Major Downturns Have an Upside – The Emergence and Growth of New Business Ideas

Economic recessions create bursts of economic and cultural change. Did the buggy and coach business just fade away?  Or did those companies die most quickly in the Panic of 1907-1908 and the Post-WWI Recession, only to be replaced by rapidly expanding businesses involved with motor vehicles, and a rising economic tide to lift them?  What new inventions attained increasingly levels of acceptance and use as people struggled for every advantage to dig themselves out of the recessionary problems of the Great Depression?  Were businesses developing lighter construction materials, alternative energy systems, and fuel conservation technologies some of the positive outcomes of the Oil Crisis and recession of 1973-1975?

Better Regulation of Business Will Be Necessary as Population Explodes and Energy Prices Rise

Big corporations are like big sharks.  They’re not evil.  They’re just eating. I read this clever observation several years ago on CDBaby, and had the immediate realization that WE have to swim with those sharks, and our shark cage (government) just isn’t protecting us like it once did.  On this, the eve of release of Michael Moore’s new movie “Capitalism: A Love Story“, I just have to write about the impact of capitalism on our future, and how we might possibly avoid sliding into an almost feudal state where a tiny upper class of owners dominates a huge but painfully poor mass of wage slaves. 

The Future of Energy: Things Never Change So Much …

Things never change so much as they stay the same. That’s the saying, anyway, and I figure I’ll see how things balance out if I stick around long enough.  I expect that there will be surprises, and some advances people expect won’t happen, or will be disappointing, while other inventions will become mainstays of our civilization.  Inevitably, the deciding factor behind the decision to discard or keep something involves money, and I believe that will extend to our energy infrastructure.

Will Anything Reduce Global Birth Rates and Carbon Emissions Except Fossil Fuel Shortages?

Today the news proclaimed that agreements were made at the G-8 summit in Italy to hold global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Centrigrade.  It was a very positive step to see that the United States has finally joined most of the rest the world in making a commitment to fighting climate change.  Will people really be able to do this, though?  And aren’t population and energy use just as important if not moreso?

Will Complicated Economic Cycles Recur and Worsen as Population Explodes?

There are lessons in the current worldwide economic decline as to how the global situation will interact with the population explosion in the coming decades. This recession appears to have been set up and triggered by a range of economic and political factors. A short but fierce spike in oil prices on top of a real estate price bubble combined with an regulatory trend going back decades that not only allowed banks to take on far too much risk, but also promoted a business culture in which debt became the lifeblood of businesses around the world.  Why did businesses take on so much risk?  The short term-focused profit motive, instead of good long term planning, seems to be a root cause.

The Shark Cage is Rusty – How Capitalism and Government Might Change for the Better

Corporations, by their nature, are focused on profits. Unfortunately, this causes them to sub-optimize the overall results for society. This is one of the shortcomings of the current capitalist system. Corporations, in their soulless drive for profits, will take your last dollar if they can, and will influence governments and drive them away from their original purpose, to ensure the common good and the positive evolution of society in ways that reflect the principle that, as they say in business school, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”  I found an interesting and pointed expression of this last year.

A Huge Waste of Internet Resources (and Our Time)

Looking for articles on global warming, and especially for evidence of skepticism, I was surprised to find one of my titles in a list at a site called World News Network and a link beneath the title that appears to attribute the article to the “The Examiner”. Clicking on the title link took me to another World News Network page with no more information than the first – just a snippet of the first paragraph of my entry, and a title link accompanied again by the same apparent attribution, “The Examiner”. Clicking the title link there took me to a page on a website called Examiner.com, again giving little more than the title of my entry. Clicking on the title link there actually does take one to my blog entry. That’s a total of three clicks and a lot of advertising data to get to my own article. It is noteworthy that the World News Network link shows up as the first in a google search, as I have to wonder if someone is paying Google some pretty good money for their page to show up there.

“The Bomb” is Here, But It’s the Population Bomb

My childhood fears of nuclear war have come to pass, but not the way I expected. When I was a kid I had a great fear of nuclear war.  At school we drilled, hiding under our desks, in case Russian missiles with nuclear warheads should wreak terrible, radioactive firestorms on us.  One winter night around the age of 6 I woke up from a dream and looked out the window to see the sky glowing yellow – I was immediately convinced that either a nuclear attack was creating the incredible light in the sky, or that the nearby Fermi nuclear power plant had blown up, and in either case the radiation would soon get us.  As it turned out, it was just a full moon illuminating a light snowfall, but I will never forget the terror of those moments.  These days, with nuclear war seeming to be a much more remote possibility, I don’t even think about it.  The other night, however, I noticed the sky glowing orange most of the way around the horizon, and realized that, if I didn’t know it was street lights illuminating the falling snow, I would have thought a nuclear war had broken out.  The lights were like those of an explosion frozen in time.  Then I realized that this IS an explosion – a population explosion.  This extremely long, slow-motion explosion started over a century ago and the echoes won’t die out for decades, or maybe centuries, to come.  Unfortunately this explosion has consequences potentially more devastating than even a global nuclear war.  So what are we doing about it?  How can we mitigate the effects of this very-slow, long term explosion on ourselves and our descendants?

Will We Ever Know For Sure If Humans Are Causing Climate Change (and Does It Matter)?

I am overwhelmed with the data and analyses of global warming and climate change. A quick search on Google reveals over 74 million articles on global warming. While that is certainly overstated due to multiple “finds”, even if I could find the most authoritative 1000 of them, and spend as little as 5 minutes skimming each one, it would take me 83 hours, and I am lucky to have a few hours in the week for any activity like this. At this rate, in the 6 months or more it would take me to do that, there would be … how many more articles? I hate to guess, but I expect I would never catch up. I have learned what I think I know now from a diverse mix of news, scientific articles, the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, and blogs like Anthony Watts’ “Watts Up With That?“. I am recognizing my limitations, however. Will we ever have a definitive answer as to whether and how much human activity is affecting the climate? And isn’t it more important that we retain the ability to respond to climate change, since nature will inevitably change the climate anyway, sooner or later?

Global Warming and Our Responsibility to the Future – A Call to Action

Global warming and climate change are only pieces of the puzzle. The storm of media coverage and conflicting scientific data around global warming is overwhelming, but it is concealing very real problems we need to face if we are to ensure ourselves and our descendants can continue anything like the kind of lifestyles we have today. Climate change will happen, whether we cause it or not, and when it does, how prepared will we be? Energy supplies are a key factor, not only for our current relative comfort but as an enabler to our ability to deal with issues we will face in the short and long term. Where does this all lead, and what are our responsibilities as individuals? What can we do to ensure a better future?

Economic Boom in Developing Countries Puts Farmers in Other Countries at Risk

The economic boom in developing countries is putting farmers and whole communities at risk in less developed countries hungry for cash.  The Chinese economic boom is becoming SE Asia and Africa’s boom (link) as China struggles to feed its booming industries, but not without problems.  The demand for input by companies in China is putting smaller, remote economic regions at risk as food farming is replaced by single-crop agrobusiness farms.  How is this occurring and what does this mean in the long term?

How Pundits Support Denial of Climate Change

Some media pundits create a system that promotes and supports denial of climate change. Most media pundits are opportunists by nature. Their pay is based on their ratings, and being controversial gets more attention than being rational. It is to their advantage not only to say startling things and draw attention to themselves, but to nurture constituencies that will bolster their ratings. That is one of the ways human nature interacts with our mass media. Unfortunately, our global challenges just happen to provide excellent opportunities for unscrupulous pundits.

What is Behind the Denial of Climate Change?

Fear, grief, and greed appear to all be behind denial of climate change.  Are people who deny climate change in the denial stage of the grief process?  Are they motivated by fear of climate change, a global problem that can certainly feel overwhelming to an individual?  Either or both are possible, depending on the person.  I can sympathize with those who have reached the understanding that humanity has become so numerous, and is having such a big impact on the global ecology as a result, that we are facing enormous and serious challenges to our existence (and intelligence) as a species.  I can also understand the grief of anyone realizing that the good economic times of the past are probably gone, and our days of carefree consumption and travel appear to be over.  These are significant losses, and truly worthy of our concern.  The problem is, the motivation for many denials of climate change comes from another source: corporate funding.  First, though, I want to address the emotional side of the issue.

It is Encouraging to See Corporations Moving Towards Sustainability

Xerox is making the pursuit of sustainability a priority, and other companies are following.  A few weeks ago I saw an article reporting that Xerox had created a staff position to track the green footprint or “green value chain” (similar to ”lean value chain”*) for all their products.  A quick news-search revealed that Xerox is working with other corporations such as EDS to track and reduce carbon emissions related to Xerox products (link), and has been named to Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index (press release).   Read further for more on what is behind the change and how we can encourage it.