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Climate Change, Despair and Empowerment — A Roadshow from “Down Under” (video, audio)
Peak Moment, Global Public Media
After summarizing the facts of deepening global climate chaos, New Zealander Kelly Tudhope notes that our psychological response is often overlooked. Feeling powerless, many people stay in denial. But if we acknowledge our feelings, we can find empowerment arising from our hopelessness. Kelly identifies “false solutions”, which are forms of business-as-usual, in contrast to “true solutions”, which ask us to change our behavior. Episode 77.
Janaia Donaldson hosts Peak Moment, a television series emphasizing positive responses to energy decline and climate change through local community action. How can we thrive, build stronger communities, and help one another in the transition from a fossil fuel-based lifestyle?
(26 October 2007)
Widespread attention for Oakland’s Green Jobs Corps
Jessika Fruchter, San Francisco Bay Guardian
The average young person doesn’t pay much attention to things like wind turbines and energy efficiency. Friends and family, yes. School or work, sure. Green technology? Probably not. And for youths in underserved communities, where violence and economic hardship are a backdrop for everyday life, the likelihood of thinking green is even lower.
Enter activist groups like the Oakland’s Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and watch as things begin to change. Under the leadership of cofounder Van Jones, the Ella Baker Center has received widespread attention for its role in the development of the Oakland Green Jobs Corps program, set to begin in early 2008.
The Green Jobs Corps will provide training opportunities for hard-to-employ populations (read: at-risk youths, low-income people, and those formerly incarcerated) while supporting the development of a greener economy.
(24 October 2007)
Carbon Neutrality Makes the Grade
Alison Damast, Business Week
B-schools are enlisting students’ help in developing their own carbon-neutral schemes, and they may develop leaders of tomorrow’s sustainable economies
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… never before has the term “carbon neutral”-the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2006-been so trendy on business-school campuses. Despite some skepticism about the ultimate value of various carbon-offset schemes, “carbon neutral” is echoing all over business-school corridors, with students and faculty carefully trying to figure out ways to erase their jumbo carbon footprints, a term used to describe how much carbon dioxide a person contributes to the atmosphere through everyday activities like driving or energy use.
Business schools in Britain, Canada, and the U.S. are taking stabs at reducing carbon, hoping to stem the tide of global warming. For example, at Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, administrators are giving executive education students carbon footprint calculators this fall, hoping students will use their math skills to reduce their energy output at school and, eventually, in the workplace. Other schools have invested in the carbon offset retail market, buying credits from organizations that then use the money to fund reforestation, renewable energy, and energy-efficiency projects in other parts of the world.
Perhaps the most telling sign that the trend is here to stay is the January, 2008, launch of what’s termed the world’s first MBA in Carbon Management, at the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Business School in England. Students in the program will take classes in environmental accounting, low-carbon business regulation, and sustainable economics, among other topics. Companies interested in recruiting students have already begun contacting the school, says Kevan Williams, the director of the program.
“They’re asking us, ‘Do you have any graduates yet? We need to employ somebody like that,’ ” Williams says. “We feel, and our recent experience has justified, that this is a subject of its time.”
(23 October 2007)
Just out: Marlboro Launches MBA In Managing For Sustainability which says:
The Marlboro MBA is expected to be of particular interest to professionals involved in fair trade, organic products, renewable energy and environmental technology and services; persons pursuing CSR careers; social entrepreneurs; and those seeking to learn how climate change and fossil fuel scarcity may create new socially responsible business opportunities in the future.
Current scientific and policy debates about climate change, “peak oil” and other natural resource depletion topics are driving concerns about the sustainability of business and the future of many industries to new levels of intensity.
