thinkingstring.com

A little while back I wrote about disclosure. Just a few thoughts trying to articulate a code of mini-corporate conduct by which I am attempting to shape my own little slice of the economic pie.

And so it is with no small amount of surprise, mixed together with what I hope is the appropriate amount of sincere humility that I find that David Tebbutt has said a few words on the subject here in the blog he authors for SmallBizPod.

As I mentioned to David via Twitter today, I’m not seeking to inspire here, just to get my own house in order.

Kicking around some ideas related to what “governance” means to eco/grreen - this is a work in progress.

First up is the observation that it’s really “governance of sustainability” which is more expansive than “eco/green governance”.

When applied to an organisation “sustainability” then encompasses ecological sustainability, and also financial sustainability,risk management, human asset management, and operational management. The following graphic illustrates this idea:

Throughout all of these areas are compliance conformance and reporting needs, project portfolio execution and coordination tasks, and strategic planning.

There are numerous ways in which each of these areas interrelate. While a “eco-governance” is a generally new concept it is clear that you can’t actually achieve anything meaningful if you handle it in isolation.

I’m working this up into a full blown article, meanwhile I’m just thinking out loud…

What isn’t surprising is that America hammered home a ground stake yesterday at the G8 Summit with the declaration that they will commit to an 80% reduction in GHG emissions, achieved by 2050. The idea that the Obama administration would take such a direction crystallised on the evening of October 2nd, 2008 in St. Louis Illinois.

On that evening the then Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and the current Vice President Joe Biden primped, positioned and even occasionally answered a question during the Vice Presidential (nominee) televised debate. Biden, in response to a question regarding the causes of climate change responded; “It’s man made, it’s clearly man-made. That’s why the polar ice caps are melting”.

For those paying attention, this was a watershed moment – remembering that every answer given in that debate must have been subject to intense preparatory deliberation by an expert team of policy setters and massagers of messaging. Biden’s answer unequivocally nailed a sign on the wall pointing to the direction the administration would take. Here we are, some nine months later, and the bright spark Biden gave voice to that night has gestated in the G8 announcement.

And yet, like a newborn child, there is both an infinity of possibility and the great potential for tragedy all wrapped up in the same bundle. The G8 announcement, designed to spur developing countries like China and India into making similarly far reaching commitments, is problematic in that it fails to set aggressive commitments for interim emissions targets. Climate scientists would like to see developed nations achieve 50% emissions cuts by 2020, on the way to the overall 80% cuts three decades later. The announcement also courted controversy for the failure to concretely specify the baseline year against which relative targets are calculated – “OK…I’ll cut 80%. 80% of what though?” So…dramatic progress, but the devil remains in the details.

If the announcement isn’t a complete surprise then, is there anything that is? There’s certainly no surprise in the fact that 99% of the western world will get up today and do exactly the same things that they did yesterday, even if they read the newspaper headlines regarding the announcement as they crunch through their morning bowl of cereal. They’ll eat the same food, use the same transport method to get to work or drop little Mary-Jane and Muhammad at the local school, and book the same holiday destination regardless. An infinitesimal number of people will internalise the news and begin to think how their lives might be different if conducted such that they generate only 20% (or less, depending on the baseline year) of emissions than they do today.

Similarly, business leaders will generally have the same meetings they otherwise would have had. Focussing not on the method by which they may achieve profitable operations with 80% less emissions, but instead on this quarter and this year. Product Managers, Vice Presidents of Futurology and other foretellers of the future will spend the day dreaming up two-dot-oh this and three-dot-oh that, mashed up, twittered and iPhone ready for all. Ministers of Education, School Principals and Teachers will pull out the same textbooks and all give no thought as to how to enable the room full of fresh-faced 9 year olds with an education suitable to successfully progress and contribute to an economic model that is undergoing a fundamental shift throughout the duration of their future working lives. The 9 year olds of today are the 50 year olds of 2050. They are generation of Emissions Transitioners – the Digital Immigrants of the carbon-down age. Their lives will be defined not by the rhetoric of the 2009 G8 Summit, but by the continued action of many throughout the coming forty years.

Perhaps the surprise then, if there is any, is simply the degree to which the minutia of planning necessary to actually enact structural change has thus far failed to materialise. To have the head and the mouthpiece of the dog bark is one thing, but to have the body react requires specific directions to be sent to the nerves and muscles that initiate and coordinate action. It is high time that detailed consideration is given to how change will be achieved and successfully guided and governed along the way.

Clearly the necessary structures to accommodate and encourage change remain illusive – preceding the G8 announcement by just a few days was the news that an ambitious plan to generate 4,000 megawatts of wind farm electricity in the USA was being mothballed. The project was cancelled, according to the chairman of BP Capital Management due to fact that “transmission issues and the problem with the capital markets make (the scheme) unfeasible at this point”. The country that does achieve such a plan for renewable energy generation and distribution will be the first to lay claim to the pole position in the rankings of countries decoupled from the pollution, profit, violence and warfare associated with oil production in many parts of the world.

A high game of brinkmanship therefore continues to be played amongst the world’s leaders. At stake is nothing less than the shape of the geopolitical stage and the economic ordering of the winners and losers in the “green economy”. Mixed in amongst that is the question of what sort of everyday opportunities and decisions will be available to everyone alive today who is 45 years of age or less – for we are the generations of transitional action. L’Aquila may rumble with the aftershocks of tectonic discontent, but it is the aftershocks from the 80% announcement that will rumble far longer and with far more potential reach.

I’m a big fan of “disclosure” and have been a long time advocate of laws like California’s SB1386 (or for a more formal explanation here) which calls for disclosure of information security breaches that have resulted in leakage of personal data.

Disclosure of company financial performance; transparency into the individual expenses and financial interests of elected officials (and non elected decision makers); the state of corporate risk exposure; and a whole list more are also examples of public and private sector governance and reporting arenas where transparency has proven to be a positive influence on behaviour. Unfortunately, we have learned the importance of disclosure mainly through the numerous examples of the exact opposite. All of which resulted in ultimately ill-advised, unethical, and illegal behaviour by individual, corporations and government continuing due to a very real lack of transparency.

On the sustainability front, the corporate social responsibility report has long added marketing gloss and positioning around a company’s social, environmental, equal opportunity and financial efforts. The CSR report is the Vogue edition of the reporting minutia that is the raft of environmental reports that a company may need to file (depending on their industry) - marketing selected data excerpts dressed up with photographs of happy, successful people doing happy, successful and socially responsible things.

Carbon (emissions) disclosure joined the fray a few years back. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is probably the best known, and the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment is a looming requirement for many businesses. Small businesses however will be exempt, while “one man band” home workers such as myself are considered “off the radar”.

However heating, cooling, lighting and generally keeping an an individual’s accommodation habitable and pleasant are collectively the single largest factor in the person’s overall ecological impact, aside from their daily travel and long distance travel habits. So it makes sense to improve the operation and design of our housing stock in these areas all the time in order to reduce the ecological load. It has also been asked (reasonably) whether there is a real net benefit in terms of lower emissions from home-working an employee versus providing them office space in the traditional way, and as a home worker this is a very real factor for me.

Whether it is or it isn’t, figuring it out is perhaps helped by disclosure and transparency. To that end, I’ve jotted down a summary of the ways that I personally attempt to reduce my own ecological footprint. So far, this is qualitative in nature only. A more quantitative calculation (and plan) is something I must get to. What I do today is by no means perfect, however its the best compromise available to me as a worker and as an individual (and as a family member) for the moment.

A later quantitative analysis will provide I hope some good insight as to where I can make further material changes in my own behaviour and resource consumption choices. Along the way I hope to also gain through experience a better understanding of the net benefit of technologies and services that claim to assist in reducing our individual and collective ecological impacts.

You can read a qualitative statement from me regarding my own guiding principles that I follow in an effort to minimise and continue to reduce my own ecological footprint here.

Nod @ DT.

A recent tweet by tebbo recommended a short article on a proposed in-wheel electric motor that can be retrofitted to existing petrol vehicles…. “RT @Vibroseis Retrofit hybrid kit for your car using electric wheel motors http://bit.ly/8gLox <<< Nice one Mr ex-IBMer”

Its an interesting idea. The technology proposal is for a set of electric motors to be installed between the wheel and the brake mechanisms, and powered by a battery array in the trunk. The motors will take up some or all of the load with the petrol engine therefore needing to work less, perhaps including down to only an idle speed. The petrol engine wouldn’t be able to be turned off completely when in motion as it will be required to power the vehicles existing essential systems - steering, brakes, aircon, digital-integrated-multi-media-web-browsing-GPS console, and heated 48oz coffee mug holders.

The practical challenges to making such a system work have to be: electric engine power limits; battery technology constraints,; integration with existing controls especially braking (incl. ABS) and acceleration - such systems may be fly by wire or cable/hydraulic; networking of motor units in order to synchronise output across the two/four wheels; the need to support multiple wheel size, stud pattern, rim offset configurations.

Wheel sizes and configurations are standardised more than you might think. A quick check of the webiverse finds that there are probably about 20 combinations of wheel size and stud pattern that are used across a high proportion of vehicle manufacturers and models. The practical consideration of deliverable motive power from the electric motors versus vehicle weight might reduce the range of cars the technology is practical for anyway, so the most common 20 size/stud patterns might well fit 75% of the addressable market. If the electric engine drive assembly is designed to allow for it then additional stud patterns can be bolted on easily. The published design schematic (see figure) seems to indicate that this is catered for.

The other caveat is that of bureaucracy. As the electric motor system is a change to the motive power source of the vehicle, and on paper adds horsepower over and above the existing petrol engine I would imagine that every vehicle in which it is installed will need to pass some sort of re-registration and roadworthiness inspection. There will no doubt be insurance implications as well.

There is another important design consideration - style. There is a trend toward Brake Bling. The designers will do to remember to cater for those who wish to greenvertise their new electric wheels.

It’s been an interesting week in jolly, old England. The thermometer that is positioned in a hanging plant basket just outside the kitchen window where it can be read of a morning from the climate comfort of the indoors crept to 39c on Wednesday. Allowing a few degrees for the fact that the rear of the house cops the full blast of the PM sun, and we can safely call the temperature that day as 35c. Meanwhile, due to the simple exercise of keeping the curtains closed on the sunny side of the house as the day went on, indoors maintained a temperature a noticeable 6-7 degrees lower than outside. If only he house (an extended 1930’s semi) had some decent shading verandas it’d be even more pleasant.

If only..

If only all those people who gleefully jumped up during this winter’s snowfalls, pointed out the window and jabbered “See…snow. In England. Just proves global warming is a load of hot air. If the climate was warming we wouldn’t have snow now would we?” would now take a sweaty moment to consider the meaning of a different day. As Goerge Monbiot points out, the same climate deniers are noticeably silent in the face of a heatwave.

A four day UK heatwave does not a global climate trend make however. It may be likely that the UK regionally gets more hot weather incidents as a result of changing climate, but the specific incident of a few hot days is not the indicator that we’ve suddenly reached climate tipping point.

However, the recent heatwave ought to provide something for the climate deniers to think about. Because they’re also fond of saying “We’ll anyway, I like hot weather. We fly to Spain every year to holiday in the beautiful heat. If it does get hotter, I’m all for it. Malaga in East Anglia I say. Bring it on!” That’d be the same people then who drearily moaned there way through four days of hot days this week? Moaning about sleepless nights, their faces flushed red after the small exertion of walking 200 metres from the town carpark to the school to pick up little Edward or Edwina. The same ones passing out at their desks due to the lack of office air conditioning, having already dangerously weakened themselves through the hot crush of the morning commute on the Tube.

What they might well think is “This hot weather is not as much fun when you have to live in it, going to work in a suit when its 35c, and going about the everyday humdrum of life under blazing, cloudless skies.” Because the lesson of this week’s heatwave is not “One heatwave = final proof of global climate change,” the lesson is “England’s infrastructure is not designed to deal with hot weather.”

England’s housing stock for instance lacks the wide eves or verandahs to be found in countries like Spain, Australia, and South Africa, that provides shading for the walls of the dwelling when the sun is at its hottest point. Meanwhile the county’s office stock is, aside from new structures such as The Gherkin, devoid of air-conditioning, and locked in a design that gives no thought to the need for extensive natural air flow on a hot day. Instead, what windows there are are likely to remain shut against the incessant roar and exhaust fug from the traffic below.

Little Edwina will be spending the day sitting in a school classroom, distracted from lessons by the heat, the stickiness, and her state of mild dehydration. The UK school system doesn’t do heat well - there is an almost complete lack of shady areas in the playground.

Summer hats that would protect faces, heads and eyes from the fierce midday sun (right when school lunch break is) are not a feature of 99% of school uniforms, and there is no universal policy anyway that would encourage / force pupils to wear them outside on the hottest days.

As the drought conditions across southern England showed a few years ago, this nation is also woefully unprepared to deal with any extended period of summer dryness; at the time of the hosepipe ban high street retailers (remember them?) continued to sell an extensive range of backyard wading pools “All of which can be filled and refilled with impunity.”

In short; 35c is an enjoyable lark when on holidays, dressed in swimming trunks, sunglasses, a beach hat and with nothing more taxing for the mind to do than read a Dan Browne novel by the poolside bar. Living with 35c: working, commuting, shopping, schooling, cooking, cleaning, sleeping and myriad of other daily activities are not at all as much fun. Its even less fun when the basic infrastructure of the country isn’t geared toward dealing with it. And changing that infrastructure will require a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of disruption.