President Zuma today endorsed the South African Renewables Initiative as a South African-led, international, lighthouse initiative designed to enable the scaling up of renewables in South Africa by reducing the incremental cost burden to South Africa’s citizens, economy and jobs…the relevant part of his speech is below:
“Ladies and gentlemen,
As we noted, the biggest barriers to developing renewable energy in Africa to date are not technological, but financial.…
Unilever, working with The Guardian, today launches its on-line debate on sustainable living. As a part of this initiative, Unilever invited a number of folks to write short essays on the topic that have been compiled into a bound collection, Inspiring Sustainable Living, also published today on line. My contributed essay is set out below.
Exiting the Valley of Death
Start-up companies have named the most dangerous moment in their development as the ‘Valley of Death’ – the moment between proof of concept and the beginning of mass production and significant sales.…
The Financial Transactions Tax is surely dead, may it rest more peacefully in future. Surging objections to the European proposal, indeed ridicule, have come from almost every quarter, from leading lights representing the ‘responsible investment movement’ to the IMF’s former chief economist, Kenneth Rogoff. Beleaguered European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, will find it hard to continue circulating in polite society if he sees through his high-profile support of the tax to the bitter end.…
European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, in supporting the financial transactions tax, has allied himself with OccupyWallStreet. But OccupyWallStreet has more than a moral alignment to offer Europe’s leading bureaucrat, it also has some smart policy proposals.
“It’s a question of fairness,” Barroso argues, “It is time for the financial sector to make a contribution back to society”, pointing out that tax payers have contributed more than €4,000bn in guarantees to the banking sector to support it through the crisis.…
“There is no such thing as the perfect hangover”, argued Indigo Jones in the History of the Hangover, “although anyone who has known more than one of them seems to have the perfect hangover cure. The roast beef sandwich, I’ve heard it said repeatedly, can’t be matched”. Like such cures, there appears to be a profusion of ‘keys to economic recovery’ currently in vogue, ranging from the well-worn calls to ‘spend, spend and spend’ through to the magically curative effects of garbage, emissions contol and women.…
What do Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature have in common? More than you might think, although Greenpeace is a high-profile, aggressive campaigning organisation funded by individuals with a penchant for spectacle, whilst WWF describes itself as a ‘critical friend’ of business and governments, and has long term partnerships with these folks, funded by, well, these folks.
Participating in their self-reflective analysis of their approach to business and sustainability revealed way more similarities than expected.…
China’s criticism that the US is failing to live within its means is a little rich given that it has benefited so much by the US’s debt addicted, three decade long consumer binge. But that aside, China does have a point. And so does Standard and Poor in its historic downgrading of the US’s credit worthiness, despite the dispute over an alleged US$2 trillion maths error deemed by S&P as ‘neither here nor there’.…
Hardly had I pressed the button on my recent ‘Thank you, Harvard’ blog that I received a cascade of emails asking me what i was planning to do ‘next’. Normally I would not use my blog to detail my (presumed) place in the world, but to fill apparently an information vacuum this blog will be a (hopefully rare) exception. Those with no interest or having already over-indulged in such enquiry need read no further.…
