Sustainability News Round-Up

I've put together this round up of sustainability news particularly as it relates to our efforts to adopt a sustainable lifestyle and make green choices.

Bill Gates gave a great talk on TED, touted as the biggest talk of the year. It pulls a whole new demographic into the camp calling for serious steps to combat climate change. Gates states that the developed world needs to move to zero emissions by 2050. He explains emissions as CO2 = P x S x E x C — People, Services, Energy and Carbon per energy unit. A critique from Alex Steffen tweaks this formula as CO2 = P x S x E x C / N, where N stands for nature. Another critique and another critique. These critiques raise valid points about Gate's focus on technology and research, ignoring the role of social change and biodiversity. Still I think Gates is on the money on Zero Impact, and this being his number one priority is powerful stuff. An energy miracle is necessary. It's just not sufficient. I see plenty of practical solutions that are available and economical today but are not getting deployed. Solving the deployment problem requires social change. On this note, this article suggests that cracking the nut on sustainable behaviour change requires understanding how people behave socially.

Amazon finds that the sustainability rating service from the GoodGuide can drive sales. While GoodGuide is currently mostly about consumer goods, this article suggests the GoodGuide will move into the business space as well. Also in this article, Walmart warns suppliers about transparency, "You're going to be naked". Intel is also making a transparency push. The GoodGuide is pretty useless to us here in Australia. Fortunately, there is Shop Ethical! for Aussies from the Ethical Consumer Guide. The GoodGuide also gets a mention in this article on the state of green economy.

Transparent reporting of climate change risk to investors is also a hot topic at the moment, as described here. Among other things, they need to report on the impact of potential or pending legislation to their business.

A UN report is coming out that profiles the environmental impact of the largest companies. There is more in the Guardian. The damage estimate for the 3000 largest global companies is estimated to be $2.2 trillion in 2008. Climate change is roughly half that number. If these companies are forced to pay the full costs, it would account for 6-7% of revenues, putting a good dent in their profits.

AMEE is also making a data play as a search engine for data needed in carbon calculators. They closed a $5.5 M Series B. Also in this article, the report on BetterPlace (swappable electric batteries cars) and AeroFarms (urban agriculture) is also interesting. This article on AMEE's carbon accounting engine has a great video from the AMEE CEO on the need for systemic change.  These guys have a great vision.

This article examines Seth Griffith's approach to a low watt lifecycle. I'm been tracking my wattage on Wattzon.com for while. It's worth watch Seth's talk on the Wattzon video. There is also an API integration between Wattzon and tweet-a-watt, which just won a green gadget award. Another interesting web resource is this site for asking green questions and getting green answers.

18% of Americans are alarmed about potential consequences of Climate Change. 7% are dismissive, and there is a range in between. There are some really interesting findings on the cognitive dissonance of sceptics. The green consumer movement continues with 30% of consumers make decision based on sustainability and CSR. Here are tools for marketers on how consumers respond to green messaging. Here is a good twtpoll from the WWF on what people would like. I'd sum it up as tools and access to take action at home, school, work and in the community. Interesting Apps are coming that help provide these tools in a social context.

In software news, SAP eats is own dogfood and drops CO2-e emissions 16% in 1 year. An Australian energy management software company BuildingIQ gets some coverage. Picking up the green IT theme from earlier posts, here is more on how Google, Facebook and others are reducing damage from their massive data centres.

eBay is an accidental green giant. As this article describes, ebay helps people reduce through reuse. eBay sells $2000 worth of used stuff per second. Check out the eBay GreenTeam site, e.g. "Buying a pre-owned smart phone on eBay saves 94 percent of the carbon associated with going to the mall and buying a new one. That's like not driving 186 miles, or over 880 hours of laptop use". Now that's what we like. Before you buy new, check eBay, craigslist or a freecycle site first. I'm glad to see car sharing getting some love. This article estimates a savings through carsharing of $435 per month. Carsharing is likely to be a good early market for electric cars as well, which, when coupled with fewer cars being produced is a double savings.

Sustainability is a big topic at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year.  Among other topics, this article discusses how we buy and sell products with a view towards sustainability and what we can learn from open source. They look at how consumers can be encouraged to make sustainable choices. In the disappointment around Copenhagen, this article hopes that Davos can get some commitment from influentially people and add momentum. Another article examines how a Davos style meeting may be more effective than a Copenhagen style. And another on how businesses are asking for certainty and targets; hopefully, these sessions can set us up for real targets in Mexico so we can get out of this prisoners dilemma.  This video on the Global Redesign Website makes the case that we're at an inflection point with sustainability, the global financial crisis and asks how can we design systems to solve truly global problems, bringing together a truly global group of constituents from different backgrounds.

We've had a bad 12 months with cancer. We had a big scare with my Dad when a skin cancer on his face metastasized into neck cancer. Fortunately, he's made a great recovery. Sylvia's brother-in-law is undergoing aggressive chemo after his melanoma metastasized into his lungs. We're concerned but optimistic. In September, I lost a good friend, Jeffrey Walker, to cancer. My Dad strongly recommends Anticancer. It is guiding him towards lifestyle changes, many of which are more sustainable as well as more healthy. It takes a holistic approach — mixing traditional and alternative medicine — to cancer prevention and guides us towards healthy choices.

Since no news update would be complete without information on the iPad, check out this green scorecard for the ipad. It gets a "B" when compared to eBook readers, yet given all that it can do, the reviewers describe it as a "pretty green little machine". Ops, I forgot to consume less. Must have one.

People are starting to think in whole systems and tools, at Davos, fighting cancer, with data centres and even permaculture inspired plans to build sustainable organisations. That's good news! My brain is toasted, and it was 40 C (104 F) in my office today. Cold spell, my ass. Sen. Inhofe: Can I share Al's Igloo for a bit?