green transition

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pages: 829 words: 229,566

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, big-box store, bilateral investment treaty, Blockadia, Boeing 747, British Empire, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, equal pay for equal work, extractivism, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, financial deregulation, food miles, Food sovereignty, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, green transition, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, ice-free Arctic, immigration reform, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jones Act, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, land bank, light touch regulation, man camp, managed futures, market fundamentalism, Medieval Warm Period, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, patent troll, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-oil, precautionary principle, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rana Plaza, remunicipalization, renewable energy transition, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, scientific management, smart grid, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, structural adjustment programs, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wages for housework, walkable city, Washington Consensus, Wayback Machine, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

There is little hope of bringing the fossil fuel companies onside to a green transition; the profits they stand to lose are simply too great. That is not the case, however, for the workers whose salaries are currently tied to fossil fuel extraction and combustion. What we know is this: trade unions can be counted on to fiercely protect jobs, however dirty, if these are the only jobs on offer. On the other hand, when workers in dirty sectors are offered good jobs in clean sectors (like the former autoworkers at the Silfab factory in Toronto), and are enlisted as active participants in a green transition, then progress can happen at lightning speed.

We could alternatively close our eyes, hope for the best, and pay the cost when the bill comes due.”56 If we had heeded this advice and got serious about meeting that goal immediately after the 1992 signing of the U.N. climate convention in Rio, the world would have needed to reduce its carbon emissions by about 2 percent per year until 2005.57 At that rate, wealthy countries could have much more comfortably started rolling out the technologies to replace fossil fuels, cutting carbon at home while helping to launch an ambitious green transition throughout the world. Since this was before the globalization juggernaut took hold, it would have created an opportunity for China and India and other fast-growing economies to battle poverty on low-carbon pathways. (Which was the stated goal of “sustainable development” as championed in Rio.)

Defenders of these trade deals argue that protections like Ontario’s buy-local provisions distort the free market and should be eliminated. Some green energy entrepreneurs (usually those that purchase their products from China) have made similar arguments, insisting that it doesn’t matter where solar panel and wind turbines are produced: the goal should be to get the cheapest products to the consumer so that the green transition can happen as quickly as possible. The biggest problem with these arguments is the notion that there is any free market in energy to be protected from distortion. Not only do fossil fuel companies receive $775 billion to $1 trillion in annual global subsidies, but they pay nothing for the privilege of treating our shared atmosphere as a free waste dump—a fact that has been described by the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change as “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen.”


pages: 384 words: 93,754

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism by John Elkington

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, anti-fragile, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, deglobalization, degrowth, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Future Shock, Gail Bradbrook, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, Hans Rosling, hype cycle, impact investing, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, John Elkington, Jony Ive, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, microplastics / micro fibres, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, placebo effect, Planet Labs, planetary scale, plant based meat, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, space junk, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, systems thinking, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, Whole Earth Catalog

But in a report called Better Business, Better World,53 the Business & Sustainable Development Commission, which Oppenheim led, concluded that meeting the goals in just four out of sixty sectors (food and agriculture, cities, energy and materials, and health and well-being) could open up market opportunities worth up to $12 trillion a year by 2030. In a parallel initiative, the latest round of the Green Transition Scoreboard, operated by Hazel Henderson’s Ethical Markets,54 has concluded that there had been a cumulative investment of $10.39 trillion in things like clean energy, green construction, and plant-protein food between 2009 and 2019.55 One telling indicator of the shift was the public listing of Beyond Meat, whose shares skyrocketed 135% shortly after the listing, even though the meat alternatives company warned that it may never make a profit.56 In one of my favorite new sectors, producers of plant-based meat, chicken, egg, and fish substitutes are working toward true Green Swans—and maybe, with alternative fish products, what we might call “Blue Swans.”

., DDT; dissolution of the USSR for those living there; 9/11 attacks; the opioid crisis in the US; “The Great Hack”8; Brexit; “Insectageddon”9; spread of meat-based diets and fossil-powered cars across a growing global population; death of more than 500 million animals in Australian brushfires in 2019 •Impact of “Earthrise” image of our planet; rapid rise of environmentalism; restoration of Loess Plateau, China; rise of renewable energy; electric vehicles; green bonds; Denmark’s “Green Transition”; London declared a National Park City; development of plant-based alternatives to eggs, meat, poultry, and fish; Stanford University $73 trillion Green New Deal plan for 143 countries; EU €1 trillion Green Deal © Volans 2019 Figure 8: The Swanspotter’s Guide, 1.0 Clearly, this is very much a work in progress.

See also change process stages; Future-Fit change approach; technology allowing to flourish, 166 Anthropocenic route, taking, 230–234 antibiotics through lens of, 108 assets with characteristics of, 73 be a leader, not an algorithm, 223–230 Black Swans starting off as, 182 business models with characteristics of, 53 calories through lens of, 102 capitalism with characteristics of, 202–208 carbon economy through lens of, 111 defined, 9, 22, 167 democracy with characteristics of, 208–213 different thinking, need for, 23–27 early sharing of content about, 199–201 exponential leaders, 236–242 future, differing views of, 190–193 global grand challenges approach, 186–187 governance with characteristics of, 71 gradual, then sudden evolution of, 76 growth with characteristics of, 57–58 historical, 43 impact with characteristics of, 64 liability with characteristics of, 68 losing control, risk of, 193–197 materiality with characteristics of, 69–70 overview, 1–3, 22–23, 219–223 as parallel reality with Black Swans, 9–10 plastics through lens of, 97 profitability with characteristics of, 55 purpose with characteristics of, 50 push and pull in evolution of, 189–190 recent examples, 42 reinventing everything, 197–199 space junk through eyes of, 116 spotting, 254–256 sustainability with characteristics of, 213–218 systemic change overview, 201–202 three horizons, two scenarios, 2000-2100, 38–39 and triple bottom line concept, 12–13 U-bend, unclogging, 234–236 value with characteristics of, 61 Green Swans (film), 9–10, 248 Green Transition Scoreboard, 233 growth, 47, 55–58 The Guardian (newspaper), 96 H Haan, Nick, 200, 222 Hamid, Mohsin, 109, 110 Harvard Business Review (HBR), 32, 155–158 Haut, Sonja, 253 Hawken, Paul, 141, 142, 232 Hemingway, Ernest, 79 Hichens, Robert, 198–199 Hill-Landolt, Julian, 229–230 Hippocratic Oath, 108 Hoffman, Donald, 27 Hofstetter, Dominic, 220 Holocene epoch, 86 Honda, 135 horseshoe crabs, 231–232 How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life (Roberts), 80 The Human Planet (Lewis and Maslin), 29 Humanitarians, exponential leaders as, 238 humor, 120–121 Hunter, Sarah, 240 Hurd, Nick, 212–213 Hutton, Will, 196 Hwang Sang-ki, 126 Hyatt, John Wesley, 94 hydropower, 201 Hype Cycle, Gartner, 173–175 I Ibbitson, John, 222–223 Ignatius, Adi, 155–156 illusion of control, 44 impact, 47, 61–64, 256 impact investing, 63, 64 Impossible Foods, 233 incremental change, 34, 35f, 57, 233–234 India, 82 Indonesia, 220–221 industrial revolutions, 175–176 industry federations and associations, 132 inflated expectations, in Gartner Hype Cycle, 174 influencing activities, 145–146 information, role in economy, 190, 192 Innovation Trigger stage, Gartner Hype Cycle, 174 innovations, in three horizons framework, 38–39 Innovators, exponential leaders as, 238 Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, 242 Institute for Transformative Technologies (ITT), 184–185 insulin, 156–157 insurance industry, 136–137 intangible assets, 72 integrated business models, 52 Interface, 142 intergenerational transfer of wealth, 201 International Accounting Standards Board, 58 International Finance Corporation, 119 international OTA, need for, 183, 185 International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 133 International Space Station (ISS), 111 internet, 173, 175, 192 Internet of Things (IoT), 177 investors/investing, 63, 64, 162, 205–208, 242–244 invisible hand, 18, 25, 85 Ipsos, 219 Israel, 171 Ive, Jony, 213–214 Iversen, Torben, 212 ivory, 93 J Jackson, Clive, 245–246 Jackson, Tim, 56 Jakarta, Indonesia, 220–221 Japan, 135 Johnson, Nicholas, 113 Johnson & Johnson, 13 Johnson County, Indiana, 126–127 joint and several liability, 66 Jørgensen, Lars Fruergaard, 158–159 journalists, 227 JPMorgan, 142–143 Just, Inc., 233 JWT, 140–141 K Kahneman, Daniel, 204 Kaiser Permanente, 255 Kelly, Kevin, 36 Kelly, Marjorie, 205 Kendall, Geoff, 159–164 Kerr, Andrew, 201 Kessler, Donald, 112 Kingston, Phil, 189 Klee, Louis, 109 Klimenko, Svetlana, 207–208 Kondratiev, Nikolai, 203 Kramer, Mark, 59 Kuhn, Thomas, 41, 121–122, 123, 191, 230 L Langer, Ellen, 44 Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, 184–185 Layton, David, 190–191 leaded gasoline, 172 leaders, 223–230, 236–242.


pages: 197 words: 53,831

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference by Alice Ross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, decarbonisation, diversification, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, family office, food miles, Future Shock, global pandemic, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, green transition, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, impact investing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, off grid, oil shock, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, precision agriculture, risk tolerance, risk/return, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, uber lyft, William MacAskill

But attention also turned to how governments could use stimulus packages to ‘Build Back Better’ – by putting sustainability and climate change at the heart of plans to revive their economies. The United Nations used Earth Day on 22 April to call on governments to do precisely this, arguing that the huge amounts of money spent on recovering from the coronavirus should deliver new jobs and businesses through a clean, green transition. In addition, the UN said, where taxpayers’ money had been used to save companies from going bust, it should be tied to achieving green jobs and sustainable growth. Public funds should flow to sustainable sectors and projects that help the environment and the climate, while fossil fuel subsidies should end.


pages: 249 words: 66,492

The Rare Metals War by Guillaume Pitron

Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean tech, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commodity super cycle, connected car, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, energy transition, Fairphone, full employment, green new deal, green transition, industrial robot, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lyft, mittelstand, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, South China Sea, spinning jenny, Tesla Model S, Yom Kippur War

This bears repeating: over the next generation, we will consume more minerals than in the last 70,000 years, or five hundred generations before us. Our 7.5 billion contemporaries will absorb more mineral resources than the 108 billion humans who have walked the Earth to date.8 Vidal admits that the study is incomplete: assessing the actual ecological footprint of the green transition requires a far more holistic approach that includes the life cycle of raw materials. It also requires measuring the staggering volumes of water consumed by the mining industry, the carbon dioxide emissions produced by the transportation, storage, and use of energy, the still little-known impact of recycling green technologies, and all the ways in which these activities pollute ecosystems — not to mention the extent of their impact on biodiversity.


pages: 249 words: 89,012

The Iceberg by Marion Coutts

Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, green transition

Yet we are never presented with sites that might hold a theoretical explosion or contain its profound impact: the dissolution of the floor, folding in of doors and walls, sudden drops in pressure, the creation of a vacuum, the appearance of a void. So all our news, great and terrible, is imparted in liminal spaces. In between. I can name them: the telephone, a pale green transit room opening out on two sides on to adjoining clinics, a swing door, a tiny office crammed with chairs, computers, files and a shredder. This last had a door that could be shut, so it counts at least as a room. After the removal of the staples and a further half hour waiting, this is where Tom and I; Mr K, the surgeon; and Charlie, the charge nurse meet so that Mr K can give us the biopsy results.


pages: 249 words: 89,012

The Iceberg: A Memoir by Marion Coutts

Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, green transition

Yet we are never presented with sites that might hold a theoretical explosion or contain its profound impact: the dissolution of the floor, folding in of doors and walls, sudden drops in pressure, the creation of a vacuum, the appearance of a void. So all our news, great and terrible, is imparted in liminal spaces. In between. I can name them: the telephone, a pale green transit room opening out on two sides on to adjoining clinics, a swing door, a tiny office crammed with chairs, computers, files and a shredder. This last had a door that could be shut, so it counts at least as a room. After the removal of the staples and a further half hour waiting, this is where Tom and I; Mr K, the surgeon; and Charlie, the charge nurse meet so that Mr K can give us the biopsy results.


pages: 317 words: 87,048

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Charles Babbage, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, Gabriella Coleman, global pandemic, green transition, housing justice, informal economy, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julian Assange, lab leak, lockdown, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Minecraft, nuclear winter, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, Piers Corbyn, post-truth, pre–internet, QAnon, real-name policy, Russell Brand, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Snapchat, social contagion, Steve Bannon, survivorship bias, TikTok, trade route, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks

Curious as to what it must feel like to find your organisation accused of orchestrating world affairs, and be deluged by people across the world, I asked Adrian Monck,24 the WEF’s managing director for public and social engagement, what the experience had been like – and why a provocative title like Covid-19: The Great Reset had been chosen in the first place. ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset grew out of previous work on financing the green transition,’ he says. ‘Not necessarily the most exciting of topics, but nonetheless an important one. It was an attempt to encourage leaders – and the public – not to lose sight of issues like climate change, but also technology innovation and inequality. As a book it’s actually been pretty popular.’ The trouble for the WEF actually started on ultra-conservative Catholic blogs and Facebook pages, Monck says.


pages: 382 words: 92,138

The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths by Mariana Mazzucato

Apple II, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California gold rush, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, circular economy, clean tech, computer age, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demand response, deskilling, dual-use technology, endogenous growth, energy security, energy transition, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fairchild Semiconductor, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, G4S, general purpose technology, green transition, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, incomplete markets, information retrieval, intangible asset, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, linear model of innovation, natural language processing, new economy, offshore financial centre, Philip Mirowski, popular electronics, Post-Keynesian economics, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, renewable energy credits, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, smart grid, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, William Shockley: the traitorous eight

‘me too’ 64–7; see also pharmaceutical companies (‘pharma’); specific drugs Duhigg, Charles 173–4 DuPont 178–9 economic crisis: boosting clean technologies 142–3; causes of 12, 182; public sector blamed for 15, 17; varied impact of in EU 41 Economist, view on State and enterprise 16 ‘ecosystems’: see innovation ecosystems electric cars/vehicles 108, 123, 124, 133 Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) 151 Elias, John 102–3 email 104 End of Laissez Faire, The (Keynes) 4, 194 endogenous growth theory: see ‘new growth’ theory energy crisis 137, 144–5; see also green industrial revolution Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) 133 Enron 148 ‘enterprise zones’ 54 ‘entrepreneurial’ State: building of 54, 196–7; growth and inequality in 183; risk assumption and vision of 24; role of 6, 10, 21, 23; see also State Entrepreneurial State, The (report) 2, 3 entrepreneurs: DARPA’s brokering role with 77; financing of 57; investment choices of 136; myth of in Silicon Valley 63; risk types and 58–9; SBIR funding to 80, 188 EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) 150 equitable growth 13, 177, 185 European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) 101 ‘European Paradox’ 53 European Union: approach to green initiatives 124; ‘Big State’ behind innovation in 166; feed-in tariffs in 153; ‘fiscal compact’ of 42, 197; green transition targets in 115n2; gross R&D spending as percentage of GDP 43; growth producing spending in 196; investment in renewable energy 120, 121; public sectors in 17–18; R&D targets of 41; weaknesses of countries in 52–3 Evans, Peter 4 Evergreen Solar 151–2, 162 Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, An (Nelson and Winter) 34–5 ‘evolutionary theory’ of production 34–5 ‘exogenous growth theory’ 34 externalities 4, 7, 21, 168; see also Apple Fadell, Tony 100n8; see also Apple Fairchild Semiconductor 76 fast Fourier transform (FDT) algorithm 109 feed-in tariffs: in energy technology 114; in European markets 153; German 122, 138, 149, 156; policy changes in 125n7; UK 124 Fert, Albert 96 Fiegerman, Seth 171n3 finance firms 182 financialization 25–8 FingerWorks 103 Finland 120n4, 121, 190 First Solar (formerly Solar Cells Inc.) 128–9, 151, 159–60; see also green industrial revolution Fiscal Investment Loan Program (Japan) 40 flat panel display (FPD) industry 106 Florida, Richard 107 Forbes on WuxiSuntech 153 ‘Fordist’ model of production in 38–9 Foxconn 170–71 France 61, 120, 120n4, 121 Freeman, Chris 193 Fuchs, Erica 133 Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research 63 G4S, security company 16 game theory 36 GDP, balance in categories of 30 Gedser turbine 145 Genentech Inc. 57, 69, 81 General Electric (GE) 125, 137, 147–8, 160–61, 174n5 general purpose technologies (GPTs) 62, 83 Genzyme 81, 181 Germany: feed-in tariffs 122, 138, 149, 156; government energy R&D spending 121; green revolution in 115n2, 116, 120, 122; long-term support provided by 158; public R&D spending in 61, 144–6; solar resources of 144; State investment bank 190; systems of innovation in 37; wind energy and R&D projects in 144–6, 149, 156 Ghosh, Shikhar 127 giant magnetoresistance (GMR) 96–7 GlaxoSmithKline 66–7, 82 Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) 138–9 Goldwind 149 Goodenough, John B. 108 Google 20, 174–5 government energy R&D spending 121, 121 GPS (global positioning system) 105, 105n12 Great Transformation, The (Polanyi) 194–5 Greece, R&D/GDP 52 Green, Martin 152 green industrial revolution: ARPA-E 133–5; ‘carbon lock-in’ 117; China’s ‘green’ 5 year plan 122–4; climate change 117, 123, 135; development banks funding of 139–40, 139n14; DoE role in 132–3; Economist on 16; financial commitment for 116; funding of 116–19; global new investment in renewable energy 120; government energy R&D spending 121; government support to 114–15, 119, 129, 141–2; hurdles to 138, 156, 160; leaders in 11–12, 126; national approaches to 119–22; ‘No More Solyndras Act’ 130–31n12; patient capital 138–40; policies impacting 113–15, 119; pushing green development 136–7; renewable energy credits (RECs) 115n1; smart grid technology in 115, 118; sustainability 117, 119, 123; UK’s approach to 124–6; US approach to 126–35; venture capital in 127–9, 128n9; venture capital subsectors in 128; see also clean technology; solar power; wind power Green Investment Bank 125n7 Gronet, Chris 151 growth: economy-wide 62; effect of venture capital on 49; of firms and R&D benefit 44; firm size relationship to 45–6; ‘inclusive’ 167, 183, 195; inequality and 31, 54, 177; innovation as key source of 9, 177; measures of 33; myths about innovation and 10; national debt relationship to 18; ‘smart’ 167, 183; and technology 33–4; theories of 33–4; variables important for 18; see also equitable growth Grünberg, Peter 96, 97 Grunwald, Michael 113, 136 Haltiwanger, J 45 Hamilton, Alexander 73 Hanwha Group 157 hard disk drives (HDD) 96–7, 109 Harrison, Brian 154 Harrod, Roy F. 33 Haslam, Karen 171n3 Heymann, Matthias 145 Hoffman Electronics 150, 150n4 Hopkins, Matt 129n10, 160 House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee 125 Hsieh, Chang-Tai 46 HTTP/HTML 103–5, 109 Hughes, Alan 45 Hurst, Samuel 101 IBM 50, 97, 104, 107 ‘iGesture Numpad’ 103 Ill Fares the Land (Judt) 1 Immelt, Jeffrey 126 income-contingent loans and equity 189–90 income distribution 30n1 India 45–6, 120 industrial policy: challenges to 13; decentralized 78; in ‘rebalancing’ of economies 27; recent US history of 10, 21; redistributive tools needed in 167; State led 40; see also ‘picking winners’ inequality: as debilitating economic issue 177; growth impacted by 31; reducing 166, 186; shareholders as source of 183; tax cut impact on 54 information and communications technology (ICT) 50, 118 Information Processing Techniques Office (DARPA’s) 76 Innovalight 158 innovation: collective character of 183–7, 193; ‘culture’ of 87; as cumulative 167, 187; Death Valley stage of 47, 48, 122; development banks fostering 139–40; development of 3, 41–2; and distribution 186; economic growth driven by 9; firms resisting pressure for 77; global process of 155; government support for 31; in Japan 37–8; macro models on 44; myths about 10, 22; myths of R&D being about 44; ‘open innovation’ model of 25, 27; patent increase relationship to 50–51; process in energy technology 114; Schumpeterian innovation economics 5; State as a force in 5, 166; State leading in risky 62–4; stock market speculation and 49–50; tax policy impact on 51; threatened in US 24; undermining of in US 53, 183, 187; US 24; see also ‘systems of innovation’ approach innovation ecosystems: cumulative innovation curve in 167–8; open systems 193; socioeconomic prosperity dependence on 179; symbiotic vs. parasitic 23–5, 155, 162–3, 179; types of 2; see also actors ‘innovation fund’ 189 innovation networks 36, 40 innovation policy 22–3, 44, 46, 54, 167 Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, An (Smith) 1; see also ‘Invisible Hand’ Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) 51–2 institutional change, assessment of 36 integrated circuits 98, 98n6 Intel 130n11 intellectual property protection 110 intellectual property rights 174 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) 5 Internet: Apple’s use of 109; commercialization of 22; DARPA’s role in 76; and HTTP/HTML 103–5, 109; origin of 63; public funding behind 105 interventionist policy 83 investment returns, social vs. private 3–4 ‘Invisible Hand’ 30 iOS mobile operating system 89–90 iPad 102, 105, 109, 111n14 iPhone 101–3, 105–6, 109 iPlayer 16 iPod 95–6, 100–102, 105, 109, 110 Ireland 120n4, 121, 121 IRS 529 plans 111, 111n15 Italy 17, 39, 41, 52, 121 Jacobs 149 Janeway, William H. 49–50 Japan: Apple entering market of 110; computer electronics competition by 97, 98, 98n7, 106–7; economic growth of 37–8; finance system coordination by 40; flat panel display (FPD) industry of 106; government energy R&D spending 121; lithium-ion battery perfection by 108; MITI 37–8, 40; public R&D spending in 61; systems of innovation in vs.


pages: 357 words: 94,852

No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need by Naomi Klein

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, antiwork, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Brewster Kahle, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Celebration, Florida, clean water, collective bargaining, Corrections Corporation of America, data science, desegregation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, energy transition, extractivism, fake news, financial deregulation, gentrification, Global Witness, greed is good, green transition, high net worth, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, Internet Archive, Kickstarter, late capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, new economy, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, Paris climate accords, Patri Friedman, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, private military company, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sexual politics, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, tech billionaire, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, urban decay, W. E. B. Du Bois, women in the workforce, working poor

In other words, austerity and privatization as usual. But instead of fighting for the best deal they can get under this failed logic, they worked with The Leap team and a group called Friends of Public Services to put together a visionary plan for every post office in the country to become a local hub for the green transition. Combined with the union’s long-standing demand for postal banking, the proposal, called “Delivering Community Power,” reimagines the post office as a twenty-first-century network where residents can recharge electric vehicles; individuals and businesses can do an end run around the big banks and get a loan to start an energy co-op; and postal workers do more than deliver the mail—they also deliver locally grown produce and check in on the elderly.


pages: 328 words: 96,678

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them by Nouriel Roubini

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, 9 dash line, AI winter, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, game design, geopolitical risk, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, GPS: selective availability, green transition, Greensill Capital, Greenspan put, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meme stock, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Mustafa Suleyman, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, negative equity, Nick Bostrom, non-fungible token, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, paradox of thrift, pets.com, Phillips curve, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, Second Machine Age, short selling, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Energy Information Administration disclosed in March 2022.48 Energy prices in the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index soared almost 60 percent in 2021 as supply lagged behind demand.49 Pressure on institutional investors from eco-minded shareholders has slashed investment in new fossil fuel projects by 40 percent, according to one estimate. Production of renewables has increased but not fast enough. Surging energy demand after the end of the COVID-19 recession drove price increases and even energy shortfalls in China, India and the United Kingdom. A green transition also requires copper, aluminum, lithium, and other vital raw materials. Mining and processing them requires energy that fossil fuels produce. If current policies raise the price for fossil fuels we may end up with “greenflation.” Simply put: There is no free lunch in the transition to green energy.


pages: 372 words: 107,587

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality by Richard Heinberg

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, computerized trading, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Elliott wave, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, green transition, happiness index / gross national happiness, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, income inequality, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Kenneth Rogoff, late fees, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, naked short selling, Naomi Klein, Negawatt, new economy, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, price stability, private military company, quantitative easing, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, short selling, special drawing rights, systems thinking, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade liberalization, tulip mania, WikiLeaks, working poor, world market for maybe five computers, zero-sum game

Yet we all can still grow in wisdom and continue expanding the knowledge of our universe, while growing greener technologies capturing the sun’s daily free photon flow as we transition to the Solar Age. — HAZEL HENDERSON, author, The Politics of the Solar Age (1981) and other books, President of Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil) and its Green Transition Scoreboard® Dig into this book! It is crammed full of ideas, information and perspective on where our troubled world is headed—a Baedeker for the perplexed, and that’s most of us. — JAMES GUSTAVE SPETH, author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability Read this book and have the light switched on


pages: 496 words: 131,938

The Future Is Asian by Parag Khanna

3D printing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Basel III, bike sharing, birth tourism , blockchain, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, cashless society, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, colonial rule, commodity super cycle, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, death from overwork, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, energy security, European colonialism, factory automation, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, flex fuel, gig economy, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green transition, haute couture, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, Internet of things, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, light touch regulation, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Lyft, machine translation, Malacca Straits, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, mortgage debt, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, Parag Khanna, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, prediction markets, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, smart cities, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Vision Fund, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

For the 250 million Indians who still lack electricity or suffer from power outages during summer heat waves, the government is accelerating new solar-power and biomass projects. The sooner China and India transition to alternative energy, the less fossil fuel they will import from West Asia. As oil and gas prices decline, therefore, Asia’s largest energy producers are themselves accelerating their green transitions so that they can maximize their export revenues and spend less on domestic fuel subsidies they can no longer afford. With funding from Japan’s SoftBank, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are investing in carbon-neutral eco-cities and 200-gigawatt solar farms. China and Malaysia have together captured two-thirds of the global solar panel market, reducing the price of production by 90 percent.


Smart Grid Standards by Takuro Sato

business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, clean water, cloud computing, data acquisition, decarbonisation, demand response, distributed generation, electricity market, energy security, exponential backoff, factory automation, Ford Model T, green new deal, green transition, information retrieval, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Iridium satellite, iterative process, knowledge economy, life extension, linear programming, low earth orbit, machine readable, market design, MITM: man-in-the-middle, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, OSI model, packet switching, performance metric, RFC: Request For Comment, RFID, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, smart transportation, Thomas Davenport

The TYNDP package comprises of six regional investment plans (Rglps): Baltic Sea, Continental South East, Continental Central East, Continental South West, Continental Central South, and North Sea [46]. The TYNDP package has also specified the Scenario Outlook and Adequacy Forecast (SO&AF) 2012–2030. In SO&AF 2012–2030, four visions for 2030 have been specified: Slow Progress, Money Rules, Green Transitions, and Green Revolution. These four visions are different enough from each other to capture realistic future pathways and challenges. There will be more than 100 transmission projects of pan-European significance, which total about 52 300 km of Extra High Voltage Routes, and require a total investment of more than €100 billion [46].


pages: 651 words: 162,060

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions by Greta Thunberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, BIPOC, bitcoin, British Empire, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, degrowth, disinformation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, land tenure, late capitalism, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, retail therapy, rewilding, social distancing, supervolcano, tech billionaire, the built environment, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

According to a team of researchers including Joeri Rogelj of Imperial College, London, just one tenth of Covid-19 stimulus spending, directed toward decarbonization during each of the next five years, would be sufficient to deliver the goals of the Paris Agreement and stop global warming at a level well below 2°C. Globally, the total cost of a green transition would be half of what was spent on stimulus in 2020, and yet, even in the midst of all that spending, the world couldn’t manage to take the deal. In the US alone, the Wall Street Journal noted, a full decarbonization of the power sector would require upfront spending of between $1 trillion and $1.8 trillion – less than one fifth of the cost of the country’s pandemic relief.