Famous Harvard professor Rob Stavins with a copy of my book (for which he wrote the foreword) at the COP16 conference in Mexico yesterday.
Rob Stavins - A Bretton Woods for the Climate
And by the way, the book can now be ordered through Bokus
UN weather agency: 2010 among 3 hottest years
CANCUN, Mexico (AP) — This year is “almost certain” to rank among the three hottest years on record, and 2001-2010 is undoubtedly the warmest 10-year period since the beginning of weather records in 1850, the U.N. weather agency said Thursday. Read more
Cold spells in northern Europe is dampening the interest in the ongoing climate conference in Mexico. However, climate change is all about the big picture - don’t let local variations fool you. Graphs from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
Climate data
Climate data
Text on the Y-axis of the graph above: “Global temperature anomaly (C) compared to 1901-2000″
And:
NOAA: October Ranked 8th Warmest on Record
November 18, 2010
October 2010 Temperatures Compared to the 1971 - 2000 Average. (Credit: NOAA)
October ranked the eighth warmest October on record. The first 10 months of 2010 tied with the same period in 1998 for the warmest combined land and ocean surface temperature on record. The global average land surface temperature for January–October was the second warmest on record behind 2007. The global ocean surface temperature for January–October tied with 2003 as the second warmest on record behind 1998. Read more
And:
Review of Four Decades of Scientific Literature Concludes Lower Atmosphere is Warming
November 15, 2010
The troposphere, the lower part of the atmosphere closest to the Earth, is warming and this warming is broadly consistent with both theoretical expectations and climate models, according to a new scientific study that reviews the history of understanding of temperature changes and their causes in this key atmospheric layer. Read more
Top 10 TED Talks of all time
1. Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
2. Jeff Han: Touchscreen demo foreshadows the iPhone
3. David Gallo: Underwater astonishments
4. Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo
5. Arthur Benjamin: Lightning calculation and other “Mathemagic”
6. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
7. Hans Rosling: The best stats you’ve ever seen
8. Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better
9. Al Gore: 15 ways to avert a climate crisis
10. Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote
An article about Globe Forum Dublin in Irish times yesterday. I look a bit crazy in the photo but… 
We need to foster enterprise, forum told
…
Jakob Rutqvist, director of the environmental programme Fores in Sweden followed, and said creating sustainable innovation, particularly in developing countries, was primarily about addressing the needs of the user.
“Developing countries need to be seen less as a victim of global warming that needs to be saved and more of a partner in creating solutions,” he said.
In an interview with the Times, Nicholas Stern recently said that;
“The US will increasingly see the risks of being left behind, and 10 years from now they would have to start worrying about being shut out of markets because their production is dirty”
This is an interesting perspective to analyze and it would be exciting to try and quantify the comparative disadvantage for a country with a carbon intensive production under certain assumptions future scenarios. There are several reasons why a country that doesn’t adopt policies to rid themselves from carbon-intensive production might suffer:
1. Other parts of the world might adopt policies that require imported products to account for their embedded emissions
2. Fossil fuels (and other natural resource inputs) will likely become relatively expensive as the world’s middle class is growing exponentially, stocks are dwindling, demand increasing and world population growing
3. Consumer tastes and preferences is changing and might change permanently. Will environmentally harmful lifestyles and products be considered uncool and be increasingly shunned by consumers in the future? I think so
4. Innovation will happen disproportionately much in low-carbon segments of the economy and support creative-destruction in favor of these industries. This will happen if global talent, tastes and trends favor low-carbon - “conscious” - products and workplaces over fossil-intensive ones
5. Relative goods prices will change as natural resource efficient and renewable resource intense products gain in advantage when one or several of points 1-4 occur, where low-carbon alternatives to carbon-intensive products gain advantage
It might very well be so that countries failing to take action on emission today, will soon see themselves producing relatively expensive and unpopular goods with a capital stock and an infrastructure unfit for the demands and tastes of the global consumer class.
EUOBSERVER / WASHINGTON – Europe’s main chance of forcing tougher environmental standards in a reluctant US lies in greater competition over green jobs, say Washington insiders.
“What I believe will really alter the US environmental approach is when people see that change can result in positive economic growth,” the World Bank’s top environmental advisor, Stephen Lintner, told EUobserver on Tuesday (16 November).
Globe Forum Dublin
Today I talked at the Globe Forum conference in Dublin on the topic “can innovation save us?”. I talked about how all projected emission increases globally the coming 40 years is predicted to happen in developing countries. This is also where population growth, urbanization and an explosion of the middle class is happening.
In 2050, fully two-thirds of global income will go to the middle income countries of the world. Another two billion middle class consumers will enter the global market and demand housing, energy, food and transportation. These people needs to be welcomed by us already fortunate and be treated not as victims of global warming, but as partners in sustainability. In order to make sustainability work we need innovations that solves the problems and needs of the global middle class (while of course also doing everything possible to fight poverty) without increasing exponentially environmental degradation. We are talking about required efficiency increases in the global economy of epic proportions. At the same time the rich countries of the world needs to rid themselves from unjustifiably high levels of current emissions and from a capital stock in dissonance with the global ecosystem. Great challenges, great opportunities.
In the morning I met with Peter Lacy from Accenture, where I’ll start my new job in a few weeks time. I’m impressed by the work Peter and others are doing at the firm and I’m really excited about joining the team. Check out this move about their work - “new era of sustainability“.
I’m currently in Dublin attending the Globe Forum sustainable innovation conference. The conference started this morning and it’s promising. Strong support from Irish business and politics - the economic crisis forces people to look ahead and make long term planning. What will drive growth and job creation in a future with rising energy prices, scarcity of resources, global population growth and urbanization - and a warming planet? How can we create a future economy with sustained growth and ensure global life quality improvements? At stage now is being presented an energy efficient cooking stove that can help reduce 1.6m annual deaths in the developing world, reduce emissions (carbon negative technology) and make the lives of 2.5bn people better. Awesome!
I’m speaking under the heading “Can innovation save us” tomorrow morning.
Follow the conference on twitter: #gfdublin
It’s well known that developing countries did a technological “leapfrog” in telecommunications by largely skipping the stage of fixed lines and going directly for mobile connections. Today you can’t visit even the remotest village in the poorest of countries without being struck by the widespread use of mobile phones.
In Tanzania I noticed how the same thing is now starting to happen for Internet communication where mobile broadband connections and networks are spreading like wildfire.
What’s next? Decentralized renewable energy production? I hope so!
Solar cooker on Zanzibar
The benefits of solar energy according to Solar Energy Africa:
1. No Monthly Bills to worry about
2. No Risk of Electric Shocks to worry about
3. You are assured of power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! NO LOAD-SHEDDINGS!
4. The system can be designed to suit your individual needs
5. Solar Energy can be connected at any place (remote village, rural, town, island, top of the hill, etc)
Why not use some of the green climate fund money to stimulate this development?!
