State of the Union Preview

Bush is expected to talk about a new greenhouse gas mitigation plan tonight. He’s talked about ending the “oil addiction”, increasing efficiency and shifting to cleaner energy sources in just about every SoU, but with a focus on voluntary action and little follow through in the way of policy. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with tonight. Some things to keep in mind as he talks:

• the US Climate Action Partnership has released a report calling for mandatory regulation on GHG emissions – the group consists of Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, FPL Group, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, PG&E, and PNM Resources, along with 4 NGOs -- Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pew Center, and World Resources Institute. They have said that they are doing this now, in part because they expect softer caps under Bush than they will get under the next administration

· there have been plenty of bills on GHG regulations put forward in Congress of late. PointCarbon North America offers a recap:

In the US, the new senate majority leader Harry Reid introduced a message bill on energy, designed to frame broad goals for upcoming legislation. This “National Energy and Environment Security Act of 2007” calls for mandatory greenhouse gas regulation, and according to Reid’s staff it implies cap-and-trade. With Democrats now holding a one-seat majority in the US senate, his staff predicted that by the end of January “we’ll see at least a dozen bills popping up that deal with carbon emissions, many of them from senior people like committee chairmen.”

Indeed, Senators Lieberman and McCain re-introduced their cap-and-trade proposal last Friday (see page 2), with a new co-sponsor – presidential hopeful Barak Obama. Yesterday former Senator Jeffords’ greenhouse gas cutting bill was reintroduced, and Senator Diane Feinstein’s office will release hers this week. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, has indicated the climate change hearings she plans to hold will produce several proposals for regulating US emissions as well. Her first hearing on the issue will be held 30 January.

New faces in key positions on the state and regional level may accelerate progress toward carbon trading as well. Massachusetts’ new Governor Deval Patrick plans to bring his state, one of the biggest emitters in the northeastern US, back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)

Hopefully these forces coming together, with the back drop of the wind storms in Europe, ice storms in Texas, etc. will spark some meaningful, decisive action. Stay going.

Tesco's carbon rating

Some good news from UK's retail giant Tesco (from the Financial Times):

Tesco will become the first supermarket chain to assign a "carbon rating" to everything it sells in the latest attempt by a retailer to cash in on consumers' concerns about the environment.

The fifth-largest retail chain said on Thursday it would work with Oxford University's environmental change institute to create an index to measure the carbon required to produce, transport and consume every product it sells...

...Labels showing energy content could encourage shoppers to opt for lower carbon goods. This could boost local suppliers to Tesco stores and encourage manufacturers to cut carbon emissions in order to attract shoppers to their brands...

...The retailer said it would spend up to £500m during the next five years in reducing energy use. It has already put £100m into a sustainable technology fund. Its capital expenditure budget is about £3bn a year.

Sustainable consumption has become a hot topic for retailers over the past year as they look to win over the growing legions of shoppers who are expressing concerns about the environment.

This is great news to see the trends going this way, and making it easier for us to make better-informed "votes" at the cash register. Hopefully this will also make the choice between "local or organic" easier - while work towards the time when everything will be both.

Check out the full story: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/133d5be4-a718-11db-83e4-0000779e2340.html

Stay going.

New year’s and Climate Change

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday season. I spent a good portion of it traveling (a terrible habit I’m working to break) and talk from various parts is ever-more focused on the weird weather, and the economic costs. Wind storms in the north west have been responsible for Stanley Park in Vancouver losing around 4,000 trees, and two deaths, and restoration efforts will cost at least $5 million, according to recent estimates, though they won’t know for sure until this summer at the earliest. Province-wide the utility there is already looking at upwards of $40 million in storm damage, vs. the $5 million budgeted.

Also, couple of other interesting headlines from Environmental Finance:

London, 11 January: The World Economic Forum (WEF) has upped its assessment of the risk posed by climate change, estimating that it could cause up to $250 billion of economic losses over the next 10 years.

(Read the full story)

London, 11 January: The European Commission has called on industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30% by 2020 compared with 1990 levels.

(Read the full story)

All of these represent examples or manifestations of the funnel walls for individuals, businesses, universities and all other organizations. Luckily, solutions-oriented approaches are finally becoming more common, and this is where it gets fun – when we pull together against our common enemy of unsustainability and start developing the creative, innovative solutions that will move us past the carbon economy, provoking us to step back and reconsider what is the real purpose of our endeavors here on Earth, reconnect with our local communities and throughout it all learn together.

One such uplifting recent development is the Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability opening this month and general trends towards sustainability in higher education. My company Greenland Enterprises will be in the mix over the coming months helping out with the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment mentioned in the article. We’re very excited about this, and encourage anyone working in college administration, or know people who are, or if you’re a student, or an alum or a college or university to encourage those institutions to take a stand and make the commitment, and enjoy a leadership role in this exciting challenge.

We’re also very excited to be back in Boston, and look forward to catching up with everyone, and getting involved with exciting sustainability initiatives going on around here. More excited still for the Pat’s game this afternoon and a graceful defeat of San Diego on their home turf. Stay going.

Mending Wall

As I attempt to bore through the culture shock of returning to the US, it’s the news that’s really tripping me up. After a year and a half or so of getting news online only and selectively picking headlines while pressed for time, it’s crazy coming back to the full bombardment of TV, radio and print – all in a language I understand.

I’ve been chuckling, as I’m sure many have, about the recent news about the fence company working on the Mexican border fence hiring illegal workers. It’s a tricky, complex issue for sure, and one I won’t tackle here except to say that I think it’s certainly just a symptom of underlying, systemic problems – which is where we should be focusing our energies, instead of on fence building.

It also go me thinking about the Shell Global Scenarios and how there is always an element of a kind of “walls” scenario – from back in ’92 with “barriers” through to last year’s with “flags” – in which eroding trust (a big issue on the declining wall of the funnel) hampers the emergence of a global community and a global consciousness, as well as global business and global security. As these thoughts swam around I happened upon an old book of Robert Frost poems – North of Boston – normally the kind of old book you pick up, admire the old pages, wonder how they’re still intact, smell the old-book-smell and put down. But today I flipped through and actually read one, which resonated:

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No ones has seen them made or heard them

made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

“Stay where you are until our backs are

turned!”

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, “Good fences make good neigh-

bours.”

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t

it

Where there are cows? But here there are no

cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to

him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, “Good fences make good neigh-

bours.”

Stay going...

Thought control

Check out this new video - a remake of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall

with a twist - "you don't need an education to save the planet" ... in fact today's educational system is designed in such a way that our thinking about problem-solving and how we meet our needs will continue to destroy natural & social systems until we radically alter our way of thinking - so we all certainly need learning to make it happen. In the meantime - do the easy stuff in your homes, or these kids will do it for you...

Stay going.

Biofuels & Sustainable Agriculture

A quick bit of good news from a new study out of the University of Minnesota evaluating a diverse mix of perennial grasses and other flowering plants provide more usable energy per acre than corn grain ethanol or soybean biodiesel.

Now there’s often a lot of confusion generated around biofuels “in the leaves” of details. A strategic, whole-systems perspective tells us that moving from fossil fuels to biofuels helps with SP 1 violations – but for it really move us towards sustainability it must be done in a way that eventually eliminates SP2-4 violations. So if its biofuels are grown using huge amounts of pesticides & fertilizers that doesn’t help us with SP2 (and sets us back with regard to SP1, as its energy intensive to produce those). If they’re grown on huge tracks of previously natural areas, we’re done doing any good with regard to SP3, and if we get them from producers that exploit laborers (exposing them to toxins, underpaying them, etc) we’re not doing any good on SP4.

The good news is it’s fully possible to image creative ways to do this today – and by engaging on the process, we won’t be able to help but discover new innovations to continually do these things better. To keep the process moving, actions along this path should: 1) move us towards sustainability (i.e. not violating the 4 SPs), 2) be flexible platforms for supporting future actions, & 3) provide sufficient ROI to support & continue the process.

This study represents a great example of that – and touches on a couple of key components to sustainable agriculture & permaculture: integrating perennial crops (as the article says the roots sequester carbon, there’s less erosion from annual plowing and not all of the nutrients leave the soil with the harvest) & taking advantage of diversity (which when properly designed increases productivity by creating synergies, and mitigates risk of losses from pests & adverse weather conditions).

Check out this recap of the study with a link to the real deal.

Stay going.

Kenya Travel, Part VI (final)

DAY 15 – (Mon)

The next morning we woke to a personal wake up call at 6. Taking a minute on our porch to enjoy the peaceful still of the morning, we watched a crock slowly glide through the water, barely making a ripple. We continued on to have coffee with the hippos and then another, brief game drive. We enjoyed the indescribable sensation of witnessing the sunrise on the African savannah and were accompanied by four bounding buffalo running parallel to us through the golden grass along a stretch about a km long. Spectacular.

We returned to camp for another great breakfast, and packed to move onto to our next destination. We were supposed to meet an armed convoy at a particular intersection, as the stretch of road between Tsavo (where we were) and Amboseli (where we were heading) is apparently dangerous and prone to attacks by AK-47s wielding bandits. But through a series of communication errors, we missed the convoy and unwittingly ran the gauntlet through the dangerous stretch solo. Given the fact that all wazungu (whites) have been traveling through there in armed convoys for the last few years, I doubt there are really many ‘bandits’ still active there, but a bit of a thrill nonetheless. At a half-way check-point we met up with a different convoy and raced the rest of the way at speeds undoubtedly statistically more dangerous than any carjacking. Still, we made it to Amboseli safely, but our adventure was not over. Our map of the park was not great and didn’t include about 90% of the roads, so after a long search for petrol, we found ourselves at a dead end in a Masai village.

A group of friendly young Masai chatted us up, and tried to explain to Bradley that we were heading the wrong way and that we needed to head to the “that hill” pointing into the distance. Finally, one just jumped in the back of the Land Rover and drove 12 kms with us giving directions.

We made it to the Tortilis Lodge, again road weary, but in time for a late lunch. Again, the lodge was beautiful, but in a very different style from Finch. It was more open and manicured. Due to some confusion in the booking we were in a tent that was not what we paid for, and given their vacancies, the only alternative was the “family house” – quite an upgrade. The thing was huge with a beautiful deck looking over a watering hole, in front of what we would later discover was the stunning backdrop of Kilimanjaro.

After dropping our bags, we headed out with a guide in one of their vehicles this time (much smoother and easier on the back and way easier to see out of) for an evening game drive. Jumo, our guide, was mild mannered but very knowledgeable and calmly pointed out birds, tree species, and game as we drove. As we passed elephants grazing half-sunk in the swamp, he explained how the snow melts from Kili seep into the plains and support all of the biodiversity, adding ominously what was at the top of our minds – with global warming, the snow pack is expected to disappear within 20 years – “no snow, no Amboseli.”

He took us to a hyena den, full of pups right next to the road. Michelle had been requesting lions, and though he tempered our expectations heavily, we happened upon two lionesses and a cub, at quite a distance, but striking and exciting nonetheless. Heading home, feeling lucky and satisfied, we spotted a lone bull elephant meandering on an intersecting path to us with the dark blue and bright orange sunset horizon falling behind him. We stopped just in front of his path and he slowly, quietly, gracefully passed behind the car with a couple of meters. He paused momentarily, turned his head towards us flapped his ears and shook his head, just to demonstrate his power, before continuing on. Just then, awestruck, we looked up and the clouds had lifted from the peak of Kilimanjaro, revealing to us for the first time the equatorial snow cap. Words can do the moment no justice, so suffice it to say it was one of those moments.

We made it back well after dark, showered and headed to the lodge for dinner. In the bar we met a 3 friendly Canadians (again, virtually neighbors of Michelle’s, small world) who were making a documentary on global warming. They had been shooting at the COP and were here to get Kilimanjaro footage. We obviously had lots to talk about and joined them for an exciting dinner sharing experiences and thoughts on sustainability and throwing around ideas for the movie. We did our best to stay up and hang out, but the early mornings and dusty days on the roads were catching up.

DAY 16 – Return to Nairobi (Tues)

Again, a personal wake-up call at 6, only this time with coffee. We threw on some clothes and stepped out on the porch, only to be greeted by the striking spectacle of Kilimanjaro, fully clear of cloud cover. We sat and had our coffee, gazing at the mountain and watching a crane hunt in the little watering hole in our front yard. We joined Jumo again for a morning drive and watched the plains wake up and turn golden. We hiked observation hill and took in a 360 view of the swamps of Amboseli. Ready to call it a morning and head back to camp for breakfast, we got back in the vehicle, and just down the road spotted a cheetah out for a morning hunt. It was another lucky sighting and we spent about 20 minutes watching from about 50 meters as she stalked around, sat up on high ground, had a look around, and generally just showed off. It was amazing.

Sad to leave we headed back, got packed up and took a quick tour of the organic garden at the camp (that's a basil 'tree') - then we made the long drive back to Nairobi, for a joyous reunion with the little ones.

DAY 17 – T-day prep (Weds)

A slow day of recovering, unpacking & catching up on work – we also did a big grocery shop in preparation for an African Thanksgiving. We had a big bird lined up – and far and a way the highlight of the day was Em & I trying to figure out how to brine a turkey, following our brother emailed directions from a year earlier. After some clever use of a trash bag and a cooler, as well as some serious refrigerator reshuffling, we got it taken care of… well worth it.

DAY 18 – Thanksgiving, rain / water tank, turkey, intermitten power (Thurs)

It was pouring in the morning, and ironically we had no running water. Evans and I had a bucket water-catchments system going to refill the tank, but the pump still wasn’t working – this of course wasn’t helped by the fact that the electricity was intermittent. This fact also didn’t help us cook the bird – but we persevered. And after 6 or 7 hours – we had a fully cooked turkey (as best we could tell by candle-light). Em set a beautiful table, Mich had mixed up some unreal sage stuffing, and Agnus made her famous mashed potatoes. All in all a raging success – and as we ate we were joined by a Kenyan and a Norwegian, who were no doubt blown away by the dedication to our national heritage & the sheer magnitude of the spread – making it a truly international affair.

DAY 19 – Bizarre Bazaar, travel

Hardly believing it was over, we spent the final day at the Bizarre Bazaar, an annual pre-Christmas shopping fair for (mostly white) Kenyans. It was cool to see all the various goods & wears from around the country – everything from baskets & home stuff to clothes, art & music. We spent the evening packing, enjoying one final meal & some sad good-byes. All in all it was an unforgettable trip – and so much thanks & love to the fam for all the hospitality & so much more. Stay going.