In the heated discussions about climate change and the clean tech economy, it’s hard to avoid arguing about whether green jobs are “real” or if they can replace traditional fossil-fuel jobs. But this debate is moot on two counts.
By wielding a tool more powerful than legal action, protests, or even partnership, a relative upstart — the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) — has rapidly become the NGO to watch. CDP and its backers are basically demanding transparency– that’s the powerful idea that makes the NGO so strong.
The New York Times reported today that the U.S. Military is aggressively pursuing “Less Dependence on Fossil Fuels.” Why does the military care about going green? Because the cost in money, resources, and lives to bring fuel to Afghanistan and Iraq is just too great. A few of the mind-blowing statistics in this article…
Popular Science released its list of Breakthrough Awards 2010 for new ideas and products (some on the design table, some out in the market). Out of 18 winners, 5 are clearly green innovations:
China is spending $75 billion or more each year for the next ten years to build a clean economy. The country is in the clean tech race to win it. Is the U.S.?
The world faces some big shocks in the realms of sustainability and climate change, and the ways of thinking about the future described in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, The Black Swan, will come in handy. But two competing black swans — climate change itself or worldwide action to pursue sustainability — both of which seem unlikely, are competing. Let’s hope the second one wins.
The New York Times’ Ross Douthat relies on a set of arguments against the pursuit of a clean economy that have little basis in fact and mainly defend the untenable status quo. The overall pitch has two main parts: (a) promoting a clean economy through the use of market mechanisms like cap-and-trade is a perversion of free markets…(b) going green will cost jobs and hurt the economy. Let’s look at both ideas.
I know it’s difficult for the average person to believe, but how we use energy and what we drive actually connects directly to the price of bread. And it doesn’t really take that many “degrees of Kevin Bacon” to connect the dots.
While the “greening of the supply chain” has been in the works for decades, the movement has really taken off in 2010. In the last few months, a number of corporate giants have announced new initiatives that pressure suppliers to do much more to measure and manage their environmental impacts. The big guns asking the questions include Pepsi, P&G (more in a future post), and IBM.
I recently spent two nights at the lovely, high-end Westin hotel in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. When I first entered my room, every lamp and light in the place was on…plus two radios…the hotel is forcing its customers to face two conflicting messages, one conservation-oriented and one theoretically welcoming, but blatantly wasteful.
