For the record, it appears that ocean currents are destabilizing methane hydrates on the Arctic slope. The warmer the ocean gets, the more methane gets spewed out of those stores on the continental shelf, and the warmer the ocean gets, ad infinitum. There is an immense amount of carbon stored in the arctic. “It’s a giant number. But we […]
Author archives: Permabusiness
Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years
For the record, new analysis shows that the number of wild animals on Earth has halved in the past 40 years. Creatures across land, rivers and the seas are being decimated as humans kill them for food in unsustainablenumbers, while polluting or destroying their habitats. “If half the animals died in London zoo next week […]
New ways of growing food
Four stories about new, more sustainable models for farming, from four countries across Europe:
Brics create their own development bank
The five ’emerging’ BRICS economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa account for a quarter of the world economy (24.5%). Their voting power at the IMF is only 10.3 percent. They have decided to stop waiting for the US Congress to ratify reforms to that voting structure. At their sixth summit recently they announced […]
Schleswig-Holstein about to go 100% renewable electricity
One entire state in Germany is about to product all its electricity (and more) renewably: http://cleantechnica.com/2014/06/23/100-renewable-electricity-will-achieved-german-state-soon/
Agroforestry is crucial to the food production challenge
The IPCC’s latest report says that that climate change has “already affected agriculture, human health, ecosystems on land and in the oceans, water supplies, and some people’s livelihoods.” In agriculture the solution lies in complexity, which promises a resilience to extremes which fragile monocrop systems can’t match. Farmers know that producing many different crops protects them from […]
Water shortages looming
“We’re going to run out of water long before we run out of oil,” says Peter Brabeck, chairman of Nestlé. In the first instalment of a series on the threat of water scarcity, the Financial Times describes the impact on companies. “We have a water crisis because we make wrong water-management decisions. Climate change will further affect […]
Geothermal energy growing
The worldwide market is growing at just under 10% a year and could be a considerable contributor to reduced greenhouse gases. The estimated geothermal resource in the U.S. is between 100 and 500 gigawatts. Iceland is already generating a quarter of its electricity and around 90 percent of household heating from geothermal energy. More information here.
Holacracy
Another in the series of emerging ways of organising is ‘holacracy’. The idea is to treat an organisation as a series of ‘holons’: autonomous self-reliant business units. We are familiar with thinking of a corporation as composed of different business units — defined by geography, customers, or products/services — but holacracy takes the idea one step further and […]
Seven new models for work
This Fortune article says that traditional organisations are becoming less attractive as workers become more entrepreneurial and more mobile. Their ‘Unlimited Human Potential M-Prize’ has rewarded a number of emerging new models for how to organise work:
