How to improve human-glacier relations (they're pretty bad)
TED talks to my cell. Even our fixed line broadband at work can't do
that. DS.
A qur'anic take on sustainability
Thanks to Meg Lyons for sharing.
Making no-electricity lightbulbs from plastic bottles
Interesting project! My only question would be if bleach could be replaced by something slightly less harmful? Any chemists around?
Thanks to Madhura for the find.
Who will be the Kraft foods for the emerging middle class? And how must they be different?
Furthermore, they quote a study saying that the 1925 market leaders - at the time the European and American middle classes grew like this - were still the leaders at the end of the century.
A huge opportunity for business in other words. However it is also a huge opportunity for a change in the patterns of consumption. It is arguably a large, affluent middle class t puts the largest pressures on for example environment, health care, etc. (the rich are too few to matter). Only if we manage to grow the emerging middle with a different set of behaviors (public transport, less meat, sustainable travel) will this not be a huge threat.
Hopefully the Kraft Foods of the emerging middle will have a completely different set of desirable behaviors to sell.
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/newsletters/chartfocus/2010_09.htm
Building a compost plant, part 1
A sustainable trade-off?
Some of the most interesting discussions come up when you are faced with a trade-off, especially when it is between two areas or ideas that have an almost equal value to you.
Currently I am spending about two weeks in Rome as part of an international conference called International Presidents Meeting (or IPM for short) that AIESEC organizes to connect all the presidents of the global organization and set the global strategic plan as well as host legislation to manage the governance of AIESEC.
In this global, strategic forum a lot of trade-offs come up. One of the ones that came up for discussion during a lunch-break was the trade-off - caused by these global meetings - between acting sustainably (one of AIESEC's core values) and between connecting people face to face from different cultures in order to create understanding of the value of diversity and intercultural connections (another one of our values). We have for example a conference having more than 700 participants that brings together the management of local and international level of AIESEC from all over the world. The carbon footprint of such a conference is of course very high (from flights, etc.) - so, is it reasonable for us to host such a meeting? Could the same purpose be reached by other means - such as connecting with each other online and hosting virtual meetings?
Personally, right now, I don't have an answer - but I think the process of asking these questions is valuable and that we should constantly reassess if the activities, meetings and products that we offer are really in line with our values and, if we identify a trade-off, perform a cost-benefit analysis as to what we can expect to achieve and what the cost to our other values are.
How much for a tonne of carbon?
This is my third post on how to carbon offset a trip from Brussels to Stockholm. In the first one I dealt with how much carbon to offset and in the second which type of offsetting to do. This post explores how much to pay for offsetting. So, once I figured out the standards part and what type of offsetting they did - the next challenge came up - what should be the price for a tonne of carbon? This is not an easy question to answer as the market is very new, and there aren't really any set standards on how to price carbon. What you can generally see is that CER projects will be more expensive than the VER projects (for explanation read my earlier post), as CER is priced through a market based system whereas VERs can allow their price to be set much more idependantly.
From the 10 services I compared the price of offsetting a tonne of carbon varied from €6 (www.carbonfund.org) to €27 (www.carbonpassport.com, www.clear-offset.com). This would add between €3.4 and €13.86 euros to my trip between Brussels and Stockholm
.
Planting trees or building power plants?
This is my second post in a series of on carbon offsetting where I compare different providers and ways of carbon offsetting for a trip from Brussels to Stockholm. The first post was about how much carbon you need to offset for a trip. The second question comes to what type of offsetting to do. Basically there are two broad classes - the ones that are approved through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in the Kyoto protocol called Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) and ones that aren't so called VERs (Verified Emission Reductions). 
Making my carbon offset count - which provider to choose?
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