This four minute video shows the latest scientific (fact-based) consensus on some of the major impacts of climate change. It demonstrates the near-certainty of what is already expected, and introduces the idea of a ‘carbon budget’: the maximum amount of carbon equivalents we can consume, and the short remaining time before that budget will be …
Continue reading “The clock is ticking to create the no-carbon business”
Channel 4 News finds that iconic species and habitats in Britain are facing ‘wipeout’. As a result it is running a special series, ‘Green and Pleasant Land’. “In just a few decades, we’ve lost 44 million birds from our skies, with some species plummeting as much as 90 per cent and facing a very real extinction. …
Continue reading “The British countryside is facing unprecedented “wildlife in crisis””
A recent article in the New York Times puts the cost of environmental degradation in China at about $230 billion in 2010. This is 3.5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, three times the level in 2004. “This cuts to the heart of China’s economic challenge: how to transform from the explosive growth of the …
Continue reading “The two sides of change for a sustainable future”
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York has collated data on global surface temperatures since 1884 and turned them into a video. This 13-second excerpt shows how warming accelerated in the 1970s, all of the ten hottest years have occurred since 1998. To view the full 26 seconds of temperatures since 1884, …
Continue reading “Watch 62 Years of Global Warming in 13 Seconds”
An interesting sign of the times, here. Lawyers for Coca Cola in South Africa have written to Sodastream complaining about their advertisement at OR Tambo International Airport. The advertisement was an ‘installation’ — a giant cage containing used cans and bottles of Coke, Fanta, Sprite and other brands, together with the tag line “Save the world from …
Continue reading “Environmentalism as competitive advantage”
On Friday 25 May 2012, Germany’s solar power plants produced a record 22 gigawatts of electric power, equivalent to 20 nuclear power plants, and half the country’s demand for electricity that day. Germany aims to be nuclear-free by 2022. It currently generates four per cent of its annual energy needs from the sun. Source: RT.com
In February this year, KPMG published a report identifying ten “sustainability megaforces that will affect every business over the next two decades.” They have identified ten good drivers of change. They just seem to have missed a trick when it comes to showing how these issues will have serious consequences for business leaders. Even inclusion of the …
The RAF yesterday acquired a new £200m C-17 transport aircraft. Known as the ‘workhorse of the RAF’ it is large enough to carry three Apache helicopters, a Chinook, or even a Tornado fast jet or three Warrior armoured vehicles. It will be used to strengthen the UK’s air bridge with Afghanistan. But how will this …
Continue reading “RAF strengthens ‘air bridge’ to Afghanistan”
Yesterday’s story about how the IMF foresees a doubling in the real price of oil by 2022, and the consequent urgent need to adapt or redesign our business models, might have raised a few eyebrows. So here are two stories about how adaptation to life with less oil can proceed quite straightforwardly… and in fact …
The IMF has just published a working paper on the future price of oil. It concludes that: a) the price of oil in real terms will most likely double over the next ten years, and b) there is a large degree of uncertainty in how things might actually turn out.
