Our World 2.0

Brendan Barrett, Head of the UNU Media Studio is web publishing a nice looking, thoughtful and thought provoking magazine called Our World 2.0. Here’s a recent article I recommend checking out:

Peak Oil What does it mean to you? Excerpt:

Does oil priced at over $140 per barrel signal the arrival of Peak Oil? The experts disagree on the cause of the price jump but agree on one message: The era of easy oil is over.

How this affects you: Health: 

The rising fuel prices cause a lot of stress and worry for everyone. We all know that stress is not good for your health. One important point is to make sure to stay informed about why this is happening and then consider how you can put a positive spin on the situation, one that can actually bring about improvements in your health. For instance, by cycling rather than driving, which is good for you and good for reducing your costs associated with fuel consumption.

Brendan does a good job of making the current rise in fuel costs understandable. He does a particularly good job of connecting the systemic dynamics to everyday living. 

Good work Brendan. 

Tags: peak oil, sustainability, United Nations University

Innovation & Climate Change Pt. 4: Alex Evans

As noted in previous posts, Alex Evans and others spoke on inter-related elements of the implications and science surrounding global warming and climate change. Present only for the first half, my impressions are recorded below:

Alex Evans ended his presentation with the pronouncement that he doesn’t believe that the G8 leaders can fully grasp, develop and relate the climate change story in a meaningful way. This begs the question, “OK, well then, who does get it?

Actually, it’s not so much “getting it” as it is the storytelling aspect that is eluding our leaders. Al Gore, certainly has no trouble getting his point across in An Inconvenient Truth. Yet his story is one that falls well short of relating the inter-related complexities of food production & distribution, food availability, energy availability, climate change. 

I think the problem is choosing what story to tell. Where do you begin? Where do you end? What do you leave out? What do you include? Evans pointed out that without shared awareness acting as an attractor for attention it’s very difficult to craft a moving national or global narrative. Also, with little causal fuel for creating a sense of urgency, getting the public or a leader’s constituency to support sustained action (and sacrifice) regarding climate change is also quite a challenge.

What Evans said we needed was a “shared OS” and “shared platforms” that would allow multilateral functionalism and cooperation on climate change issues. I would add that the OS and platforms should be “open source” to allow development of shared applications that can be localized and run “glocally.”

With the above architecture in place Evans implied that it then becomes more plausible to

• create systems level measurement and detection tools
• implement strategically targeted and transparent financial interventions
• refocus trade policy along systemically apparent needs and dynamics
• develop useful risk management and assistance programs

Tags: climate change, innovation, sustainability, United Nations University

Innovation & Climate Change Part 4: David Sanborn Scott

As noted in previous posts, Dr. Scott and others spoke on inter-related elements of the implications and science surrounding global warming and climate change. Present only for the first half, my impressions are recorded below:

David Sanborn Scott presented an elegantly systemic overview of the patterns which underlie energy consumption (reproduced below). The overview identifies “roles” as opposed to the “things” that fill those roles during different eras of energy use. 

One of the points he made is that policy makers don’t understand the “energy architecture”, the structures and patterns that undergird energy issues. They tend to focus on “things” and outputs without understanding the relationships between those things and outputs. This creates debacles like the Kyoto Protocol and the emissions trading ridiculousness that arose with it.

Instead, what policy makers and energy producers should be looking is something like Dr. Scott’s model:

(services) – (service technologies) – (currencies) – (transformer technologies) – (sources)

This model begins not with the source of the energy (coal fields, gas deposits, crude oil) but with the service that source enables (for example, heating). To provide heat there must be heat providing technologies as well as “currencies” that power the service technologies. These currencies are what we generally call “fuel” such as coal, natural gas, and gasoline. The transformer technologies are things like coal mines and mining tools and oil refining technology. 

Dr. Scott went on to explain why hydrogen is a compelling choice for a “new” major currency. It can be transformed using a number of currencies as sources including sunlight, wind, natural gas and uranium. In terms of sustainability, then, Dr. Scott argued that renewable resources are neither wholly necessary or sufficient. For example trees are renewable but if we switched to wood as a primary currency we would still have emissions problems. destroy a key CO2 absorbing mechanism and run out of wood in pretty short order.

What is necessary, he claimed, is a diversity of sources that yield currencies (like hydrogen) that do not destabilize the atmosphere and climatic conditions. In broader terms, the currency when transformed to a service needs to have a minimal intrusion on eco-systemic flows. 

Dr. Scott concluded with how hydrogen could assume a greater role including powering vehicles like cars, submarines and planes as well as generating power for other electrically powered services.

What was really compelling about Dr. Scott’s presentation was the way in which he re-framed the energy consumption process and how, when we begin to see it as a system, we can begin to see where we can apply leverage to generate meaningful change and what is required to enable that change. 

Also, he convinced me that hydrogen may very well have an important role to play in reducing emissions and stabilizing supply and demand issues.

Dr. Scott left us with this message concerning the role hydrogen can play in affecting climate change:

The needs are critical.

• The fundamental ideas, simple.

• The lack of understanding, stupefying.

• The dithering, scary.

• The promise, brilliant.

Tags: climate change, hydrogen, innovation, sustainability, United Nations University