The A,B,C of COP15: Abortions, Blamestorming & Copenhagen

The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the UNFCCC arrived pregnant with anticipation for the conclusion of a much needed and long awaited binding agreement to address the global problem of Climate Change following a road-map that had been put together two years before in Bali. COP15 left us with an abortion, followed by a last minute emergency Caesarean section, a dying UN mother and an illegitimate child that is expected to save the world but will either die prematurely or become an unwanted orphan in a world driven by greed and apathy.

I had the audacity to invent a new word for the climate change dictionary, which I also posted to Twitter: Cockenhaven (vb.) To cock up the climate change talks and then find a safe haven to hide from taking responsibility for having done so #cop15. There was no response, but that's no surprise because everyone was still plugged into real time reporting, digesting the first of the flowery speeches (although some spoke from the heart - Lula da Silva/Brasil) and the #cop15 tag was racking up about 50 tweets a minute - too fast to actually keep up with everyone's sentiments and thoughts. A friend of mine was calling COP15 a joke: "JOK15 in JOKENHAGEN"

The world expected an agreement, and a clear consolidated commitment to a solution. It didn't happen. COP15 was a resounding failure. The ramifications are pretty clear. I started joining the dots and scetched the first strokes into my facebook status on the evening of 18 Dec: COP15 has failed. International cooperation has once again failed (last time it was the WTO). WTO & Kyoto are now two monuments in history signaling the need for structural change.

At last the world is waking up to the fact that it is economics that drives climate change. A BBC article claimed: "Despite many expressions of concern about projections of climate change, finance has emerged as an issue more likely to make or break a deal than emission pledges."

The real underlying issues are poverty, inequality and a capitalist system that exploits unfairly and leaves a trail of destruction in it's wake. I believe that the bigger the need for change the more traumatic it will be when it comes, and that's bad news for our climate change future.

The blamestorming has begun. It's inevitable when people who are in positions of authority have a mandate and a moral responsibility to deliver on their commitment to finalise a deal and they fail to do so. Not only are the UK and China pointing fingers at each other but the process and procedures involved in the negotiations are also being blamed. Lots of people are playing the Blame Game.

One analyst described Obama's efforts as follows: "Obama decided a comprehensive treaty was a bridge too far. And he pulled off a deft political maneuver. He circumvented the UN process (ticking off less powerful nations), screwed his European allies (by cutting them out of the real talks), and reached out to his top opponent in the negotiations: China." One of the people I was following on Twitter said "This is the end of the UN as we know it".

But the "deal" is a tepid one to say the least. The details are nebulous. Reports state that some form of progress has been achieved: the US has "roped China and other major developing nations into a system in which they're going to have to commit to some form of emissions limits (even if those obligations are not binding under international law)." This is quite amorphous fluffy stuff, a bit like snow that melts after a few days, weeks or months. It lacks the commitment we expected to see and is not even very clear or specific. Have these people never heard of SMART goals?

This is not a "deal". It's more of a take-away food wrapper dripping in the oily residue of something that tasted good at the time but wasn't actually good for our health in the long run. There's also the guilty new year's resolution to go back to gym for some more exercise in Mexico City at COP16.

Two day before the end of the conference a report was saying: 'Obama and other world leaders recently said they will reach a "politically binding agreement" in Copenhagen, which is fancy diplomatic speak for, “We’ll hunker down in our Danish study hall and bang out as much homework as we can, but there’s no way we’re getting this project turned in before next semester.”'

There is no doubt in my mind that a fundamentally different paradigm is required. Einstein said something about having to shift paradigm gears when trying to solve a problem. Something like this (although few of his quotes are captured exactly word for word): 'We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.'

Grass-roots Sustainability Initiatives

The basic foundation of sustainability is the ability to survive in the long term. The key question to me is 'for how long', and my favourite idealistic answer is 'indefinitely'. I am, however, interested in the point where idealism meets reality. How practical are these ideas? Show me sustainability in practice. I have specifically become interested in grass-roots initiatives which consider an alternative way of living. If the proverbial s%$!T really hit the fan - what would the response look like? So I have started looking at people who are trying to live in this way. Let's take the first step in this new direction and have a look at a humble, and yet ambitious project in London called "Kew Eco Village"

Kew Bridge Eco Village is a grass-roots sustainability initiative in London. They have been on site for six months and have made some stunning progress. The facilities are functional and offer an alternative way of living.

The basic philosophy is an attempt to get away from any form of financial support, so everything is either donated, or reclaimed and reused from waste streams. The site is run with an open door policy, which is admirable and probably comes with it's own inevitable difficulties of trying to make space for many different social, political and religious ideologies.

Personally I am interested in the functioning systems: clean water, hygienic waste disposal and or treatment, heating, cooking, hot water, power generation and food production. I want to take my engineering knowledge and apply it in this new type of setting. Doing this without cash is going to be a challenge. It offers an opportunity to learn about what works and what doesn't.

I see these types of initiatives as an insurance policy that everyone could be helping to fund. What happens if the unthinkable happens? What happens if service delivery stops and the super-market supply chains break down? How does a city, or pockets within a city actually survive? Is it possible? Can it be done? These types of pilot projects can be invaluable in providing answers. If the unthinkable happens it will be much easier to turn to these projects and say 'teach us', 'help us' - you guys have the practical hands-on experience that we desperately need. Without this the cost of errors, mistakes and adapting may be higher than what we would like.

Money talks, chop, chop, chop

So here's a novel idea - pay us to not chop down the rainforest. Great idea in principle. It's easy to take money today and do the right thing. The problem arises when the next recession bites or demand gets so great that prices become too good to ignore. If the government is in trouble and can't balance it's books or needs a boost to it's coffers or gets a different leader who has pals in business (nudge nudge bush bush) then the temptation may be too great. When it's convenient money will talk and exploitation will set in. I remain a sceptic - we need a fundamental change in the rules of business and in the attitudes and expectations of people who are trapped in the vicious cycle that ever increasing growth demands.

The oil plot thickens

A few days ago I wrote about the oil leak on the Australian owned West Atlas oil rig in the Timor Sea. It turns out the rig has caught fire and has been abandoned. This is the Bloomberg report, which has more detail. The company, PTTEP has their own media release webpage.

I would be very interested to see the detailed report on what really happened here.
Could it be that the problem was easier to solve by getting the insurance companies to cover the costs (or part thereof) of shutting the facility down? Is this a case of a convenient accident? I sincerely hope not. Checks and balances in a properly functioning world: 1. The insurance companies don't want to get taken for a ride. 2. The HSE authorities will want to see that everything was done to prevent something like this happening.

The environmental impact is now even greater than before. Now that it is out of control I wonder how much worse it's going to get?

Follow up Review:
4 Dec 2009: First assessment and insurance action.
The investigation is being lead by David Borthwick (power and authority of a Royal Commission) and is due at the end of April 2010.

Other similar stories:
21 April 2010: Oil rig blaze off Louisiana leaves at least 11 missing

Birds, Technology and Destruction

What is it in the nature of people to kill birds even when it's illegal?

"I have a gun,
I will go out and kill,
because it is fun."

The unfortunate truth about technology is that not everyone will use it responsibly. I wonder what proportion of the world's population has the moral, emotional and intellectual maturity to use the technologies that humans produce responsibly? Can we get it right or will it destroy everything around us and ultimately ourselves too?

It happens in America too, as this article indicates: Last successful breeding whooping crane shot and killed.

It's not the environment, it's the economy , stupid.

It's not an environmental problem, it's an economic problem.
It pollutes the way we think.

Here's a classic example. The BBC runs a story entitled "Australia fails to plug oil leak". From the way the article is written and the way those involved have framed the problem it sounds like an impossible task - trying to plug a "small hole" in the pipework below the sea bed. Statements like "extraordinary difficulty" and "complex task" are used to explain just how difficult it is when "trying to hit a needle in a haystack 2.5km below sea level".

This is a classic problem framing issue. Those involved have framed the problem from their own perspective and are ramming their view down your throat. If we reframe the problem we get a different perspective.

Let's assume the real problem is the damage to the environment. If the highest priority is to protect the environment and manage this "resource" in an environmentally responsible way then the solution is simple - replace the entire pipe system that has the leak. The process is relatively simple - block the pipe as low as possible, pull the upper pipe section out, lay new pipes with no leaks and redrill the artificial plug at the bottom of the well.

So what's the problem? Ah, now we get to the real problem. It's too expensive. This is a good environmental solution but it's an unattractive financial and economic solution. This is where we have to challenge our paradigms and ask ourself the most important question: IS ECONOMIC PROFIT MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE ENVIRONMENT? If it is then you try a cheap patch and leak oil into the sea and say 'it was really difficult and we did the best we could'. If the environment is more important then you need to consider that maybe the expectation of endless growing profits and the primary motive that drives all business is fundamentally flawed wrt to actually treating the environment correctly.

Perception Problem
So what we have is a perception problem, which is polluted by the assumption that business is more important than the environment.

Part of this problem is the international nature of free market competition. By having a leak that needs expensive repairs your costs increase, which means your competition can outperform you and in the ruthless world of business if you go out of business that means more market share and more profit for the other guy. Business likes that. Business is not going to try help you.

So what's the solution?
I've tried to come up with a pragmatic business friendly approach to a solution. Throw money at the problem. The solution is actually quite simple. Tax everyone so that there is a huge fund to help pay for this stuff.

Unfortunately it's the management of the solution that is problematic, because it raises new problems. This is where policy makers and government officials become as meek as little lambs - I know, I've had the DDG tell me he doesn't like my solution (different situation) because it's too difficult to implement. Who can be trusted with that much cash? The potential for fraud is massive. Everyone will be applying to use what's available and then someone needs to assess the merits of the application and the validity of the costs involved. The bigger and more global the scheme the more bureaucratic and cumbersome it will become. It may also result in companies using lower safety standards in an attempt to drop Capex costs and then expect to be able to fix the resulting mess with free funds later.

Let's face it, policy is difficult - so even those responsible for the required regulation (governments) are finding it hard to provide the necessary leadership. To make things even more difficult governments are also not neutral enough. They are dependent on business for taxes, which help pay for other essential services. They have national interests in competitive international businesses and are therefore not able to act by themselves. This means they have to cooperate with others and now we get into the international treaty area. There is a reason why WTO and Kyoto are failing to deliver - governments, like business are acting out of self interest.

Economic Paradigm
When you teach Adam Smith and adopt his view of "the 'invisible hand' to describe the apparent benefits to society of people behaving in their own interests" - then you get the world we live in. Philosophically I challenge the central tenant of "self interest" being the basis of good economics. I believe our world view needs to change to an economic paradigm that looks after cumulative interests, which include the environment with all it's interdependent ecosystems.

Economics is also fundamentally flawed because it doesn't take the cost/value of nature into account. By not establishing that link we cannot get the pricing signals required to act in time. This will result in a day of natural reconning, when the indirect costs catch up to us. My fear is that when that happens it will be too late to do anything about it because as an engineer I understand irreversible processes (thermodynamics, time and extinctions). Economists do not have this appreciation for nature - they solve problems by creating more debt. When you pollute and kill a working natural system you cannot buy back a new one, regardless of how much money you have.

The other thing that bothers me about trying to link the cost/value to nature is that it lends itself to more exploitation by businesses acting out of self interest. It also encourages this crazy idea of ownership - that individuals need to put a fence around something and own it in order to make their own living. Imagine all the big businesses buying up all the trees that produce oxygen for the planet and charging us for our right to breath their clean air. This would be a horror story on unprecedented scales.

Paradise Lost
Part of the miracle of living in the "paradise" that we live in is that we live in a symbiotic relationship with those trees and they do it for free. We humans are the ones who are failing to live up to the deal of engaging in symbiotic relationships. Business is killing this notion, and it is destroying the paradise we had (and the little we still have left). It is also destroying the miracle of life and the treasures of biodiversity (food, medicines, aesthetic beauty).

Business is our 'Eve' personality biting into the apple of exploitation based on the knowledge we have acquired through science. We are making that choice today - Genesis can be interpreted as a contemporary tale of life today.
(Now that would make for an interesting story Alex:-)

Hidden Car Subsidy

Unfortunately the UK Government's Extension and Broadening of their “Cash for Clunkers” Program
is a hidden subsidy that stimulates the production of more cars, and therefore more emissions. We need less cars to reduce emissions significantly. The new cars may have better carbon footprint technology, but that's still only a small step in the right direction. We need less cars and much less kilometres.

Make a 10% carbon reduction commitment

The more I hear and read about the #1010 campaign the more I like it.

Please sign up: http://www.1010uk.org/

Aviation Industry Solution

The solution is simple. These are the principles:
1. Fast is not sustainable.
2. Get the price right, so that sustainable technologies can compete fairly.

Let's look at some basic facts:
1.1 Aircraft that are lighter than air (E.g. Airships, blimps) don't need speed to stay airbourne. (Please don't let anyone tell you that they are still as dangerous as the Hindenburg - technology has improved and Helium is not flamable).
1.2 Energy = 1/2 mv^2 i.e. Energy consumption increases by the square of the speed, in other words more speed means much, much more energy.
1.3 Engines using propellers can run on agro/biofuels like ethanol, whereas jet engines can only run on a small fractions of hydro-cracked biofuel that meets the kerosine molecule's specifications.
1.4 Ethanol can be produced from sustainably grown feedstocks BUT they need to be rationed (there is NOT enough arable land to grow all our food and fuel demands). Making this rationing decision needs to be fair for low/no income people (climate justice applies here too).

2.1 The PLANET is more important than PROFIT.
2.2 Aviation prices should be based on passenger miles per kg of carbon, they should be standardised, and they should be inflated to cross subsidise a. less carbon intensive forms of transport and b. other low carbon development projects.
2.3 Alternative forms of transport with lower carbon emission performance should be cheaper than flying.

This implies that business executives won't be able to get from London to New York in six hours but I have a message for them: Use the ITC technology you have at your disposal more effectively, plan better in advance so that you can do a longer more sustainable trip and stop flying jets that burn kerosine/jet fuel!

Oops, did I forget about vested interests? What does the aviation industry do with all those jets? Well maybe the government needs to think about bailing them out too, just like the banks. And while we're at it why don't we look at all other forms of transport, and all of the power stations too. Let's start employing people to do the right thing instead of protecting a way of business that is doing more harm than good. Maybe the entire world's high carbon unsustainable economy needs to be bailed out.

Activism Parallels

I grew up in a country where unfair political practices marginalised people and resulted in conflict. The freedom fighters (ANC) where branded as terrorists - until the racist Apartheid South African government came to it's senses and negotiated a settlement and moved through a peaceful but difficult transition process.

So let's look at some parallels.

We live in a world in which unfair political and business practices marginalise the environment, animals, biodiversity and some people. Some of the freedom fighters (climate activists) are branded as protesters and are subject to violence and intimidation. I wonder whether there can be a negotiated settlement for this ongoing drama?

International Environmental Fund

Most of us know what the problem is:
1. Exploitative hunting and poaching (economics rewards individuals who sell natural products to markets - the more animal pelts you can provide or trees you can chop down the more turnover and profit you can make). An example is the Flying Fox, which is hunted for food, medicine and sport.
2. Competition for land (the economic system requires humans to own something to be able to make a living out of it, so if you can't fence it you can't earn anything from it - this therefore reduces the space for those who are not economically active, like tigers and trees).

So here's a radical idea - a potential solution

If you have a picture of a tiger on your product you should pay a percentage of the value of your product or service into the international fund to help preserve that animal. The same applies if you are selling tiger teddies or toys etc.

To make this practical the funds raised would go into a central fund that would be allocated to a variety of different causes as determined by the governing body based on their expert opinion of where the prioritised needs lie.

It's a bit like an environmental tax concept, and that could be the extension of this idea. Maybe what is needed is a pilot project to be rolled out gradually until the concept is well enough proved to become an international UN driven collaborative initiative, where all countries make a contribution.

Like all regulation-like initiatives it suffers of the weakness of requiring enforcement practices, which are traditionally difficult to police and expensive to administer - but that isn't a good enough reason not to try. This is what leadership is about.

Tiger Watch

I have mentioned before we are living through a mass extinction and part of the problem is that some animals (like Tigers) are worth more dead than alive. This is an attempt to try track news events related to this topic. You can make a difference - please follow this link to find out more.

2010
15 Mar: "Despite attempts to protect tigers, numbers have approximately halved over the last decade".
10 Mar:Eleven rare Siberian tigers die at Chinese zoo
2009
24 Aug: Sumatran tiger killed by poachers in an Indonesian zoo.

2005
6 Apr: Investigation into police poaching at wildlife reserves of Sariska and Ranthambhore.

Vested Interests

Climate change suffers from a principle I call Economic Inertia and this is created by vested interests. It's a bit like a nuclear chain reaction - once it's started the chances of stopping it are practically negligible.

Imagine you have just over a trillion barrels of proven oil reserves lying in ground that you have bought the rights to and have spent money to understand (drilling, testing, modelling, measuring etc).
Add to this all the costs of building and transporting sophisticate drilling and pumping equipment out to these remote sites scattered all over the planet.
Add to this the investments you have made in logistics to get the "product" to the market (Ships, tankers, pipes, tanks, processing equipment, refineries).
Add to this that you have hundreds of thousands of retail outlets where your brand name is an integral part of everyone's life.
Add to this the fact that you have a dependent relationship with one of the biggest manufacturing industires in the world (motor manufacturing). Also note that this is a captive market.
Add to this the fact that governments are dependent on tax revenues that they generate from your product.
Add to this that you have shareholders in your business and most people's pensions are invested in your stocks (including your own). Note that your industry is also responsible for th largest profits ever generated and that your bonuses depend on this.

And then imagine that someone comes along and says:
"Sorry old chap, your product is doing too much damage, you need to abandon everything, cut your losses and reinvest in something completely new."

What are the chances of oil companies becoming altruistic and shunning their record profits as well as all that secured future income? I don't think so. So "we" are trapped by an economic monster of our own design that will continue to propagate the problem of climate change. This is one of many reasons why my ex-colleagues and I, who worked as consultants in the sustainable energy consulting field reluctantly believe that humanity cannot stop the trend. We will get hammered by climate change and it will hammer us hard. We will survive (I am not a doomsday prophet) but our quality of life will be substantially reduced and life will be tough (but maybe that's what we need). I say this as someone who has worked for Shell. I know what it looks like on the "inside".

The same principle applies to nuclear energy - it is also defended vigorously by people with vested interests.

Some supporting facts:

The IEA estimates there are 5 - 10 trillions boe of recoverable oil & gas available (It really irritates me that a professional body like this can omit the date on such an important claim - oh maybe that's because they don't want to be held accountable when new data proves them wrong?).

BP claim that there is 1.26 trillions toe of recoverable oil (Two important sub-notes here: 1. I trust the BP data more than any other data & 2. Note that the IEA have deliberately fudged the perception of what is really happening by lumping oil and gas together).

Some interesting facts:
If you do a search for "proven oil reserves" on google you will get the following results ranked in "apparent importance":
Wikipedia (usually not a bad source but tends to be flaky and unreliable - not peer reviewed, open for anyone to edit at will)
The CIA (God help us if anyone believes they are the Über authority, but just in case you didn't know they use other people's data - also never trust anyone who doesn't disclose their references),
EIA (USA, beautifully cross-referenced and balanced report, some parts of this country do actually work, miracles never cease to amaze me)
And then surprise, surprise the two best authorities BP and IEA don't even make the first page of the google search. Considering that these two are the most reliable it gives me deep insight into the reliability of wonderfully powerful search engines - remember that like other machines, someone wrote the rules.

The IEA is subject to wilting from political pressure from the EU, so the reliability depends who's in power.
Generally from what I understand about the appalling attitude of Shell towards the idea of knowledge management as compared to what I have been taught about that of BP, I will venture to say that BP's data is probably the most reliable in this area.

A note on Knowledge Management:
A little anecdote to be included in my autobio one day. I was invited to a lunch meeting with the CEO of said company when I worked for them several years ago as part of an initiative to get to know new recruits (commendable). The CEO said "there are no holy cows here, ask me any question you want." When it was my turn I asked what his ideas were on "knowledge management", which was something I was really struggling with in my day to day work. He flippantly dismissed my question by stating that there was no such thing as "knowledge management" and that it was something that consultants had invented to make money. A few yeasr later Shell was embarrassed by the "shocking admission... that it had overstated its proven oil and gas reserves by 25 per cent." I was particularly peeved by the fact that this person had not attempted to understand what the basis for my question was and didn't give me the opportunity to explain what my experiences were as a new recruit in his organisation. As it turns out I went on to become the best student on my MBA for the Knowledge Management elective and still my proposals fell on deaf ears, especially when it came to my line-manager. It was one of many frustrations that lead me to the decision to apply my services elsewhere.

Economists have failed

Economists have failed to solve the Climate Change problem. Economics is a good tool, but it's what you do with the tool that counts.

As a futurist I look for trend breaks that indicate fundamental shifts in existing trends. Despite all the hype and all the talk and media attention that climate change attracts there remains NO TREND BREAK in the atmospheric CO2 levels (shown below).


















This means "leaders" are failing to exercise true leadership, business is not making a contribution and even more sadly - some of those who can make a difference and understand the problem can't find work.

To the economists I say your form of Economics has failed. It has not failed because there is a problem with economics, no Sir or Madam, it has failed because the rules of economics don't work when the boundaries are not clearly defined or properly quantified. The proper boundaries have not been established. The idea that the price of energy or carbon can solve everything is only valid when the price is correctly defined, and in the fossil fuel versus alternative energy debate this is not the case. The plot above is a testimony to this.

Sustainability & Economics

So how does a "SUSTAINABLE energy" business go bankrupt? It has an unsustainable business model. So how do 1000 sustainability minded people get it wrong? Simple, one person puts up their hand and says "We have a problem here" and someone in a management position shoots them.

The article says "400 workers, both domestic and internationally, are expected to be retained". Then it says "Econcern employs about 1,100 staff in total", but what they should have said was 'Econcern used to employ...' What's left of this company is called Ecofys, and I wonder how long they will continue to use the same business model?



The lesson, the bitter little pill, is to realise that sustainability and profit are not necessarily synonymous. As long as the current economic imbalances are in place where fossil fuels receives unfair subsidies (past and present) and the true environmental costs are not included, the following trend will continue unabated:

The Bear essentials

"So I'm taking a walk through my 'back yard' and I find these lost humans who have decided to cut down my forest and build dens for themselves. They have no idea how to live in harmony with nature," says the bear when he returns to the woods.

Let's look at the vocabulary that was used in the article about this bear and see if we can understand the psyche...

Title: "Bear on loose in suburbs of LA", so bears are not supposed to be 'loose', they belong in a zoo?

"Authorities ... have been contending with a wild bear that wandered into a residential area", so there is a contest for space here, and things can either be "wild" or tamed "residential areas". These are also people who are perceived to be "authorised" to do this.

"Authorities shot at the bear with non-lethal rubber pellets in a bid to contain it, and it has since headed back into the wilderness." I though you 'contained' things inside of bottles or cages. Sad that when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail - so if you have a weapon the best thing to do is shoot at something like a lost bear who can't read the signs outside the residential area that clearly state "no bears allowed in the residential areas". Finally the last word is the most telling of all. The bear headed back into the "wilderness" (where it belonged?). Is "the wilderness" not that place where those people in the old testament went when they were lost?

So as humans we hide behind walls for fear of getting "lost" on a "wild" planet we call home.

I find it difficult to believe that a group of "authorities" resembling riot police brandishing rubber bullet guns were somehow authorised to deal with something as sensitive as nature, with it's under-represented animals and fragile symbiotic relationships.

Futurism and Transhumanism

"I was there."

As a futurist I perform some basic daily scanning exercises. I found this article (a BBC report) and realised that I was at both the meetings the reporter refers to.

Future Trends

It's a "normal" seasonal thing now in Californian.

Wildfires every year and soon enough we'll have regular heatwaves too.

Now I know where Cormac McCarthy got his idea for "The Road".

Accelerated feedback

In systems theory we talk about co-creating systems and reinforcing loops.

In a BBC report today 14Aug09: The fact that antarctic ice (specific data from Pine Island Glacier) is thinning four times faster than ten years ago shows that the ice-melting trend is accelerating. There are several reinforcing feedback loops that accelerate this phenomenon. Accelerated feedback means that equilibrium is rapidly lost. Our climate may have been very robust and stable for a very long time but we are on the verge of a tipping point - and when that happens, we won't be able to stop it. What concerns me is that despite the fact that many people know this we keep doing the same things, which keeps the same trend running in the same direction.

The trend is towards rapidly diminishing ice and this specific future is clear. There will be no significant ice packs, and with it sea levels are expected to rise significantly (7m for the Greenland Ice Sheet and 5m for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet). This isn't going to happen overnight - this is a long term climate trend, not a weather report - but it does mean that something you know very well (E.g. the London underground train transport network) will change significantly (i.e. get flooded and seize to operate).

Mass Extinction

We are currently living through a mass extinction. This is described as the "Holocene extinction event" where "nearly 70% of biologists view the present era as part of a mass extinction event, possibly one of the fastest ever, according to a 1998 survey by the American Museum of Natural History."

According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ the Tiger, which is my favourite animal, is classed as endangered with a trend towards a decreasing population size. Sadly it appears as though a Tiger is worth more dead than it is alive.

What bothers me is that, with the exception of some advocacy groups and some environmentalists, hardly anyone is doing anything about this. The reason is most likely that everyone finds themselves in the same trap that I do: we are trapped in the rat-race. This forces us to look after ourselves without having any time for other things. This is the saddest characteristic of the system we find ourselves in. Individuals cannot do anything about it but just like Climate Change, we can do something about it as a collective.

So I ask myself: where are the leaders of the 21st century? Where are the people with vision? Are they too busy furnishing and renting out their 3rd and 4th houses?

So the conversation around the dinner table in the near future goes like this:
"The other day I saw something moving in the garden, I got such a fright."
"It must have been a rat."
"Of course it was a rat. That's all that is left on the planet. Humans and rats."
"So why did you get a fright?"
"Well I thought all the rats were farmed in cages at Rat Farm Inc, how on earth did it get to my garden?"
"I read somewhere there are still some wild rats running around."
"No ways. That's just terrifying. I'm gonna buy myself a shotgun!"
"Here, we go, the rat burgers are ready"
"Nice handbag. The rat pelt goes nicely with your rat pelt shoes and jacket."
"So what is it your husband does for a living?"
"He's a genetic engineer - rat genomics. He's trying to make rattigers. And yours?"
"He's making a horror documentary called 'attack of the killer rats'."

The Skeptic on Banking Bonuses says:

A BBC article reports:

"The FSA says that bonuses should not be guaranteed for more than a year, and that senior employees should have their bonuses spread over three years."

The Skeptic on Banking Bonuses says:

All this means is that bonuses will be three times bigger and spread out over three years. Bankers are the quickest breed to find ways around hurdles and ensure that they can line their pockets and buy a new house each year.

"There goes my diamond"

I recall Madam Medusa (The Rescuers) sitting on top of the smoke stack on a Mississippi river boat that was sinking, crying "There goes my diamond" (2min & 50s into this clip).

One of the expectations from climate change is more extreme weather.

With the ubiquitous nature of video cameras in modern society we will be seeing more of the following types of things:
There goes my house. Then quite spectacularly: There goes my business (a hotel), and these houses.

Some will be quick to argue that individual events like these cannot be attributed to climate change and they will be correct. Climate change is a longer term trend in which these types of events become more common.

Most people don't realise that there is collective responsibility for what is happening. I went on holiday a few months back and chose to fly instead of taking a ship. I used the lift instead of using the stairs when I went to work. I drove in my car instead of cycling or taking public transport. I boiled my tea water with an electric kettle instead of gas or a wood fire. ... And thus with 6 billion others I indirectly pushed that building over into the raging water and wasn't aware of it and didn't actually care because it wasn't my building.

I wonder what type of world we would be living in if everyone did care, and if everyone did make an effort?

"Drink blamed for oral cancer rise"

More top quality blamestorming.

According to the BBC report: "Numbers of cancers of the lip, mouth, tongue and throat in this age group have risen by 26% in the past decade."

Then a statement: "Alcohol consumption has doubled since the 1950s", so somehow there's a link here - which is apparently a direct link and the most significant link according to the headline. Let's see? How does this work? Oh, yes, So alcohol consumption is double what it was sixty years ago and this has a direct effect on the last ten years of cancer stats.

Oh, no, wait, it might also be "the most likely culprit alongside smoking".

Oh, no, wait, there may also be a dietry link: "Other risk factors that may be involved include a diet low in fruit and vegetables".

Oh, wait, it may also be related to the "sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), which also causes cervical cancer." I thought we were talking about mouth cancer here?

It sounds like someone has no idea what's going on here and is just clutching at straws.

The there is an emphatic statement "Tobacco is, by far, the main risk factor for oral cancer". That's funny, I thought it was "Drink". I'm confused now.


Disclaimer: The sections that follow are wildly speculative and are based on a sneaky suspicion. I have no evidence to support these assertions at this point in time. I will, however, be doing some research on it to see if I can uncover the truth for myself (and for you loyal reader).

Let's open up this little can of worms and look at what someone is NOT saying:

Did anyone think of all those chemicals they use in the new white filings the dentists love to use. Anyone heard of carcinogens? I'm trying to do some research on exactly what chemistry goes into these polymer dental filings and when I've got it I will include it here. My frustration is that good quality information is only available at a cost - like this Elsevier article on "Evaluation of the carcinogenic risks to humans associated with surgical implants and other foreign bodies." With section (4) referring to dental materials.

Let me explain why I think there is a problem.

I was at the dentist last year and was persuaded to buy dental insurance to help cover the astronomically high costs of private dental care. The dentist went out of their way to explain that the policy also included cover for mouth cancer. It sounded like someone who was trying to cover their tracks by making sure I was aware of the kind of things that were covered. These are risks. What they didn't say was that their work might incur those risks. Then while they were working they used a mouth wrap that reminded me of what a female condom must be like to use. It covered the inside of my mouth and only exposed the one tooth that was being worked on. I was lying there thinking this is paranoid behaviour. Maybe not.

So let's go down the rabbit hole of behavior driven by economic incentives (i.e. more profit):

Anyone heard the story that those silver filings were bad for us and needed to come out to be replaced with "new technology" white filings. Funny how those white ones don't last so long and need to be replaced more often. This means we go to the dentist more often with rework. My silver (amalgam's) were fine. They never gave me any headaches, which was the one reason I heard one dentist use. That's quite sneaky - everyone gets headaches from time to time. So blame the filings - that way they can come out and be replaced by the "new technology". More work. More pay. It's new technology, it must be better - surely? I'm not convinced. I'm watching this trend with great interest.

I wonder whether an entire profession has ever been sued for malpractice? Oh, no, wait - it's like the banks. We can't live without them. So when it all comes out in the wash a swift apology and a change in practice may be all that is required. Once again someone will get away with economic murder.

Dentist to patient: "I'm terribly sorry that you have mouth cancer, and that you can't afford a new house. Too bad your profession didn't find a way to swindle the masses into believing that they had to have lots of rework done. Actually I think it's quite clever that we get so much work each time we change the group-think on which technology is good and which is bad. Would you like to rent my fourth house? I'll let you have it at a discounted rate because you are such a loyal customer of mine."

2048 Collapse for world sea fishing

This extract from the Economist:
"BORIS WORM, a marine biologist, has spent much of his academic life studying fish. In 2006 he came to the depressing conclusion that by 2048 the world’s commercial fisheries would have collapsed. Fish would no longer be on the menu. But Dr Worm is no pessimist and on July 31st he published a more encouraging piece of work in Science. It suggests that, with proper management, it ought to be possible to rebuild the world’s fisheries."

Misleading reporting on organic benefits

A report on the BBC website caught my attention and had me fuming about one-sided reporting again. The article titled 'Organic has no health benefits' claims that there are no additional nutritional benefits to people who eat organic food instead on non-organic food. The title, however, is misleading.

The clues lie in the small apparently unimportant statements that come later in the article.

This sentence irritated me immensely: "The Food Standards Agency who commissioned the report said the findings would help people make an 'informed choice'." It irritated me because it assumed that this single faceted and myopic view of what the issues are is the only view that really counts. It implies that a narrow view is sufficient for people to be able to make "informed" decisions.

The following quote is the one that conveniently stepped over the real issue as if it was negligible: "She added that the FSA was neither pro nor anti organic food and recognised there were many reasons why people choose to eat organic, including animal welfare or environmental concerns." Actually, the environmental concerns are the important ones. Face it food is food and you're going to get the same nutrition from it regardless of how it was grown. The really important thing is how much good or damage are you doing in the process?

My view is that organic practices are there to ensure the health of the entire system involved in producing that food. Things do not exist in isolation they are surrounded by ecosystems which rely on interdependencies. Similarly our health depends on a complex web of interdependencies with nature that even we do not fully understand.

I take a holistic systems thinking view of things. There is never just one issue. Most things have knock-on effects on other things because that's just the nature of the world we live in. As much as I welcome the work of specialists I detest the laziness of those who report on their work without putting all the issues into context. This makes me wonder whether there is something wrong with the ethics of journalism. Maybe the problem lies with society where not enough of us question the content deeply enough?

There is also this little disclaimer.
"Also, there is not sufficient research on the long-term effects of pesticides on human health,"

For those who have seen "Thank you for smoking" will understand this because it has the same context of the punch line at the end of the film, where the now-independent-consulting activist says to his concerned clients: "Repeat after me: There is no conclusive evidence linking brain tumours to mobile phone use."

There are serious problems out there and there are essentially three types of people:
1. Those who are negligent, or who are exploiting things,
2. Those who are ignorant, and
3. Those who have insight and are trying to do something about those problems.

I sincerely hope you are in category three.

Climate change policy makers need much more vision

One of the reasons I moved to the EU was to get closer to the action on the climate change front. The UK is demonstrating scintillating leadership in driving the renewable energy and response to climate change agenda. But as noble and courageous as this leadership appears to be there are some serious shortfalls. The most glaringly obvious area is that of transport. Policy seems to be driven by the EC directive on biofuels.

I find this policy to be sadly short on vision. This policy only focuses on vehicles, internal combustion engines and standard fuel types. There is no incentive what so ever to make radical changes. We need radical changes. True, significant change requires step changes in orders of magnitude. The scale of the breakthroughs we need are something like a 90% reduction in current emissions per passenger mile.

One of the most important elements of Leadership is that of vision. A biofuels based policy assumes that there will be no changes to transport technology or fuel systems. It addresses the how and not the why. Why, I ask, not develop policy that enables us to address the core problem? I believe the primary objective should be to reduce emissions per passenger mile (by an order of magnitude).

Here is some vision for the future. I wear my futurist cap with pride. Imagine wave machines compressing air into cylinders and these cylinders being ferried to service stations where vehicles running on compressed air can change "fuel canisters" of compressed air. The first generation of these vehicles would be hybrid electrical vehicles with retrogenerative braking systems that maximised efficiency by storing "waste energy". Have a look at innovative companies like MDI. With the exception of the initial energy investment in the wave machines, infrastructure and all the other supporting technology, this approach would result in negligible emissions of ghg's to atmosphere.

The current policy doesn't help these innovations at all. On the contrary, it looks more as if the current policy was designed to entrench the existence of oil companies, and their massive record profits (at the expense of the environment) and the tax revenues that they generate, and the existing jobs they support. Having worked for one of these massive oil companies I understand the thinking. I made a choice, for better or for worse, to make a difference and align my skills and talents and passion to supporting the sustainability agenda.

I'd like to see much more support from governments. Governments appear to be the only one's in the current philospophical order of civilisation who can make the difference and break the short sighted and myopic view that many businesses have. Businesses are driven by profit and it doesn't help when the only policies in place are supporting their old and outdated ideas, just because they make money out of them - while everyone gasps and asks "why, oh, why, is no one doing anything serious about stopping climate change?"

Has Facebook crashed and burnt?

I was trying to get into my facebook account today. I kept getting the same error message indicating the server wasn't available. Thinking it was a temporary glitch I went back later, and again even later to discover the problem was a persistent one. So I tried to find a discussion forum to see if others were having the same problem. What I did find was that there seemed to be a issue between FB and the Canadian law makers. See the article here: Facebook breaches Canadian Law

Now I am wondering just how sustainable something like Facebook is...

Has this woman poked Facebook in the eye?

Could Fool's Gold become Fool's Green?

The credit crisis has revealed cracks within the internal structures of capitalism and economics. I read Donald MacKenzie's review of the book, Fool's Gold with much interest. Having studied business and finance I can understand the desire for people who work with financial instruments to want to reduce and sell "risk" in an effort to make money out of it and reap handsome bonuses.

I shudder to think what would happen if these innovative people where given an opportunity to sell environmental risk for profit. Imagine selling environmental debt neatly packaged in a Bistro or a CDO.

The reality is that there is a lot of environmental or ecological debt out there and there is a lot of risk associated with it. Banks can be recapitalised by creating more debt (thanks to the governments and tax payers) but unfortunately there is no way to bail out the planet when it's natural capital is spent or squandered.

If the financial systems collapsed we could always go back to the land to survive on a subsistence basis. However, if the land fails then our bones, and our cars, and our mobile telephones will become part of the fossil record.

Capitalism is not perfect

For a long time I have suspected that there is a fundamental problem with Capitalism. My conclusion of the years is that like any other system it has it's advantages and disadvantages. Nothing is ever perfect. We can't live without it, but at the same time we find it has it's inevitable problems.

The real question to me is whether capitalism is sustainable in the very long term? Imagine if life expectancy could be boosted significantly and the pensionable age was lifted to 175 years. Would we want to change the current rules or unspoken guidelines between what's okay and what isn't?

One of my little pet fears is that capitalism in it's current guise drives unsustainable behaviour.

The problem with Capitalism is that it drives decision making based on making profit and practically nothing else. The philosophical and moral reasons for doing things become overwhelmed by the profit motive, or at the bottom of the inequality pyramid, by the essential need to survive in a system that threatens people's very livelihoods and survival. Injustices and imbalances are sometimes addressed by financial mechanisms, the best example being the cap and trade system, which was first successfully used to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions to atmosphere (which was causing acid rain).

I have reasons to believe that the link between the environment and capitalist costing models is fundamentally wrong. The continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions is a testament to this. Mechanisms like CDM and carbon trading have been put in place in an attempt to start addressing the problem but the mechanisms are too simplistic and not adequately cross linked to all the elements of Capitalism that come into contact with the environment.

The most significant problem is that the true value of environmental services are not built into the costs of goods and services that take them for granted. Examples like the work that bees do for us to pollinate our food. The work that algae and bacteria do to help us clean our water. The work that trees do to recycle carbon dioxide and regenerate oxygen. The value of biodiversity is not fully understood and is certainly not valued in Capitalism.

I use the term Capitalism synonymously with economics, in the hope that those who are fastidious about semantics will forgive me for the general references to anything that involves money, cash, credit, debt etc.

I will elaborate more on this in the days and months ahead.

New Blog requires a packaging of ideas

It was obvious that I need to start a blog. I've done it before but other things kept getting in the way. Now that I am writing on a much more regular basis it makes sense to have the blog support I need.

The next problem was trying to package the expected content so that it's easier to market. I bumped into Laurence (http://www.laurenceborel.com/) at a networking function in London a few days ago and she listened to me and came to the obvious conclusion that I should be blogging. Looking at her site I saw the elegant packaging that is required. She describes the content as "

A cocktail of advertising, social media, and technology". She describes herself as a "London-based Social Media Strategist".

So if I had to think about me, what would I describe myself as? A strategist? Definitely. With a focus on? Well the future of the planet and humans. That includes about everything, which isn't helpful. The interaction between human technology and the environment is what interests me. My primary concern is looking back on the planet's history and seeing a string of extinctions and wondering whether we (as humans) are heading the same way. So sustainability is what I am really interested in. I have worked in the energy industry and have gained a lot of insight into problems like climate change and future resource shortages. There are some serious sustainability problems, which many people are ignoring. I don't understand all of them but I have gained some insight into some of them and will share this journey as I discover new things along the way.

So I you can call me a sustainability strategist and philosopher.

Along the way I will also dance on the edge of fact and fiction, science and science-fiction because the dabbling in the future inevitably draws us into this grey area of speculation. While I am at it I will also fragrantly splash out on the sci-fi stuff because I believe it contains the seeds of new ideas, insights and philosophical questions that grapple with the essence of the issues at hand.

I hope you'll enjoy the journey with me. I look forward to it.