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.

But all this does serve to flag up one classic dilemma of sustainable development: namely, what happens when an initiative aimed at meeting people’s aspirations and improving their quality of life runs slap bang into environmental limits? When the social and economic pillars of sustainability, in other words, come crashing down onto the environmental one?

Source: Green Futures Blog

The basic idea: Boosting the cost of anything containing carbon – the main greenhouse gas – would compel industries and consumers to seek cheaper alternatives. They’d switch to cleaner fuels or consume less – either by adopting more efficient technologies or simply reducing their activity. Presumably, the alternatives would be better for the environment.

The problem: No government appears willing to impose a cost high enough to actually change behaviour. And while several industry groups argue pricing carbon is a good idea, their enthusiasm is less than it seems.

For more, The Oil Drum.

“I think the trick with clean energy is not to be able to charge more. Because you can’t see global warming, I don’t think people are willing to pay more for it. It’s got to be a viable investment if it’s going to be successful.”

- WSJ

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at a college — that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?” –Howard Ikemoto

Source: Daily Good Newsletter

“All this emphasis on statistics and calculations…,” he went on, rapping his silver-handled cane on the table for emphasis, “without a proper theory, it is all nonsense. And your economists seem to have no theory at all…they just think they can manipulate the system in order to get whatever outcome they want. They think economic growth comes from consumer spending and that they can control consumer spending by adjusting lending rates. It is unbelievable that anyone takes this seriously. It is capital formation that really matters. A rich society is one with a great stock of capital…one that builds capital and puts it to work to create more capital. A rich society is not one where people consume. Just the opposite. It is not what is consumed that creates wealth; it is what is NOT consumed. Yet, all the Anglo-Saxons focus on motivating consumers to consume. And now they are consuming more than they make. I tell you, in 70 years of studying economics, I have never seen such nonsense.

“I have always thought it was the duty of each generation to leave the next one a little better off. That means, each generation has to consume less than it produces. It has to leave a little something extra. The problem, you see, is not an economic one…what we are doing to our children with this use of credit and debt is deeply immoral. It is wrong. It is wrong to burden the future with our mistakes, our conceits, our ambitions. This is what we are doing, and it is shameful.”

Source: The Daily Reckoning. Newsletter on Sep 13th 2007.

You build a hotel and it’s going to be there for the next 50 years. In that time you are going to have economic cycles that go up and down, you are going to have trauma that the world experiences. You have to have to put your business model in place, where you can get through the good, the bad and the ugly. So, your whole purpose of developing a longterm business plan is to under stand, that is what you’re facing. The people that we have partnered with, these are professionals who know the real estate business really well.

Source: The Mint