A friend recommended this film. In about 40 minutes, it gives a wonderfully positive message about how we can all be part of the change to a sustainable future.
Find it on Youtube here. I attended this event yesterday evening at OUCE (Oxford University Centre for the Environment) put on by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. Academics and bankers had frank and open dialogue with attendees about sustainability/ESG (Environment, Society and Governance) issues. While some segments of the banking sector have been around a long time (over a hundred years), they profess to place more emphasis on being responsive to customers than developing foresight and leadership on the gathering storms of carbon bubble, unburnable carbon, water stress, food stress etc. One speaker (being devil's advocate) even wondered if sustainability/ESG was just another passing fad. Although this was said 'tongue-in-cheek', it seemed to appropriately paraphrase the gist of what the bankers in the room were saying. This doesn't augur well for efforts to persuade bankers to put their weight proactively behind the transition to a sustainable future for us all.
Here are my two demijohns - wonderful objects to handle, and functional as well! The one on the right contains a batch of Pinot Grigio that is nearly ready to decant and drink. The other has a batch of Shiraz that I've just started fermenting. The previous batch of Shiraz was nice - sweet and not too alcoholic. My first home-brew batch was Chardonnay and was as good (in my unrefined view) as any shop-bought one. One of these days I'll get a suitable sampling container to use with my hydrometer, and then I'll be able to work out how strong each of my homemade wines is. This all started after two of my children (Charlie and Polly) gave me a home winemaking kit last Christmas. Cheers, kids! With increasing efforts to green human society (eg deploying renewable energy at an increasingly fast pace) we have started the transition to a sustainable future. In fact, we've been doing this for a few years now. So, in that context, can we ever now say that we're in "Business As Usual"? Perhaps it is now a redundant term and we should talk instead about "pre-transition business", "transitional business" and "post-transition business".
The European laws on Plant Reproductive Materials (the ownership of identified varieties of plants and the selling of their seeds, basically) are due to be codified and changed, under current proposals. The file attached below is a Q&A sheet about this, which is quite useful for grasping the gist of the existing laws and some of the main features of what is proposed. However, it's difficult to get an appreciation of the raft of issues surrounding this topic, in the context of attempts to achieve "sustainable intensification". (See my other blog post about this specific term). There appear to be some vociferous objectors railing against the rights of big companies to exert their ownership of plant varieties through the controls over seeds. On the other hand, there are supporters of these rights pointing out the benefits of the controls in ensuring quality and continuing availability of the varieties owned in this way (some of which are GMO), which arguably improve food security. Who's right? And how much of a compromise is there between the need for sustainability in agriculture and and the need for sufficient total output to feed a growing global population?
Link to Carrying Capacity Dashboard (from the Queensland University of Technology). This Australian visual tool is a fantastic example of a total systems perspective being brought to bear on two common challenges - "what amount of population can be supported on a set amount of landmass?", or "what amount of landmass is needed to support a set amount of population?" While I can immediately see that the tool has limitations, this is a great way to visualise and teach total systems perspectives, to get people thinking in a different way compared with the existing mainstream political, economic and business paradigm of unconstrained growth. I've just been reflecting on my post below about carbon constraints, and the one further below about a sustainable world being an expensive world. It is clear (to me) that the policy/intervention that gives the greatest chances of keeping human footprints within planetary limits is the one that pushes the supply curve downwards. The example used below is the carbon tax. When comparing the two measures (demand reduction and carbon tax) the tax is the only measure that can be designed so that planetary limits are never breached. Other meaures, for example ones that move the demand curve, might still result in a scenario where limits are breached through a product or service being sold ridiculously cheaply (perhaps through dramatic economies of scale) and someone being prepared to supply huge quantities at that price (resulting from a significant shift in the supply curve, perhaps through the effects of government subsidies, or through loss-leading activities). By contrast, with a supply curve kept within planetary limits (eg through carbon taxation) then however the demand curve shifts, there will never be enough produced and supplied (let alone sold) to breach planetary limits because it would become infinitely expensive to produce (even if not sold) the final unit of production that went over the volume limit.
I attended a talk by Michael Wilkins from Standard & Poor's yesterday at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment which summarised the result of their work on carbon constraints, as published recently in a report on the Carbon Tracker website.
Here's a link to the referenced report "What a carbon-constrained future could mean for oil companies' creditworthiness" It appears that, because of various reasons including the European ETS carbon price having 'tanked' (ie hit rock-bottom) and the impact of the economic situation on Government priorities, it is unlikely that the "unburnable carbon" agenda will result in significant credit downgrading of major oil companies for a few years to come. The scenario modelling S&Ps had used for their analysis arrived at a Brent crude oil price of $65 per barrel by 2017, based on assumptions about Government-led demand reduction initiatives kicking in (thereby depressing prices because of the supply-demand dynamics). During the discussions that followed the talk, I became gripped by a thought - what would be the impacts of both such demand reduction initiatives AND a stringent carbon tax? The former would tend to reduce price at equilibrium, the latter would tend to increase it (all other things being equal) - so off the top of my head I was struggling to reconcile the net effects of these if they occured together - would they be complementary or would they fight against each other and result in unintended consequences? Having pondered further, I think that the situation would be as shown in the diagram below. The demand reduction initiatives would shift the demand curve downwards, and the carbon taxation would shift the supply curve downwards (because, at every volume, it would become more expensive for the suppliers to supply with the tax in place than if the tax was not in place, so that, for any given volume, they would need a higher sale price than before in order to be happy to supply that volume). The opportunity this offers is to arrange matters such that the two effects, taken together, reduce equilibrium demand but leave equilibrium price about the same. This strategy would reduce the risk of the effects disproportionately disadvantaging the poor, by keeping prices stable. Therefore, the two policy objectives of tackling climate change and addressing poverty could be addressed at the same time with this approach. |
About the BloggerI'm David Calver - an Accountant with a passion for sustainability. Categories
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