As a follow up to an earlier blog about big business pulling money out of fossil fuels and turning to greener pastures to generate profit, the Bloomberg New Energy Finance annual summit in New York shows concrete examples of exactly when and why the energy sector is moving in this direction.
This commentary from the Toronto Star does a good job of attempting to answer the question: Who should be leading the way when it comes to implementing, and recognizing the need for, a living wage? It argues that the provincial minimum wage (which currently sits at $11/h) is not even two thirds of what the cost of living in the city of Toronto requires to maintain financial independence and autonomy for a family of four with working parents.
Read this amazing article about a business leader, Dan Price, addressing income equity with his employees after learning that for people earning less than $70,000, extra money makes a big difference in their lives.
Efficient storage of electricity, especially from renewable sources, is the holy grail of the energy industry. And Elon Musk could have a gamechanger up his sleeve. Business leaders such as Musk are crticial to making the world a better place. We have enough information, we have enough science, we have the potential technologies to achieve more sustainable futures now, to move to a carbon neutral economy by 2050.
Of the many activities one could do to celebrate Earth Day this year, The Master Shift, could possibly be one of the most immediately tangible. This non-profit initiative is campaigning to have everyone who participates in the movement to plant a single tree on April 22nd, 2015. Their Facebook page already has almost a million “likes”, so it’s encouraging to imagine all those people (and countless more) planting a tree.
The five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution are 1. shifting to renewable energy; 2. transforming the building stock of every continent into micro-power plants to collect renewable energies on-site; 3. deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies; 4.
Designing for a circular economy is not just about transitioning to a new way of production, but rather, a transformation, rethinking almost everything from first principles. Not only on how stuff gets to be remade, but what that stuff actually is. Click here to read more on what is possible today if we only had legislation mandating zero waste by 2020.
We have much work to do to live within planetary boundaries, it is possible and indeed, critical for humanity.
Another good news story comes from the world of sustainable housing solutions. A company called ArchiBlox working out of Australia has unveiled the country’s first carbon-positive pre-fab home. This addresses two issues: firstly, its genius design is supporting not only itself, but is capable of giving energy back to the grid. Secondly, it provides an elegant housing solution for those who are weary of more labour intensive and desire non-conventional smaller housing solutions.