A new article in Solutions Journal by Robert Costanza ("Ecological Economics" Pioneer) et al.
How Defining Planetary Boundaries Can Transform Our Approach to Growth | Solutions
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
The Life You Can Save
Ever wonder how you can save a child from dying a readily preventable death right now?
This Web site is Peter Singer's (Ethical Philosopher) idea. It uses "Givewell" to determine a short list of agencies in the best position to directly save a person's life with your donation.
It does not take much. $1 = a day-long struggle to many.
Think of it as giving CPR to someone who needs you right now. A few compressions and you just revived two hearts!
This Web site is Peter Singer's (Ethical Philosopher) idea. It uses "Givewell" to determine a short list of agencies in the best position to directly save a person's life with your donation.
It does not take much. $1 = a day-long struggle to many.
Think of it as giving CPR to someone who needs you right now. A few compressions and you just revived two hearts!
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Estimating the Monetary Value of Environmental Damage (Report)
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This is from Hazmat Magazine at http://www.hazmatmag.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000390011&link_source=aypr_HM&link_targ=DailyNews
DAILY NEWS Oct 25, 2010 12:00 PM - 0 comments
Global environmental damage caused by human activity in 2008 represented a monetary value of $6.6 trillion, equivalent to 11 per cent of global GDP, according to a new study by the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and UNEP Finance Initiative. Those global costs are 20 per cent larger than the $5.4 trillion decline in the value of pension funds in developed countries caused by the global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008.
The study, an initial effort to quantify in monetary terms the environmental harm caused by business and the possible future consequences for investor portfolios and company earnings, estimates that, in 2008, the world's top 3,000 public companies were responsible for a third of all global environmental damage.
The study warns that as environmental damage and resource depletion increases, and as governments start applying a more vigorous "polluter pays" principle, the value of large portfolios will be affected through higher insurance premiums on companies, taxes, inflated input prices and the price tags for clean-ups.
The most environmentally damaging business sectors are utilities, oil and gas producers, and industrial metals and mining. Those three accounted for almost a trillion dollars' worth of environmental harm in 2008. The top 3,000 companies by market capitalization, which represent a large proportion of global equity markets, were responsible for $ 2.15 trillion worth of environmental damage in 2008.
Workers and retirees could see lower pension payments from funds invested in companies exposed to environmental costs, says the study, which was conducted by Trucost, the global environmental research company.
The study projects that the monetary value of annual environmental damage from water and air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, general waste and depleted resources could reach $28.6 trillion in 2050, or 23 per cent lower if clean and resource-efficient technologies are introduced.
The study recommends investors should exercise their ownership rights, collaborate to encourage companies and policy-makers to reduce these environmental externalities, and request regular monitoring and reporting from investment managers on how they are addressing exposure to environmental risk.
"An increasing number of large investors are recognizing that environmental externalities generated by one company are likely to come back and hit their portfolios in another place or time," says James Gifford, executive director of Principles for Responsible Investment. "This report provides an important rationale why investors need to exercise leadership and responsible ownership by acting together to reduce corporate externalities."
For the full report please see:
Principles for Responsible Investment - Official Home
Global environmental damage could surpass $28 trillion by 2050: study
Global environmental damage caused by human activity in 2008 represented a monetary value of $6.6 trillion, equivalent to 11 per cent of global GDP, according to a new study by the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and UNEP Finance Initiative. Those global costs are 20 per cent larger than the $5.4 trillion decline in the value of pension funds in developed countries caused by the global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008.
The study, an initial effort to quantify in monetary terms the environmental harm caused by business and the possible future consequences for investor portfolios and company earnings, estimates that, in 2008, the world's top 3,000 public companies were responsible for a third of all global environmental damage.
The study warns that as environmental damage and resource depletion increases, and as governments start applying a more vigorous "polluter pays" principle, the value of large portfolios will be affected through higher insurance premiums on companies, taxes, inflated input prices and the price tags for clean-ups.
The most environmentally damaging business sectors are utilities, oil and gas producers, and industrial metals and mining. Those three accounted for almost a trillion dollars' worth of environmental harm in 2008. The top 3,000 companies by market capitalization, which represent a large proportion of global equity markets, were responsible for $ 2.15 trillion worth of environmental damage in 2008.
Workers and retirees could see lower pension payments from funds invested in companies exposed to environmental costs, says the study, which was conducted by Trucost, the global environmental research company.
The study projects that the monetary value of annual environmental damage from water and air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, general waste and depleted resources could reach $28.6 trillion in 2050, or 23 per cent lower if clean and resource-efficient technologies are introduced.
The study recommends investors should exercise their ownership rights, collaborate to encourage companies and policy-makers to reduce these environmental externalities, and request regular monitoring and reporting from investment managers on how they are addressing exposure to environmental risk.
"An increasing number of large investors are recognizing that environmental externalities generated by one company are likely to come back and hit their portfolios in another place or time," says James Gifford, executive director of Principles for Responsible Investment. "This report provides an important rationale why investors need to exercise leadership and responsible ownership by acting together to reduce corporate externalities."
For the full report please see:
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Political & Ecological "Impossibilities"
Faced with the need to integrate our economic system into the surrounding biophysical ecological context that makes it possible, we see more and more challenges to creating and implementing policy that is politically disagreeable to politicians because they perceive it to be politically disagreeable to the electorate.
A carbon tax makes rather impressive economic and ecological sense, but we see little appetite for it. The furthest we see it go is to the idea of a carbon trading "market." This is an idea that is well considered by supporters of market economic principles. But as a matter of practice it is still fledgling and rather nebulous. Where it has been tried it is rather non transparent even nefarious as to its structure and function. Those who emit the most are (predictably) strongly against it unless it is another name for the status quo. Most of us are ignorant of what it really means or how it would work to reduce emissions (if at all).
But even after the a carbon tax can be demonstrated to be superior to "permit trading," little movement on it takes place. Thus, we hear the sigh of the activist after years of advocating and cajoling something that makes rational, economic and ecological sense. We also hear from many that to suggest (let alone implement) a carbon tax "would be political suicide."
So we forge onward with an economic system which is almost entirely out of touch with the resource base that makes it possible and leave it to the "invisible hand" (a rather misleading phrase worthy of unpacking as soon as possible!) of market pricing to determine the fate (supply and demand) of the assimilative and productive capacity of nature (on which our demands are increasingly showing themselves to be far too onerous).
In the last 300 years, coincidental, by the way, with the invention of modern markets and economic theory, our population has increased ~10 fold to 6.5 billion people and our consumption of material and energy has increased ~100 fold. We are now guzzling the last half of a 2 trillion barrel cache of oil made possible by millions of years of natural processes. We consumed the first half in the last 125 years and are on track to consume the last half in the next 25-50 years. This is the richest form of energy ever known to us. It is one of a kind in its non-renewability and irreplaceability.
On the other side of the barrel, we have introduced so much of it into our atmosphere in the form of entropy (the result of burning it), that our atmosphere is showing signs of reaching the end of its ability to absorb it at the current rate. So, even if oil were renewable or infinite in supply, we have a fixed boundary in the ability of our atmosphere to assimilate the products of its combustion. All of this is related to how we value it and how we value the ability of our atmosphere to assimilate it. Once the oil is gone, we can try to develop alternatives. Once the assimilative capacity is gone, we're gone. At the very least, something is amiss in the connection between the way we price material and energy and the rate at which it is consumed.
So, perhaps we have things rather severely inverted. Is it not "natural suicide" to think that contingent pricing and anthropomorphic monetary incentives can be a reasonable guiding principle to the health of present and future generations?
Perhaps it is more advisable to attempt what some think may be "the politically impossible" than to continue to do what we know is the biophysically and ecologically impossible.
A carbon tax makes rather impressive economic and ecological sense, but we see little appetite for it. The furthest we see it go is to the idea of a carbon trading "market." This is an idea that is well considered by supporters of market economic principles. But as a matter of practice it is still fledgling and rather nebulous. Where it has been tried it is rather non transparent even nefarious as to its structure and function. Those who emit the most are (predictably) strongly against it unless it is another name for the status quo. Most of us are ignorant of what it really means or how it would work to reduce emissions (if at all).
But even after the a carbon tax can be demonstrated to be superior to "permit trading," little movement on it takes place. Thus, we hear the sigh of the activist after years of advocating and cajoling something that makes rational, economic and ecological sense. We also hear from many that to suggest (let alone implement) a carbon tax "would be political suicide."
So we forge onward with an economic system which is almost entirely out of touch with the resource base that makes it possible and leave it to the "invisible hand" (a rather misleading phrase worthy of unpacking as soon as possible!) of market pricing to determine the fate (supply and demand) of the assimilative and productive capacity of nature (on which our demands are increasingly showing themselves to be far too onerous).
In the last 300 years, coincidental, by the way, with the invention of modern markets and economic theory, our population has increased ~10 fold to 6.5 billion people and our consumption of material and energy has increased ~100 fold. We are now guzzling the last half of a 2 trillion barrel cache of oil made possible by millions of years of natural processes. We consumed the first half in the last 125 years and are on track to consume the last half in the next 25-50 years. This is the richest form of energy ever known to us. It is one of a kind in its non-renewability and irreplaceability.
On the other side of the barrel, we have introduced so much of it into our atmosphere in the form of entropy (the result of burning it), that our atmosphere is showing signs of reaching the end of its ability to absorb it at the current rate. So, even if oil were renewable or infinite in supply, we have a fixed boundary in the ability of our atmosphere to assimilate the products of its combustion. All of this is related to how we value it and how we value the ability of our atmosphere to assimilate it. Once the oil is gone, we can try to develop alternatives. Once the assimilative capacity is gone, we're gone. At the very least, something is amiss in the connection between the way we price material and energy and the rate at which it is consumed.
So, perhaps we have things rather severely inverted. Is it not "natural suicide" to think that contingent pricing and anthropomorphic monetary incentives can be a reasonable guiding principle to the health of present and future generations?
Perhaps it is more advisable to attempt what some think may be "the politically impossible" than to continue to do what we know is the biophysically and ecologically impossible.
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Thursday, 24 June 2010
Geology and Democracy
Many Canadians are in dispair about democracy and their political agency because they increasingly recognize that Ottawa politicians are so deeply in robotic lock step with entrenched vested monetary interests that they are incapable of bringing about any meaningful change or even movement on issues.
Yesterday, a modicum of lost faith in democracy was restored when, just prior to the G20 and G8 Summits, Ottawa hosted the epicentre of a 5+ magnitude earthquake near the halls of Federal Power.
While it played hell on the restorative construction taking place around the historic relics known as "parliamentary buildings," it also suggested that Ottawa may actually have access to some of the levers of power and that they may actually have the ability to "shake things up" a little.
In the mean time, in spite of the many fault lines around the capital city, there are no plans for dealing with higher magnitude earthquakes...
Yesterday, a modicum of lost faith in democracy was restored when, just prior to the G20 and G8 Summits, Ottawa hosted the epicentre of a 5+ magnitude earthquake near the halls of Federal Power.
While it played hell on the restorative construction taking place around the historic relics known as "parliamentary buildings," it also suggested that Ottawa may actually have access to some of the levers of power and that they may actually have the ability to "shake things up" a little.
In the mean time, in spite of the many fault lines around the capital city, there are no plans for dealing with higher magnitude earthquakes...
Friday, 18 June 2010
Truth in Advertising: A Justifiable Expectation?
In June 2010 Bell sued Rogers for Roger's advertising/promotional claim that it is the "Fastest Most Reliable Network." Some see it as ridiculous and others see it as a case about truth in advertising.
On the one hand we all know that advertising is loaded with puffery and to take promo claims with a grain of salt. On the other, advertisers themselves claim that advertising is a legitimate way of getting information about products to the customer. After all, who else will let them know the features and options available to them in the competitive marketplace? Purchasing decisions are to be made on the basis of what fulfills your needs the best. This is the bais of capitalism's primary to legitimacy. Good products will prevail - goodness being defined as that which best improves the quality of people's lives by their own judgment.
The question is not whether you are savvy enough to realize that these claims are self interested self serving, and to temper the influence they may have over you. This would suggest a world where falsehood rather than truth is the dominant expectation.
Rather, it is whether public utterances of any kind (advertising or otherwise) are worth enough to try to maintain. It is the question of whether it is naive to assume a general principle: When someone says something, it bears some fairly reliiable relationship with "reality." "Reality" may be a complex term but our everyday affairs suggest it has something to do with the ability to make decisions on the basis of things that hold sway in the world. Everything from the weather to Internet blogging, facebook and twitter have elements of both pure entertainment and "truth." The closer we get to things that the speaker tells us are true and we rely upon for decision-making, the closer we get to having a "right" to regard them as something we can rely upon.
What Bell has done with their law suit is obviously self-interested, but is also something in the line of faith restoring. Their actions seems to suggest that they feel advertising should resemble truth as well. Far from expecting Rogers or other self-promoters to say whatever gets them customers and their revenue, they seem to be suggesting that advertising should be something that can be supported by evidence. How would Rogers know that their network is faster? Is it not reasonable to ask them for the evidence? If the slogan is true, it would be a great benefit to Rogers. If not, it would seem reasonable to ask them to retract it and replace the claim with something bearing some more supportable relationship to reality.
On May 4, 2010 in Fredricton, Justice Judy Clendening of he Court of Queen's Bench in Fredericton ordered Rogers to stop claiming to have the "fastest speed," "most reliable speed," or "fastest and most reliable speed" because they could not support their claim in the absence of fuller information about the Bell Network.
Truth (and support for it) is important plain and simple. Truth has always been regarded as one of the highest moral imperatives. While it would be nice to find it self-evident, self-generating and self manifesting, we all know that everyone is subject to overstating their value in the world. While we like to see it in others, we are ourselves vulnerable to distorting it for personal gain.
While it is a complex concept, there is a simple and widely accepted convention about it. "Because I said so," (or "ipse dixit" in Latin) is generally very suspect. We increasingly prefer evidence and independent support for the "truth" of something.
If we should all know that advertising is puffery and beyond the simple principle of the need for independent evidence and support, there is no justification for consuming so much of our valuable time, energy, psychic resources. If there is one thing that is universally scarce and justifiably regarded as precious in life it is time. Why should we allow our personal and public space and air waves to be clogged with statements telling us what we should already know is false. So, if advertising is so obvious puffery and we are fools to take it as truth, then by all means let's get on with banning it outright as it does not advance anything but cynicism and disrespect truth itself.
On the one hand we all know that advertising is loaded with puffery and to take promo claims with a grain of salt. On the other, advertisers themselves claim that advertising is a legitimate way of getting information about products to the customer. After all, who else will let them know the features and options available to them in the competitive marketplace? Purchasing decisions are to be made on the basis of what fulfills your needs the best. This is the bais of capitalism's primary to legitimacy. Good products will prevail - goodness being defined as that which best improves the quality of people's lives by their own judgment.
The question is not whether you are savvy enough to realize that these claims are self interested self serving, and to temper the influence they may have over you. This would suggest a world where falsehood rather than truth is the dominant expectation.
Rather, it is whether public utterances of any kind (advertising or otherwise) are worth enough to try to maintain. It is the question of whether it is naive to assume a general principle: When someone says something, it bears some fairly reliiable relationship with "reality." "Reality" may be a complex term but our everyday affairs suggest it has something to do with the ability to make decisions on the basis of things that hold sway in the world. Everything from the weather to Internet blogging, facebook and twitter have elements of both pure entertainment and "truth." The closer we get to things that the speaker tells us are true and we rely upon for decision-making, the closer we get to having a "right" to regard them as something we can rely upon.
What Bell has done with their law suit is obviously self-interested, but is also something in the line of faith restoring. Their actions seems to suggest that they feel advertising should resemble truth as well. Far from expecting Rogers or other self-promoters to say whatever gets them customers and their revenue, they seem to be suggesting that advertising should be something that can be supported by evidence. How would Rogers know that their network is faster? Is it not reasonable to ask them for the evidence? If the slogan is true, it would be a great benefit to Rogers. If not, it would seem reasonable to ask them to retract it and replace the claim with something bearing some more supportable relationship to reality.
On May 4, 2010 in Fredricton, Justice Judy Clendening of he Court of Queen's Bench in Fredericton ordered Rogers to stop claiming to have the "fastest speed," "most reliable speed," or "fastest and most reliable speed" because they could not support their claim in the absence of fuller information about the Bell Network.
Truth (and support for it) is important plain and simple. Truth has always been regarded as one of the highest moral imperatives. While it would be nice to find it self-evident, self-generating and self manifesting, we all know that everyone is subject to overstating their value in the world. While we like to see it in others, we are ourselves vulnerable to distorting it for personal gain.
While it is a complex concept, there is a simple and widely accepted convention about it. "Because I said so," (or "ipse dixit" in Latin) is generally very suspect. We increasingly prefer evidence and independent support for the "truth" of something.
If we should all know that advertising is puffery and beyond the simple principle of the need for independent evidence and support, there is no justification for consuming so much of our valuable time, energy, psychic resources. If there is one thing that is universally scarce and justifiably regarded as precious in life it is time. Why should we allow our personal and public space and air waves to be clogged with statements telling us what we should already know is false. So, if advertising is so obvious puffery and we are fools to take it as truth, then by all means let's get on with banning it outright as it does not advance anything but cynicism and disrespect truth itself.
Monday, 14 June 2010
Does Advertising Influence Behaviour?
Usefully broken down into two questions:
1. Does advertising affect behaviour?
2. Does a particular ad affect behaviour?
On the first question the answer has to be an unequivocal YES. Behaviour is directly linked to advertising and the (consumer) culture it creates in general and around given products. It is probably the single largest driver of unsustainable material and energy consumption. Businesses collectively spend billions on advertising per year and while there is an element of keeping up with the "din" of other ads, companies do not spend money if it does not make them more money.
Companies and advertisers gliibly tell us that they are merely in the business of improving people's lives by giving them what they want and need. Do women want to be Anorexically (mortally?) slim? Does relentless planned "New and Improved" obsolescence really improve the quality of our lives? While "Lathering and Rinsing" are probably good advice, "Repeat" is probably not.
On the second, of course some ads are more effective than others. But at the very least they function to help us avoid thinking of the "pink elephant." In other words, the worst of the worst ads create a memory and an association with a product. They may not boost sales and consumption as much as hoped by the company but they certainly go beyond where it would have been without the ad.
Have I ever changed my behaviour as a result of an ad? I would have to say yes - I certainly change my behaviour based on the latest "evidence" (i.e. research and documentaries such as "Food Inc.") but I also make purchasing inquiries based on ads and perhaps ultimately purchase a given product if their ads live up to reality on closer inspection compared to the competition.
I think the problem is that we have difficulty thinking outside the frame of the atomic individually rational economic actor. It all seems innocent enough. Consumers looking for solutions to their wants and needs and purveyers merely providing "information" about their product's ability to meet them. Yet, can a rational and even well-educated person really compete with millions of dollars, strategies, memes, sound bytes, slogans and jingles carefully crafted by expert marketers and backed by psychologists? Advertising is far more impactful to both our physical and mental environment than any of us will probably ever be able to comprehend.
This is precisely why campaigns against smoking and other harmful behaviour such as smoking are needed. They are only required as an attempt to counter the effects of advertising that have promoted private profit over public "wealth." While many are useful and "effective," they are a burden on scarce public resources, under-resourced relative to the original, and should not be required in the first place (even if paid for by the original mind invader). Its a bit like BP's oil spill and the promise to make people "whole" (or was that "hole"!) again after a clean up. Simple not possible. Once the ideas and images are out there (like the oil), social ecology (like coastal ecology) has to deal with it and will be irretrievably "changed."
Advertising is replete with fantastic and laudable creativity and has produced many fascinating public discussions and even promoted self-discovery individually and collectively in some important ways.
However, this fantastic human creativity would be manifest in other areas were it not subsumed by the big money consumption promoters who teach us (at everyone's peril) to equate having with being.
Since the only true assets any of us have in life are, 1. Time 2. Space and 3. Energy. I would heartily recommend that the single biggest thing any of us could do to promote sustainability and preserve both our creativity, sanity and our species is to avoid and prevent advertising from invading any one or all three of these as much as possible.
Turn off the TV, avert your stare, read stories instead of flyers. Talk and listen. Write poetry, music, verse, songs. Make the most of the wondrous gift of mortality. Eschew the clutter. Own yourself.
1. Does advertising affect behaviour?
2. Does a particular ad affect behaviour?
On the first question the answer has to be an unequivocal YES. Behaviour is directly linked to advertising and the (consumer) culture it creates in general and around given products. It is probably the single largest driver of unsustainable material and energy consumption. Businesses collectively spend billions on advertising per year and while there is an element of keeping up with the "din" of other ads, companies do not spend money if it does not make them more money.
Companies and advertisers gliibly tell us that they are merely in the business of improving people's lives by giving them what they want and need. Do women want to be Anorexically (mortally?) slim? Does relentless planned "New and Improved" obsolescence really improve the quality of our lives? While "Lathering and Rinsing" are probably good advice, "Repeat" is probably not.
On the second, of course some ads are more effective than others. But at the very least they function to help us avoid thinking of the "pink elephant." In other words, the worst of the worst ads create a memory and an association with a product. They may not boost sales and consumption as much as hoped by the company but they certainly go beyond where it would have been without the ad.
Have I ever changed my behaviour as a result of an ad? I would have to say yes - I certainly change my behaviour based on the latest "evidence" (i.e. research and documentaries such as "Food Inc.") but I also make purchasing inquiries based on ads and perhaps ultimately purchase a given product if their ads live up to reality on closer inspection compared to the competition.
I think the problem is that we have difficulty thinking outside the frame of the atomic individually rational economic actor. It all seems innocent enough. Consumers looking for solutions to their wants and needs and purveyers merely providing "information" about their product's ability to meet them. Yet, can a rational and even well-educated person really compete with millions of dollars, strategies, memes, sound bytes, slogans and jingles carefully crafted by expert marketers and backed by psychologists? Advertising is far more impactful to both our physical and mental environment than any of us will probably ever be able to comprehend.
This is precisely why campaigns against smoking and other harmful behaviour such as smoking are needed. They are only required as an attempt to counter the effects of advertising that have promoted private profit over public "wealth." While many are useful and "effective," they are a burden on scarce public resources, under-resourced relative to the original, and should not be required in the first place (even if paid for by the original mind invader). Its a bit like BP's oil spill and the promise to make people "whole" (or was that "hole"!) again after a clean up. Simple not possible. Once the ideas and images are out there (like the oil), social ecology (like coastal ecology) has to deal with it and will be irretrievably "changed."
Advertising is replete with fantastic and laudable creativity and has produced many fascinating public discussions and even promoted self-discovery individually and collectively in some important ways.
However, this fantastic human creativity would be manifest in other areas were it not subsumed by the big money consumption promoters who teach us (at everyone's peril) to equate having with being.
Since the only true assets any of us have in life are, 1. Time 2. Space and 3. Energy. I would heartily recommend that the single biggest thing any of us could do to promote sustainability and preserve both our creativity, sanity and our species is to avoid and prevent advertising from invading any one or all three of these as much as possible.
Turn off the TV, avert your stare, read stories instead of flyers. Talk and listen. Write poetry, music, verse, songs. Make the most of the wondrous gift of mortality. Eschew the clutter. Own yourself.
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