Optimism in the face of repetitive failure is a sure sign of madness, I wrote in the article, Time for Progressive Companies to Deal with the Climate Bad Guys, published two weeks ago in The Guardian. Progressive CEOs need to apply their corporate muscle effectively, and that means challenging those businesses preventing a timely transition to the sustainable economy.
Heated responses to my argument were, shall we say, ‘racy’, in fact in the main dismissive and ridiculing.…
You’ve got to laugh, an animated cartoon of myself and The Guardian’s George Monbiot debating the motion at the Royal Society in London that ‘London’s Climate Policy Should Start in Beijing’. Its unclear whether the cartoonist saw me as a priest or a used-car salesman, perhaps some blend of the two. But here it is.
In summarizing the debate, I argued that China has a long-term economic and industrial policy, not a climate policy per se, whereas the UK has a well-defined climate policy, but not a serious economic policy, even for the short term.…
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.…
As my long standing senior fellowship (non-resident) comes to an end, let me start my saying that I have been honoured to be part of your elite swot team assembled to advance the business and sustainability agenda in and through Harvard’s hallowed halls.
It feels like just yesterday since you, Jane, arrived at Harvard with revolutionary intent, mandated to lead the newly-established Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative.…
“Secure financing arrangements enabling a critical mass of renewables development, with the associated economic and climate-related benefits, without incurring unacceptable incremental cost burdens on South Africa.”
Advancing such major national initiatives is no mean feat given perverse market signals, public investment priorities and the host of other factors that constrains us in addressing climate challenges and green growth oppportunities.…
Images of the green economy have gone viral, as a rash of celebratory reports hit the streets. But is this the long-lost key to the secret garden of sustainable development, or yet another impossible maze of words of wish-it-could-be-but-it-isn’t?
Most visible has been the report, ‘Towards a Green Economy‘ launched last week at the global headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nariobi.…
Co-chaired by Tarja Halonen , President of the Republic of Finland, and Jacob Zuma, President of the Republic of South Africa, the Panel is a rollcall of the smart, great and, hopefully, good.…
Weeks before COP15 at Copenhagen, ChinaDialogue and OpenDemocracy published versions of my ‘Plan B’ blog, where I argued that national initiatives would form the base currency of climate management for the foreseeable future, and the sooner we got with this new narrative the quicker we could work out how to get it done.
In a nutshell, I argued not just that a decent deal would not be done at Copenhagen, but if my accident one was indeed cut, it might prove to be a distraction that absorbed much energy (the human kind) and money, and most of all time, until its inherent shortfalls became apparent.…
