Earth Hour -- Finger, not the Moon

Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming. In order to cast your vote for Planet Earth, you need to turn off your lights at the minimum between 8:30 PM and 9:30 PM today.

In December 2009, world leaders will meet at the Global Climate Change Conference in Denmark and discuss strategies that would replace the Kyoto Protocol. The WWF are trying to provide the results from today's "election" as evidence to the widespread urge across the world to take action against global warming.

While it is pretty straightforward to understand why WWF is promoting this effort, it may be worthwhile to examine the skepticism surrounding it.

1. Hour of no power will increase emissions:
Bjorn Lomborg, author of Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist argues that people resorting to candles during the Earth Hour will emit more carbon and pollute the air further, as candles are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light globes, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. If you use one candle for each extinguished globe, you're essentially not cutting CO2 at all, and with two candles you'll emit more CO2. Moreover, candles produce indoor air pollution 10 to 100 times the level of pollution caused by all cars, industry and electricity production.

There are some skeptics that say that the publicity done for the program will increase the emissions more than what can be saved in that one hour.

2. How can we measure the success of this effort?
This is not a controlled experiment, and it will not be possible to accurately determine the reduction in emissions or the number of people who participate in Earth Hour 2009.

However, there have been several efforts in progress to encourage people to measure their carbon footprint, so that individual lifestyle changes may have a positive impact on global emissions eventually. Ranging from online applications on Facebook that help track your footprint based on your lifestyle to workbooks that help monitor and control emissions based on your energy usage, there are plenty of resources you can tap into, if you're committed to making environment friendly decisions.

3. To-be or not to-be?
Many have been intrigued at the idea of measuring the impact of Earth Hour on emissions. If you're one of them, you'd be depressed to read this paper, which reports that individual lifestyle changes done during the Earth Hour are not effective in reducing emissions.

The Buddha said "Don't Mistake the Finger Pointing at the Moon for the Moon". It is important to recognize that this is a symbolic effort aimed at conveying a message. If more than a billion people across the world, from the Las Vegas strip to Sydney participate in an effort, it indisputably sends a message. Earth Hour is not poor symbolism, as long as it does not [and it will not] increase emissions drastically.

So, I will vote for Planet Earth, not by turning my lights off during that 1 hour, but through this post, for it is important that you and I recognize Earth Hour as the finger pointing at the moon, and send a message to our leaders that we need to act on global warming. From breathing to breezing through the street, everything we do emits carbon. It is not going to be easy to reduce emissions. Bjorn Lomborg argues in the same post, that "each nation should sign up to spend 0.05 per cent of its gross domestic product on low-carbon energy research and development. The total global cost would be 10 times greater than present spending, yet be 10 times less than the cost of the Kyoto Protocol on carbon emission reductions. This response to global warming is a realistic, achievable one."

Needless to say, there's many a mile between the finger and the Moon. Let the journey begin.

I am Pat, and You need a Nudge?

Happy St. Patrick's Day, but this post has little to do with that!

Human Impact (I) on the environment equals the product of population (P), affluence (A: consumption per capita) and technology (T: environmental impact per unit of consumption).

With growing global population, rise of the middle-class in India, China and in other emerging economies, and the use of unsustainable technology, the human impact on the environment is set to grow on an ongoing basis. Thomas Friedman illustrates the exponential growth of this impact with interesting examples, in his recent book "Hot, Flat and Crowded". One scenario that caught my attention was the impact of giving a light bulb to each of the billion people who will be born between now and 2020 -- 20 new 500-megawatt coal-burning power plants.

We need to change the ways [technology] in which we produce, consume and recycle products that we choose not to consume, in order to minimize the impact that we have on the environment. While incremental improvements in technology can be helpful, you can imagine that it may not be sufficient to reverse the impact growing population and affluence will have on the environment. So, what we need is a series of breakthrough innovations in several industries that will promote a more sustainable product life cycle.

Businesses are driven by profit, and they tend to resist creative destruction, as breakthrough innovations often come with risks. To promote sustainability, governments across the world have come up with regulations for several decades and have learnt that the best mechanism is to provide a market based "nudge" to businesses. Carbon Tax and Cap and Trade are popular nudges that have been debated extensively. Operative word -- extensive. Will dive deep into that debate in my next post. Signing off for now, Pat.

Ford's Get Well Plan

Following up on my previous post, I tried to read about Detroit's reinvention/rescue plans. Ford emerged as the only beacon of hope. While I must admit that I did not follow any rigorous research procedure to follow the trend, I'd be surprised to learn otherwise, even if I had.

Incremental improvements are just as important as breakthrough innovations. Ford seems to have gotten this straight in its approach toward addressing the current crisis. Needless to say, this approach can help any company to its better days, especially when operations are aligned with the right vision. While Ford's share may not reflect this promise, it is very much a promise today -- untested, but full of potential.

Ford Explorer's 2011 model is on a diet plan to shed more than 150 pounds, with lighter weight steel. The plan also involves an "Ecoboost" engine that leverages sophisticated software from the 21st century and fuel efficiency techniques that date back to 1940s. It seems that these technologies could allow Explorer to supercede Toyota's Highlander Hybrid in highway fuel economy.

Even the best hybrid cars come at a premium today, and the return on investment is not clearly superior to that of regular cars that are otherwise fuel efficient and of high quality. There is a lot of buzz about electric cars, but it would be wishful thinking to hope that we will somehow be able to leapfrog both the technology and the cost differential at the same time. Given that the average car-buyer will try to get the most bang for her [based on Mark Penn's comments on car-buying soccer moms who represent the majority of car-buyers in the US, from his book Microtrends] buck, and that she will do so in a time when global sustainability will be put to test, with rising demand for oil and other commodities across the world, the demand for a fuel efficient automobile should be on the rise. This should be the case, at least for the next decade, assuming that we will have cost effective options that are also fuel efficient, by then.

There is a demand, and Ford seems to be eager to supply. Will the sale happen? That is anybody's guess at this time. All I can say is that Ford is full of promise today.