World is Green

When a visionary like Rupert Murdoch speaks we need to listen…very carefully. From owning a small newspaper in Australia he now owns and heads one of the top media companies in the world. Now, he announces that News Corp has acknowledged the risks in Climate Change and wants to tackle it head on.

Rupert Murdoch gave a speech a couple of years back on how the media landscape has changed and how the audiences are different from before. He saw the trend, accepted the challenge and then, he bought MySpace.com. From nowehere, he owned one of the most popular sites in the world and making more money then he coughed up for the company with a single advertising deal with Google. As he says, he took a small risk and re-invented themselves.

Now, Climate change is similar for News Corp. Going carbon neutral is good. Cutting down energy is good. But Rupert realises that he can make a bigger difference. For good or bad, he has had a strong influence on his large media network across the world. Now, that influence may make a big difference.

In his speech he spells out the potential:

But becoming carbon neutral is only the beginning. The climate problem will not be solved by one company reducing its emissions to zero, and it won’t be solved by one government acting alone.
The climate problem will not be solved without mass participation by the general public in countries around the globe.

And that’s where we come in.

We’re starting with our own carbon footprint. Not nothing. But much of what we’re doing is already, or soon will be, little more than the standard way of doing business.

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.Imagine if we succeed in inspiring our audiences to reduce their own impacts on climate change by just one percent. That would be like turning the State of California off for almost two months.

And imagine if… we were able to take on the carbon footprint of our audience in Asia. Many of the most serious impacts of climate change will be felt there, and China and India’s emissions are rising rapidly. STAR is the number one Hindi-language network in the world. In India alone, we reach 100 million people.

The challenge is to revolutionize the message.

For too long, the threats of climate change have been presented as doom and gloom– because the consequences are so serious.

We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.

The biggest challenge that I have seen with Climate Change and other sustainability issues is the marketing. Changing people’s behaviour is a herculean task. We have to wait and see how this strategy actually gets implemented but the signs are positive.

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. 

Jesse Hogan writes in The Age about his interview with Michael Braungart, who runs the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency and is the co-developer of the Cradle to Cradle system.

Braungart provides a very radical (but needed) view:

Michael Braungart…describes the theory of rationing harmful emissions to protect the environment as “like saying you’ll protect your child by beating them a little less”.

“We are far too many people on this planet to (just) be less bad,” he says at his office in Hamburg in Germany. Professor Braungart contests Al Gore’s contention in An Inconvenient Truth that environment problems are linked to overpopulation. He says the weight of all the world’s ants is more than four times the weight of all humans, yet their calorie consumption is the equivalent to that of 30 million humans.

“The question is if we can organise our material flows differently, because we are only a problem because we make waste.”

The agency creates two types of products: biological nutrients, which disintegrate after use, and technical nutrients, which can be reused in future products.

Professor Braungart, a member of the German Government’s committee for environmental innovation, says working with large companies does not inevitably compromise green ideals.

“It needs protest on one side but on the other side you need also to reinvent things to be beneficial,” he says.

What if the employees of an organization start making sustainability personal? What if the organization can help employees in making this happen? What could be it mean for the employees and the employer? These are some of the questions that I am grappling with daily in my job.

One main issue we were struggling with was to create a compelling sustainability theme which should resonate with all our employees and make them change their behaviours at work. What we hit upon was providing them with a “sustainability lifestyle at work” or “sustainable work practices” program. The best part of this program - it will provide the employee with ideas and solutions to become environmentally friendly at their home and save some money!

Our’s is a state government organization with 7000+ employees spread over 300 offices and other buildings all over the state. Add to this the diversity of the workforce and the reluctance to change and we have a big job at hand.

Sarah Rich at World Changing writes about the “personal sustainability project”. Here, she connects sustainable workplace practices with the example of the personal sustainability project of Walmart. This is exactly what we are planning to do at the Department of Families and Communities in South Australia.

Sarah provides evidence about how “energy -efficient” work practices have increased the productivity of employees at various organizations. According to the Cool Companies report for United States Post Office branch in Reno, Nevada, when the management renovated the lighting system for greater energy-efficiency it has resulted in multiple benefits.

Energy savings projected for the whole building come to about $22,400 a year. The new ceiling also saved $30,000 a year in maintenance costs. Combined energy and maintenance savings came to $50,000 a year, a six-year payback. But the productivity gains were worth $400,000 to $500,000 annually - paying for the renovation in less than 12 months.

The inspiring example to me is however, Wal-Mart.

According to the NyTimes:

In the last year, Wal-Mart has quietly introduced an ambitious program in the United States — in equal parts self-help class, corporate retreat and tent revival — that tries to turn its 1.3 million workers into a model for its 200 million customers on issues ranging from personal health to the environment.

In extensive workshops held nationwide, the company is teaching its employees the benefits of carpooling to work with three colleagues (for a savings of $400 a year on gas), quitting cigarette smoking ($1,500 a year) and turning off a television ($40 a year in electricity, plus more time to spend with family).

The program, called the personal sustainability project, is voluntary, but it is proving popular, with roughly 50 percent of employees in a dozen states signing up so far. The company may eventually extend the program to its workers around the world.

For Wal-Mart, the payoff could be significant: if it succeeds, the initiative could improve employee morale, and therefore productivity; reduce health care spending on a work force with higher rates of heart disease and diabetes than the general public; and improve Wal-Mart’s reputation with the image-conscious consumers it is courting with costlier merchandise.

The main difference in our program is to change the behaviour of people at home and work both. One should follow the other. By doing it right at home and saving money they can bring the same behaviour to work (hopefully!). As the numbers and ideas in the Walmart example show, the experience can create a huge diffrence to the employees. In the end, this should translate into better performance for the organization.

Health programs were not in my agenda but I guess it is an idea which I can incorporate. The sell to the management has been hard but we have won them over. Now, we are building the resources (website, presentations, brochures, ideas, frameworks) needed to make this happen.

We will not have the massive budget of Wal-Mart however, one way of achieving the goal is to partner with voluntary networks inside the organization working on similar stuff.

I am exploring ideas on “social psychology” and “social marketing” to sell this concept to the employees and the office managers at various offices across the state.

Reading this article has provided me with further evidence that we may be on the right track.

Seth Godin suggests that this may be the way of the future.

The NoImpact Man is a resident of New York who lives with his wife, daughter and a dog and is trying to live a no-impact life. He is chronicling his journey on his blog.

What is the philosophy behind this concept?

None of the practical questions about no impact living would be relevant if my wife Michelle, my daughter Isabella, our dog Frankie and I intended to approach the challenge by becoming ascetics. Until now, we have been your typical convenience-addicted, New York City take-out slaves. Asceticism is not a realistic way forward, not for my family and not for the world.

Saving this planet depends on finding a middle path that is neither unconsciously consumerist nor self-consciously anti-materialist. The idea for No Impact Man is not to be anorexic but to be abundant, not to be eco-efficient but “eco-effective,” in the words of the environmental scientists William McDonough and Michael Braungart.

The No Impact Man has a year long plan which is being implemented in stages. The interesting part of the discussion is what he means by no-impact. The laws of thermodynamics clearly show that you cannot have zero impact on the earth. If you consume you have an impact.

No Impact Man is my experiment with researching, developing and adopting a way of life for me and my little family—one wife, one toddler, one dog—to live in the heart of New York City while causing no net environmental impact. To do this, we will decrease the things we do that hurt the earth—make trash, cause carbon dioxide emissions, for example—and increase the things we do that help the earth—clean up the banks of the Hudson River, give money to charity, rescue sea birds, say.

In mathematical terms, in case you are an engineer or just a geek who likes math, we are trying to achieve an equilibrium that looks something like this:

Negative Impact + Positive Impact = Zero.

No net impact. Get it?

He understands that humans will live more in the cities than the rural areas. It is time for us to figure out how we can live Sustainably in the cities. This is a blog which needs to be followed.

Most importantly, this is the kind of thinking which individuals and organizations (corporate, government or not-for-profits) need to apply to create a sustainable world.

Stewart Brand is a man ahead of the curve. Reading about him I realized the importance of understanding this person and his ideas.

(He published)…the Whole Earth Catalog, he organized the first Hackers Conference, in 1984, and helped found The WELL, the early electronic community that was a sort of prototype of the Web. In Professor Turner’s history, he was the impresario who knew everyone and brought the counterculture and the cyberculture together, from the Homebrew Computer Club in the 1970s to Wired magazine in the 1990s.

I first heard about the Whole Earth Catalog in Steve Jobs’s Keynote presentations. I rushed to the University library in Adelaide and started reading all the various versions. It was an amazing experience. That it was published in the 1970s was incredible. The idea, the combination, the presentation were inspiring and informative.

The “now” version of that is the World Changing book which I had a chance to contribute to. However, it does not still come near the original.

Stewart Brand is important to understand because “He expects that environmentalists will soon share his affection for nuclear power. They’ll lose their fear of population growth and start appreciating sprawling megacities. They’ll stop worrying about “frankenfoods” and embrace genetic engineering.”

These ideas are not discussed “heretic” in the environmental movement. However, as a wise friend once said, in a second best world we need second best ideas.

He is a person who clearly understands the difference between idealism or what he calls a romantic and a practical person or what he calls a scientist.

“My trend has been toward more rational and less romantic as the decades go by,” he says. “I keep seeing the harm done by religious romanticism, the terrible conservatism of romanticism, the ingrained pessimism of romanticism. It builds in a certain immunity to the scientific frame of mind.”

And then he suggests the following,

On Nuclear power:

“There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective,” he says. “Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don’t know where it is and you don’t know what it’s doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody’s atmosphere.”

On Mega-cities:

He now looks at the rapidly growing megacities of the third world not as a crisis but as good news: as villagers move to town, they find new opportunities and leave behind farms that can revert to forests and nature preserves. Instead of worrying about population growth, he’s afraid birth rates are declining too quickly, leaving future societies with a shortage of young people.

This makes a lot of sense. Coming from India I can understand the need for mega-cities. That is a far more sustainable option that living in 600,000 villages as is the current option in India. As Stewart says, lets work with the future trends rather than fighting for some idealistic situation.
What is more important is his thinking.

Mr. Brand would rather take a few risks.

“I get bored easily — on purpose,” he said, recalling advice from the co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix. “Jim Watson said he looks for young scientists with low thresholds of boredom, because otherwise you get researchers who just keep on gilding their own lilies. You have to keep on trying new things.”

That’s a good strategy, whether you’re trying to build a sustainable career or a sustainable civilization. Ultimately, there’s no safety in clinging to a romanticized past or trying to plan a risk-free future. You have to keep looking for better tools and learning from mistakes. You have to keep on hacking.

It is important not to be idealistic but stick to facts and situations. Most importantly, is ok to change. Withought change there is no progress.

Additional Resources:

• Stewart Brand’s article in Technology Review where he spells out his ideas.
• An Interview with Stewart Brand.
• Stewart Brand Talks Slideshows

Ten Network in Australia is conducting today, Cool Aid: A National Carbon Test. On the prime time 8:30 PM slot for Sunday, the idea is to empower the individuals in Australia with information on their carbon emissions along with solutions to go on a carbon diet.

It is a big step forward for Climate Change in Australia. With professors, green company heads, the Federal Environment Minister and his shadow minister along with Al Gore and Tim Flannery participating in the show; it is the first “mass-market” show in this area in Australia.

The program follows a simple quality improvement system of: audit, act, change and check again. So use the following information to check out your carbon audit for your lifestyle, see how you can change and then act. If you are really want to take the next step, check out the carbon offsets available.

Before we go ahead lets take a step back. If you are not sure about climate change, check animations from the BBC, a long article from Wikipedia or indepth information from the US EPA or buy/rent Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” at your local DVD store.

Now let’s look at what you can do. A lot of the links are for Australians, remember that.

(Click on the link below for the rest of the article)

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As reported yesterday on WorldisGreen.com, the Fast 50 was about the business and the environment. I mentioned yesterday about how the government is a major part of the solutions in this area, the Fast 50 has a web exclusive interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was revealing to read the interview and finding out that Schwarzenegger has studies business in college and using it all his life.

We get a lot more done when we create a great partnership to tackle problems. Whenever government does something alone, inevitably it fails. Why? Because even if we include Democrats and Republicans and Independents and say, “We’ve got the best brainpower,” that’s only the public sector. We need the best brainpower from the other half, the private sector. The important thing, as we’re creating a vision and setting guidelines, is that we’re working with business. We can say, “We want to reverse global warming and go after it from every angle without hurting business.” We want to show we’re friends and not the enemy.I come from a business background. I studied business in college, and I was always interested in the business side of everything. In all I’ve ever done–you know, bodybuilding, fitness, the movie business–I’ve always looked at it not only as the joy of doing the sport or the joy of acting but also, how do we make $1 into $10? How can we make a business out of it? Because everything has a business aspect.

What we are trying to do is show leadership in this area. If you look at the globe, you see California as a tiny box geographically speaking. But if you look at the power and influence of California, it immediately changes the picture. We have this huge name. This is what I want to benefit from to get the ball rolling all over the world.

First of all, you should never say, I can’t believe all the obstacles we’re facing. Every time there’s some new idea about anything, you will have people who despise any change. They love to hang on to the status quo. They will fight and they will take it to court. You have to expect it. The car companies have, you know, 25,000 lawyers, and this is what they do. We said, “Look guys, we understand, but eventually you’ve got to come our way, because it’s the best way to go.”

The bigger the obstacles, the more fun it is for me. Because anyone can overcome little obstacles. To overcome the big ones, it’s a huge challenge. If you have the personality that enjoys that, then you enjoy this job. For me, it’s inspirational to have big goals. You can have a tremendous impact on people’s lives. People say, “You can’t get everything done. There’s no way. It’s just too big. You’re one of these big action guys that likes big things, but everything can’t get done.” Well, so be it. But the only way to know if you can lift 500 pounds is if you put 500 pounds on the bar.

When Al Gore released his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” in Australia I, along with other green guys, arranged for a exclusive screening for our company employees. One goal was to increase people’s understanding of climate change. The response was amazing, some 200 people attended and the theatre was full!

Al Gore decided to take this forward with this Climate Project where he aimed to train 1000 people to spread the message on climate change. In Australia some 85 people were trained and 9 from South Australia. Andrew Dickson, Development Manager at Wind Prospect Australia.

Along with my boss we attended a presentation by him at Regency Park today. Using the same slides used by Al Gore in the movie he explained the causes of climate change to a 20 something lunch-time audience.

The main differences between this one and Gore’s was that one, it concentrated a little more on Australia and two, it talked a little on solutions. Gore’s original felt like a abrupt end to the problem and you come out with a feeling of ‘doom and gloom’. Despair makes people inactive. This presentation was different highlighting the need for some solutions.

I think the climate change debate has changed a lot in the past year. In the future these same people can evolve into talking about solutions rather than the problem and then we can see a more positive effect of these messengers.

At the end, people like Andrew need to thanked for taking the time to spread this important message. It would have been good if I had taken a photo of him; may be next time.

Interestingly, Al Gore wrote the Foreword to WorldChanging book for which I had the chance to contribute to writing on Micro-finance.

John Howard presented this year’s Australian of the Year award to Professor Tim Flannery, a high profile environmentalist and scientist, and author of The Weather Makers, a treatise on climate change.

Environmentalist Tim Flannery got an early birthday present on Thursday when he was named the 2007 Australian of the Year, giving him a platform to convince Australians about the dangers of over-consumption.

As a scientist who has been warning about sustainability and the risk of climate change for decades, public opinion is finally catching up with Dr Flannery.

He has written best-selling books on the issue, been an environmental adviser to the South Australian and federal governments, catalogued the mammals of Melanesia, discovered dinosaur fossils and kangaroo species in his own country, and taught at Harvard.

Flannery soon after receiving the award was commenting that the Howard government was “dragging the chain” on climate change.

“I’ve said in the past that Australia has been the worst of the worst in terms of addressing climate change … but I’m hopeful that we’ll see over this year some movement.

“And it’s going to have to be fast movement. There’s been a decade of delay and that’s put us in quite a difficult position.

“Hard steps are now required where a decade ago we may have been able to take smaller and easier ones.”

Bill Drayton: these “hybrid value chains” are a no-brainer; the divergence of the consumer and citizen sectors was a “nonsensical historical accident” in the first place, and their reintegration is “profoundly important for the health of both.” Business must use social networks to reach new markets. And the citizen sector needs the marketplace to gain financial sustainability.