Sometimes I inadvertently create cool words with typos. Two of my favourites:
sustainabile - I consider this something like ‘green washing’.
climate chance - a new phrase to focus on the opportunities climate change presents. And no, I don’t mean increased agricultural production. But rather, incentives for massive investment in clean-tech and energy/transport efficiency in all countries (which are all continually developing).
China ended a drought with the use cloud seeding technologies? This article thinks the technology is unproven. Still very interesting.
Watched my first film tonight in Indonesia and was impressed that there wasn’t any censorship. Well actually, I think there was some for particularly gruesome scenes but that’s ok, I’d rather not watch those anyway. However, as for swearing, nudity (including full frontal), sex scenes, all the fun things, they made it through! I welcome relief after watching movies in Malaysia which censored pretty much everything, rendering some films unwatchable.
Incidentally, the movie was “Halloween”, and no, I don’t recommend it, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
I picked up some anti-malaria tablets today that I’ll have to take daily while in any rural areas of Indonesia. The pharmacist warned me that I should avoid excessive sunlight when taking them, as it causes you to burn easier and can increase the risk of skin cancer.
I’m already so white that the radiant light from anything higher than an 80w light globe results in singing of the epidermis, so I did consider just taking my chances with coils and nets.
However, since both malaria and skin cancer are potentially fatal, I decided to purchase the tablets, placing more value on preventing short term disease than long term disease. Even though the chance of the longer term disease is probably higher, it is a long way off, thus, health now is worth more than health later. This is a common human trait in much decision making.
But don’t worry, there will be plenty of slipping, slopping, slapping and shading.
steamed silverbeet with olive oil, crushed garlic, salt and pepper. simple. nice.
A recent copy of New Scientist had a number of interesting articles on the current economic growth paradigm and how it is damaging to the earth which sustains us. A common theme is the issue of consumer demand and particularly, consumption of short-lived disposable goods. Disregarding the arguments for a service based economy, changing this paradigm would appear to present cash flow problems to businesses.
In essence, the perfect product for the consumer and/or for the environment is not necessarily the perfect product for the producer. Apple would be far less profitable if it didn’t have a new model iPod, iMac, iThing out every year to make the previous model a tech toy cum fashion accessory faux pax. This is the other side of the coin that needs to be addressed if talking about the dangers of the economic growth model driven by consumption.
For a real example, we need only look to forestry, where it is the lower revenue, high volume uses such as mulch, firewood or pulp for paper that drive significant native forest logging. These activities provide the cash flow that support any higher value added uses such as structural timbers and furniture. In the case of forestry, the negative environmental impacts can be addressed by sustainable, best-practice, plantations. But the aforemented forestry products are non-durable by nature, genuine consumables. Whereas, for white goods, electronics, apparel etc., they are - or are supposed to be - more long lived, durable products that have been manufactured for obsolescence. The solutions here then must be based around extended producer responsibility and ‘cradle to cradle’ principles. For an alternate revenue model, leasing is likely to fit the above scenarios more aptly than ‘buy-to-own’. So, we will lease cars, tvs, white goods and other semi-permanent durable goods which would provide cash flow to businesses. There are still issues though since innovation will be required and innovation usually requires significant investment in R&D, which often requires prompt repayment upon product launch from high purchase prices of goods (e.g. Sony Playstation 3). Under a leasing/cash flow model, this quick payback would be more difficult, but if the money for R&D was lent on a longer term basis, then the cash flow from operations would aim to cover the debt repayments.
Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent near the end there and lost some focus… No time to tidy things up, paid work to do!
More info:
New Scientist, 2008, “The Folly of Growth: How to Stop The Economy Killing the Planet”, 18th October.
The US arming has provided funding for a system of communicating messages by thought alone.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/10/14/2390439.htm?site=science&topic=latest
Considering that DARPA was behind GPS and the Internet (sorry Al), don’t be surprised if you perceive this in a thought wave near you soon!
We can already start creating the terminology. Tmail, Tetter, Tic.
Oh, and maybe then one day, the babelfish will become a reality, since, if they had, for example, a chinese version of this, the machines could do the translation on the fly so to speak and then translate to any other language. Couldn’t they?
With reference to the article i posted a link to in my previous blog, and also concerning a lot of the media chatter here in Australia recently, it is evident that some new institutions or approaches are needed to tackle climate change (and more broadly, environmental issues).
It comes back to the issue of the short term outlook of politicians, given that they mostly follow election cycles and public sentiment in a given week, month, year, election term.
Climate change and other environmental policy decisions require longer term vision and commitments, not affected by cyclical changes in sentiment or political will.
Something akin to a central bank structure is needed to deal with these issues on an intergenerational basis that they require.
Europe is now at a critical point in terms of the future of climate change policy in the EU and around the world.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/14/europe/union.php
With the policy focus now firmly on the financial crisis an a looming recession, climate change is seen as risky territory for politicians. Britain provided the framework to the EU for tackling problems in the financial system, Australia could have provided - and still has a chance to provide - a framework for the world for tackling climate change.
The same issues are arising in the EU as in Australia, namely:
- Where and how should the burden fall?
- Who, if anyone, should be protected and to what extent?
- How should funds generated from pricing carbon be redistributed?
- What is the correct framework for handling countries with fewer emission ’sins’ to atone for (i.e. developing countries who are yet to emit levels that developed countries have to date, but are well on their way).
If Australia can answer the questions above when it presents its final paper on the issue (originally due early next year I believe but perhaps delayed now?), then it will do the world a great service and any actions we take will be noticed on the world stage. The Garnaut Review made some good inroads to answer these questions, although stated targets were disappointingly low.
Very interesting discovery in South Africa of a single species ecosystem. Makes me wonder how long that ecosystem has existed for though. Would be a perfect test bed for evolution if they were to monitor it for a period of time (days, months, years, decades) and see what - if any - mutations occur. Problem now may be that they’ve already introduced ‘foreign’ and new bacteria through contamination.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2008/10/10/deep-in-a-goldmine-an-ecosystem-of-one/