My Earth, Your Earth, Future Eaarth?

At this time of year, Sydney has this wonderful writers festival where authors come to discuss and be interviewed about their most recent works, and so I ventured out yesterday to see Bill McKibben, environmental campaigner, co-founder of 350.org and author of several books, including his most recent work Eaarth.

Actually, Bill spoke less about "making a life on a tough new planet" which is the theme of his book, and more about the social changes that are happening and the inequalities of a changing environment, where the greatest impacts are often on those who live the lowest carbon intense lifestyles. Bill spoke about needing new metaphors to help everyone get their heads around what is happening, and about developing a new framework for understanding the world.

And with all the buzz of the renewable industries, it is sobering to revisit why these changes are so important and so urgent, and to commend those like Bill who become involved and take on the daunting task of setting global goals and campaigning for our Earth/Eaarth which he does with his group 350.org.

We can all only speculate what lies ahead for us in the next few decades - what we do know is that we need to consider the big picture, and to re-think how we can share one unique and beautiful planet. As someone once said, "if we rented the earth like an apartment, then we are in definite danger of loosing our deposit bond". But unlike an apartment, we have no where else to go.. so let's clean up the place, stop digging up the floorboards, work out how to limit the size of our global group, and discover new ways to share this earth-dwelling that work for everyone, not just a privileged few. And just maybe, we could rediscover ourselves in the process.

Pic of Bill McKibben taken by Mary 23 May 2010

Clean Energy Real Estate: Position = Investment

The latest post on Watthead, authored by Garrett Brennan of Focus the Nation, includes the following:

"If we’re serious about solutions, we need people in power to get serious about investment in clean energy research, development and adoption, and then empower young entrepreneurs with tools to unleash their creativity. Climate change is NOT the defining issue of our generation. After all, today’s ‘millennials’ didn’t put all that global warming pollution up there. But building a clean and prosperous energy economy that averts the risks of climate change—and leading that effort in a way that inspires people in diverse communities across the country to take part in that collective effort—this is the defining issue of our generation."

Across the US, Focus the Nation are organising events for young entrepreneurs, professionals and future energy workers to engage in Clean Energy Forums. These types of movements need to, and will go global, under a variety of locally named and locally driven groups and will be across political boundaries, engaging a generation who already connect using the mediums of social online media.

Many previously prosperous and mature industries would be wise to take heed of the potential wealth to be derived from this creativity and that the "new energy economy" is already happening, in pockets and spaces around the globe. Change is upon us - embrace the change and get serious about opening doors for those who will drive the Clean Energy industries of the next decades, and in doing so, you also open the door to solutions that are needed to adapt and to minimise the risks of climate change.

Picture from Focus the Nation http://focusthenation.org/

Farming Liquid Green

In Perth last week, at a Sustainable Energy conference, I came across this company called BioLectric, doing very interesting stuff with Algae. They claim that "algae can capture and convert CO2 into biomass at a rate higher than any land based plants" and the CO2Algae process cultivates algae on marginal land utilising poor quality water. BioLectric promote their hot house pond systems which use the natural characteristics of the algae.

Algae to biomass/biofuels is an interesting and rapidly emerging area of investigation into energy systems - and has great potential, plus uses natural processes. And this reminds me of the business opportunities of the early computer days, when everyone was interested, but only a few took up the early challenges to change. Rethinking our processes and our energy systems is what is needed, and algae farming may just be one of those opportunities staring at our global collective face.

Image from http://www.biolectric.com.au/co2benefits.html

Storms of Our Future

Last night, I attended a talk in Sydney by Dr James Hansen, highly awarded scientist and author (see his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren). James has a long career of researching and defining the changes in our climate and is a world authority on this topic.

It was a full house, yet still an informal occasion, where questions were invited. James spoke about the many challenges we face, and he also spoke about some solutions, such as a new Fee and Dividend way of promoting and rewarding energy efficiency. James is among many who are seriously concerned about the global decline in public interest in climate science, while at the same time, the data is showing more conclusively that the planet is warming. His key message was that we need to reduce the CO2 levels to 350 ppm, if we want to pass on a workable planet to the next generations. To do that, James sees that we must generate our power without burning fossil fuels, primarily coal.

For the planet, he spoke about nuclear power generation, but for Australia, he could see a future using renewable options such as large scale solar thermal, because of the ideal conditions for that technology to function.

All that is well known, but one more point came out of the evening, and that was a brief discussion about the need for a "Churchill like" leader, who would engage the world and set a course for the future. And it made me think of a Winston Churchill quote that I came across last week which said “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required.”

Dr James Hansen is a brilliant scientist, not by nature a public speaker, but he is "doing what is required". And maybe that's a question for us all, "what is it that we can do, that is required for our planet and our common future".

Image : Dr. James Hansen, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. Credit: NASA

Protoype the Future

"Lessons we've learned" by Nike CEO Mark Parker see WME article

• Transparency is an asset, not a risk;
• Collaboration enables systemic change;
• Every challenge and risk is an opportunity;
• Design allows you to prototype the future, rather than retrofit the past; and
• To make real change, you have to be a catalyst.

Direction --> Money

Truman Semans published an article on Dec 18th, called "In Copenhagen, Follow the Money". In it, he says:

"Few of the Copenhagen negotiators understand economics, investment, and business well, or the contributions business can make to solve the problem, or the policy frameworks that would best encourage business to play this role."

Our focus over the past few months has been to look at what can be achieved by governments coming together to solve the climate crisis. And in some ways, this was a positive step, but mostly, it was a planetary talk fest.

Truman rightly points out that developed countries are unlikely to hand over the sums of money being sought by developing nations, and companies with existing or new IP are not going to give away that technology. So the outcomes being sought were not feasible in the current global political space.

To achieve the vision, the goals of a new energy economy, and to fast track this, business people must step in and drive the agenda. This is already happening in China, India and the US as BLWB's (business leaders without borders) see opportunities for major industries developing in water, waste and energy management. Many corporate partnerships across nations are already in place and more are on the drawing board.

Old money is blocking some of these initiatives, and it's time for them to change direction, or get out of the way. And for governments to support local initiatives that will best meet the needs of this new economy.

In Truman's words: "It is critical that the business community educate governments on the role that they can play and sell them on the enabling policies and financial mechanisms that are needed. "

Copenhagen over, now let's get on with what needs to be done.

Directionally challenged

As planetary people, we are hurtling through space and time, and our individual lives are wrapped around the circumstances that we find ourselves. And annually, by our measure of time, I find it useful to take some moments to review and look ahead.

With all the challenges that drive us daily, it is sometimes difficult to fully comprehend facts and figures that point to an uncertain future for many species, including us. How then, do we look forward positively, and enliven others around us for the changes that are unfolding?

Looking back, those who inspired us in the past, did so by their positive words. Words such as, “I have a dream….” and, “we will fight them on the beaches…”, and NOT, “I have a nightmare...” or “they are so powerful against us...”. Warnings are useful, but like this sign, give us no information about where we should go. This next year, 2010, is a year to inspire more people to become involved in the transition, and to draw more pictures of our common future, while still actively challenging short-term and factional thinking.

My picture of our future is of a stable number of people on this planet living in diverse, sustainable communities, each having access to water and food, and to life enhancing energy from renewable sources. My vision is of a sustainable global society powered by renewable energy.

What is your dream, your planetary picture, your vision of the future, one you use to engage those around you?

(and I took the picture above in Ireland/West Coast)