The latest energy and climate change white paper from the UK government pushes a green energy revolution which would see 40% of the UK’s energy generated from renewable energy sources by 2020, creating 1.2m new green jobs. (more…)
Archive for July, 2009
Are we facing a green skills shortage?
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Carbon capture and storage rambling feedback
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009Dear all I feel duty bound (well perhaps a bit strong, more a case of it would be a good idea) to provide some feedback on the comments I received to my previous ramble. Time as usual seems to have flown by and I stopped responding to some individual comments on the basis I was preparing this follow up ramble. So apologies to those who anticipated they were due another response. In deed I find I have the time to complete this ramble as I’m currently holed up with “flu like symptoms” or perhaps more appropriately “Man Swine Flu” but it has got me out of a red eye round trip to Aberdeen at least. (more…)
A lot more impact than ‘I’m just one person’!
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009Deb Albers is a hero of mine because she took on sustainability within her company in a way where she and like-minded employees could contribute. Her initiative led to a lot more employee involvement and a lot more sustainability progress for Dell. She didn’t think of herself as ‘just one person’, but someone who had a passion to contribute on sustainability through her day job. (more…)
Insufficient, outdated coverage doesn’t help economy
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009The small article on Wal-Mart’s major move to eco-rate deserved front page coverage and a different angle. Positive action toward green or sustainable living commensurate with the size of our problems is news I want to read. The news limelight on N. Korea, Iran, even to some degree all of the Middle East is counter-productive. As they say ‘what you measure is what you get’. Perhaps what you consider news is what you get. These hot spots need addressing, but with the issues we face, they seem almost irrelevant to having a livable future based on the current reality of our$700B/year foreign oil dependence, natural resource depletion, severely declining eco-systems, the onset of climate change, etc. (more…)
Green job heresy?
Monday, July 20th, 2009The green job frenzy of job seekers, web sites, recruiters, etc. isn’t helping us make major progress on sustainability. The two things that strike me are that people want green jobs, but haven’t determined the personal and professional development required to qualify for green jobs. Second, the green job frenzy seems to set us up to think that green or sustainability jobs are separate, when every job and every employee needs to apply sustainability concepts to their current jobs and businesses. From all the sustainability case studies, sustainability progress is a journey that involves learning and application at all levels, i.e., integration of sustainability in the way we do all jobs and business processes. With a basic foundation in sustainability, employees applying sustainability in their day jobs within their companies will bring more progress toward sustainable business and living than green jobs themselves. (more…)
System thinking blog —Your mental models (part 5)
Friday, July 17th, 2009I am not going to talk about what I said I was going to talk about in my last blog until the next Systems Thinking Blog. A key element of systems thinking is understanding and updating mental models. This week Fox News set me off with their outdated mental models of the world, today’s reality, so I decided to talk mental models. (more…)
What is the supergrid?
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009This month the G8 Summit agreed the first steps towards a significant global strategy on climate change by agreeing that global warming temperatures should not exceed 2C of 1900 levels and that member nations will work towards an 80% reduction of green house gas emissions by 2050. The USA has taken a major step-change in its attitude towards the climate and President Obama who chaired the discussion stressed that the issue of climate change could no longer be ignored and that we should look towards December and Copenhagen. (more…)
American personal freedom challenge
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009We were raised with the ideal that ‘all men are created equal’. It took us a long time to achieve this ideal at least in policy/law, and our consciousness, if not yet in all our actions, except probably for the Gay community today. In fact, we had to make the ideal more real because our founding fathers excluded some (at least women and blacks, gays for sure) from the equality ideal. We’re still working on race and other biases and the mental models or generalizations we have for each other. Our strength is in our diversity, our commitment to equality, along with a willingness to update our mental models to get closer and closer to the ideal that ‘all men are created equal’ in all aspects of our society. (more…)
An introduction to jatropha curcas (part 3)
Saturday, July 4th, 2009There is another source of renewable diesel that I believe has greater commercialization potential than algae. Jatropha curcas is a non-edible shrub native to tropical America, but now found throughout tropical and subtropical regions of Africa and Asia. Jatropha is well-suited for growing in arid conditions, can grow in low moisture conditions, and may be used to reclaim marginal, desert, or degraded land. An estimated 2 billion hectares worldwide is considered to be degraded and perhaps suitable for jatropha cultivation. (more…)
Annotated bibliography – A new age reading list
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009This bibliography concentrates on books on the literature related to environmental planning, including but not limited to: climate change, sustainability, history, biological resources, animal behavior, and other personal growth and development resources. As the green business profession is rapidly changing, we as professionals should take a global view of how inter-related the world is. While there has been an onslaught of comprehensive literature addressing climate change and the new economy that can make reading choices daunting, this list is just a sample of new information. These are not all bestsellers, but most of these books should be readily available in the local library. (more…)
Green job board league table - July 2009
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009July’s green job board league table is published below. There has been lots of movement this month with some sites making some impressive gains and some which have seen their job seeker numbers fall.
A number of additional sites which were highlighted following the publication of June’s table have been included this month following a review. (more…)
