SUSBIZ Sustainable Business Strategies.
A few notes on how climate change and sustainability affect business. I’m going to talk about the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Stern and the Institute of Directors. I’m running a teleclass with a few places left on Tuesday, and next week I shall be going up to the Low Carbon Best Practice Exchange in Newcastle. The RPI has come down, the CPI has gone up but the COBRA Matrix will help you deal with it, and at the beginning of May the Prince of Wales has his Mayday Summit on Climate Change.
Although the economy is in a state that nobody has seen for many, many years, it hasn’t pushed climate change and sustainability off the agenda. Pressure is coming from all quarters. The latest is the Archbishop of Canterbury who said that the case for action on climate change was a moral as well as a practical one. On Tuesday’s Radio 4 Today Programme he warned that billions could die if governments and individuals did not take moral responsibility for climate change now. Didn’t James Lovelock say much the same a few weeks ago? This comes after Lord Stern’s presentation to the Copenhagen Climate Conference when he said that the situation was very much worse than he had thought when he prepared his report on the economic consequences of climate change back in 2006.
But let’s not be negative! At a recent Institute of Directors event addressed by IOD environment spokesman David Boomer and by Todd Holden from Enworks we were told how adopting environmental policies could lead to a direct improvement in the bottom line. On the basis of studying more than 2000 companies it’s been shown that they saved 8% on energy, 2% on materials, 13% on water and up to 50% on waste. You can do a lot of this without spending any money. Apparently 70% of savings come from behaviour change. If you do need to invest to save, there’s a range of low carbon grants and soft loans. I’ve recently been looking at the work of Bob Willard who is a specialist in sustainable business based in Canada who also talks about the savings on staff costs which can be made from environmental policies; from improved morale and productivity to lowered recruitment costs and less turnover. It all depends on the structure of your business, of course, but anything that can make a quantifiable improvement to your bottom line, particularly in the present economic climate, must be valuable regardless of where it comes from.
Next Tuesday 31st March I’m running a teleclass which will cover these points and expand on them. This event is by invitation only but there are one of two places still available so if you want to take part please log on now to this link and you’ll find full details. The session will take place at 18:00 BST but if you can’t make it there will be a recording which will be available the following day.
Next week on 2nd April I shall be running a roundtable discussion session at the Low Carbon Best Practice Forum in Newcastle. If you haven’t already registered for the event go to www.Carbon–innovation.com
The big news this week is that inflation is going up, or at least it is as far as the Consumer Price Index is concerned. It’s risen from 3% to 3.2% while the Retail Price Index has declined to zero; no change. The difference is that the RPI includes housing costs which have been falling as house prices fall and mortgage rates are cut. Both these inflation indices are very crude instruments; it all depends on your lifestyle as to whether your costs are rising or falling. The other issue is the oil price. It peaked at $147 last July and crashed to $36 in January. Now it’s on the rise again - and after adjusting for the exchange rate in the UK it’s halfway back to last year’s peak.
In business, each organisation has its own set of risk factors and I’ve derived the COBRA Matrix to help managers balance impact against possibility. I’ll be covering this in Tuesday’s teleclass and there will be examples of the COBRA approach in the accompanying working papers. Download them here.
As I said to start with, pressure and the realization of the impact of climate change are coming from all quarters. On 1st May the Prince of Wales’s Mayday Summit on Climate Change takes place for the third year running. It brings together businesses at regional centres all over the country to report on progress and to commit to Carbon Reduction and environmental improvements for the year ahead. You can sign up here.
Government regulations demand that business become environmentally responsible and despite the economic environment, consumers are continuing to demand that organisations are green as well. You can find details of a survey published by the Carbon Trust here.
You don’t have to look far to find people who say how dreadful, how terrible, how earth-shattering the risks from climate change are. I prefer to concentrate on the opportunities for staying in business and staying in profit. In the coming weeks I shall be interviewing people from the Carbon Trust and Virgin Media among others to reinforce the positive message.
If you want to add your comments I look forward hearing from you. Add them to this blog or give me a call.
My name’s Anthony Day and my number is 01904654986. I hope we’ll talk soon.
Showing posts with label environment.climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment.climate change. Show all posts
Friday, March 27, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Age of Stupid
Do we need another misery movie?
Review: The Age of Stupid - premiere at Leicester Square and 65 cinemas across the country.
In The Age of Stupid Pete Postlethwaite addresses us from the wrecked planet of 2055 and asks how we could be so stupid as to let climate change destroy humanity. He flicks through endless archives showing us the obvious clues to catastrophe from 2009 and before. It seemed a long film, partly because technical problems meant that about 30 minutes of footage was played twice. Partly, too, because it replayed the breast-beating and lamentations already seen in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Leonardo di Caprio’s The Eleventh Hour, The Day After Tomorrow and all the rest.
What these films lack, and that includes the live debate following The Age of Stupid, is a credible call to action. Watching this film you might conclude that the best thing to do is to run your car on chip fat, live self-sufficiently on a small holding and protest against the nasty nimbies who oppose wind farms. It goes without saying that there’s not enough chip fat and not enough smallholdings. The effectiveness of wind farms is also very much in doubt. After the film Pete Postlethwaite pledged to give back his OBE if the government approved the proposed new Kingsnorth coal-fired power station. Ed Milliband was there to respond, but they let him off extremely lightly by not once mentioning government support for Heathrow’s third runway. Surely that’s a much more powerful national political issue than some power station down in Kent.
Sustainable economic growth is still possible in a low carbon economy, but if we are going to solve this problem we must all drive less, heat less and consume less. Life will be very different - potentially much more pleasant - if we take the low-carbon route. The Age of Stupid has missed the opportunity to show what ordinary people can do to safeguard our future, and to show what sort of future we can all enjoy if we act now. Certainly the showing raised enthusiasm both in Leicester Square and in the cinema where I was, but I fear that people will be rushing off to protest, rather than rushing off to change their lives.
Review: The Age of Stupid - premiere at Leicester Square and 65 cinemas across the country.
In The Age of Stupid Pete Postlethwaite addresses us from the wrecked planet of 2055 and asks how we could be so stupid as to let climate change destroy humanity. He flicks through endless archives showing us the obvious clues to catastrophe from 2009 and before. It seemed a long film, partly because technical problems meant that about 30 minutes of footage was played twice. Partly, too, because it replayed the breast-beating and lamentations already seen in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Leonardo di Caprio’s The Eleventh Hour, The Day After Tomorrow and all the rest.
What these films lack, and that includes the live debate following The Age of Stupid, is a credible call to action. Watching this film you might conclude that the best thing to do is to run your car on chip fat, live self-sufficiently on a small holding and protest against the nasty nimbies who oppose wind farms. It goes without saying that there’s not enough chip fat and not enough smallholdings. The effectiveness of wind farms is also very much in doubt. After the film Pete Postlethwaite pledged to give back his OBE if the government approved the proposed new Kingsnorth coal-fired power station. Ed Milliband was there to respond, but they let him off extremely lightly by not once mentioning government support for Heathrow’s third runway. Surely that’s a much more powerful national political issue than some power station down in Kent.
Sustainable economic growth is still possible in a low carbon economy, but if we are going to solve this problem we must all drive less, heat less and consume less. Life will be very different - potentially much more pleasant - if we take the low-carbon route. The Age of Stupid has missed the opportunity to show what ordinary people can do to safeguard our future, and to show what sort of future we can all enjoy if we act now. Certainly the showing raised enthusiasm both in Leicester Square and in the cinema where I was, but I fear that people will be rushing off to protest, rather than rushing off to change their lives.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Spot the Difference
The Great Global Warming Swindle, the Channel Four programme which claimed that carbon dioxide was not the cause of global warming, suggested that sunspots and solar activity were major force. The theory is that solar winds drive away the particles that cause clouds to form and the reduced cloud cover means that the surface of the earth warms. In fact, while this is a respected theory, the actual observations show that there was little solar wind at the time the global warming was observed.
Dr Michael Lockwood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Oxford has published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society complaining that the programme was selective in the use of his research findings. The graphs that were displayed were cut short at the point at which global warming and solar activity clearly diverged. As Dr Lockwood said, the sceptics were “..taking perfectly good science and bringing it into disrepute.”
It looks as though man-made carbon dioxide is still firmly in the frame as a major cause of global warming.
Public opinion, however, still wants to believe that everything can go on as normal.
Dr Michael Lockwood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Oxford has published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society complaining that the programme was selective in the use of his research findings. The graphs that were displayed were cut short at the point at which global warming and solar activity clearly diverged. As Dr Lockwood said, the sceptics were “..taking perfectly good science and bringing it into disrepute.”
It looks as though man-made carbon dioxide is still firmly in the frame as a major cause of global warming.
Public opinion, however, still wants to believe that everything can go on as normal.
Friday, March 09, 2007
The Great Global Warming Hoax
Last night’s Channel 4 documentary has caused a great deal of comment.
The film didn't say that global warming wasn't happening; just that man-made co2 wasn't the cause. Whether they are right or wrong, we need to cut fossil fuel use because it's finite and it's beginning to run out. That will cut co2 emissions, and, depending on your point of view, that's either a bonus or irrelevant!
Also we should recognise that there are two aspects to global warming (or overheating, as I prefer to call it - warming is stable and essential to life.) One is trying to stop it, and that's undeniably difficult and may not work. The other is that we are observing the effects of global overheating through climate change and we should be doing what we can to protect ourselves, and others, against those effects.
If we go ahead with a high-carbon solution to the 3rd world's energy shortage we will raise expectations, invest a lot of money and end up with something which doesn't work when the fuel gets too expensive. We're talking 3-5 years.
Focussing solely on co2, and solely on its climatic effects, is very short-sighted. It is absorbed by the seas and it changes the acidity of the seas and affects the fish and other organisms that live there. That's the base of the food chain. When we burn fossil fuels and emit co2 we also emit other pollutants, particularly nitrous compounds. These pollute our air, our food and rivers and seas, again damaging the very environment we live in.
It would be great to be able to rely on one television programme and say that there's no problem at all - we can go on as usual, only more so. The oil is running out (gas too, though maybe 30 years later) and in the short term we can get oil from coal, shale and tar sands. All of these are highly polluting, but if we can create a consensus that co2 doesn't matter the oil companies will be happy to exploit these resources. They will ignore the energy inputs, the vast quantities of fresh water needed and contaminated water released. Life will continue as usual, we'll just run out quicker.
I am firmly against the eco-warriors who want to smash capitalism and put the blame on multinationals, George Bush and anyone else they can think of. I am very concerned that the arguments are so polarised, because I believe that there is a middle way, a rational, pragmatic approach to the changes on our planet and a sensible re-evaluation of the risks and the actions we can take. Business as usual is not an option, but selling the car, putting out all the lights and living on bread and water in a tent is not a sensible strategy either!
That’s why I believe in common sense on climate change.
The film didn't say that global warming wasn't happening; just that man-made co2 wasn't the cause. Whether they are right or wrong, we need to cut fossil fuel use because it's finite and it's beginning to run out. That will cut co2 emissions, and, depending on your point of view, that's either a bonus or irrelevant!
Also we should recognise that there are two aspects to global warming (or overheating, as I prefer to call it - warming is stable and essential to life.) One is trying to stop it, and that's undeniably difficult and may not work. The other is that we are observing the effects of global overheating through climate change and we should be doing what we can to protect ourselves, and others, against those effects.
If we go ahead with a high-carbon solution to the 3rd world's energy shortage we will raise expectations, invest a lot of money and end up with something which doesn't work when the fuel gets too expensive. We're talking 3-5 years.
Focussing solely on co2, and solely on its climatic effects, is very short-sighted. It is absorbed by the seas and it changes the acidity of the seas and affects the fish and other organisms that live there. That's the base of the food chain. When we burn fossil fuels and emit co2 we also emit other pollutants, particularly nitrous compounds. These pollute our air, our food and rivers and seas, again damaging the very environment we live in.
It would be great to be able to rely on one television programme and say that there's no problem at all - we can go on as usual, only more so. The oil is running out (gas too, though maybe 30 years later) and in the short term we can get oil from coal, shale and tar sands. All of these are highly polluting, but if we can create a consensus that co2 doesn't matter the oil companies will be happy to exploit these resources. They will ignore the energy inputs, the vast quantities of fresh water needed and contaminated water released. Life will continue as usual, we'll just run out quicker.
I am firmly against the eco-warriors who want to smash capitalism and put the blame on multinationals, George Bush and anyone else they can think of. I am very concerned that the arguments are so polarised, because I believe that there is a middle way, a rational, pragmatic approach to the changes on our planet and a sensible re-evaluation of the risks and the actions we can take. Business as usual is not an option, but selling the car, putting out all the lights and living on bread and water in a tent is not a sensible strategy either!
That’s why I believe in common sense on climate change.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Bush goes bio
Newspaper reports claim that there are signs at last that the White House is taking the environment seriously. This week President Bush was in Brazil to discuss the new ethanol economy - road fuel manufactured from plants. To me this seems more of a realisation that fossil oil is running out, rather than a desire to use "green" fuels. There are serious doubts in any case over whether biofuels are truly green. While the plants used for biofuels do absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, they do not absorb all the co2 released by the whole growth/harvest/processingrefining/use cycle. Some say that the energy input is greater than the energy content of the biofuel produced. Land used for fuel crops displaces food crops, or in some cases displaces rainforest. Cutting down the rainforest releases carbon dioxide and so removes part of the largest co2 absorber in the world. Growing fuel crops instead of food means poorer nations may go hungry.
The signs are that fossil fuel shortages -Peak Oil- are just around the corner. There will never be enough biofuel to replace all the oil we now use. It's a good plan to plan to use less. At least you'll save money and it won't hurt as much when shortages really bite!
The signs are that fossil fuel shortages -Peak Oil- are just around the corner. There will never be enough biofuel to replace all the oil we now use. It's a good plan to plan to use less. At least you'll save money and it won't hurt as much when shortages really bite!
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