Today’s Cagle e-mail brings the killed cartoon of Mike Lester.
The background to the cartoon is based on this tangerine comment. If you are interested in Food Miles and Carbon footprint you may want to check this blog post.
Finding information that is relevant can be a tough exercise and many times and waste of time. However, Google Alerts provide a way to do that in a easy way. One alert that I have is with the key words “Sweden Sustainability”. Sweden has been on the forefront of sustainability implementation and examples from Sweden would be a good learning exercise. And that is how I found Eli Zigas and his tour to understand sustainability and community issues around the US. In Portland, he is discussing “The Natural Step”.
If Portland, OR steps to different beat, Sweden steps to a different drum. For example, McDonald’s in Sweden serves organic milk and beef, recycles 97 percent of all restaurant waste, and powers over half of its 160 stores, as well as the national headquarters, with renewable energy. This puts the largest burger giant’s green wrecking ball squarely through the window of most American burger chains, even Portland, Oregon’s local environmental burger chain, Burgerville.
Given the fertile grounds for environmental change, it’s no wonder that Sweden gave rise to what I see as the latest and greatest environmental advancement: recognizing that the environment does not exist in a void (“oh yes, there are societies and economies!”) and using that knowledge to create metrics regarding true sustainability. Not sustainability as you find it described in a car commercial; rather, sustainability you can capture, put in a vial, and show to your freshman science class.
[...]Developed in 1989 by Swedish oncologist Karl-Henrik Robert, the Natural Step is a framework that can help guide our actions. Robert, through a peer-reviewed process, determined four guiding principles, officially known as “system conditions,” that define sustainability in scientific terms:
In a sustainable global society, the ecosphere is not subject to systematically increasing…
1. Concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust
Examples: Fossil fuels, metals, and minerals
2. Concentrations of substances produced by society (synthetics)
Examples: Persistent substances (DDT, PCB’s…), plastics, Freon
3. Degradation by physical means
Examples: Over-harvesting (forests, oceans…), eliminating biodiversity
and in that society,
4. People are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their basic needs
Examples: Overpopulation, unlivable wages, environmental and social inequityWe can define a system as sustainable if it does not violate any of the above conditions. Notice that the Natural Step defines sustainability in a negative way – by only describing what should not be done, rather than prescribing a specific solution, the Natural Step allows for innovative solutions. Innovative solutions for, let’s say, pressing environmental and Native American issues (Udall? Anyone?). As long as you do not violate the system conditions, anything is fair game. The Natural Step helps do for sustainability what the green movement has not: create a standard definition for environmental, social, and economic responsibility.
At the Indonesia Furniture blog:
Everyone taking part in the discussion agreed there are two fronts where sustainability practices are being addressed. The first is with consumers, as those who care about green practices show their support with their pocketbooks. “Consumers support sustainable products and say products that damage the environment should not be in stores,” said Italiano. As that support becomes more mainstream, retailers are being called to not only create more sustainable products, but make them affordable. “We are in a race. We need to reach the consumer,” said Gerry Cooklin of South Cone and the Sustainable Furniture Council from the audience.
On the other front of the sustainability issue are vendors who supply retailers with products and materials—vendors who are embracing green practices less quickly.
Both retailers on the panel said they work closely with their manufacturer partners and suppliers on various sustainability standards, in some cases making this a condition of doing business. ABC Home has a “good wood” program and shares with vendor partners packets explaining sustainability. Yet Chender said several years ago when her company approached suppliers about its good wood program, some balked or did not give the initiative much attention.
Alex Osterwalder, a friend of mine, recently presented on Business Model Innovation in Melbourne at the La Trobe University. You can check out his slideshow below and if you are interested, his blog is here.
Rupert Murdoch announced In May 2007 that News Ltd would become a Carbon Neutral Company by 2010. That is a great commitment by itself. However, what was more important was the focus of Murdoch on the audience that his papers captures.
He said:
Our audience’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours… That’s the carbon footprint we want to conquer. We cannot do it with gimmicks. We need to reach them in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content– make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior
The challenge is to revolutionize the message.
My conclusion was that, The real message in the speech is this: The unique potential– and duty– of a media company are to help its audiences connect to the issues that define our time.
Now, News Ltd has a launched a initiative called One Degree where they plan to continue the two goals suggested by Murdoch.
The website provides information on what News Ltd is doing to tackle climate change. Information on what consumers can do in the areas of water, recycling, lifestyle and energy. In addition, links to Climate Change science and questions about its validity are provided. Every refresh of the webpage provides a fact regarding climate change. And the website is a refreshing blue colour.
To continue their goal of connecing their audiences to the issue, The Advertiser, a News Ltd paper for the state of South Australia will start a “A 10-part series, outlining the history and challenges of climate change and how readers can make a difference, will be published in coming weeks.” This series will start from 6th August in Adelaide for a period of two weeks. In addition, an Ad in the paper yesterday mentions that there will be daily tips in the paper.
I will be buying the paper from next week for the magazine and it will be interesting to wait and see the effect this has on the employees in my organization.
Incentives matter. China has been promoting and rewarding its local officials around the country based on GDP growth figures. This incentive model has played a part in the creation of the great Chinese growth miracle of the last two decades.
The Age reports that China has changed its incentive model:
CHINA has announced a new promotion system under which local officials’ careers will be judged by their performance in meeting environment protection and energy efficiency targets. The move comes as fears China’s surging economy is overheating and domestic unrest about environmental damage mount.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, is working on an environmental veto system under which green performance will be decisive in determining the futures of Government and Communist Party officials, a senior policymaker has told China Daily, the Government’s English-language newspaper.
This is a good major step taken by China. Even though with a communist background China has been clever enough to use some of the most important principles from Capitalism to drive its economic growth.
It goes back to the idea which Schelling talks about that government’s even though wanting to meet targets and deliver outcomes; the best they can and should do is concentrate on inputs and direction. In this case, the energy efficiency targets set by the central government will be supported by the green incentives to the party members. Hopefully this deliver the required outcomes. The bottomline is that this is a better model than mandating targets.
I mentioned previously that there has been an excessive amount of focus on carbon emissions in relation to other environmental and social issues. In Climate Change: A Design Problem I suggest that carbon emissions are a an effect and we need to look for changing the design at the core to solve this and other related problems.
Eamon O’hara in BBC’s Green Room focusses on similar issues:
Is it not time to recognise that climate change is yet another symptom of our unsustainable lifestyles, which must now become the focus our efforts?
[...]
Undeniably, climate change is a serious problem but it is only one of a growing list of problems that arise from a fundamental global issue.For many decades, the symptoms of unsustainable human exploitation of the natural environment have been mounting: species extinction, the loss of biodiversity, air and water pollution, soil erosion, acid rain, destruction of rainforests, ozone depletion – the list goes on.
[...]
The solutions currently being put forward, such as those being championed by the European Union, focus almost exclusively on reducing carbon emissions
[...]
Every day we wait, another 30,000 children needlessly die; between 100-150 plant and animal species become extinct; 70,000 hectares of rainforest is destroyed and another 150m tonnes of CO2 is released into the atmosphere.Meanwhile, another $3.0bn (£1.5bn) is spent on arms and weapons of mass destruction.
We urgently need to think about the more fundamental concept of sustainability and how our lifestyles are threatening not only the environment, but developing countries and global peace and stability.
[...]
In my view, we need to embrace this as an opportunity and not see it as a responsibility. Living a more sustainable lifestyle does not have to be a burden, as some people fear.
