Our roads and cities rise as our sand levels fall with 50 billion tons of sand harvested annually – not from deserts but from vulnerable riverbeds and beaches – all so we can make the most ubiquitous mixed material in the world: concrete.
Two tipping points are competing to determine our future. The first is visible and physical – melting glaciers, flooded cities, and sunken islands. The second is a social tipping point – subtler, less dramatic and less observable, but just as real: melting resistance to engaging in sustainability, and a rising tide of climate action. Here’s our method for ensuring the second one wins.
A simple, compact, and low-maintenance living agent that can do the work of a small forest – harvest CO2, fix nitrogen, pull many other toxins from the air and, crucially, give off oxygen – could transform the air quality in cities right where the worst pollution is found. As it happens, moss is does all of that and more.
Prior to the 2020 WEF meeting, a letter from the chairman to his members read, in part, “We look forward to the Annual Meeting being a breakthrough moment for business action on climate change.” Many seem to have taken that seriously. Here are some of the commitments that struck us most forcibly.
Scientists have revealed Dark Matter and Dark Energy, but now they’ve rolled out the most improbable ‘dark’ of all: Dark Solar, the Dark Side of solar power. This could square the circle of renewable energy and be a boon to the 13% of humanity living without electricity. If even half the energy of photovoltaic cells can be realized at night, that would equal the output of almost 36 nuclear reactors.
It comes down to this: if you and your company are not thinking about, planning for, defending against, and leveraging the megatrends that are manifesting this decade, your entire strategy is at risk.
Our proprietary 30 for 30 Megatrends© survey searched for and compiled what these sources see as the biggest and most critical trends for the next decade.
Intuitively, money that is almost entirely electronic seems like it should be environmentally friendly. Yet mining crypto — a complex and decentralized accounting exercise — requires an incredible amount of energy and creates an amazing amount of heat. Some innovators, however, are finding innovative solutions to the former and just-as-innovative uses for the latter.
Every prior generation had some upcoming date, event or achievement that served as a metaphor for The Future. For many, that future was 2020. Now it has arrived. But If Now Was the Future Then, When is the Future Now?
When the Beatles’ John Lennon first heard Paul McCartney’s It’s Getting Better all the Time , he had only one suggestion, adding, “can’t get no worse,” to the chorus. The former sentiment is, in fact, true. The latter is not: It can get worse.
It is possible to continue the good trends while changing the bad ones and It is our task now to stop the slide and make the world much better.
Welcome to Valutus Sustainability R.O.I. Special ReCap/PreCap Edition.
In it we Recap 2019, and Precap the new year — and boy, is it ever shaping up to be a humdinger! What will we be talking about this time next year? We’ve consulted our crystalline spheres, stopped in at Delphi, and even looked up a little hard data — hey, it’s us. Read on for our 2020 prognostications.
