Understanding Climate Change

Here is some software that Adriano, a friend of mine from Brazil, is working on. It can help evaluate the theoretical outcomes of various global CO2 policies. This would allow policy makers at United Nations Climat Change Conference - Copenhagen 2009 to quickly get an idea if their proposed policies are actually sustainable, or at least viable.

From the ISee website:

In this web seminar, instructor Chris Soderquist uses simple STELLA/iThink model to help you understand the basic concepts and systems principles driving climate change dynamics. Learn about the challenges we face, the changes we must adapt to and those we need to mitigate or avoid. Explore simulations developed by Climate Interactive that will be used at the upcoming Copehagen summit and see the future impact of worldwide policy decisions.

This webinar is the first session of a four-part web seminar series titled Modeling for Environmental Sustainability. All materials from this session are "open source" and available to share with as many people as you can!

JOIN LEAD TO WIN AND DRIVE MASSIVE INNOVATION IN CANADA’S CAPITAL REGION

Here is a message on behalf of the Lead To Win program:

JOIN LEAD TO WIN AND DRIVE MASSIVE INNOVATION IN CANADA’S CAPITAL REGION


If you are serious about starting a profitable business in Canada’s
Capital region, we invite you to apply to the November session of the Lead
to Win program.

If accepted to the program, you must attend six-days of training scheduled
for November 3, 4 and 5 and November 23, 24 and 25 of 2009. Your company
will be expected to create at least six knowledge jobs within the next
three years.

The Lead to Win program is free to qualified applicants - no strings
attached, no small print, no surprises. Individuals from 50 organizations
are investing to make Lead to Win participants successful for the benefit
of the individual and our community. The objective is to create knowledge
jobs, retain technology talent, and attract direct investment.

To apply to Lead to Win, please complete and submit the application
available at www.leadtowin.ca

We are seeking talented individuals who are able and willing to create
technology-based businesses in Canada’s Capital Region. Each new business
must be designed to grow so it can employ at least six knowledge workers
in Canada’s Capital Region over the next three years.
Lead to Win has three phases. In the first phase, you apply online.
Qualified applicants will then be invited to meet with Lead to Win
leadership. Participants will be selected based on their experience,
commitment, and opportunity profile. In the second phase, you participate
in an intense six day training program where you will learn how to lever
business ecosystems, profitably serve attractive vertical markets, and the
key factors that contribute to the ultimate success of a fledgling
technology company. Upon completion of this second phase, you will be well
equipped, and encouraged, to launch your new technology businesses in the
National Capital Region. In the third phase, Lead to Win connects you to
strategic customers, revenue opportunities, and individuals, companies and
organizations that can provide requisite resources, including capital.

If you know of serious individuals who may benefit from Lead to Win,
please forward this email to them. Note that we are only looking for
serious applicants.

We look forward to meeting the next wave of the region’s technology
entrepreneurs on November 3!

If you need additional information over what is at www.leadtowin.ca,
please contact:

Ludovico Prattico, prattico-at-sympatico.ca
Michelle Iseman, michelle.iseman-at-vitesse.ca
Serge Lafontaine, slafontaine-at-arrow.com
Ian Graham, ian-at-thecodefactory.ca
Rowland Few, rfew-at-sce.carleton.ca
Tony Bailetti, Bailetti-at-sce.carleton.ca
Yannick Bouchard, bouchard.yannick-at-gatineau.ca

The MBA Oath - Coincidence

Before I begin, let's get one thing straight. I don't subscribe to notions of determanistic futures, the concepts of fate or all the supernatural mumbo jumbo. I do, however believe that everything in the universe is connected, but that's only because our traditional naive understanding of Gravity tells us so. I also believe that there is much more to the physical world than imagine and much much more than we can visualize. But sometimes weird stuff happens, and it seems that this weird stuff happens much more often that it should... Statistically speaking of course. For instance when you are thinking about someone, then they call you on the phone. Or in more extreme circumstances; you are about to call someone, you pick up the phone and they are already there because they just dialed your number but your phone didn't even get a chance to ring yet. Well something like that happened today but in a much weirder way:

A few days ago I was chatting with a colleague of mine. Lets call him "Harley". So Harley tells me he is creating something called "The Great Canadian MBA Oath". The purpose of the oath is to increase integrity and accountability of MBAs (who will eventually be in command of the corporations that control our lives and the lives of our beloved children, friends and family and what you will). So, as it went, I tell him that he should talk to the Aspen Institute because they are into that sort of thing. I had talked to one of their depute directors a few weeks ago (lets call her Nancy) and sent an email introduction between her and Harley asking if anyone at Aspen would be interested in MBA oaths or oath related business. So Nancy replies to Harley referring him to a director at Aspen, who will be "henceforth" known as Rich.

Nothing happens for a day or so. I am wandering around on Twitter and find this guy who is suggesting some good CSR people to know about on Twitter. I decide to follow them reading each of their last tweets. Who would have guessed it? One of them just Tweeted about an MBA Oath just launched at Harvard Business School (HBS) by the 2009 graduating class! What a coincidence I though, so I read further. I then learn that the students had talked about this idea with a professor of theirs named David Garvin. David then referred the students to professors Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. It turned out that Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria had already been working on an oath for MBAs with the World Economic Forum and ... guess who? That's right! The Aspen Institute! Wow another coincidence! Just then, my eye catches my gmail tab in Mozilla indicating that I just received a new email. I click over and read it and who is it from? None other then "Rich" from the Aspen Institute. Guess what Rich was sending? Nothing less than a copy of the Harvard Busines Review entitled "It's Time to Make Management a True Profession" by none other than Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. Now I'm not allowed to copy or post this document but let me tell you 2 things: It was about oaths and MBAs. That's enough coincidence for me for a while. But I am now quite curious about this MBA oath business as it is so closely related to CSR and corporate sustainability. Cheers for now.

The Green Ones have landed in Capital City

I guess it's about time, but it's pretty cool to see them here. Just as I was pulling into the old driveway this morning they arrived: "The Green Ones are here!" That's right, if you are a resident in Ottawa you have probably received (or are about to receive) a Green Bin. The city is handing out some 220,000 of them. This means that once the program begins (Jan 2010) if you live in Ottawa you will be able to recycle almost all of your garbage. Between blue, black and green bins and the Take It Back program, Ottawa does pretty well when it comes to residential waste. Although with news that Plasco will only be able to turn an estimated 18% of waste into energy and not until 2011, our garbage problems are far from over. But separation of the various types of waste is it is a natural step towards a solution. "Divide and concur" or "divide and rule", are tried and true strategies to solutions ranging from politics to economics to algorithms. So dividing up waste will be the first step to making optimal use of it.

Anywho... getting back to the bins; you can put all sorts of crazy crap in there!: Food waste (including meats and bones: which makes the whole program worthwhile in my opinion cause otherwise it would just cannibalize everyones composting efforts.) yard waste and other items (including such feces as kitty litter, fireplase ash, paper plates, wax paper, sawdust and so-on and dryer lint and so-forth) I mean, it says so right on the sticker!

So I guess if we can all try to forget about the plastic bag scandal from the days of recycling past, Ottawa seems to be on the right track. Let's see how this all unfolds. Plus check out green bins trusty side kick beige bin, which is designed to hang from the inside of your cabinet door where garbages usually go. I predict a Batman-Robin or Hercules-Newton type of relationship will blossom in each of our homes between these two unlikeliest of heroes.

Can Nike and Wal-Mart save the Amazon?

Here is an interesting topic of conversation for my friend Meg who is working in sustainability with organizations in the Brazilian Amazon:

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An ambitious commitment by some of the world's largest companies not to buy beef or leather products from the Brazilian Amazon may falter if a strong monitoring system isn't put in place.
By Andrew Downie | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Sao Paulo, Brazil - A recent decision by a group of multinational companies that include Nike, Adidas, and Timberland to boycott beef and leather products from the Brazilian Amazon -- the largest cattle-ranching area in the world -- might sound like a good way to reduce deforestation.

"These companies are ... telling their suppliers they expect to see zero deforestation or they will stop buying from them," says Tatiana Carvalho, an Amazon campaigner at Greenpeace, one of the moratorium's main coordinators. "That is a big step forward."

The shoemakers and the Brazilian subsidiaries of supermarkets Wal-Mart and Carrefour agreed that as of June 22, they would not purchase beef or leather from suppliers who cut down rainforest trees to open up new cattle pasture.

But without a strict monitoring and labeling system, the moratorium on beef products from the Brazilian Amazon could amount to little more than a publicity stunt, environmentalists warn. Brazil's beef producers' association has dismissed the moratorium as "meaningless."

A tracking system that clarifies where beef or leather has been produced is not yet in place, making it difficult for producers to know whether a steak or a piece of shoe leather came from deep in the Amazon or from grazing lands in the south of the country. When the European Union looked at farms' traceability procedures last year, it approved beef exports from only 1,376 of the country's estimated 5,000,000 cattle farms.

Leather is more problematic, since it is sold on the open commodities market and is even harder to trace.

Reassuring consumers

"[The moratorium] shows the industry is concerned and wants to assure the consumer that it is doing its part. But the criteria are difficult to implement, and, in the end, may be shown to have been ineffective," says Peter May, an assistant director at Friends of the Earth Brazil. "But for the time being, it may reassure consumers."

Some of the companies that have signed on acknowledge that they don't yet have enough information to guarantee they're not using products from the Amazon. Shoemakers Nike and Clarks both said they would give suppliers until 2010 to put full traceability procedures in place.

Many of the companies were prompted by a June report from Greenpeace that named and shamed supermarkets, shoe manufacturers, automakers, and other blue-chip companies whose "blind consumption of raw materials fuels deforestation and climate change."

They were also encouraged by a similar, albeit more limited, moratorium on soybeans that stopped traders from buying beans from recently deforested areas in the Amazon. The moratorium was judged a success and was extended for a fourth consecutive year in July.

Rainforest stampede

But beef is where real environmental gains can be made, since very little soy is grown in the Amazon. For years, cattle farmers have been selling their most productive pastures in the south to soybean and sugar-cane producers and using the cash to buy cheaper land in the Amazon, which is deforested and populated with cattle.

That practice, spurred by surging global demand for beef as incomes in countries such as India and China have risen, has led to a stampede into the rainforest.

Three of every 4 new additions to Brazil's cattle herd between 2003 and 2008 came in the Amazon, according to a 2008 Friends of the Earth report. The beef industry is one of the main drivers of deforestation and one of the world's main sources of greenhouse gases. Brazil boasts around 200 million cattle and is the world's biggest beef exporter.

Under Brazilian law, Amazonian farmers may clear just 20 percent of their land and must keep the rest as natural forest. But the law is rarely enforced. Today, around 17 percent of the Brazilian Amazon's original tree cover is gone.

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The original post can be found here

What do you think the intentions of these companies are? Take the survey at the top left of this page!

Symbol Quest: Online Game from Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (Spoiler Alert)

This is what you get for reaching the 33rd degree of Symbol Quest . I'll post some help later for those "it's about the journey" people, but if you are strictly after the prize, this is your shortest path.

Here is word for word what Dan says. You never know what clues may be hidden in them:

"This is Dan Brown,
Congratulations on playing Symbol Quest and reaching the 33rd degree with a perfect score. I’ve just finished signing 33 first editions of the lost symbol which are locked in the vault, waiting to be sent out to the 33 different winners. The 33 first winning code breakers who call the secret phone numbers, encrypted on the book jacket, will receive this reward.
Good luck"