Why not put a face on the future? Name those CEOs and heads of states that are killing the planet: Support the escape from the great carbon lock-in

With a strong agreement that we need dramatic CO2 reductions within 10 years to avoid dangerous climate change it frustrating to see that investments still take place that are locking us into a high carbon dependence.

One of the main challenges is that we don’t differentiate between investments that lock us into a high carbon society for decades and those that can be changes tomorrow. If we are to change direction we must be able to find instruments that can help us define what is important from what is less important. In media today it seems to be more discussions about light bulbs than about buildings. Light bulbs are important, but we can change these quite fast, but buildings will be with us for decades.

Selling a SUV is much more serious “crime” than selling a mobile phone with a charger that use a lot of energy. Not only will a SUV use a lot more energy and trigger investment in an unsustainable infrastructure it will be with us for decades, but the charger, not a very important part of the climate challenge, will also (hopefully) be recycled after a year or two in most cases.

In order to get serious about climate change, equity around the use of natural resources it would be valuable to start by tracking the performance of the top 20 CEOs on the Fortune global 500 list and the political leaders of G20.

A webpage with all the names and faces should be created and then each year their decisions would be assessed (by a group of expert and with wiki-opportunities to write up the assessment). The assessment would include three things on the negative side:
1. To what degree have they made decisions that lock us into a high-carbon society?
2. How much (money) have they invested in high-carbon lock-in?
3. How much goods and services have they put on the market that lock us into a high carbon society and for how long?

It should obviously also include the positive part
1. To what degree have they made decisions...
2. How much (money) they invested in solutions...
3. What have they put on the market...
... that help people move out of poverty in a sustainable way and allow rich people to live better lives with less use of natural resources?

If we can make the current destructive trend less anonymous and get a discussion with those who actually have power to make decisions that affect the future of us all. We could discuss why certain decisions are made and how we can move beyond incremental improvements a lot could improve and those taking decisions that can kill or save us all can answer why they do what they do.

Why not put a face on the future?

China now bigger CO2 emitter than US …, or? Getting the numbers right

It has been reported over and over again that China’s emissions is as large, or larger, than US emissions, about 6 billion tonnes CO2 each. We will see more of this so I thought I would put down my key points from presentations regarding this issue.

If China emit more than US or today, or if it will take an extra year or two is less important. The big question is if these numbers actually tells us anything meaningful that can help us guide our action, or if we need to add information to get something useful. Judge for yourself.

FACT 1: Numbers for Simple emissions

China: 6 billion tonnes
US: 6 billion tonnes

That is probably not too far off, however looking at the actual situation using some rough numbers, gives us a very different perspective.

First of all about 25% of the emissions in China are embedded in net export that mainly feed (over) consumption in OECD. So from Chinas emissions we can subtract about 1,5 Gigaton. For US the situation is reversed as it has outsourced a lot of polluting industries and have a net export of approximately 0,5 Gigaton each year.

UPDATE 25th Augusti: New numbers indicate that 30% of China's CO2 emissions are embedded in their export. That would take us to almost 2 Gigaton in the export... (That is about 50% of EUs total emissions so quite a significant number).

FACT 2: Numbers including embedded emissions in import and export

China: 4.5 billion tonnes (due to net export of 1.5 billion tonnes in products)
US: 6.5 billion tonnes (due to net import of 0.5 billion tonnes in products)

Then we should not forget that people are important, it is not countries that emit CO2 but people. So the question is how big the emissions are per capita. China’s population is about 1.3 billion people and US is 0.3 billion people.

FACT 3: Numbers based on per capita emissions from consumption

China: 3.46 tonnes/ person
US: 21.67 tonnes/ person

Another fact that is often forgotten by media in OECD is that it is not only the emissions today that matters. The infrastructure that US (and the rest of OECD countries) have built up exist thanks to massive use of fossil fuel. If we compare the cumulative emissions between 1850-2000 in order to capture the whole industrialization we can see that US have emitted about 30% of the world’s emissions during this time, compared to Chinas 7%. During this time Chinas population has grown from 400 millions to 1 300 and US from 25 millions to 300 millions. So China has been hosting a population between 10 and 4 times larger than US. So not only has US contributed 4 times more historically, per capita we can assume that it is at least 5 times more, resulting in 20 times greater emission through history. Talking about emission trading today without acknowledging the historic pollution from US/OECD is not very credible.

FACT 4: The proportional responsibility from a historic perspective

China: 1
US: 20

Steve Jobs: The icon of heartless entrepreneurs watching the world die?

Working with many really amazing entrepreneurs I’m fascinated that the business press often seems unwilling to put any filter beyond money on what constitutes a world leading entrepreneur. We have less than ten years to reverse the trend with increasing CO2 emissions, every third second a person dies unnecessary, we are wiping out the last untouched places on this planet, extinction rates are at least 100 to 1000 times higher than natural rates found in the fossil record. In short, there is no lack of challenges worthy an entrepreneur.

My question is not if it is a lack of empathy/heart that these people suffer from, or is it a lack of understanding of how serious the situation is (even if these are interesting questions)? A single individual is never very interesting. In all societies there is a Hitler somewhere, the question is why we at times we want them as leaders and celebrate them. Jobs is obviously not a Hitler, the point I’m trying to make is that he is a reflection of society and not interesting as a person, but as a phenomena.

Blind hunger for more and unwillingness to face the facts around us are major problems. Why are so many people celebrating a man who has probably done more than any other single living person to create a situation where the rich world is turning an ipod-deaf ear to the problem and staring at a 2.5” screen while reality is trying to knock on the door?

Don’t get me wrong, I love my mp3 player and my fascination for technology is not a big secret. I should also clarify that I don’t know Steve Jobs personally, he might be the best person on the planet, or the worst. What I see as a problem is the public persona that is celebrated, a person that is seen as one of the greatest, or even the greatest, entrepreneur of our time by many in media. A person that has given the world a funny little toy, nothing more and nothing less.

I wonder how it feels for those who celebrate Jobs as a word leading entrepreneur when they see the poor of the world, hear about climate change and know that we are in desperate need for new technology and new low carbon lifestyles?

I don’t think people are evil, but we live in a culture that celebrates "infantility" and Homo Ludens as role models. People that don’t ask about the consequences of their actions are not seen as immature, but rather seen as examples of how “far” it is possible to get if you focus and “innovate”. The direction and what you innovate seems to be less important.

Early this year in Davos I posed the question during a dinner conversation I moderated (all attending was from the field of high-tech) how they thought history will judge us and what kind of people future generations would admire in our generation. Will it be people selling small toys that we can listen to music on, or will it be people providing low carbon living for people and helping people out of poverty?

I think that a first step to improve the situation would be to rank the entrepreneurs in relation to how much they have increased long-term welfare on this planet? Getting people like Muhammad Yunus and Dipal C. Barua side by side with Steve Jobs and Lee Raymond would be interesting. Getting a discussion going in MBA educations around the world would also be a good start (I will do a tour later this year in Europe, Middle East and Africa and hope to have a few questions for them to answer, such as: “What legacy would you like to leave behind, micro-financing helping people out of poverty or a little machine that people can listen to music on?”…

Maybe the creation of a “Steve Jobs index” in societies that measures how many of the entrepreneurs that focuses on trivial things and how many that focuses on the great challenges of our time? Then also have a “Steve Jobs media index” that tracks the reporting in media related to the two different kinds of entrepreneurs.

Best of all would be if Steve himself could support and help develop the index… We need surprises and while Gates left his job to help the poor, maybe Steve also could begin to use Apple to save the planet and start an index (he don't even need to stop doing toys, we need them also)...

Wikinomics by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams

Wikinomics is a book about the new web, web 2.0, the social web where new things can happen. The book is not bad, but there are few interesting and inspiring examples of how the web is used today. It is more their thinking than their examples that make the book worth the time.

The fact that they must have looked for good examples makes the book depressing. A rough estimation after reading the book for actual web 2.0 applications:
- 90% of the examples are either trivial (mostly pretty harmless narcissistic stuff along the lines we are familiar with in Facebook) , stupid (how to print graphics on a potato chip [yes that is an example of wikinomics in the book, page 107]) or destructive (how to destroy and empty the planet on natural resources faster [It actually start with an example of how to extract more minirals out of a mine, page 7, how much further can you get from the needs in the 21st century]),
- 9% of the example relate to research
- 1% for initiative ways to use the net that might actually make a difference.

The fact that most of web 2.0 (so far) is either doing meaningless things or accelerating current unsustainable trends might not be surprising. The authors are however looking for something else. In the introduction they write:

“The movement to stop global warming is a good example of mass collaboration in action. We’re the early days of something unprecedented: Thanks to Web 2.0 the entire world is beginning to collaborate around a single idea for the first time ever – changing the weather. Climate change is quickly becoming a nonpartisan issue, and all citizens obviously have a stake in the outcome. So for the first time we have one global, multimedia, affordable, many-to-many communication system, and one issue on which there is growing consensus. Around the world there are hundreds, probably thousands, of collaborations occurring in which everyone from scientists to schoolchildren are mobilizing to do something about carbon emissions. The “Killer application” for mass collaboration may turn out to save the planet, literally.”

This sounds interesting and optimistic, or even naïve. Especially as the following is written a few pages later:

“This new participation [wikinomics] has reached a tipping point where new forms of mass collaboration are changing how goods and services are invented, produced, marketed and distributed on a global basis”.

As we need a transformative shift in order to ensure a resource efficient development that allow for the world’s poor to rise out of poverty without a war over natural resources and a climate catastrophe, we need to see changes in all of the above. The challenge is that we don’t need any change, we need a resource efficient, low carbon change. This is complex as the very basis of our infrastructure need to change, our economic system need to change, our legal system need to change, system solutions (with new collaborations) need to be implemented, etc. So far the wikinomics seem to have delivered more of the same, not any transformative change.

Maybe this complexity is why Anthony Williams is putting himself in the pessimist camp on his blog?

“I reluctantly put myself in the pessimist’s camp for now. While I think there will be many significant collaborations to stop climate change, I don’t see the equivalent of the human genome project emerging in this space. That being said, I am eager to see someone prove otherwise. It’s true that no issue has captivated the attention of a broad internal audience as much as climate change has in recent years. And, as noted by Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, ‘For far too long, climate change has been seen as a problem of the future, one that only a limited range of ministries and institutions should manage. This must change now. Climate change requires broader engagement.’ Will the ‘killer application for mass collaboration’ turn out to be saving the planet? What do you think?”

For now I think that there is very little beside some climate research, that might come up with a few new ideas, that is really interesting and use web 2.0, but that can change.

Suzanne Pahlman and I have begun a project to explore the contribution of cutting edge IT solutions to a low carbon, resource efficient and equitable development and in this web 2.0 is included (together with things like cloud computing, petaflop computers, decentralized production, etc). In this we actually have a potential “killer application”, more about that later.

PS
The examples in the book are not bad, but very boring. Actually surprisingly boring. I know of quite a few applications that are much more interesting than anything in the book. Maybe the reseach grant they got came from companies like P&G and IBM with little new in the field of web 2.0, but as they paid for the reseach they had to be included?

India’s first victory in the Olympics: India:5 Holland/UK:0

[The result is from the less known energy competition...;)]

As the Olympic game begun in China I left India for Europe and picked up a few magazines. While sport might be interesting to many these days, there is a constant battle over the future of the planet. Companies are investing in different technologies and solutions that will determine the future for us all. In the air between India and Europe I saw two ads that got me thinking.

UK/Holland represented by Shell and their fossil ad
Looking through the papers I was sad to see that Shell still run their ads about their investments in dirty technologies such as oil sand and CCS. A few years ago it looked as is Shell and BP was serious in changing towards sustainability, but these days it looks like they are moving in the wrong direction. Shell might be aiming for Exxon’s old role (things might slowly change in Exxon, see earlier blog) as the worst energy company in the world, in tight competition with Vattenfall. Their ad is such a desperate attempt to defend destructive and old technology that they are not even close to score a point the energy competition.

India represented by Suzlon and their future ad
Suzlon from India on the other hand had a very different add on the back cover of CNBC European Business. I can’t find it on the web but the text reads (the picture is a photo I took): “Where do we look when there are no fossil fuels to look for? As the world races on towards development, our finite conventional energy supplies continue to deplete. To power sustainable development, we need to look towards renewable, eco-friendly energy sources like the wind. At Suzlon, we serve your energy needs by providing dependable wind energy solutions backed by excellent customer response and a fully integrated and secure supply chain, which delivers customised solutions to ensure project performance globally. Come to us, so the wind can power the world’s future and yours.”

Suzlon is also a sponsor of CNNs “Eco solutions”.

Maybe media can start report more about sustainability now with the help of Indian and Chinese companies that are serious about sustainable energy solutions? As we all know media is about pleasing those who sponsor and place adds in the papers/on TV, so we need companies with sustainable solutions that pay for ads and sponsor media to get news about sustainable technology. I know it is sad, but we must stop pretending that media with such small resources can give anything close to a balanced picture (it is not a coincident that western media are in love with CCS, the big power companies are and therefore it does not matter that it is not a very important technology and that it most certainly will lock us into a high carbon infrastructure).

This is a clear winner and maybe to some a surprise. How come that India is home to the world’s 5th largest and fastest growing wind turbine manufacturer with all the talk about sustainability in Europe? The reason as I see it is that most companies in India that start to act in the area of sustainability don’t see this is a PR exercise, but an opportunity to make money while providing solutions that the world needs.

I can’t give less than one point, if that was possible Shell would get that… For Suzlon they get points for hope, concrete suggestions, actual delivery and investment in the future with an extra bonus for their contribution to CNN.

You will soon see more things from India.

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UPDATE 14 August: Good news on Shell and its advertising:
From the Independent: "In an embarrassing rejection of Shell's "greenwash", the Advertising Standards Authority said the company should not have used the word "sustainable" for its controversial tar sands project and a second scheme to build North America's biggest oil refinery. Both projects would lead to the emission of more greenhouse gases, the ASA said, ruling the advert had breached rules on substantiation, truthfulness and environmental claims."

In Sweden and other countries due to weak laws Companies like Shell and Vattenfall can still get away with lies, hopefully this will change.
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