Linking Tiger Woods, the BP oil spill and the current state of weather related events around the world may seem like a stretch. Please humour me for a few hundred words, by the end of this piece; it may not seem like a stretch.

The inspiration (if you can call it that) for this blog came from watching a piece last week on ABC News. Clayton Sandell, an ABC reporter, asked experts whether they believe that recent incidents around the world, such as the forest fires in Russia, the heat waves around the world, and the flooding in Pakistan where related to global warming. The good news is that they did talk to respected scientists who stated that there certainly is a link (kind of perverse to call it good news); the bad news was that they also gave Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe air time in the news piece.

Inhofe certainly has an interesting approach to explaining why climate change is not happening (note he is one of the most of vocal of remaining climate change deniers kicking around). The reporter told Inhofe that the summer of 2010 will go down as the hottest on record – his response included “A few days here and there means nothing”, “we are currently nine years of a cooling trend” and “look at the snow that fell on the east coast last winter, that is evidence that this global warming thing is not happening”.

Last time I checked, temperatures are getting hotter decade over decade, and about the snow? Roughly 90% of the North American east coast is experiencing a trend of increased precipitation as a result of increasing temperatures. Last time I checked, snow is precipitation!

So what has this got to do with BP and Tiger Woods?

The link to BP isn’t that hard – the risk of environmental disaster (beyond climate change) is high when things go wrong when extracting oil.

So what do Tiger, BP and this summer have in common? The ugly underbelly of all things we enjoy are showing their true colours.

·        All but a few people knew Tiger was doing what he was doing while the rest of us enjoyed watching his golf. Some of Tiger’s inner circle must have known his escapades would end badly.

·        We happily consume oil from the Gulf (and everywhere for that matter), but a few people on that rig figured it was a ticking time bomb, they were correct – they likely knew it would end badly.

·        Millions of people around the world are, right now, being affected by extreme heat, smoke, forest fires, and flooding. For those who have lost their lives as a result, their lives ended badly.

How many more ghosts are in our collective closet?

We have to stop merrily rolling along and assume all things are ok. We have to demand transparency, ethics and honesty from public officials, business, and even athletes. We cannot continue to allow cancers to fester while we roll along in denial of all things that can harm us in the near and distant future. Our collectively financial obesity caught up to us in the last year or so, Tiger’s behaviour caught up to him last year, and ignoring the impact of a warming planet is catching up to us now. When we will take our collective head out of the sand and work together towards a course of financial, health and environmental sustainability? There are certainly enough of us trying, just not enough people listening and acting on it yet!

Enough venting for now J

Yes, I am one of the two million people who have already purchased an IPad, and I love it! As an early adopter, I sometimes don't know what the benefits of my early techie purchase will be until it gets used for some time. Well, let me tell you, this new IPad has the capability of not only replacing my laptop, but my entire briefcase!

First of all, I have discovered an app that allows for note taking right on the device, it is called Penultimate. Notepad is gone!

I discovered an app that allows me to download files from my desktop called Dropbox (yes, I know, real techies will not be impressed with that find).

MS Word and Excel work fine on the device, Keynote/Powerpoint is still a bit of a challenge.

Only one cord is needed and no big power supply for the laptop, and the battery really does last 10 hours. So the is no need to schlep around a power cord on daylong or overnight meetings.

Bottom line - I have been on the road for a few days now and have not needed to haul out the laptop (I am carrying both to be safe on this trip, but not the next trip).

No laptop, no big cords, ability to download files anywhere anytime via 3G = an early retirement for my briefcase and all of the stuff in it. Imagine if a few people per flight were able to replace the laptop and briefcase combo with just an IPad? A few pounds less flying, perhaps 30 to 40 pounds per flight times hundred of flights per day...do the math.

Perhaps an airline should reward people for coming onboard with only an IPad and no briefcase? Ha...we can dream. 

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley, 1875

I watched the movie Invictus on the weekend, featuring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as the captain of the South African rugby team in the mid-1990's. The story warrants an A+, the movie, about a B (sorry director Clint Eastwood - guess I didn't make your day). That said, I did draw inspiration from the focal point of the movie for two reasons. Let me explain.

We collectively need to work together to leave the world a better place than the one we inherited from our ancestors. The question is how?

Back on May 25, 1961 (ok, that is WEIRD!, 49 years ago TODAY), JFK challenged a nation to put man on the moon by the end of the decade - they succeeded. Unfortunately he did not live to see it happen. One simple iconic goal and vision pulled together a nation.

Our challenge today is exceedingly more difficult in scope. Not just from the measurable and visible goal, but from a societal goal. How and when do we collectively admit and celebrate success? It will not be on a certain date or time and what metrics will be associated with success? A certain reduction on greenhouse gas emissions by 2050? Fresh and accessible water for all of mankind? No more deaths by cancer? The list goes on. It will not be as easy to define as a moment of victory, relatively to the victory of putting man on the moon.

Up until watching Invictus I did not think this challenge and measurable was possible. However, that changed for me during this movie.

JFK leveraged his position as President of the U.S. to pull together a nation towards a common goal and Nelson Mandela used his position as President of South Africa to pull together a common goal (a rugby game was Mandela's man on the moon).

We are not all president's of nations, or famous rock stars or athletes, but what we all do share is what Henley recognized in 1875:

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

We can all, in our own way, drive positive change from the current places we exist. Whether it is as a small business owner, president of a large corporation or a school principal or teacher - we all influence people in own way or another. The more of us that act on our convictions of leaving this world a better place and believe that we can influence change the better off our children and their children will be. Henley's words should not be taken as selfish but in the context of leveraging our influence for the good of mankind and the planet.

Is it just me, or are other people concerned about the state of the world today?

Did you notice that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Guvenator of California just did a 180 on drilling off the coast of California due to the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico? That is good news and bad news. Why?

First the good news – because drilling off the coast of California could result in similar incidents in the future.

Now the bad news, which is a much longer statement. To quote Arnold, "You turn on the television and see this enormous disaster, you say to yourself, 'Why would we want to take on that kind of risk?'.

I appreciate the use of the word ‘risk’ in his statement. Why? Because when moving oil goes wrong, bad things happen (think Exxon Valdez, etc). Or when mining goes wrong, people die. Both are high risk ventures.

Years ago I worked as a Quality Assurance manager in the automotive parts industry, we supplied Ford, GM, Chrysler and Honda. Part of the requirement in manufacturing components for those companies is the submission of what is called a failure modes and effects analysis, or FMEA for short. Basically, an FMEA is the process of identifying and ranking potential failures in a process or product. It is a structured process that takes into account the ability to detect a failure, the potential severity of a failure and how often a failure might occur. To make an analogy with modes of transportation:

- On a bicycle: the ability to detect a blown tire or failing brakes may be low and may happen from time to time, but the potential severity may be low (i.e. a scraped knee or broken wrist, unless you are going downhill in the Tour de France).
- In a car: the ability to detect a blown tire or failing brakes is very good, but if failure occurs, the severity could be quite high, such as the possibility of death or at least some broken bones and air bag bruises.
- In an airplane: systems are in place to increase the ability to detect a failure relative to a bicycle or car, but if a failure occurs the severity would most likely be much greater than a bike or car failing.

FMEA’s help address failures (most of the time) before potential failures occur, they are also designed to address what to do if failure does occur.

So, herein lies my concern.

We are living in an increasingly competitive global market. As such, companies seem to be taking greater risks in addressing their own risks. Toyota, BP and Wal-Mart come to mind this year alone. Corporate resources are thinning due to the competitive market, dwindling margins (think 2009/2010) and boomers retiring. Less and less people are being paid to hold down the fort. Funding for private and public infrastructure upkeep is suffering as a result (think bridges in Minneapolis and Montreal in the last couple of years). Sadly, all of these variable will lead to more disasters in the future, it is inevitable. And I am an optimist.

So, what to do about it?

A lot of people need to learn fast on how to apply FMEA’s to all kinds of things, such as comparing the risks of fossil fuels vs. renewable – not only in the long term affect on climate change (ok, so a lot of that has been done for sure), but also on the effects on lives and local environments if failure occurs. I.e. what is the impact of a wind turbine or a solar panel failing vs. an oil spill. We need to leverage the power of the Internet and all of the tools that it brings to quickly scale knowledge and creativity to address these kinds of question and issues.

To use an overused term, we need a major paradigm shift. What worked in 1810 did not work in 1910 and what worked in 1910 will not work in 2010. It is time for change, ASAP. Perhaps those whose slogan is ‘Drill Baby Drill’ should take a closer look at the unintended consequences or failure – it ain’t pretty.

Henry Ford once said "If I listen to my customers, they will all have faster horses". Like Henry Ford almost a century ago, products like the Walkman, IPod and minivan would not exist if companies large and small did not take risks and establish new products and services that 'the customer' did not ask for. Although not a new class of vehicle or new way of purchasing or listening to music, the staple free stapler is one of those products that is ripe for the taking.

Check it out at Green Cricket - the staple free stapler! I purchased mine the other day and spent the first few minutes 'stapling' holes in pieces of paper - what a cool device. This device costs less than $10 and does not need staples, which means not having to worry about putting staples in the recycling bin or trying to find staples when it runs out.

Cool features aside, this product is a perfect example of creativity and (pardon the overused cliché), thinking 'outside of the box' (yes, I am sick of that term too, but what the heck, seems appropriate here).

It is this kind of thinking that will take us towards products and services that we will all embrace because they do good for the planet, and guess what, we don't even know they exist yet!

Now if only we can cut down on the amount of paper we use so we don't need the staple free stapler?

Countries around the world will be meeting in Nagoya, Japan, this October at the COP 10 Convention on Biological Diversity. A brief summary of the Convention, as quoted from their home page: "Signed by 150 government leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity is dedicated to promoting sustainable development. Conceived as a practical tool for translating the principles of Agenda 21 into reality, the Convention recognizes that biological diversity is about more than plants, animals and micro organisms and their ecosystems – it is about people and our need for food security, medicines, fresh air and water, shelter, and a clean and healthy environment in which to live."

Kirsten Falkenburger, a remarkable student from Oakville, Ontario, Canada, is part of an international youth team creating the Global Youth Accord on Biodiversity for the United Nations. Kirsten, along with a number of other students, will be attending COP 10 in Japan. To raise funds for the journey, Kirsten has designed an organic cotton t-shirt that is for sale on Green Cricket. Please check out this work of art and purchase a couple - I can't think of spending money on a much worthier cause!

I usually have three or four books on the go at any given point in time. Those I am reading right now include Confessions of a Radical Industrialist by Ray Anderson and Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.

I highly recommend both books if you want to learn about doing more with less and industry can substantially improve its collective environmental footprint.

The following excerpt is from Cradle to Cradle, and it hit me on the head like a ton of bricks:

Imagine that you have been given the assignment of designing the Industrial Revolution – retrospectively . With respect to its negative consequences, the assignment would read something like this:

-          Puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year

-          Produces some materials so dangerous they will require constant vigilance by future generations

-          Results in gigantic amounts of waste

-          Puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved

-          Requires thousands of complex regulations to keep people and natural systems from being poisoned too quickly

-          Measures productivity by how few people are working?

-          Creates prosperity by digging up or cutting down natural resources and then burying or burning them

-          Erodes the diversity of species and cultural practices

We have a long way to go don’t we! Please check these books out if you get a chance - both are a great read.

My heart goes out to the miners and their families who suffered in the West Virginia mining disaster this week. A number of things associated with the tragedy bother me. Here are three of them:

1) CNN reported that the owner of the mining company had been cited repeatedly on safety violations. And what I heard next really bothered me - it appeared that rather than adhere to the citations, the company fought them. Huh? Here's my guess, that company will be out of business soon due to not being able to pay for the lawsuits they are about to experience in the coming months. Had they complied in the first place, it is possible that those miners would be alive today. Simple arithmetic.

2) A miner was interviewed post accident on the CBS Evening News. He said that he can't wait to get back to work and that "we need coal, we need to get back in that mine. Hey, I can't put a windmill on my front lawn now can I? We need that coal". Huh? It reminds me of a passage from David Suzuki's biography where he interviewed a logger in British Columbia; Suzuki asked the logger if it bothered him that the logging was sustainable, the loggers response - "it will bother me if I don't feed my family next week". Which leads to my third thought.

3) If a tobacco farmer was told in 1970 by the Surgeon General and 98% of doctors that smoking causes cancer, the tobacco farmer would have denied it. Why? Because the tobacco farmer depended on people smoking for his income, despite the negative health impact on peoples lives and the cost of the health care system. Same thing with the miner interviewed on CBS - his livelihood depends on digging coal out of the hills of West Virginia. What then if that stops?

Therein lies our dilemma in addressing environmental issues such as climate change - we need to act fast and carefully (hopefully that is possible) towards making sure that people dependent on carbon based extraction are taken care of in the transition through education, training and appropriate allocation of renewable resources, such as incentives for establishing manufacturing centres for renewable energy in areas that will be affected as we wean of fossil fuel based energy.

Hey, if it was easy to do, we'd all be doing it. The challenge is doing it and making sure that the miner on the news can look back in three or four years from now and be happy with a well paying, safe job manufacturing wind turbines in West Virginia, or, dare I say, maybe Northern Alberta too!

I have an admission to make - the power went out at my home office today from 4 pm to 6 pm, and it felt good. Go figure.

I thoroughly enjoy working, which in 2010 means being connected. Being connected means being online. Being online means needing electricity (I can only do so much with the IPhone), and until I can go entirely off grid, needing electricity means being on grid. Being on the grid means greenhouse gas emisisons. And so the circle goes around.

So, here in lies the dilema...

I believe that information technology (IT - my industry) will play an increasingly important role in addressing environmental issues, especially through online learning and interaction, as well as the role of IT in the smart grid.

That said, after the five minutes of 'oh oh, the power is out' today, I slipped into a state of mini-vacation - there wasn't much I could do, and for a few minutes, it felt good. For as much as we all live on our email, text messges, and smart phones today, you have to admit - it feels good to check out for a while. We actually need to, don't we?

Earth Hour is this Saturday night, March 27, starting at 8:30 local time - an opportunity to turn everything off and do something novel like play a boardgame by candlelight or chill with your family.

What did the prelude do for me today? It made me think that perhaps we all need an Earth Hour every day, or at least an Earth Half Hour everday...there is a win-win - check out the brain, save some money and reduce our collective carbon footprint - how cool would that be?

I had lunch today at Isaac's Way in my hometown of Fredericton, New Brunswick. It is my favourite restaurant in town for three reasons:

1) The food is great.

2) They are a member of the Fredericton Green Shops Program - a great program the city developed to recognize local business. Every community should duplicate this program.

3) They are currently running a silent art auction to raise money for community programs - how cool is that!

How does it work?

-  Paintings by local artists hang in the restaurant from January to May.

- Customers write down their bids in a binder that circulates around the restaurant (click here to see the book)

-  Winning bidders are contacted in early May - they pick up the paintings and the proceeds go to local charities. In this case, it is dance (my daughter is a dancer), but it could easily be for environmental programs.

If I recall correctly, the owner said they have raised over $14,000 since they started the private auctions.

What a great concept - perhaps you can entice restaurants and artists in your home town to do the same thing!