Video: One degree war plan

Peter Willis, Director of CPSL South Africa, interviews Prof. Jorgen Randers and Paul Gilding, long-standing Core Faculty members of the Business & the Environment Programme and thought-leaders at this year’s BEP seminar in Cape Town.

Jorgen and Paul believe is it inevitable that society will at some point in the next decade demand a much more dramatic response to climate change than is currently on the cards, given the reality of the risk it poses. The interview outlines their radical “One Degree War Plan”, which is the type of response they believe will be demanded in due course. The Plan was “premiered” at our BEP seminar and has generated tremendous interest. This insert will be shown on SABC 2′ “50-50″ programme on Monday 1 June at ’09 19:30. (Full transcript below)

Produced by: Charles Moore

TRANSCRIPT
PETER:
I’m talking to Professor Jorgen Randers from the Norwegian School of Management, and Paul Gilding, climate activist and faculty member of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership.

I believe you’ve been in some discussions to develop a global strategy in relation to climate change.

PAUL:
We notice this incredible disconnect between what the scientists are saying, which is that we clearly face a risk of catastrophic civilisation and economic collapse. Clearly that’s not the most likely outcome but it’s certainly a possibility. And the science is getting increasingly urgent on that issue, and yet you don’t see that kind of response from the public or from government at all, despite incredible change in the debate in recent years.

And so we thought, well logically there’s just a lag. Because logically will therefore come at some part where there’ll be a great awakening on the issue. And the public and the elites, we think will virtually, suddenly wake up and say, “Oh my God! There is actually a risk of complete economic collapse and very severe consequences for society. We have to fix the problem?”

And so we thought, let’s work out that plan. Then when it’s needed, and which we think, our best guesstimate is kinda 2018 or thereabouts, and we call it the “One Degree War” plan.

PETER:
And why a “One Degree War” plan? What’s the one degree about?

PAUL:
Because the general consensus in the scientific and policy community is that the target, the best we can hope for is a 450 part per million cap on CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and that gives us a 50/50 chance of not passing two degrees… two degrees of warming, and two degrees of warming actually is the tipping point in most scientific studies that says beyond that point we get into very scary territory of runaway climate change or runaway greenhouse impacts, and catastrophic, cascading consequences down the line.

PETER:
That sounds like quite a steep challenge, given that most policy’s aiming, if we’re really lucky, at two degrees. So what’s the plan?

JORGEN:
Reduce by 50% during a strong effort, the climate war, from 2018 to 2023, and then a further 15 years where we cut dramatically, and then in a carbon negative territory for the rest of the century.

PETER:
Take me through each of those stages. What’s involved in the climate war? The first five years?

JORGEN:
Step number one is basically to reduce logging by 50%. A second step would be to ban half of the driving. So you basically say to people that you have a certain rationing. So you can drive your car a certain amount but not further. At the same time of course one starts the longer term task of shifting the car fleet from fossil cars, running on gasoline, to electric cars running on CO2-free electricity.

A third activity – you cut airplane flights by 50% again. So you basically strand half of the flights of the world. Much more powerful would be to take the world’s 6000 largest power stations and identify the ones that actually emit a lot of CO2, and close them down.

PETER:
Isn’t there going to be huge resistance? I mean, how could people possibly agree to do these things?

PAUL:
If people could imagine mass starvation because the climate changes so rapidly that food supplies collapse, then having to ration your petrol, suddenly becomes a lot more viable.

And so you’ve got to imagine a context, very clearly of a very scared public – of very scared political leaders who are saying, ‘hang on’. On my watch decisions are going to be made which could lead to the collapse of civilisation, and certainly are going to otherwise lead to some very severe economic collapse. With massive dislocation of people, loss of jobs, loss of value in society. And then suddenly a “planned” reduction of this type, even with that level of sacrifice – like a war – is going to be a price the public is going to support paying, relative to the alternative.

JORGEN:
And so the more you think about this, the more attractive the one degree war actually starts to become, and then you can start asking the question, why doesn’t this happen by itself quickly?

And of course that’s the real core problem. It’s a decision problem, very much more than it’s an execution problem. So, if one simply decided to start the war, implementing it would be fine. There would be little suffering, but there would be great excitement and this is highly do-able. And so it is just a question of getting going. But this, alas, will take some time because there is still not that type of fear in the population.

PETER:
But it seems to me one of the strengths of your proposal is that you’re not saying that this must happen now. You’re saying, we think this needs ten years of preparation, then it will be needed because then people will be ready.

And my… I find myself thinking as I’m sitting here that of course, once this plan gets out and people start debating it and thinking, well how feasible is it and so on, that I think, well why must we wait ten years? Why don’t we perhaps do it in three?

Video: Greening the Empire State Building

Paul Hawken – University of Portland ’09 Commencement Address

Commencement address to the Class of 2009. University of Portland. 3 May 2009.

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not onepeer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.

Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.

Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled inhistory.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

* Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, founder of Wiser Earth and author of many books – most recently Blessed Unrest. He gave this address at the University of Portland when presented with with an honorary doctorate of humane letters.

First published in: Charity Focus

Dyeing for more solar power

The main impediment to the widespread use of solar power – clouds and nightfall aside – is the cost of the silicon cells that actually convert the sun’s rays into electricity. To keep the expense down, people have been searching for ways to minimise the size of solar panels relative to the amount of light they can harvest. Often, this is done using clunky pieces of kit called solar trackers, which tilt an array of mirrors so as to direct large amounts of sunlight onto small, high-performance cells.

An alternative now being tested is called the luminescent solar concentrator (LSC). Instead of focusing the sun’s rays on a cell, as a solar tracker does, an LSC first traps them, wherever they have come from, and then delivers them to the cell using what is known as a waveguide. No moving parts are involved. A group of MIT researchers using this technology believe it could boost a solar panel’s efficiency by up to 50 percent and formed a company, Covalent Solar, to develop the technology.

The team has spent two years identifying organic dyes, painted onto glass or plastic that can effectively concentrate the sun’s light onto solar cells, enabling them to produce more electricity from fewer cells. The dyes basically reflect the light (technically, it’s actually absorbed and then sent back out), so that some of it is trapped inside the plane of glass. With the help of a scientific principal called “internal refraction”, which is the same principal that keeps light trapped in optical fibers, the light bounces to the edges of the glass, which have been equipped with strips of solar cells that convert it into electricity.

Integrated into solar panels available today, the technology could potentially boost the amount of light the panels convert into electricity by as much as 50 percent so consumers would get more electricity for their money.

The company hopes the technology could be used for both rooftop systems and for large solar farms and even one day could be integrated into windows, where a greyish tint would let in 20 percent to 30 percent of the outside light, while simultaneously directing the light toward solar cells around the window’s edges. Covalent Solar expects to bring its first product to market in three years.

Read more…

GE’s green locomotives

General Electric has come out with its latest “green” locomotive, part of a broader push it is making in the field of fuel-efficient rail transportation. The ES44C4, the latest in GE’s “Evolution Series” locomotives, uses an alternating current motor instead of the direct current motors typical in older locomotives. That will make it 17 percent more fuel-efficient and cut greenhouse-gas emissions by about 70 percent compared to older models. The new locomotives also have fewer parts, making them easier to maintain. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway has bought 25 of the new locomotives so far.

GE says that 600 of the new locomotives can do the work of about 800 older ones. That switch would lead to fuel savings of about 260 million litres per year, equivalent to taking about 115,000 cars off the road. GE is putting a lot of money into better train technologies. Last week it announced it would put $100 million into a new battery factory in New York. The factory, which GE is seeking stimulus funding to help build, will make sodium batteries aimed at, among other things, powering its upcoming line of hybrid locomotives.

Railroads are already about three times more fuel efficient than trucks for freight hauling, according to railroad company CSX. That efficiency has led some to consider railroads as a “clean” form of transportation as they stand today. But trains also present a host of potential efficiency gains, like capturing the energy used in slowing them down through regenerative braking, much as Toyota’s Prius hybrids capture braking energy. The energy used in braking a 207-ton locomotive over the course of a year is equivalent to the power used by about 160 homes. Replacing all the pre-2001 locomotives in the country with GE hybrids that use regenerative braking would lead to emissions reductions equivalent of taking a third of America’s cars off the road, GE claims.

Original article: Jeff St. John. Greentechmedia. 18 May 2009. Read more…

Greening the Empire State Building

Historically, improvements in existing buildings are made on an ad hoc basis, however, much more energy efficiency and savings can be obtained by taking a whole-building approach, when integrated solutions and blended savings bring long-term benefits. A case where this is aptly demonstrated is the iconic Empire State Building in Manhattan, New York, that is now also becoming an example of innovation in building management.

The Empire State Building Retrofit Project is a partnership between the owners, Johnson Controls as the preferred energy service company, Jones Lang LaSalle as the project manager, Rocky Mountain Institute as the peer reviewer and sustainability experts and the Clinton Climate Initiative as a resource and advisor.

The $20 million project will reduce energy consumption by more than 40%, achieve annual energy savings of $4,4 million and save 100,000 metric tons of carbon over 15 years. The work will include a layer of film added to each of the 102-storey building’s 6,500 windows, insulation behind radiators and improved lighting, ventilation and air conditioning. People working in the building will be able to use the internet to monitor how much energy is being used, and where.

A special website, esbsustainability.com, has been created to showcase the tools and processes that resulted from the project, and includes a video, interactive model, and information on best practices for future building retrofits.

Read more…

See a short video clip on the process here…

From waste to high-tech logistics solution

EnviroServ is a leading South African waste management company. One of their recycling initiatives involves the recycling of Tetra Pak cartons – the containers in which you buy long-life milk, juice and similar products. These cartons are composites, made of three layers (paper, aluminium and polyethylene), so they would previously have required peeling and separation into three different recycling bins. But, the company developed a way to recycle Tetra Pak cartons lock, stock and barrel into pallets to transport more Tetra Pak cartons. It is an elegant solution.

Wood has been the traditional material for pallet manufacture in South Africa and 95% of all pallets for materials handling and storage are still manufactured from wood. But wood is getting scarcer and more expensive. Composite pallets solve a lot of problems. They are made of plentiful waste-stream materials, are more durable, easier to clean and are more UV-resistant. Composite pallets don’t harbour microbes, as wooden pallets potentially do, so they do not need to be heat-treated for the export market. Heat treatment makes the pallets brittle.

Unfortunately, the price gap between timber and plastic pallets is still huge. Wooden pallets average from $9 to $16; plastic pallets cost from $40 to $80. So EnviroServ came up with a smart plan: rather than selling the Bid Pallets, it rents them out. During the development and roll-out of the pallet model, it became apparent that a logistics partner would be needed to manage, track and transport the pallets. An associated company, Rennies Distribution Services, now has a rental pool of Bid Pallets and carries the costs associated with their maintenance, repair, cleaning, storage and circulation, plus the associated risks.

One of the major risks of renting out the pallets is keeping track of their movement. The solution was to microchip them. So now they have green pallets, made of rubbish, yet carrying high-tech radio frequency identification devices.

EnviroServ Polymer Solutions aims to increase production and market demand to 30,000 new pallets a month. This will save 680 tonnes of Tetra Pak a month, or the equivalent of 2,4-million beverage cartons, that would otherwise go into the landfill.

IKEA like solar system

Armageddon Energy has come up with a framing system and a lightweight solar panel that can pretty much go straight from a few cardboard boxes to your roof, sort of like furniture from IKEA.

A single solar “clover” from Armageddon consists of a triangular frame, a micro-inverter and three lightweight silicon hexagonal solar panels. A single can put out 400 watts. A few Tab A into Slot Bs and it’s complete. Three on the roof together can provide a house with a kilowatt of power. The clovers still have to be secured to the roof, angled toward the sun and plugged into the electrical system – which works best when handled by professionals – but much of the grunt work associated with conventional solar systems is already done. As a result of pre-fabbing, the cost of an Armageddon system will be lower, the company asserts.

The clovers are also lightweight. A single hexagonal solar panel weighs around 10 to 12 pounds. A conventional silicon solar panel might weigh 40 pounds. Lower weight means cheaper shipping, lower carbon taxes (where applicable) and a more rapid install. And installation costs could stand some trimming. Installation still accounts for around 30 percent to nearly 50 percent of the cost of a solar system. Over the past three decades, the vast majority of research in the industry has focused on increasing the efficiency of solar cells and reducing the amount of raw material required for solar cells.

The hexagonal panels weigh less than conventional panels because the cells are encased in a Teflon coating from DuPont rather than glass. The company also believes the hexagonal shape makes it more efficient. Circles tend to be strong, but contain a lot of wasted space. Rectangles are, by their nature, off-balance. Hexagons are inherently strong and efficient. Hexagonal solar panels means the company can also use triangular racks, and triangles tend to be fairly stable.

Original article: Michael Kanellos. Greentechmedia. 13 May 2009. Read more…

BoP Learning Lab – May

** Please note that this event has been postponed till further notice **

The Fourth 2009 Lunch-hour workshop will take place on Thursday, 21 May 2009.

TIME: 12:30 – 14:00 (coffee/tea & sandwiches supplied)
VENUE: Open Innovation Studio, 27 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town

The names of the guest speakers will be confirmed shortly.

A vast majority of Southern Africa’s more than 240m people live below the poverty line. Even in South Africa, by far the region’s strongest and most modern economy, 75% of the population earn less than R1800* per month.

It is the mission of this generation, our generation of Southern Africans, to reduce this gap, and allow us to build a better society. Brick by brick, the work of each contributes to the progress of all. In this battle for a common ideal, businesses are vehicles of social transformation. Their ability to engage at the base of the economic pyramid (BoP) is crucial to our development and prosperity.

Businesses are emerging as an engine of positive social change as well as economic upliftment. But the challenges are huge. Identifying the right business models, learning from each other’s experience, exchanging intelligence and keeping pace with new developments is crucial in order to have a meaningful impact on the lives of people at the BoP.

The BoP Learning Lab is meant to provide sources of inspiration, to be the toolbox with which the Southern African corporate fabric can maximise its social impact at the bottom of the pyramid.

* World Resource Institute, 2008

More info on www.bop.org.za.

To confirm your attendance, please phone Norma Saayman on 021-918-4238 or e-mail to ns5@usb.sun.ac.za.