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Having trouble with lots of carbon numbers and Copenhagen claims? A solution is the World Bank’s Data Visualizer. It does a great job in turning numbers into pictures.

It’s hard to visualise greenhouse gas emissions, and more difficult still to conceptualise the numbers over time, across countries and against other important measures like economy and health. In the image, the bubble size is total emission plotted against economy (horizontal) and per person emissions (vertical).

Go to the Data Visualizer site, chose what you want to compare – from the left hand side menu – and then press play and watch the changes over time.

And a suggestion for the World Bank. Add future scenarios to this visualiser. It would be great to see the data map a path for contraction of total greenhouse emissions and, convergence to equivalent per person emissions, in the future.

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France with his high powered Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (CMEPSP – including Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi) form the latest group to join the call for a better measure of progress than GDP.

The CMEPSP’s report (3Mb pdf) highlights current well-being alongside the assessment of sustainability – whether this well-being can last over time. It’s recommendations focus on changing our emphasis from measuring economic production to quality of life, equity and our well being over time and into the future.

It’s not a new argument – famous examples included Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness, Redefining Progress and, The New Economics Foundation. But it is a very prominent call for change.

Nicolas Sarkozy is encouraging a great revolution to economic and well being measurement. Others in France however see GDP here for a long time into the future. GDP criticisms include the non measurement of state expenditure, such as some public health and, the positive value it places on destructive economic activity.

Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few argues The Wisdom of the Crowds. If this is the case and, to the extent twitter is representative of the Australian population, Joe Hockey should pay attention to the twitter results on his climate change question. He twittered hey team re The ETS. Give me your views please… on Friday.

A random sample of responses to his climate change question finds:

• 51.6% say support the ETS and/or don’t sell out on your previous support for these laws
• 43.2% say no ETS and/or delay it, it’s just a tax
• 2.1% say become the leader, presumably implicitly saying no to the ETS as well
• 3.2% say twitter discussion about this is silly

Details of this sample are here.

Joe Hockey asked this question as the opposition liberal party is pushing him to become leader. This change will overturn his previous position – and the party’s decision last week – to take action on climate change by passing the Australian emissions trading legislation (ETS).

And the current leaders views? “This is not a game . . . We’re talking about the future of our planet. We’re talking about whether we, the Liberal Party, will want to be a credible, progressive political movement of the 21st century” 27/11/09 Malcolm Turnbull quoted in The Age.

Alongside Barak Obama there’s a second Noble prize surprise this year – Elinor Ostrom for the Economics Nobel Prize.*

Elinor is a groundbreaking economics win as her work covers how humans look after shared resources – we often collaborate to protect environments such as water resources and fisheries. That is humans do not inevitably act as ‘economically rational’ – out to maximise our profit.

It’s often assumed that without outside intervention we will inevitably see a tragedy of the commons. This tragedy occurs as individuals overuse resources – e.g. the global atmosphere’s ability to absorb carbon – reducing the quality of life for everyone.

In fact there are many examples where people do collaborate and can achieve far better outcomes than purely government action. The graph above is one such example. It compares the lobster catch in Maine (community driven management – red line) with fish (government management – blue line).

So what do we need for a triumph of the commons? Mark van Vugt’s recipe for success is here.

Image: Comparison of landings of ground fish in Maine and lobsters. Source: The Struggle to Govern the Commons, Thomas Dietz,Elinor Ostrom and, Paul C. Stern Science | * The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2009

Cutting traffic jams in cities is often about more roads and keeping pedestrians safe from cars – off the road. The idea of shared space is turning this logic on its head – mixing traffic with pedestrians and observing real improvements.

The picture, left, shows Zentralplatz in Biel, Switzerland. Biel’s town square has become an encounter zone mixing cars with pedestrians, removing traffic lanes and markings and often traffic lights. Traffic improves for everyone.

This is not just happening in Europe. Bendigo Australia has an ambitious program for shared space* – removing pedestrian crossings and creating an city where people prefer walking over cars.

Dr Rodney Tolley, Director Walk21 and author of the Bendigo transformation study says a study of such shared spaces finds they are incredibly safe. ‘We are yet to find a death’ in such spaces worldwide, he said in Adelaide today.

As a bonus car traffic is actually cut. Previously people drove between shops in the Bendigo space. Now it appears they walk. This has real economic benefits – shopping district come alive, along with more obvious community and environmental outcomes.

* See page 5 | Pictures: Christian Thomas

Wubbo Ockels describes the incredible speed he experienced lifting off into space in the Challenger space shuttle. Within 2 minutes blue sky fades to black, 8 minutes later he’s weightless just 200 miles from earth and outside the atmosphere. Minus 200 degrees outside. No oxygen.

From Challenger astronaut to Professor of Sustainable Engineering and Technology at Delft University in the Netherlands Ockels, speaking in Adelaide after the World Solar Challenge, is a passionate solar advocate. He says ‘solar is growing exponentially’. From 2007 to 2008 growth was greater than 100%.

If we continue to grow at this rate, 8 years from now solar panels will equal today’s global electricity generating capacity. Sound’s extraordinary? The numbers are in the table below.

Year	Solar Installed	Global Total Solar Installed	Global installed electricity
	GW/Yr	TW	TW
2007	3	0.0
2008	6	0.0	4.1
2009	12	0.0
2010	24	0.0
2011	48	0.1
2012	95	0.2
2013	190	0.4
2014	381	0.8
2015	761	1.5
2016	1,523	3.0
2017	3,045	6.1

You’ve seen the banners: It’s simple. Save energy, save money and the environment; Save yourself $350; Cost effective energy savings opportunities for industry.

Is it too good to miss an offer like this? Turns out we often do.

People generally try to avoid a future loss more than they try to achieve a future gain. This can occur even when the size of the financial loss or gain is similar. We know such an outcome occurs for finances and money and researchers David Hardisty and Elke Weber have just shown the same applies for environmental decision making.

In other words, if we are trying to encourage people to take action today – action that has long term benefits for themselves and the broader environment – we are likely to be far better off saying stop wasting $350 rather than the save yourself $350 message.

The UK Energy Saving Trust, despite it’s name and proclaiming energy saving week rather than stop wasting money and energy this week, does have a bet both ways. Stop wasting energy and money is on it’s home page. | Picture: irtsurveys.co.uk

In the lead up to the Copenhagen Climate talks, amid the carbon cut numbers, cap and trade or tax policy there are some real, smaller picture, stand out initiatives being announced. A few include the French government’s announcement of 2.2 billion for electric car charging stations and making it mandatory for office car parks to have charging stations by 2015 (picture inhabitat.com).

In Korea it’s hydrogen from landfill gas for hydrogen vehicles and a commercial hydrogen fuel cell that powers 3000 homes (cost comparisons here).

In a slightly different vein – but a sign of the times none the less – Apple, Nike, PG&E and Exelon quit the US Chamber of Commerce over it’s climate stance. And UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has put a size on the low-carbon sector. It is now larger than defense and aerospace combined.

Clearly there’s some business and government action at these levels. For the moral imperative, Simon Longstaff of the St James Ethics Centre documents the uncomfortable similarities between climate responses and slavery, as argued in the UK Parliament in 1806!

For anyone who’s wondered what’s actually going into their quarterly power bill, electricity at home just got smarter.

Google’s powermeter promises to show your electricity use from any internet connected device, including your mobile phone. By knowing your power use every day, rather than every three months, the aim is to give you information that helps cut wasted money on power bills.

Trouble was you had to have a smart meter and buy electricity from one of two – Florida and Germany – power companies. And, as Nicholas Stern highlights in his Climate Change review for the UK government: Behaviour is driven by a number of factors, not just financial costs and benefits (see summary). Easy access to information is a step towards such change.

The answer? The Energy Detective a monitor that sends your home’s power use to the web. It’s not quite all there yet however, 240 volt Australian / Europe versions are due early 2010.

In a sign of the times, this month the Harvard Business Review proclaims Green Will Save Us on its front cover while Newsweek has published green rankings for the USA’s 500 largest companies.

The Harvard Business Review’s bold statement sees that “Once and inconvenient truth, climate change is now an incontrovertible problem… Consumers are ever greener, and their support for sustainable products and practices is growing worldwide.”

The Review’s writers argue that: “organizations can turn sustainability into innovation’s new frontier – achieving competitive advantage and influencing economic recovery in much the same way that the breakthrough products and business models of computer companies led the way out of previous recessions.”

We can think of such development in stages – for example:

1. Viewing Compliance as an opportunity
2. Making Value Chains Sustainable
3. Designing Sustainable Products and Services
4. Developing New Business Models
5. Creating Next Practice Platforms

It’s all adds up to big call to find your business’s sustainable and carbon advantages.