By Dan Kempner
Welcome to VBlog
This is a little more personal, a bit more informal, a tad more me.
My work with Valutus, and its founder, Daniel Aronson, exposes me to all sorts of tid-bits, tantalizing innovations, incredible companies, and lots of people who know stuff — amazing stuff! — that I want to know. And share.
Dan Kempner is Managing Editor of the Valutus R.O.I. newsletter and a writer based in southeast Asia.
More on “ESG Is Under Attack. You Should Be Happy About That”
I posted a piece on LinkedIn called “ESG Is Under Attack. You Should Be Happy About That.” Some of what I wanted to write wouldn’t fit on LinkedIn, so here’s more detail about how environmental, social, and governance issues matter to investors, employees, and customers. Take investors, for example. For a long time, investors either…
Missing Persons: 56 Years Later, It’s Time to End This
I was only five, but I remember the hunt for the bodies of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman after the Freedom Summer murders in Mississippi in 1964. I recall watching the search on TV, my parents’ anguish, how sickened they appeared. A local Black man and two Jewish men from New York City had gone missing,…
Back Off! But Get Closer
Thousands of miles from friends and (most) relatives, as well as my clients and colleagues, I’ve been less isolated than I can ever remember. Assuming a device and connection, there are so many ways to work and play, it’s hard to keep track. Here’s a day-in-the-life this week as my town, Ho Chi Minh city, locked down tight.
So That’s Where it Was!
A cross-country trip via Greyhound occasioned a stop in the blasted moonscape of Sudbury, Ontario. It was a weird place in 1975, with a giant Canadian nickel presiding over a town with no trees, no animals or birds, just rock stained black by metals.
What led to the destruction of greater Sudbury’s environment, and the 40-years of painstaking, award-winning repairs, bears examination.
The Hudson and the Success of the Clean Water Act
The New Jersey Palisades, magnificent cliffs along the lower Hudson river, in Autumn. In 1976, I stood about here and watched the Tall Ships tack up the river for the U.S. bicentennial celebration. Known as the Parade of Ships, 16 three- and-four-masted vessels sailed the river, returning to dock in New York Harbor at the…
The Once and Future Smog
The air in the developing world is worsening, while the United States atmosphere – once very dangerous – is as clean as it’s been in a long time. Can the Clean Air Act and the EPA be models for action in less developed countries? Let’s hope so.
The Launch: Phoning It In on the Climate Strike
By Dan Kempner, Managing Editor, Valutus Sustainability R.O.I. Speeding along the pre-dawn Mass Pike en route to Logan Airport, my brother-in-law stretched languorously in the passenger seat, laughed and said, “how about those losers who spent all day at the Apple store for the new iPhone launch. Who would use a vacation day just for…
From Tundra to Taiga: Musings on Siberia from 38,000 Feet
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, legendary pilot and author of such books as Night Flight and Flight to Arras (French: Pilote de guerre), wrote of his forced landing in a Saharan desert, and of his chance meeting with a Little Prince there among the dunes. It is to be hoped that we are not forced down so,…
Sustainability and the Student Climate Strike: It’s Everything.
This morning I had breakfast in Manhattan with my oldest friend, a man I met in middle school in 1971. I’ve been travelling in The States the past few weeks to see friends and family and managed to find him through social media. He’s not a Luddite but he doesn’t have the usual Instagram presence,…
The Effect of the Photoelectric Effect
By Dan Kempner, Managing Editor, Valutus Sustainability R.O.I. Last week I met a microbiologist, a former Vietnam War medic who has travelled the world meeting with other scientists, doing research, and working tirelessly to understand and manage infectious diseases. His dissertation focused on Alexandre Yersin, who developed an anti-plague vaccine at the Pasteur Institute in…
Of Tigers…
…and Pangolins An article this week in The Los Angeles Times details the culling of the Pangolin, an armored anteater rather like a tropical aardvark. The thousand-or-so scales that protect the animal from its natural predators – big cats: lions, tigers, and leopards — are no match for poachers. “…Because their meat is considered a…
