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Franny Armstrong and Team Stupid today launched the campaign 10:10 - on the back of the release of the film The Age of Stupid. The film (which this author has not yet seen) spices up a documentary on oil and climate change with a fictional, backward glance in time at the present day. It is designed to be no less than a catalyst for change in the attitude of viewers regarding the reality and urgency of climate change, and thus one that inspires meaningful action across a broad front. The film’s production, distribution and funding models are themselves innovative - and that too has helped form a buzz around the film. Meanwhile, the associated 10:10 campaign is an attempt to get individuals and corporations to sign-up to a pledge to reduce their GHG emissions by 10% (over 2009) levels by the end of calendar year 2010. So while the film is intended to galvanise action, the campaign is intended to provide the framework for execution. I sincerely wish both the film and the campaign the best of success.

However it pains me however honesty compels me to say that I also ultimately believe that neither effort will make a difference to the course we are on.

Here’s why…

We are well beyond the point where simple changes to everyday behaviours are going to make any meaningful difference to climate outcomes. That’s not to say that there aren’t a long list of good things that can’t be done at an individual level - from the choice of lighting and building environmental control methods to the selection of green energy producers. There are nearly as many lists of methods regarding “how to drop 10% of your emissions” as there are tonnes of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere every year. We have no shortage of knowledge with regards to what needs to be done. What we lack is any broad interest in actually making those changes and making them stick.

Of course, that lack of interest is what both the movie and the campaign are attempting to address. But it won’t work - there is too much momentum built into the system of doing things for the change to occur. Honestly - of all the people I know I can’t think of a single person who is today not already switched onto the idea of the need to reduce their own reduce emissions who is likely to change opinion now to meaningfully internalise the need to alter behaviour. Note the emphasis - I do know people who are doing their darnedest to make a difference, both in their own lives and in the broader community and business world. However of all the intelligent, successful and everyday people I know, living everyday lives I see no evidence whatsoever that the message on climate change is sinking in. Of course they are all aware of all the little things that I happen to do at a personal and professional level - however all that is relegated to either being something that is regarded as endearing and quirky personal characteristics (and thus forgiveable) or the “Well that’s just all about work…let’s talk about something meaningful like the great deal I can get on a new sports car since the recession.”

The all too obvious answer of course is to interject with the suggestion that if a sports car is needed then perhaps a Telsa Roadster might be a better environmental choice than an AMG modified Mercedes. However the real, strategic answer is “How about cycling, walking, or catching the train instead.” Its the difference between the tactical choice and the strategic direction and lets be honest, we’re not gearing up for it. After all, in order to make enough of a difference that we avert further climate change we don’t need 10% of film goers to elect to watch The Age of Stupid, and then have 10% of them not only to sign onto the 10:10 pledge but to also actually achieve the committed reductions. We need more like 50% of the developed world’s population to make and then deliver on that commitment, while supporting the developing nations in a wide variety of ways such that they do not fill the resulting emissions reductions with their own GHG fuelled economic growth.

The question is “What’s stopping us getting there? Surely a people-powered social change such as that of the 10:10 commitment will overcome the inertia?” Actually, its hard to believe that it will. Realistically speaking there is little to point to which would indicate that the carrot approach of market forces alone will set the appropriate path and pace for change. Cutting through to the “bottom line” we can actually say that market forces have proven to be utterly ineffective at delivering a low carbon economy. Only a bloody great big stick approach involving market intervention of a dramatic kind is likely to alter that outcome, and there is much to point to support the case that such market intervention is unlikely to occur.

Take the USA. Obama’s administration does I think get climate change, as well as understanding that a path toward a low carbon economy provides opportunities for a renewal of US economic fortunes. However one needs to look no further than the debate - if we can sensibly call it that - in the US concerning the health care system to find an example of the ability of the US population overall (stirred on by Republican Party agitators) to violently insist on retaining a status quo that is both already enormously damaging to human health and fiscal responsibility, as well being forecast to cause far greater economic exposure down the track. There are plenty of parallels between how the US health care debate is playing out and how events would unfold if the administration attempted the necessary market interventions required to reduce the USA’s by 10% next year, with further dramatic changes scheduled annually thereafter. Rest assured that bipartisanship will be sunk deeper than the Good Ship Titanic if the Democratic Party administration took that path. The chance to play politics on the issue of climate change and by doing so to place a Republican leader back in the White House in 2012 will override the longer returns to humanity that come from avoiding a greater than 2c degree rise in global temperatures by 2050.

Meanwhile in the UK there is consensus amongst all but the Brown family that the Tories will form the next UK government. Even the most ardent of Labour supporters can smell the paint fumes from the writing that is on the wall on this one. From the perspective of the government in waiting there are therefore no significant votes to be had in taking a more hardline approach to climate change than has already been mooted. Cameron has done green and almost certainly has recognised that he doesn’t need the incremental votes of the 10:10 pledged voting public to achieve power. Look no further than the very real absence of a detailed plan from Camp Cameron on how to achieve real structural change regarding climate change (hint to London’s Conservative Mayor, Boris Johnson - it makes no difference to climate outcomes if Heathrow expansion is cancelled in favour of a runway in the middle of the Thames).

Meanwhile down in Australia the debate between the incumbent Rudd government and the Liberal opposition over the details and implementation timetable of the proposed Climate Bill is raging. The Rudd administration, seeking to exploit the currently shambolic leadership of the opposition party has flirted with the idea of pushing the question of the adoption of the bill - which has thus far been blocked by Liberal Party opposition - through to a double dissolution election. Doing so would deliver both the opportunity to strike politically while the opposition is weak, outside of the standard election cycle (thus extending the overall potential duration of the Rudd government term of power), while giving all the appearance of taking action, while actually avoiding the pain of making real change. The latter is in fact the only guaranteed outcome of the whole process as there isn’t a climate scientist of any repute who has looked at the proposed Australian bill who feels it commits Australia to the necessary level of emissions cuts. Politics over real climate action again.

If all that sounds awfully cynical let me hold up some examples to ponder of where phenomenally important decisions and agendas have been pushed through by the government of the day. The following list is not, to be absolutely clear, meant to be representative of what have been good decisions. There are merely examples of the lengths that government will go to when they really want to achieve an end.

Exhibit one: The Iraq Invasion. When George W. Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein he co-opted no less than Tony Blair, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Colin Powell, and most of the USA/UK/Australian media in a campaign of popular and political persuasion both audacious in its scope as it was inevitable in its outcome. The general citizenry were lied to regarding the evidence for WMDs, and when none were found the raison d’être for the war was conveniently changed. When hundreds of thousands of protesters voiced their opposition to the invasion they were ignored (something to keep in mind if 10:10 does in fact succeed in drumming up widespread ground-up calls for action on climate change).

Exhibit Two: When in 1999 the question of whether Australia ought to become a republic could be ignored no longer as a question of federal political importance no less than a national referendum was held to put the issue to the public vote. Some would say that the outcome was manipulated by the structure of the actual referendum questions citizens could reply to - but like the Iraq War the point isn’t necessarily about the rights and wrongs of the process, its more to do with the fact that when an issue is deemed important enough to be brought to the voting public’s consideration a process and will exists to do so.

Exhibit Three: During 2008 and into this year as the economies of the world collapsed governments have not pulled back from a degree of market intervention that is without precedent. Money is being printed in the US and the UK. Banks have been nationalised, car companies and airlines bailed out. Indeed the outcome of the 2008 US election cycle ultimately hinged on the question of how the nascent government would address the failing economy and the rapidly growing ranks of the unemployed and homeless. You can bet too that as the dust clears from the market collapse that a whole slew of new regulations will be introduced designed to tighten up fiscal and corporate governance in the hope of avoiding a repeat. So we have widespread extraordinary intervention already, and we’ll get a whole lot more intervention in the form of ordinary legislation later.

The 10:10 campaign, for all the good it will do, and for all the good intentions of those behind it exists solely because there is a leadership vacuum on the issue of climate change from the only people who can truly make the strategic and structural changes required - the collective governments of the G8 nations and those of India, China and other major emerging large GHG emitters. People power alone is not enough to sway the outcome - those protests that have already taken place continue to be dismissed as the Greenie Fringe. Our elected leaders have the capacity and track record in manipulating widespread public opinion on the occasions that they wish to. When that fails they simply claim the mantle of electoral mandate in order to override a minority of public dissent in the secure knowledge that the majority are too distracted to really care anyway. Simply put - we won’t achieve the necessary GHG emissions cuts without structural changes to the global economy; to society; to transportation and housing; and to the balance of fairness of the world’s economic systems without deep market intervention. And we won’t achieve that without a degree of leadership so far utterly absent on this issue.

We can be honest. Or we can continue to be collectively stupid. The status quo may win votes and avoid an uncomfortable degree of change, but only history will honestly judge the degree of the stupidity of the age in which we live.

The debate, if you can call it that, in the US over health care system reform is a truly bizarre spectacle, and one that is an abject lesson in how to distract an argument away from the core subject being discussed.

The indisputable fact is that approximately 40,000,000 people in the US cannot afford access to basic health care services. By “basic” I refer not to agonising decision over whether to have nipple enhancement or not while you’re in to get your breasts done. No…by ‘basic’ I mean services like non cosmetic dental care, A&E care, blood pressure and cholesterol diagnosis and treatment, diabetes diagnosis and treatment, natal care, and services to repair all the wear and tear experienced during the average first 18 years of life. The bottom line here is that the current system, the status quo, is structured such that 40 million mothers, fathers, grandparents, sons and daughters have zero ability to pay for services to fix health problems that are chronically painful and perhaps life threatening. With no “health care net” available either “no ability to pay” translates into “zero access”.

To reiterate what is an important and fundamental point. The current population of the UK is approximately 60 million people. If 40 million people in the UK were similarly effectively blocked from access to health care then two thirds of the population could not go to the dentist or doctor ever. The current population of Australia is 21 million - so if you deported all the doctors, nurses and dentists from Australia and closed all the hospitals and clinics you’d still only be halfway to denying 40 million people basic health care services.

Meanwhile, for the other 260 million or so Americans who do have access to health care, services and treatments are eye poppingly expensive. However, be careful your eye doesn’t pop too far out as it may not covered by the health insurance scheme provided by your employer - which is shelling out an estimated US$12,000 per employee per annum to pay for that insurance (providing insurance for the employee and up to 3 dependants). That’s US$12,000 more that could be paid directly to the employee as wages if the employer did not structurally have to cover the health insurance costs. If you think twelve thousand bucks is chicken feed, it is worth remembering that that figure is the about the US minimum wage - though it is also worth remembering that if you were an employee actually on minimum wages, it is unlikely that your employer would also be providing health insurance making you perhaps one of those 40 million people unfamiliar with the inside of a doctor’s waiting room.

This author speaks from experience with regards to the platinum coated pricing schemes of US health care as we had a son born in New York state during the family’s four year tenure in the USA. It is worth providing a short summary of those costs to provide perspective:
- total time mother/son spent in a hospital: 12 hours (the minimum time before you’re allowed to check out after giving birth)
- total time doctor spent in room: 60 seconds (to sign a form)
- nursing staff: 1 “in and out” with the majority of nursing provided by self funded midwife
- drugs and other interventions: zero (yes you read that right; no drugs, no interventions)
- use of “machines that bleep”: zero
- use of ambulance or similar: zero

In short - you would struggle to describe a birth experience that required less support from neo-natal services other than a home birth.

Total cost: just shy of US$8000; with the employer provided insurance paying for 90% and leaving us with a 10% or US$800 deductible. Just what was worth eight thousand dollars of medical treatment remains a mystery to this day.

Meanwhile the US is ranked by the WHO in almost all indicators, except for cancer survival rates, far below Oman, Morroco and Colombia, as well as the UK, France, Germany (just keep listing other major European and Scandinavian countries here), and Australia. The USA ranks 37th.

To summarise: the US has a health care system today that under-delivers against important key performance indicators (infant mortality, average life span etc), is eye wateringly expensive for those treatments it does provide, and leaves 40,000,000 people with zero health care. Oh, and by the way the status quo is projected to bankrupt the country entirely as it will fail to scale further as the populations increases and ages.

The debate therefore ought to be a simple one - does the US maintain this status quo, or does it seek to reform health care in such a way as to drastically improve the USA’s WHO rankings , provide basic services universally, and reduce the overall costs to prevent budgetary collapse.

However that isn’t the debate that is taking place. The debate that is taking place is over whether the provision of universal health care is “socialist” (translation: pinko subversise communist), and whether fantastical death panels will rule over the worth of Grandma’s life (Sarah Palin says she can see the Death Panels from her medicine cabinet). Take these two distracting and emotive topics, add a little dash of Glenn Beck to the aforementioned Salt of Palin and you’ve just hijacked what was a needed and sensible debate, and you’ve turned it instead into a roiling mess of argument that churns onward and achieves nothing. Or more accurately, it achieves the maintenance of the status quo.

Which brings us naturally to the topic of peak oil (this as my old friend George Watt would say, is a “neat little seque”). The connection here is twofold and less tenuous than you might think. Firstly, oil provides the energy that enables modern health care. Secondly, and more directly relevant to the main point here is that the debate over the timing of peak oil has been allowed to overshadow the necessary debate over the future of (petroleum based) energy prices.

The truth of the matter is that we will only definitively know when global oil supplies have peaked once we’re well down the slope of decline. Far enough down perhaps to have put behind us a few (more) instances of supply having insufficient scope of growth to meet real demand. There is much evidence to suggest that we’re already basically at the peak point, or just beyond. However arguing this point tends to just around in circles. It is very easy for peak-deniers to point to the status quo and argue that “Providers report significant reserves as they have in the past. They didn’t stop pumping last year. So they won’t stop pumping this year. And anyway, we can just drill a few more holes in the Alaskan tundra if we need more.” Such drill-baby-drill responses are the peak-oil equivalent of the pinko-communist-death-panel responses in the US healthcare debate. The main purpose, intentional or otherwise, is to maintain the direction and rate of the status quo and delay or prevent structural change and improvement.

The real discussion that needs to be taking place concerning oil is whether cheap oil will continue to be available. “Cheap” is of course a relative term. Ignoring for a moment that (not insignificant) fact of the infamous US$147 p/bl price peak, by “cheap” means “the median price of oil over the period during which it has fuelled the development and growth of the current economic model.” Furthermore, given that the maintenance of the social/economic/world-balance-of-power status quo relies on the oil price remaining somewhat near that median price, what are the implications for the economic decisions that are made countless times every day, that are based on the price of oil?

The outlook is such that it is almost certain, on balance, that anything but the status quo will result. For example, OPEC has for some time now called for a price range of between US$70 and US$80 p/bl as being the minimum that can support the necessary infrastructure and exploration investments required to maintain supply levels. Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer stated in June of this year that “(All this) points to new price spikes and volatility further down the road.” The same Kuala Lumpur hosted Asian Oil and Gas conference heard BP CEO Tony Hayward state that a target price of US$60 to $80 p/bl is also in BP’s sights in order to pay for required investments.

A per barrel target price of between US$70 and $80 p/bl is a very interesting one for a number of reasons.

For a start, it represents the upward slope of prices for petroleum and oil-derived products (fertilizer and plastics feed stocks) that are felt downstream by consumers and industry. The Wall Street Journal reports that petroleum prices as a percentage of disposable income more than doubled between 1981 and 2008. This is enough to change consumer behaviour, and certainly enough to alter the balance of cost calculations for heavily oil dependent industries.

Secondly, it is worth looking at the 2006 study performed by the US Department of Commerce titled “Macroeconomic and Industrial Effects Of Higher Oil and Natural Gas Prices”. The D.O.C. study was designed to predict the effects on the US economy (and by extrapolation all other developed economies) of an oil price that is maintained in the range of US$70.00 to $80 p/bl for two years or more. Not surprisingly, the study found depressive effects on GDP, industrial output, consumer disposable income levels and more. All other things being equal such a price would also result in an additional 500,000 people becoming unemployed due to cross sector job losses, compared to an oil price range in the US$50 to $60 p/bl range.

Those resulting changes occur for a very simple reason: as oil prices increase (and therefore the prices of products derived directly and indirectly from oil increase) the decisions made by individuals whether acting as individual consumers or in their capacity as business decision makers changes too. Spend less, invest elsewhere, carry less employees, locate and manufacture elsewhere. Scaling upwards to the strategic and structural as oil prices continue to go upward from US70+ we eventually reach a point where airlines downsize and go out of business en masse, and where commuters desert their SUVs and catch a train or a bus instead. Jeff Rubin, former Chief Economist of CIBC Worldmarkets is quoted as saying “I think we’ll see a return to triple digit prices (per barrel oil prices) very early into an economic recovery”. His book titled “Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: What the Price of Oil Means for the Way We Live” is worth a read as a basic outline of his thinking.

This therefore is the discussion we ought to be having - how do we achieve a soft landing for society as oil prices increase, and the associated economic decisions are reworked? Sure, there are clearly some, like Mr. Rubin who are sounding the drum. However the majority of individual and corporate decision makers continue with the assumption that energy prices will remain roughly in line with those enjoyed during the past 50 years, and that therefore the same structural economic system will continue. All the rest have either not noticed at all, or have been distracted by the circular debate regarding peak oil.

All of which is a segue if I ever seen one. And a sick one at that.

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.

A recent tweet by Monkchips caught my eye; “good question from @tomraftery. regarding smartgrid resilience how will we defend against electro magnetic pulses?”.
Having recently written about smart grids the question of potential security risks is a good one in my view. I got to thinking that the question of whether the vendor spokespeople had anything scripted to say was interesting, and perhaps indicative in a small sample way of the lack of strategic risk analysis in the vendor community. But the really interesting question is the other one; are smart grids inherently more at risk from an EMP incident?

“Compared to what?” is the first response. Compared to the status quo of national and international grids powered by baseload and demand plants fueled mostly by fossil fuels? Compared to individual off-the-grid power generation by the likes of smal PV and wind based renewables? Smart grids and the status quo approaches rely on networked generation, so they both carry the added risk of a cascaded failure, where a failure in one part of the grid unbalances neighbouring zones. Individual power generation failures cannot cascade; all failures are local failures.

Meanwhile smart grids share the same generation methods and technologies that are used in individual off-the-grid generation. A mix of renewable generation techniques including PV, wind, wave, water, thermal tower and the like would be used, as suited to the local environmental conditions. Is such equipment especially vulnerable to EMP? If the vendors Monkchips spoke with are indicative it might be safe to say that EMP shielding is unlikely to be a current design feature on standard, commercially available installations. There is inherently more electronics distributed throughout a smart grid than in the status quo grid, therefore it is fair to say that on a component basis the equipment used in smart grids is damaged more easily by EMP.

In a smart grid, some of those electronic components will be involved in managing the flow of electricity across the grid; controlling and measuring consumption and contribution whilst maintaining a baseload current. So a failure due to EMP would not only knock out local generation in the affected area, it would also knockout the controlling grid management nodes. There is in this case the potential for cascade failure flowing out from the area directly affected by the pulse.

In reality however, the status quo grid is today national and international structure of both radial and interconnected design. Switches between network branches control the flow of electricity, dictated by spot market price fluctuations and efforts to balance the grid to baseload demands. Switch changes are made both manually and automatically. The existing danger of cascade failure was famously demonstrated in the 2003 failure of the grid in the North East of the USA. This article (http://www.newsmax.com/weyrich/emp_radiation/2008/06/25/107194.html) holds the view that the existing grid is already gravely at risk from cascade failure.

Arguably, smart grids might actually be more resilient than the existing switch grid networks in two important ways. Firstly, the modern equipment may detect an up or downstream fault faster, make a decision faster, then enact a switch change faster than current systems. The difference may only be milliseconds, however that may be the difference between cascade or otherwise. Secondly, smart grids are intended to have a more granular switching capability, though they will likely share the same suburban and rural trunk and backbone transmission as is already used today. “Lower” down the food chain from the suburb level subgrid might be street level controlling nodes and so on. The greater granularity of such control nodes may also isolate a cascade faikure within a smaller zone.

So far its a fairly even match. The generation nodes in smart grids and local off-the-grid designs is likely to be less EMP resilient than a coal fired power station. On the other hand both the smart grid and the status quo share a risk of cascade failure. The smart grid design may even be a little more resilient to cascade failure.

But there’s one more thing worth considering; that is the question of whether there is a material risk of an EMP incident anyway. An EMP incident isn’t something that is likely to occur everyday; the detonation of a nuclear weapon high in the atmosphere would do it. There are a few other ways, but all require nothing less than considerable money, skills, madness, and balls. A hostile EMP incident will either be an active of war launched by a nation state, or one of terrorism by an unallied group. There is also the possibility of friendly fire by way of an industrial accident, or the failure of one or another item of ill maintained national critical infrastructure (whether privately or publically managed).

If the EMP incident was as a result of friendly fire then it is highly unlikely that an atmospheric nuclear detonation would occur. If the attack was an act of terrorism then it is on the balance more likely that an EMP pulse could be generated locally to a generation plant or other critical element, and less likely that a nuclear bomb could be procured and exploded in an aeroplane or launched in a rocket to explode over the target company. Again, the affect would therefore be localised and unlikely to result in catastrophic cascade failure throughout the grid.

In the event that a nationwide EMP incident did occur, the country is probably at war. At that point all this discussion is perhaps interesting, but whether we have a smart grid or the status quo grid probably isn’t our biggest problem. Other than the fact of course that it is arguable that there will be more international conflict ahead of us if we continue the status quo approach, fuelled by resource shortages and social disruption resulting from the effects of climate change.

Anyone who’s ever attempted to avoid certain foodstuffs, whether for reasons of taste, allergy, diet, belief or morals, will know that it’s the fine print in the ingredients list that is all important. The ingredients list, together with standardised disclosure labels such as the Soil Association’s “Organic” symbol, the Fairtrade mark, and the Food Association’s “traffic light” symbol help consumers make informed decisions over what they put in their mouths. It’s worth noting that many foods have ingredients lists longer than the fine print in a mobile phone contract, which is an indicator that when required to by legislation, manufacturing companies can manage to track a complex set of base ingredients in a way that supports required disclosure.
It must be said that such disclosure requirements aren’t always welcomed by industry, however there’s a grudging acceptance of the need to label together with a strong desire to happily seek a stamp of approval if having one is suddenly recognised as being a positive brand differentiator. Disclosure, and informed choice, are after all powerful market shaping forces that have created new markets and enabled the phasing out of products, sources, and manufacturing methods newly considered undesirable or dangerous. There are many examples of these phenomena, but the two most powerful examples in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) food market in the last two decades are the Fairtrade and Organic Produce marks. There have also been notable “issues based” campaigns such as that conducted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the UK against battery farmed chickens during 2008 and 2009. The power of such issues-based campaigns ought not to be downplayed especially when sufficient media attention gets behind one. Consumer preference can be extensively shaped when attention is drawn to the sourcing of produce tainted with the whiff of dubious morals or unsustainable practices.

Disclosure also supports one of the most basic and powerful tools of international diplomacy; the application of economic pressure through sanctions and market control. Forcing companies to identify and disclose the use of materials sourced from a particular country allows for the enforcement of laws restricting trade between certain countries. The U.S.A’s Export.gov site provides full information regarding international trade restrictions, as does the UK’s Foreign and Commercial Office site. Such restrictions fundamentally shape market behaviour, and restrict everyday company actions such as selling to or sourcing from specific countries.

By now, you may be wondering what all this has to do with the ICT and consumer electronics industries; and the answer is Tantalum. Tantalum is a rare mineral with conductance properties that make it an essential ingredient in the capacitors inside every mobile phone (and many other ICT devices). Tantalum is sourced from only a few mines around the world, with the majority of supplies now coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC has been in a state of guerrilla warfare for many years to the tune of around 6 million deaths, and Tantalum mining and export is to the conflict what opium poppy farming is to Afghanistan; providing a rich source of international trade that funds continued conflict. Tantalum’s role in the DRC conflict has long been recognised, with the U.N. creating a panel to look at the issue back in 2001, at the direction of then UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

While the intervening years have seen little real change, Tantalum’s presence in consumer and office electronics goods is facing renewed focus. In April, U.S. Senators Sam Brownback, Dick Durbin, and Russ Feingold drafted and introduced a new act called the Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009. Under the draft legislation, U.S.-registered companies selling products using columbite-tantalite (a source of tantalum), cassiterite, or wolframite, or derivatives of these minerals, would be required to annually disclose to the SEC the country of origin of those minerals. If the country of origin is the DRC or neighbouring countries, the company would need to also disclose the specific mine that the minerals are sourced from.

How significant that act might be in shaking up the electronic supply chain is perhaps indicated by the fact that meanwhile, the world’s largest source of Tantalum outside of the DRC is busy shutting down operations. Australia’s Talison Minerals, which previously enjoyed a 50% market share for supply of the mineral, mothballed its largest mine at the end of 2008, a move that reduced its active Tantalum mine operations from three to one. In announcing the action Talison cited unviable market prices related in part to cheap supply from the DRC. Perhaps the U.S’s Congo Conflict Minerals Act will see a reversal in this market state in the coming years, as the restrictions and market pressures make electronics manufactures reconsider their supply chains. Right now, electronics manufacturers are unnecessarily and significantly exposed as far as the provenance of the Tantalum supply.

All of which is a good lesson as to why “sustainable IT” is more than a passing nod toward an energy efficient server or a refillable printer cartridge. While the newly drafted Congo Conflict Minerals Act has a way to go before being adopted (as is or amended) it is a sign that far more scrutiny can be expected into the ICT industry supply chain in the future. Such scrutiny no doubt introduces complexity in both adherence by manufacturers, as well as in the level of consideration a buyer might have to take in selecting a product and supplier. However scrutiny crucially enables informed decision making, which is never a bad thing. Meanwhile, take another look at your mobile phone, there’s more inside it than just your contacts list and a battery that never lasts long enough.

Originally written for eWeek Europe:
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/comment/sustainable-supply-and-the-trouble-with-tantalum-850?page=1

Every parent learns the trick of reverse psychology. Its cheap, its unsophisticated, but heh….whatever works.

Those doubting the USA’s new-found passion for driving an economic reconnaissance on the back of a “green” agenda will find a strong suggestion for the new Obama administrations resolve in the unlikely grounds of an Iraqi complex for orphans in Tikrit. It comes in the form of a 2.5 metre long statue of a shoe. Sculptor Laith al-Amiri masterpiece is a lovingly crafted replica of one of the shoes hurled at Ex-President Bush by journalist Muntadhir al-Zaidi in Baghdad.

That act, and the monument it has inspired represents more than anything how low the opinion of the USA has fallen to amongst a larger proportion of the Arab (oil bearing) world. They have lost leadership not just economically, but also inspirationally, morally, and industrially. But here’s the most important thing and also why any of this is relevant to the “sustainability” story: The Obama administration are keenly aware of the existence and magnitude of that loss. And it is worth emphasising that the Obama administrations newly minted existence itself is also a reflection of the same awareness of that fact too, amongst the majority of the electorate. It is a sure thing that the Whitehouse staff have little enough time on their hands right now to be minutely following the fibreglassing and metalwork career of al-Amiri. It’s also pretty much guaranteed to be true that the thought of a monument to the execution of the most heinous insult an Arab can give being a final symbol of the US’s impact on Iraq would be an unwelcome one.

That keen awareness of America’s down and nearly out position on the world-stage is however transforming into a spirited and forceful turnaround. Like the turning manoeuvre of an ocean liner it is going to take time to set the economy off in a new direction and to stoke the boilers back from their currently sputtering and hissing state. However once turned and sailing their wake will influence the direction and pace of others.

Obama is pointing toward the US’s future - “Green Industry”. Environmentalists are rightly sceptical of our collective ability to engineer our way away from catastrophic climate change. With that reality check in mind, have no doubt that from an economic point of view that “green innovation” will be the underlying technology engine driving the next macro economic wave around the world.

The Obama Whitehouse will do everything to make sure that the US gets a big slice of that wallet. They will do everything they can to ensure that the US position is back to where they feel it should be - one of dominance on the world political and economic stages. You don’t have to like that, but you do have to recognise it.

And if they ever feel that someone else is nipping at the heels of the pace of their innovation and investment efforts, they need only to look to an orphanage in Tikrit to get the necessary boot up their behinds.

Sometime in the next one thousand, four hundred and fifty eight days its all going to get really ugly. There will be no single day of reckoning, but rather a wave of reckonings - somewhere around 303,824,640 of them. According to no less an authority than the CIA 303,824,640 was the USA population back in mid 2008, though there have been a few burials and births since then so perhaps this piece of intelligence, like so many others from the CIA should be taken with just a pinch of salt.

Arguably more than a few have already tipped into the realisation of just what is in store for them should the newly elected US President, Barack Hussein Obama II actually bring into reality the promise of a low carbon economy. Most however are still dazed by the spectacle of the inauguration to give it real thought. Carrying on his shoulders the hope of so many Americans (and no small number of the majority of the world’s population i.e. the rest of us) that he can steer the USA away from its socially, morally, and physically destructive ways, President Obama cocoons many from the reality of what those changes might mean for them. When they’re told, or when they find that they can’t do today what they could do yesterday, stand well clear ladies and gentleman of the spinning fan blades.

The Obama/Biden administration is the first to unequivocally state that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is reality, and that it represents a major risk for the survival of life. While there have arguably been many missed opportunities to say more on the subject during the 2007/2008 election cycle and during the limbo days since the election it is worth quoting again from the Vice Presidential debate of 2008:

“MODERATOR: Senator (Biden), what is true and what is false about the causes (of global warming)?
BIDEN: Well, I think it is manmade. I think it’s clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden — Governor Palin and Joe Biden. If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade. That’s the cause. That’s why the polar icecap is melting.”

Obama gave further nod to the road ahead when, in his inauguration speech he said:
“And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.”

On those scores the Obama/Biden ticket would have got my vote (had I been entitled to one), though in fairness to my Inner Sceptic I should hasten to add that action is what will make the difference not words. And it is that action which brings me back to my original thesis: its going to get real ugly some time during the next four years.

Of those three hundred and three odd million American people there are very few who really get what those words might mean to them and their daily lives. It is one thing to hear the words, it is another to listen to them, it is yet another thing to internalise them and absorb the implications. The challenge ahead no longer lies with convincing a nation’s leader of the reality of AGW, the challenge ahead lies in bringing the citizenry of that country along the same road. I suspect that for most, it is today somewhat akin to the cynical exercise of going to Church on Sundays. Being inspired by the rhetoric of the preacher, washing out the stains of a few sinful acts in the confessional, praying with heartfelt earnestness for the redemption of those who have lost the way on the true path…and then going right back to the same shit way of living by Sunday evening.

So sometime during the next four years, those 303,824,640 or so people are going to find that navigating the road ahead involves their participation. The problem hasn’t been solved by a newly elected President dropping one sentence into his inauguration speech. The problem won’t be solved the by Washington twiddling a knob or two on the economic and social control panels that mysteriously manages (or not) the ebbs of flows of the macro economic maelstrom. Nor will it be solved by changing a light bulb or two, turning down the thermostat a degree, and manufacturing the same old stuff in the same old way but with a nod toward any resulting device having a better energy efficiency than last year’s model.

Obama’s implementation of his campaign words will instead involve changes in the running of every day American life. And seeing as so many other countries are followers and imitators of that social and economic model a lot of other lives too. Yours. Mine. Your neighbours. Your parents and your friends. What we drive, whether we drive. Where we holiday and how we get there. What we eat, how that food is grown and where it is grown - and therefore when it is available. Where and how we design our communities and buildings. How we define success and freedom and how we reward it. What our expectations for economic and social growth are. Which businesses make sense. Which businesses need to be deliberately shut down. These are just a few of the smaller questions that we must address as we enact change.

Some of them have undoubtedly already twigged. A largish number who perhaps already have one of these plastered on the back of their Chevy Suburban. Any slick talkin’ Dem-o-crat who tries to wrestle the keys for their Chevy from their clenched fist and swap it for the electronic keyfob for a shiny new Prius (or even a Chevy Volt) is probably going to find themselves staring down the barrel of a constitutionally legal firearm. These people are going to resist with every braincell, every dollar, every decision, and perhaps even with their physical might any effort to have them change their day to day way of life.

There are to be counted also the relatively small number of people who already truly understand the personal implications of dealing with AGW. They have proactively made personal decisions, and have set themselves on a course somewhat different to the day to day path followed by mainstream. They are the Eco-Amish. They already walk. They already eat a little differently. They already holiday locally. They already teach their children that unbridled economic expansion derived from profligate consumption of fossil fuels might well be mainstream, but it is also a truly dangerous thing.

Then there are the rest of them. To quote the newly elected President - change is coming. What worries me isn’t whether the newly installed US administration says and believes those words, it is whether the everyman understands the truth of those same words. And most importantly, whether the everyman accepts the change to them that delivering on those words means.

Hang on for the ride, this is where it gets really interesting.

According to Wikipedia (yeah…I know but its good enough for this purpose) the group named “The Club for Growth” is “a 501(c)(4) political organization and an affiliated political action committee that raises money for candidates who support a low-tax and limited-government agenda. The group claims over 40,000 members.”.

Relevant to me is that they are the major mouthpieces for the US coal and petro industries and that on their behalf it is trying its best to prevent the adoption of “cap and trade” regulations in the US. As the debate continues this week in Congress, and The Club for Growth and their coal industry lobbyist friends “America’s Power” continue their massive disinformation and influence campaign, they’ll probably succeed. Succeed in slowing the necessary political and regulatory changes and accelerating our rush to a climate change crash landing.

The Club for Growth says “Are the unproven benefits of legislation worth the major job losses?”.

It might be time to ask “Are the unproven job opportunities and benefits worth the loss of the planet that sustains the people in the jobs?”.