Daily Archives: July 13, 2007

The global warming paradox

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Ben McNeil in the Sydney Morning Herald:

As a climate change scientist, I must thank Martin Durkin for making The Great Global Warming Swindle. Thanks, also, to the ABC for screening it last night. Both actions unwittingly make it far more likely that my colleagues and I will be better funded.

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In all the great scientific challenges of our time, funding is allocated towards diagnosis or cure. The two are strongly independent of one another. Propagating scientific uncertainty leads to more funding towards diagnosing a problem rather than developing cures – such as clean energy technologies or a carbon emissions trading schemes. This is not a hypothetical argument. All over the world, climate science funding is correlated to how sceptical governments are.

[...]

Just as cancer researchers want government programs to lower the smoking rate, climate scientists want strong solutions on greenhouse emissions. This may not be acting in our immediate professional self-interest, but it does make it more likely that our livelihood – and that of documentary makers – will have a future.

Daniel Quinn on “Environmentalist”

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EcoGeek: In many of your books, you tackle the subjects of sustainability and the environment, but from a perspective that may seem odd to many environmentalists. It seems you are not the typical “tree hugger”…

Daniel Quinn: I don’t consider myself an environmentalist. I feel that the category itself is badly conceived, dividing the world into people who are “for the environment” and people who are “for people,” which is nonsense. Thus it came to be seen that “environmentalists” were “for” the spotted owl, while non-environmentalists were seen to be “for” forestry jobs that would be lost by saving the spotted owl. The term “environmentalism” emphasizes a false division between “us” and “it” — “it” being the environment. There is no “it” out there. We are all in this together. There are no two sides. We cannot survive as a species somehow separate from the rest of the living community.

Source: EcoGeek of the Week: Daniel Quinn

Andrew Winston on Live Earth

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Andrew Winston, the co-author of Green to Gold (which I am currently reading); discusses the recent Live Earth Concert.

The pledges. Gore raised his right hand (I thought he might pledge to defend the constitution…) and asked everyone to join him in saying seven pledges (which, by the way, were not that easy to find online). Besides the ones that have obvious impact on specific industries (a moratorium on coal-fired power plants!), the last one was really interesting:

“I pledge to buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.”

This is asking consumers not only to understand whether the companies they buy from are green and ethical, but whether their lobbying efforts and political donations are supporting green-minded leaders. I have no idea how people are supposed to figure this stuff out on their own since the information on that is incredibly hard to put together. But the pledge itself is fascinating: it’s a newer, larger definition of what consumers as stakeholders can and should demand. Also, it may point to an opportunity for companies that have nothing to hide, can use transparency to their advantage, and can tell a well-founded story about their full environmental impacts and what they’re doing about them. What a great chance to build customer loyalty.

Language and imagery. One criticism: there was still a lot of “save the planet” talk. Sorry to be cynical, but the environmental movement has been using that language for decades and failed. We need to talk about saving ourselves, our economy, our way of life, etc. And they kept showing the curly-Q compact fluorescent bulbs. Those are still weird-looking to many people. Why not also show the frosted encased versions that look like a regular bulb. My point is that we’re still a bit behind on how we portray the shift (except for the clear preference for “climate crisis” over “global warming” and the constant messages about saving money). So companies that can pitch environmental solutions with a combination of words and imagery that make the change seem like a life improvement, not just a way to assuage guilt over killing the planet, will also thrive.

VCs, India and the rising BOP market

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Nandini Lakshman writes about the rising interest of venture capital funds in India. (Hat tip: Clean tech investing)

“The base of the pyramid is often ignored, but offers a tremendous opportunity,” says Katie Hill, the India representative of Acumen Fund, an $8 million fund backed by the Cisco Systems Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Acumen has put $1.5 million into Ziqitza, a Mumbai-based ambulance company that offers deep discounts on its service for residents of the city’s vast slums.

Or take IT-rural, set up by a group of software Relevant Products/Services engineers from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. A clutch of U.S.-based VCs are circling the startup technology venture, which develops solutions for rural India. The company doesn’t just provide a bunch of computers and conduct basic-training classes, but has a Web site to educate farmers, giving them information about crop patterns, nature of soil, crop diseases, and remedies. IT-rural also has established backward and forward linkages, from buying the seeds to branding and retailing products.

And two California VC funds — Walden International and New Enterprise Associates — are considering a $5 million investment in Novatium, a Chennai-based company that has developed a $100 personal computer. The machine uses microprocessors similar to those found in cell phones, and Novatium hopes to offer a suite of products including Internet connectivity, application software, and services for $10 a month, according to founder Rajesh Jain. Novatium expects to sell 3 million machines, with the potential to reach 40 million households by 2010. Says Alok Singh, CEO of Novatium, “We have always been market-driven.”

Talk Like a Corporate Environmentalist

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David Douglas is the VP of Eco Responsibility at Sun Microsystems. On his blog he provides some tips on how to talk like a Corporate Environmentalist.

#1 – Focus on The Improvement, Not What’s Left to Fix

You’ll never hear a corporate environmentalist get up and say “We’ve cut our methane emissions from 423 to 420 gzillion tons per year”. People back at HQ will freak out if you say something like that. Instead, focus on the positive: “We’ve made dramatic methane emissions reductions of 3 gzillion tons per year!”. Doesn’t that sound better?

#2 – Make Emissions Accessible, but Not Too Accessible

It’s really hard to visualize a ton of CO2 or a gigawatt of electricity, so its important to give your audience analogies that help make your statistics real. The basic approach is to compare to things people know, like cars or houses, as in “This reduction is the same as taking 13,000 cars off the road for a year”, or “That’s enough electricity to power 10,000 homes for a month. The problem is that someone in the audience might actually know some of these factoids, so you have to actually do the research and the math to make sure your comparisons are accurate – yuck!

Instead, experienced speakers will make comparisons which sound real, but are much less likely to ever be checked. The key is geographic locations and timescales which will demotivate even the most ardent fact checker. Recognizable, but not huge cities (e.g. Topeka, Milwaukee, Edinburgh, Columbus, Dresden), Canadian provinces and recently formed Eurasian countries are all great targets. “That’s enough energy to light the homes in Estonia for 16 months” – wow! “That’s the same as taking all of the cars in Alberta off of the road for a fortnight” – incredible!