7.31.2012

Gem of the day

With over 26,000 megawatts of coal-fired power stations lying idle in India, and 600 million people without power, where's backup power coming from? Via NY Times:

“We are taking hydro power from Bhakhra Nangal Dam,” in northern India, said Sushil Kumar Shinde, the power minister.

Right, renewables. And in one of the best unintentional campaigns for energy efficiency, Indians have begun mobilising around the hashtag #benefitsofpowercut. Choice gems:

#benefitsofpowercut people will go out and hang out with each other in person rather than on google

#benefitsofpowercut Have you ever had a proper candle night dinner with your family?

7.26.2012

Another non-environmental wonder

Best Olympic blooper so far (via Guardian):

"London 2012 organisers have apologised and blamed human error for Wednesday's flag mix-up when South Korea's flag appeared alongside North Korea's women's football team on stadium screens as players warmed up before their opening match."

Amazing demonstration of LOCOG's secret political transformation agenda?

Even better, the official reaction from the North Korean coach:

"If this matter had not been solved, continuing would have been a nonsense."

Something that's actually good

David Roberts (via Grist) nails the self-reinforcing loop between our global dependency on fossil fuels and the international agencies that crunch the numbers in support of them, propping up the industry and therefore the decisionmakers that are beholden to industry:

"The International Energy Agency and U.S. Energy Information Administration do not try to predict policy changes; they project based on the current policy regime. In 2000, there wasn't much in the way of clean-energy policy. Since then, however, there's been a great deal, and those policy changes are the biggest driver of renewable energy growth."



7.23.2012

Something that's actually good

The case for a radically new information environment to move the true sustainability agenda forward (and breakthrough capitalism), in a nutshell (via James Henry in the Guardian, author of the 'The Price of Offshore Revisited' report):

"The very existence of the global offshore industry, and the tax-free status of the enormous sums invested by their wealthy clients, is predicated on secrecy."

7.20.2012

Another non-environmental wonder

After a second week of humiliating stories of banks gone bad (remember, it's all of them - not just the ones who have been caught and grilled in the public spotlight), financial commentators start to ask the 'unaskable'.

Here's James Saft writing for Reuters:

"Never mind that our largest banks are too big to be allowed to fail, they show every sign of being too big for investors...they aren’t just risky and volatile, but often badly managed and highly likely to produce further scandals in which insiders gain at the expense of everyone else in the capital structure."

Maybe this head-in-the-sand mentality will finally be broken on the role of banks in financing an unsustainable future, too. Just maybe.

7.18.2012

Gem of the day

Another classic triumph of the insidious fossil fuels narrative in supposedly 'progressive' media (via NY Times):

"Cheaper fuel produced domestically could reduce the cost of shipping and manufacturing, trim heating and cooling bills, improve the auto market and provide tens of thousands of new jobs...It might also pose new environmental challenges."

Oh and this one too, from the same article:

"For Americans battered by rising gasoline prices, frustrated by the dependence on foreign oil, skeptical of the benefits or practicality of renewable fuels and afraid of nuclear power, the appeal of plentiful domestic oil and gas could far outweigh the costs."

Another non-environmental wonder

In case anyone needed more proof of how systemic the problems with our financial institutions are (reality check: banking is broken), HSBC is this week's latest disaster (via The Guardian):

"HSBC's subsidiaries transported billions of dollars of cash in armoured vehicles, cleared suspicious travellers' cheques worth billions, and allowed Mexican drug lords buy to planes with money laundered through Cayman Islands accounts."

And in case anyone needed more proof that the banks themselves still don't get it, here's how HSBC describes the issue at hand:

"Structural problems with the bank's compliance function"

Right.


7.16.2012

Another non-environmental wonder

HSBC Hong Kong's Chief Operating Officer on why the small persistent band of Occupy Hong Kong protesters need to leave the square outside HSBC offices (via NYTimes DealBook):

“As the occupation continues, the hygiene situation is deteriorating and will likely continue to deteriorate,” his affidavit said.

Too bad he wasn't instead talking about the state of Hong Kong's economy, which is currently beset by raging, record inequality:

"The city’s wealth gap has widened, property prices have soared and average citizens have become increasingly priced out, in many cases by well-heeled investors and visitors from the Chinese mainland. The average home price is around 13 times the median annual household income."

Healthy.

Something that's actually good

Choice quote from an interview with Jeremy Heimans, on what kinds of clients it takes to start a movement (that is, if you're a consultancy whose business it is to do that):

"A mayonnaise company came to us to build a movement around real food and local food. But we said you aren’t real and you aren’t local. We didn’t take the job."

Zing!

Gem of the day

Another astonishingly small environmental public affairs wonder, as the EU wrestles with its own bureaucracy to label its water management plans:

"On 23 October 2000, the "Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a framework for the Community action in the field of water policy" or, in short, the EU Water Framework Directive (or even shorter the WFD) was finally adopted."

7.11.2012

Another non-environmental wonder

In [yet] another episode of 'what recent crisis does this remind us of?', a summary of Jim Chanos' Chinese economic forecast (via NY Times):

"Chanos contends that China is headed for a hard landing of epic proportions because of its shaky financial system and an imminent collapse in its property market, which undergirds the entire economy. “'’m being conservative when I say that the coming bust in China’s real-estate market will be a thousand times that of Dubai,' he told Barron’s."

Unstable financial system? Real estate bubble? Nobody shout 'America'!

Gem of the day

Choice quote off of McDonalds UK's strange new 'stakeholder engagement' platform, 'What Makes McDonald's?', which encourages people to 'find the facts, share your views':

"Ultimately it’s up to individuals to make the right food, drink, and activity choices for themselves every day.”



See image above - where do they find these 'consumers'?

7.10.2012

Gem of the day

Trendwatching.com's trend-of-the-month never fails to deliver a few laughs. This month's takes the cake:

"NEWISM. The ‘new’ has never been hotter, as the entire world, from emerging to mature economies, is now creating new products, services and experiences on a daily, if not hourly basis, in every B2C industry."

And what better picture to accompany the debut of NEWISM than one of this long line at H&M? It perfectly sums up the hell that this trend will drive: more mass-market, cheap and vacuous consumerism.



As with so many outputs from the marketing vortex, NEWNESS comes with the following disclaimer:

"It is also not just breathless, eco-unfriendly, product-replacing madness (see also driver 6): in fact, there's an absolute avalanche of new eco-friendly products and services out there as well."

So all we need to do is introduce more products with vague environmental credentials, on top of the pile of stuff we don't need, to buy our way out of our global sustainability crisis? That's right Trendwatching.com, you totally don't get it.

Another non-environmental wonder

Assessment of Bob Diamond by one Barclays employee (via FT):

“He engendered great staff loyalty right through the ranks...And he was always great with clients.”

That's right, clients - not your average Joe retail consumer, who have the most to lose from this latest scandal.

And the FT, never one to recognize its own irony, has this gem to add:


"However, Mr Diamond was not great with the authorities."

7.06.2012

Another non-environmental wonder

Rupert Murdoch, one of the richest men in the world, weighs in on the American presidential election (via WSJ):

"The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it's Mr. Obama's fault. We're on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that 'Obama isn't working.' Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that."

Murdoch clearly didn't get the memo that our economic system isn't working.

Gem of the day

Edelman, as always, has great intel on what really went wrong with the Fukushima nuclear disaster (via Holmes Report):

"Tepco’s handling of the communications aspects of this crisis contributed significantly to widespread anxiety,” says Edelman Japan CEO Ross Rowbury. “This led to severe reputation damage for the company and created a new low in the public trust of institutions in Japan.”

7.05.2012

Something that's actually good

Jorgen Randers sums up everything that's wrong with the world from a generational perspective (via Club of Rome):

"They [young people] are already now beginning to wake up to the fact that their parents and grandparents are in the process of leaving them an exploited planet with degraded life-support systems, indebted economies, few jobs, and no affordable housing...In developed countries they also inherit the responsibility of caring for an increasing number of retired people who plan to receive pensions and health care for the next thirty to forty years."

7.04.2012

Gem of the day

Barclays is going through the ringer this week as both its CEO and Chairman step down, following revelations that the bank manipulated key interest rates during the financial crisis.

In the words of one Barclays official to the British Bankers Associations:

"We’re clean but we’re dirty-clean, rather than clean-clean."

It's not hard to see where those grey areas of responsibility stem from when you take a look at Barclays' Citizenship Strategy. Two of its three pillars are essentially about increasing growth and profit:

  • "Contributing to growth - We support economic growth and job creation by operating a strong, profitable business."
  • "The way we do business - Our clients’ interests are at the heart of what we do."
For a business that clearly assumes growth and business as usual are the keys to responsibility, a crisis of this scale can hardly be a surprise.