World is Green

Logic+Emotion: Whispers

Life’s whispers are often soft and subtle. They come without warning. The whispers are always there—but we’re not always listening. The noise we surround ourselves with often keeps the whispers at bay. We become incapable of hearing them, until we choose to. At this point we see through fresh eyes.

I’m choosing to listen. But first I had to slow down and stop in order to do so. I had to be willing to miss the train if it meant learning something, even if just for the day. The whispers are there, waiting for us to notice them. But only if we’re open to turn our own volume down, even if only for a brief moment in time. For me, this moment just happened to be the right one.

From Tom Peters

Simple & crystal clear (to me): To give a high-impact, well-regarded, occasionally life-changing speech “to customers” I first & second & third have to focus all my restless energy on “satisfying” … myself. I must be … physically & emotionally & intellectually agitated & excited & desperate beyond measure … to communicate & connect & compel & grab by the collar & say my piece about a small number of things, often contentious and not “crowd-pleasers,” that, at the moment, are literally a matter of personal … life and death.

I crave great “customer feedback”—but in no way, shape, or form am I trying to “satisfy my customer.” I am, I repeat, trying instead to satisfy me, my own deep neediness to reach out and grab my customer & connect with my customer over ideas that consume & devour me.

Hence … my “Job One” is purely selfish & internally focused, to be completely captivated by the subject matter at hand. That is, to repeat in slightly different words, Job One is … self-motivation.

Warren Bennis, my primo mentor, in On Becoming a Leader, said, “No leader sets out to be a leader per se, but rather to express him- or herself freely and fully. That is, leaders have no interest in proving themselves, but an abiding interest in expressing themselves.”

” When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? “

- John Maynard Keynes

Quote of the day (Gil Friend)

DD’s Eco Notes

# There are no effect-free solutions. We need to guesstimate the effects of all potential solutions, measure their real effects if we put them into practice, and compare alternatives to the best of our collective ability.
# We cannot afford to paint things black or white. We need to be able to differentiate a wide range of shades of green, and be willing to give new technologies some extra slack.

X Prize: $100 Million for Clean Fuels

In its richest and largest competition yet, the foundation will divvy up some $100 million for transformations in biofuels, clean aviation fuel, energy storage, the provision of basic utilities for developing nations, and other categories.
[...]
The X Prize Foundation has previously launched competitions for breakthroughs in private space travel, genome mapping, and high-mileage cars. In 2004 aerospace entrepreneur Burt Rutan won the Ansari X Prize by sending his rocket-powered SpaceShipOne to an altitude of more than 367,000 feet with a pilot and the weight equivalents of two passengers. More recently, Google ( GOOG) has backed an X Prize of $30 million for the first team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit video, images, and data back to Earth.

Google Lunar X Prize Team Announcement
[...]
He says one prize will be for innovation in providing water, broadband, and clean electricity to villages in the developing world. Other energy categories will be for innovation in energy transmission and the construction of energy-efficient houses and commercial facilities.

More details on their website (PDF). The incentives of X Prize has proved before to be powerful enough to solve issues never before solved like non-government space flights.

MIT Class Calculates Carbon Footprint of “The Man” | Wired Science from Wired.com

The MIT class, in a paper (pdf) to be presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, estimated that no American, even the homeless and itinerant Buddhist monks, could get their total “share” of energy usage below 130 gigajoules, which is more than twice the global average, and directly correlated with carbon footprint.

That’s because the basic infrastructure of the United States including police, roads, libraries, courts and the military were allocated equally to all citizens of the country. Thus, even if one’s personal consumption in terms of purchased products and lifestyle were minimal, he or she would still bear their share of the systemic carbon load, according to the methodology of this study. In common terms, each and every U.S. resident is carbon-heavier other countries’ citizens.

This is the real issue that needs to be addressed.

Last year when the Sydney Earth Hour was conducted, followed by Light’s Out London, I was not very happy with the initiative. Now this year, with more than 20 cities participating, it has become an internation event.

Well, the Earth Hour organizers say that “Earth Hour is about more than one night. Its about inspiring you everyday to make changes that will help achieve Earth Hour’s ultimate goal of reducing emissions by 5%.” That is good. Like some of the comedy lines on the radio, hopefully people did not switch off their lights and switched on their Plasma TVs to watch how much energy they saved.

However, the measurement systems used by their official releases do not suggest that.

The press release on AFP says that

Tens of millions of people switched off lightbulbs this weekend as part of a global campaign to throw the spotlight on climate change, organisers of the Australian-led ‘Earth Hour’ initiative said.

“We had 2.2 million last year; I reckon by the time we finally count it up, we will have about 100 million people involved around the world,” he said.

Energy Australia, which supplies much of Sydney’s electricity, said a drop of about 8.4 percent in energy usage had been recorded in the city during the hour, equivalent to 1.6 million light bulbs being switched off.

It is not important how much energy consumption decreased in the cities that participated for that hour but it will be interesting to see how many people were informed and involved in energy conservation before the event and how many increased their understanding after the event. That would be a good outcome.

100 million participants is a big number either way.

The issue is whether participants understand this to be a small part of the challenge or whether they think that energy conservation is easy. As we can see from the articles all around the world, the entire effort was on switching off lights but not on general energy conservation principles.

Over the past year or so I have been covering the green industry to understand it better. Over the course, it became apparent that the biggest stories are about the people behind these initiatives.

In the course of being in this industry and writing on the blog I have come across some interesting people who are trying to make it big in this industry in their own way. In order to tell their story, I have decided to conduct an interview with them. The idea is to understand the stories at a more personal and knowledgable level.

I have no specific publishing schedule, but would try to do about 3 interviews a month.

Our guest today is Sreenivas Ghatty. Sreenivas is the founder and CEO of Tree Oils India. With all the interest in Biofuels Sreenivas believes that there is a great future for using them as an alternate fuel of choice.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I have a Masters in Agriculture and was a corporate banker in India and Dubai for 18 years until I entered the Biodiesel industry in 2003. I live in Melbourne with my wife and two daughters and keep travelling to India and other countries regularly.What is your company about?

Tree Oils India Limited was established in 2003 to produce Biodiesel from non-edible oils. Please visit our web site (www.treeoilsindia.com) to learn more about this company. Bear with me if some of the information is obsolete as the contents have not been updated during the last five years. As non-edible feedstocks were not available in sufficient quantities and at reasonable pricen at the time, we started with plantation activity. As there were no tested varities of these tree species and knowledge of agronomy was limited, we started an R&D farm to begin with. So, as of now, we are a technical-know-how company, trying to develop non-edible oil-bearing trees such as Pongamia, Jatropha etc.

Only Peter Drucker can provide this level of clarity.

Three roles of Management

Drucker teaches us three roles of management. The first role is to accomplish the function that is specific to each organization; in other words, to contribute to society through its business. If it is a newspaper company, it is to publish the best paper. If it is a greengrocery store, it is to supply the best vegetables. It is only a monastery deep in the mountains that does not have to contribute to society directly. It is only a gangster connection that does not have any intention to contribute to society. All other organizations must contribute to society, because they are allowed to exist, occupy, and hire the most valuable in society.

The second role is to make work productive and people achieving. Man as a social existence seeks to exert his ability fully, to fulfill his potential, and contribute to society. Especially from now on, we will enter an age when people will leave an organization that cannot make work productive, and satisfy them in achieving through their strengths.

The third role is not to give any negative impact on society, and to contribute society in solving its problems. This is so-called the social responsibilities of the organization.

The social responsibility of organization

The first social responsibility of organizations is to eliminate any negative impact to society caused by its existence and activities, or at least to minimize it. If a noise is produced during the process of production, it has to be reduced as much as possible. Traffic stagnation might be caused in neighborhood. It has to be eliminated. Drucker says the organization has to eliminate or at least to reduce these nuisances as much as possible.

Furthermore, the responsibility of organizations is to solve social problems by mobilizing its strengths. And, to make the problem- solving into a business if possible. In any industries such as power companies, automobile companies, convenience stores, hospitals, etc., the business itself started fulfilling social needs. It is true to any business. These two responsibilities make up the social responsibility of organizations.

Drucker affirms strongly that there are not any special responsibilities, called the social responsibility of business. It is politically wrong to give any special responsibility to anyone, or to any organization. In Europe, such an idea was discarded a long time ago, even before modern industry was born. Pascal, well known by his “Penses” (1670), pointed this out. If special responsibilities were laid on, special powers would be given. As powers are accompanied by responsibilities, responsibilities are accompanied by powers.

For management, profit is a requirement to achieve these three roles. At the same time, it is a scale to measure its achievement. It is not a purpose. A requirement is harder than a purpose. A scale is also harder than a purpose. During my thirty years in Keidanren, so called the headquarters of the Japanese business, I have never met a single CEO who said he worked for purpose of moneymaking. Drucker says there is no such thing as profit motivation. Profit is a cost that a company as a public institution needs to achieve its roles. It is a requirement. It is a standard to judge its achievement.

Source: 1366 Tech