Globe 2004 signals next industrial revolution

They unveiled and discussed their latest environmental, social, technological, and economic achievements and strategic plans for making money, and at the same time saving the planet from human induced planetcide.

Executives consider sustainability at Globe 2004. © Globe 2004

Techno efficiency

Some governments are making changes in their operations to benefit the environment - Canada and the United Kingdom were stand-outs. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin announced funding for the creation of a controversial �hydrogen highway,� a series of hydrogen fueling stations from Vancouver to Whistler to be built in time for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

And the UK was there to publicise its Kyoto Protocol commitment to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012, and its goal of a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2010.

On the trade show floor it was clear that technological leaps in efficiency are occurring, seen in products like the new solar panels with electronics that are 30 percent more efficient, and transparent with surfaces that accept projected images.

A section of the trade show floor at Globe 2004. © Globe 2004

Another company, PyroGenesis, has created a new plasma waste incinerator and resource recovery system that takes a third of the space of a conventional type and recovers energy and metals. It even creates new material for products or construction, and all with no ash produced. One is currently installed on a Carnival cruise ship.

Climate show

One of the most popular exhibits was the Climate Change Show, a multi-media �object theatre� developed by Science North Enterprises, which featured an animated sheep talking about the science and causes of climate change and the things individuals can do. The audience appeared to enjoy being misted by water and buffeted by winds that made a point about increased and more violent storm events as a result of global warming. The show goes hand-in-hand with Canada�s recently launched One Tonne Challenge, a government program to encourage householders to reduce their annual greenhouse gas emissions.

In the corporate conference rooms, too, it was clear that the catastrophic events linked to climate change are increasingly making their way into the thoughts and onto the balance sheets of corporations and governments.

Conference participants cited last summer�s record heatwave in Europe that killed an estimated 26,000 people, devastating forest fires worldwide, the widespread flooding in China last July that left millions homeless, the 65 million people being threatened as river levels sink in the lower Mekong River basin, as well as the dangerous dust storms in Asia where the sands are whipped up as far away as Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and the Pacific basin that are blamed for a combined economic loss equivalent to $8.47 billion.

By contrast with the ongoing debate in the media, there was little dissent about the validity of the UN�s Kyoto Protocol to address climate change, except perhaps for Lorne Taylor, environment minister from Alberta, a Canadian province that depends largely on oil and gas and logging of its boreal forest for income. Canada has ratified the protocol and is working on ways to reduced its greenhouse gas emissions.

Corporate responsibility

But an unsettling theme began to surface in the presentations and forums - the global economy is still hard wired to constantly accelerating growth and increasing amounts of energy and material throughput. Some companies are performing much better, but doubts were expressed that their growth will be enough to shift the global economy towards sustainability.

It was clear that the ministers, executives, and thinkers are earnestly fishing about for a new concept. In the words of Canadian businessman Maurice Strong, council president of the UN University of Peace, "one that takes into account ethical, moral, and spiritual values."

Some speakers, like George Carpenter, are still asking, �Is there really a business case for sustainability?� Carpenter is director of corporate sustainable development at Proctor & Gamble (P&G) which operates in 160 countries and sells 30 million consumer products a day.

�The barriers are not technology,� Carpenter said, �Our laboratories are filled with technology that would cause huge quality of life differences. The challenge, I think, and why we don�t have more people doing this is because we haven�t got a successful business model yet."

"If you can�t figure out how to make money on a product, and if you can�t make money on it," said Carpenter, "you don�t have a business, and therefore there�s no reason to invest what sometimes can be sizeable upfront investment to get to something that�s not a sure thing.�

One of the products that did make it out of P&G�s labs for testing is a little packet of ingredients that purify and disinfect polluted drinking water at a retail cost of about US$.01 per litre, a boon to reducing waterborne disease in the developing world where diarrhea is a leading cause of death among children.

The first clinical study in Guatemala two years ago showed a 27 per cent reduction in diarrhea in the overall population and 42 per cent among per cent children under two, the most sensitive population, and that these results were replicated in Kenya in the past six months.

Another product aimed at improving the quality of the lives of women who do laundry by hand might give them back an hour per day, maybe more, by reducing the amount of water needed from four buckets to two. And clinical trials of another P&G product in the area of dental hygiene showed that it reduced cavities in about 60 per cent of the population they reached.

But none of these products have made the company any money yet, said Carpenter. �At the same time that we have spent all this time working on our responsibility to society, many of us have been struggling to understand and then articulate what�s the business case for sustainability. And with the exception of eco-efficiency, which delivered a bottom-line savings, those of us that have been involved in this subject for decades have been long frustrated by the failure of green marketing and the failure of investments we made in the �90s on eco-friendly products that never delivered a true competitive advantage in terms of not the bottom-line but the top-line - business growth, new markets, new consumers, new businesses.�

Investment needed

Many revolutionary products and technologies may be sitting in corporate and government laboratories because they either won�t make money for shareholders in the short-term or they threaten the present global economic infrastructure.

Some promising and scientifically sound technologies are faced with chronic lack of government and industry support, such as the tidal wave energy technology by Blue Energy Canada that has languished for more than 10 years.

The air car from Moteur Developpment International © MDI

And why invest heavily in hydrogen fuel cells, an infrastructure and energy-intensive conversion technology, when we have the MDI Air Car, invented by Guy N�gre of France, which runs on pressurized air?

On the other hand, there are technologies that governments and multinationals are boosting, such as hydrogen, which is not the most efficient and cheapest technology but fits nicely into oil and gas companies' strategic plans, or genetically modified organisms and nuclear power, which threaten to do irreversible damage to human health and the environment.

Michael Maser from Blue Energy Canada, the tidal power company, has been to a number of the Globe events through the years, and when asked if the present business model is effective in saving the planet from human damage, replied, �Clearly not. As discussed in one of the forums and answered by Ray Anderson [of Interface Inc.], considered by many as CEO of one of the most sustainable corporations on the planet, although triple-bottom line accounting and authentically sustainable business practices have been adopted by a few businesses and industry associations, the business-shareholder model and conventional business practices, for the most part, remain dedicated to maximizing profits at the expense of environmental and social values.�

Strong said that the commitment of governments is still lacking, and improving this is up to the public.

But corporations are another story.

It was revealed last week that 57 per cent of Canada�s commercial forests are now under the control of private companies - an astonishing proportion in a country where the forests have historically been considered a resource held by the Crown for the benefit of all Canadians.

Global corporations have incredible power. By their very size and reach - some of them have budgets larger than entire countries - they wield enormous power and influence that can be either planet-positive or planet-negative, and a growing number are putting money and effort into cleaning up their companies and producing more sustainable products.

But what about the rest? Stand by for Globe 2006.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2004. All Rights Reserved.

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