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The evidence is overwhelming, and the statistics are staggering, about the benefits of a plant-based diet. Many experts agree that the global meat industry has a larger carbon footprint than the world’s entire transport sector. The amount of water needed to produce animal proteins, from beef to eggs to cheese, concerns many considering the world’s struggle with securing this precious resource. And with the COP21 talks in Paris underway, more analysts are suggesting that less meat consumption is critical if the world is serious about attaining any sort of long-term climate goals.

Then, of course, are the ethics of factory farming and the impact that an excessive amount of meat can have on human health. To that end, The Purple Carrot and its new chief innovation officer, former New York Times columnist and celebrated author, Mark Bittman, want to do something about it.

Bittman has joined forces with Andy Levitt, the founder of The Purple Carrot, to bring vegan cuisine to more homes. Their collaboration is a quest to deliver creative plant-based meals that will be both healthful and easy to prepare.

Neither Levitt or Bittman is advocating for a 100-percent vegan diet. As with any social change, they are advocating for a slow turn in that direction, and to make their case, cite statistics that build the case for less meat and more plant-based meals. A boost of legumes and veggies in one’s diet can reduce the risk of high blood pressure by over half; decrease the danger of heart disease by a third; and cut the odds of having stomach cancer by almost 25 percent. Vegans, according to research out there, also tend to have a lower body mass index and outlive their carnivore peers as well. Just skipping that occasional burger, or eating vegan a few days a week, can cut one’s personal carbon footprint while improving health.

Of course, what one doesn’t know (how long must I soak those lentils?) can be intimidating, so Bittman and The Purple Carrot aim to make preparing these meals easy for you. Visitors to the TPC (could this be the kinder, gentler KFC?) site can choose a plan for two or four people, receive all the pre-measured ingredients, and are ensured their meals will be mostly organic, always non-GMO and ethically sourced. Current recipes include a risotto, chili beans with cornbread, and pan-fried cakes made with mushrooms and nuts. Bittman has created and tested all of the recipes. And, as is the case with your community supported agricultural (CSA) deliveries, shipments can be skipped for a week and orders can be customized.

Can The Purple Carrot succeed? The company is growing rapidly, according to Fast Company, with its Boston headquarters servicing 25 states and a new distribution center in Los Angeles set to supply customers in the West Coast and Southwestern states.

As with any new product or service, quality and pricing will make a difference. Some may balk at the cost of the plans, but put into context, The Purple Carrot provides a middle ground between eating out and cooking meals from scratch. The meal plans’ prices are about the same as what a couple would pay for one meal out at a nice restaurant. But instead, a customer is scoring multiple meals, and far more nutritious ones, which in turn are eaten in the comfort of home.

If this company can familiarize more consumers with fresh produce and vegan ingredients, while encouraging more couples and families to eat at home, it will accomplish quite an impressive social mission while enjoying a healthy balance sheet.

Image credit: The Purple Carrot

By Paul Mackie

As leaders from around the world are meeting over two weeks in Paris to advance collective action on climate change, it’s heartening to note that transportation continues to gain prominence as an accepted path to cleaning up pollution.

In order to keep global temperatures below levels that are dangerous to humans, transportation offers both the curse of being the fastest growing source of CO2 in the world and the blessing that offers significant hope: If we can reduce the number of cars on the road and, more importantly, the number of total trips, then we can cut the 27 percent of greenhouse gases that originate from transportation vehicles in the U.S.

Perhaps most crucial of all to transportation goals other than the U.N.’s COP21 meeting is the parallel launch in Paris of the Climate Summit for Local Leaders. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, and Michael Bloomberg, just named the first-ever U.N. special envoy for cities and climate change, led the group.

City officials in attendance are learning from each other what can be done. For example, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mayor Bill Peduto is focused on the conversion of his city’s vehicle fleet to fossil-free fuel for a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse emissions. Olympia, Washington, Mayor Stephen Buxbaum stresses the importance of consistent, public reporting of his city’s climate data as a way to show how action affects change. And Oakland, California, Mayor Libby Schaaf has ambitious climate goals, which include engagement with employers to reduce commute and business trips.

Determining which modes to promote from an environmental standpoint

This isn’t about granola-crunching hippies with anti-car axes to grind. Cars are great. They can be beautiful. They can be a life-safer, like when you’re running late and have three kids to drop off at three different play dates. They can even – every great once in a while – truly take you away for a refreshing, exhilarating Sunday drive that’s mostly free from stressful, annoying traffic jams.

But those kinds of uses are becoming less and less commonplace in a landscape that is simply becoming too crowded to continue incentivizing people to use personal vehicles for all of their trips.

The environmental benefits are clear for fewer drive-alone trips. The University of California and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy recently found that pollution in cities can be cut 40 percent by 2050 by more people switching from cars to taking trains or buses, bicycling, or walking. That, in turn, would put about $100 trillion back into the economy.

How universities (and maybe someday schools) are on the leading edge

It’s no accident that traffic seems considerably more pleasant the moment you enter many university campuses around the U.S. They have been some of the most forward-thinking entities on designing spaces that make it easier to get from place to place. For example:

• As part of its master plan, Lehigh University in Pennsylvania is getting car travel to the periphery to create a more walkable campus.


• Free transit passes, a campus bikeshare program and implementation of a $150 charge for an annual parking pass have helped Westminster College in Salt Lake City reduce its drive-alone rate for students and faculty from 77 percent to 57 percent in just four years.


• Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. added 40 electric golf carts to its fleet to improve the way employees move about campus.


• The University of Kentucky’s Lexington campus offered a $400 voucher for students to use at local bike shops if they agreed not to bring a car to campus for two years.

And, as researcher Todd Litman notes, these programs (which he lists in detail at his website) are often “particularly effective and appropriate in such settings. It is often more cost-effective than other solutions to local traffic and parking problems, and students and employees often value having improved transportation choices.”

One area, however, where much improvement is needed is at elementary, middle and high schools throughout the country. The fact that Mobility Lab published an article with this headline – Arlington County First in Nation with Program to Ease Public-School Staff Commutes – earlier this year indicates a big problem.

“Jurisdictions have typically focused on reducing car trips for students – like under the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, which gets them thinking about walking or biking to school. But the drive-alone rate for Arlington Public Schools staff is a surprisingly high 88 percent, compared to 53 percent for the county overall,” said Elizabeth Denton, business-development manager for Arlington Transportation Partners, which partners with APS in the ATP Schools Champions program.

“Staff at Discovery Elementary School, which is brand new and is also one of three net zero schools in the nation, is forming carpools and establishing walking groups. H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program started a student after-school bicycle club. Other schools are conducting staff commute surveys and working with Safe Routes to Schools to start walking schools buses and to incorporate bicycle and pedestrian education into PE and health classes,” she said.

Denton promotes the Champions program using environmental messaging, which she says is an important motivational factor for school staff. APS is a “green” school system, ranked third nationally in green-energy usage by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The research presents a compelling path forward

Two studies by Susan Shaheen of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California-Berkeley have the data that could prove influential in getting more people to understand the power of reducing car trips as a way to save the economy and the environment.

She studied what the effects of the growing trend in ridesharing would be. Two of the positive factors include potential monthly savings for those who change from driving alone to pooling in some way of $154 to $435 and a decrease in their contribution of greenhouse gases.

And just recently, the Natural Resources Defense Council announced an upcoming study with Shaheen’s group to determine the environmental impact of major ride-hailing services uber and Lyft and whether they are indeed – as these companies have hinted at – removing the total number of car trips from the nation’s roads. The recent launches of UberPool and Lyft Line, which hold great potential for reducing car trips, could help change a long-held societal distaste for riding in cars with strangers.

Sure enough, the Mineta Transportation Institute recently found that Uber and Lyft may be reducing vehicle miles traveled in the San Francisco region by as much as 23 percent.

Whether those numbers add up or pan out over time, at this point, it’s safe to say that we have reached an important period when truly realistic “future of transportation” scenarios like autonomous cars, electric vehicles, ride-sharing, and an on-demand economy present an opportunity – a glimpse in time – when we have a chance to redefine and reinvent the ways we travel and go about our business.

How can leaders in business and policy connect the environment and transportation for people?

Bike advocates have been buzzing about it for a long time now, but truly, one of the best things company leaders and politicians can do is call for better bike infrastructure. Once that happens, it will be much easier for all those Americans with bikes sitting unused in their garages for the past two years to gain the confidence needed to ride sometimes instead of drive.

Some of the most compelling recent evidence for how much bicycling matters to local transportation networks comes from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. It found that if cities work harder to get people to bike, carbon emissions from urban transportation could be cut 11 percent.

easy way for business and city leaders to influence the transportation system and increase everyday satisfaction and happiness of employees and constituents. Since 2009, when there were virtually no bikeshare systems in North America, more than 50 cities and towns – from New York City to Birmingham, Alabama – have added them to their transportation networks.

Other low-hanging fruit includes:

• Bike parking and amenities like showers and lockers in office buildings


• Policies and programs that consider increasing carsharing and ride-hailing and the subsequent decreasing need for parking


• Education and outreach efforts to improve public-transportation ridership in low-income areas

Many business executives may fail to focus on how their workforce gets to the office, but any company – big or small – can reap economic and social benefits of promoting the kind of perks provided by LinkedIn and Facebook. LinkedIn has a handful of bikes on site that employees can take to meetings or even to their homes as a way to have healthier, happier workers and a cleaner environment. A similar program at Facebook – still in its early stages – actually helped increase the share of people who bike to work from 1 percent to 6 percent.

Further, streets present a huge opportunity for local transportation departments to do much more than simply patching potholes. With local governments strapped for cash and infrastructure getting worse, an easy sell for politicians ought to be: one mile of protected bike lanes is 100 times cheaper than one mile of roadway, and lots more environmentally friendly.

Transportation thought-leader Chris Hamilton notes, “If we make our streets more people centered, and if we help make it easy for more people to walk, bike, and take transit, our cities will be more prosperous. More physically healthy. More mentally healthy. And more green.”

Here are eight practical ways to help the environment through your personal transportation habits. What are other ways to help?

Photos by Sam Kittner for Mobility Lab

Paul Mackie is communications director at Mobility Lab, which is funded by Arlington County, Virginia and is nationally "the source of research and best practices for advocates to increase awareness and education about more and advanced transportation options for people."

By Daniel Matthews

Where do you stand on the gig economy debate? Given America’s economic picture, how we answer this question is extremely important.

Let’s look at the picture and the debate as it stands. According to TSheets Time Tracking, a startup highly interested in this subject, the number of gig workers stands to jump from 3.2 million “on-demand” workers in 2015 to 7.6 million in 2020. These workers stand to benefit from the following:

• Flexibility: 73 percent of Uber drivers prefer the flexibility of on-demand work to traditional jobs.


• Options: Workers can choose from Uber and Lyft if they have a car, and AirBnB if they have a living space, among myriad others in a variety of niches.


• Safety cushions: All of the options don’t just make for one safety net — they make for many.

At the same time, there are risks and challenges — which is why there’s room for debate about whether the gig economy is a good thing. Some of these hurdles are:

• Inconsistent income: It’s a come-and-go situation, wherein your given line of contracting could dry up from bad reviews or litigation, affecting the company through whom you’re contracting.


• New costs: Costs, such as 15 percent employment taxes and work-related expenses, come into play for the gig worker, who has to pay them all.


• Fewer protections: This has been the big one for Uber drivers: Protections afforded to normal employees — including severance pay, disability leave, paid time off, sick days, workers compensation and health insurance — don’t apply to gig workers.

The economic picture

For Generation Z, millennials and the 46.7 million Americans living in poverty as of 2014, the debate is a matter of economic and social mobility. The pro-gig viewpoint says the impoverished and young can benefit from the greater number of options. A disenfranchised worker, unhappy with wages and stuck in a bottom-rung job, could choose to ply a trade or offer a service through a middleman and potentially be much better off than working for, say, Walmart.

One group that has a big stake in this is graduates saddled with student loan debt. Defaulting on student loans can mean facing collections agents, lawsuits and a declining credit score. Furthermore, if you have a default on your record, you can’t work for a federal agency. State and local agencies often follow the same suit. If you already work for the government and default on a student loan, they garnish your wages, take your tax returns, withhold a portion of your Social Security benefits and more. This applies to government contractors, too.

American college graduates are crippled with over $1 trillion in debt. The gig economy offers what may seem like a solution, at least for now — it means plenty of available work toward meeting regular loan payments. For the student, it could mean picking up extra work on the side: flexible work allowing for school schedules and lessening debt. And, for the graduate who defaults on loans, gig economy jobs could replace the jobs you wouldn’t be able to get working for the government.

The debate picture

Heard of the Good Work Movement yet? If you haven’t, it’s probably because companies such as Uber and AirBnB get more press. The Good Work Movement, founded by the National Domestic Workers Alliance in October 2015, is a gathering of gig economy companies pledging to deliver the protections and benefits companies such as Uber notoriously fail to offer.

Dan Teran is the CEO and cofounder of office management company Managed by Q, one of the founding Good Work Movement members. Echoing Marco Rubio (or Rubio is echoing him), Teran says:

“The way we work in the United States is undergoing a fundamental shift, but our current social structures, programs and policies have not kept pace with the realities of our 21st-century workforce. As leaders in this space, we’re in position to help shape the future of work, and with that comes the responsibility to ensure the jobs we’re creating are good ones.”

This statement gets at the heart of the gig economy debate. Detractors argue that the jobs this economy creates aren’t good ones because they don’t take care of workers. They also argue this economy lowers the bar for businesses, creating an atmosphere in which companies copy an unethical model: contracting employees, treating them poorly and getting rid of them if there’s a problem because there are no regulations against it.

In the absence of policies to ensure worker rights and ethical treatment, the Good Work Movement and its code say it’s the companies’ prerogative to reach out to workers. Managed by Q, for example, is offering a bonus program, base benefits including a 401(k) and stock options. The company is also “calling for household employers to commit to fair pay, clear expectations and paid time off for domestic workers.” There’s no guarantee that household employers will answer the call. But they are more likely to do so if Managed by Q expects it.

Proponents of regulation would have the type of voluntary commitment that Good Work Movement companies are making become the gig economy policy. But would that stifle the gig economy and slow the economic progress it’s facilitating? Would the gig economy be the gig economy anymore if the come-and-go atmosphere becomes a more traditional employment situation?

Whatever the implications of regulation, it’s clear we should strike a middle-ground. We want to preserve the innovation and options, and we want to maximize freedom and fair work, following the Good Work Movement’s example. Let’s talk about this. To tweet at the Good Work Movement, find them at #goodworkcode.

Image: Ai-jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, courtesy of Wikipedia 

Luxury German car maker Porsche is investing close to a billion euros in its first 100% electrically powered model.

The project called 'Mission E' was described by Dr. Oliver Blume, chairman of Porsche's Executive Board, as the "beginning a new chapter in the history of the sports car."

The investment will mean 1,000 new jobs for the Stuttgart operation with the vehicle due to launch at the end of the decade.

The Mission E concept car was premiered at the Frankfurt International Motor Show (IAA) earlier this year. The four-door car with four individual seats has a system power output of over 600 hp (440 kW) which means that it will achieve both acceleration of 0 to 100 km/h in under 3.5 seconds and a range of more than 500 kilometres. Charged via an 800-volt charger unit specially developed for the car, which is twice as powerful as current quick-charge systems, the lithium-ion batteries integrated within the vehicle floor have enough power again for 8% of the range after just 15 minutes. 

Dr. Wolfgang Porsche, chairman of the Supervisory Board of Porsche AG commented: "With Mission E, we are making a clear statement about the future of the brand. Even in a greatly changing motoring world, Porsche will maintain its front-row position with this fascinating sports car."
 

BMW Group, Coca-Cola Enterprises, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. (IFF), Nordea Bank AB, Pearson PLC and Swiss Post are the latest corporates to sign up to RE100, the global commitment to source 100% of their electricity from renewable energy.

The wide-ranging businesses join a wave of world leading ICT companies including Microsoft, Adobe and Google who have also joined, taking the total number of committed companies to 53.

New research from The Climate Group and CDP shows that when today’s group of 53 companies are 100% powered by renewables, they will create demand for 90.1TWh of renewable electricity. That’s around 0.4% of global electricity or 1% of electricity used by industry – more than enough to power Hong Kong and Singapore combined. The switch would save around 56Mt of CO2 every year – broadly the same as Morocco’s emissions.

Emily Farnworth, RE100 Campaign Director at The Climate Group, said: “Many companies are switching to renewable power at a remarkable rate, and encouraging their suppliers and customers to do the same. Our analysis of the private sector’s electricity consumption and carbon emissions indicated that a switch to power from renewable sources could cut global CO2 by nearly 15%."

“By acting together, the world’s leading companies are creating a thriving renewable energy market that will help keep a global temperature rise below two degrees."

 

Corporate momentum on tackling deforestation is at risk of stalling warns new analysis from CDP, the global non-profit which collates environmental data on behalf of investors.

While seven in 10 companies have commitments to address deforestation, few are translating these into meaningful actions, says CDP.

The report, Realizing zero-deforestation: Transforming supply chains for the future, was launched at the Global Landscapes Forum in Paris. The findings suggest there is a widespread understanding of the business case for action, with nearly 90% of companies identifying commercial opportunities from addressing deforestation.

However, without relevant procurement strategies and policies, commitments are not being implemented fast enough. Half (50%) the companies with commitments to source certified soy are yet to get any into their supply chains. For palm oil this is the case for over a quarter (26%) of companies. And while over three quarters (77%) of manufacturers and retailers have standards for sourcing commodities identified as among the largest drivers of deforestation, just over a quarter (26%) provide suppliers with training or workshops on this issue.

CDP’s global forests report 2015 is produced on behalf of 298 investors with US$19 trillion in assets. It analyzes disclosures from 171 of the world’s largest companies – including Cargill, Mars and Unilever – to establish how they are managing four key commodities linked to deforestation: cattle products, palm oil, timber products and soy.

Katie McCoy, head of forests at CDP, commented: “In an era of climate change, protecting our forests is one of the best things we can do to prevent dangerous global warming. Reaching a climate change agreement in Paris is therefore critical for creating a level playing field for companies already striving to address deforestation. While policymakers have their role to play, companies too must enable suppliers to join their efforts to protect forests. The long-term viability of agricultural production, food security and climate action depend on this.”
 

After a week of negotiators working in "spin-off" groups, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (ADP)  completed their work on Saturday with the final compilation of the Paris Outcome draft text officially transmitted to the COP, ready for ministerial negotiation beginning on Monday.

Typically, spirits in the plenary hall and meeting rooms rose and fell throughout the week. Friday began with reports of tension among delegates as they "frantically" reviewed the  draft texts from the spin-off groups compiled overnight by the ADP co-chairs. With the Saturday deadline looming, talk of "ghosts of past COPs" remerged, particularly over fears of a loss of transparency in the text, with some delegates worried their main concerns would end up on the "bottom of the pile."

But Saturday dawned sunny in Paris, and with it the mood of the delegates. The tensions had morphed into a much more "harmonious mood," with reports of one delegate saying that parties has managed to "exorcise" the lack of transparency that shrouded negotiations in Copenhagen.

Thus in a relatively convivial mood, the ADP completed it four years of work began in Durban at COP17, handing over the draft text agreement to COP president Laurent Fabius.

A groundswell of global support

"We're halfway there" said  Rhea Suh of the National Resources Defense Council at a news conference on Saturday afternoon. "What a first week this has been. For the first time in history we have tabled serious and systematic action commitments from (at least) 170 countries representing 90 percent of the world's emitters"

Suh said the commitments codified in the proposed Paris Outcome point in "one direction and one direction alone...

"A clean energy revolution that is already attracting unprecedented levels of financing and entrepreneurialism around the world"

Mindy Lubber of Ceres told reporters on Saturday that the "collective will from all corners of the world to tackle this issue is palpable. Unlike anything we have ever seen before."

"I am optimistic that it will provide the momentum needed to cross the finish line with an agreement that puts us on a clear path to a sustainable, low carbon global future," said Luber.

Acknowledging the difficult path that still lay ahead in the next week, Lubber added that "we cannot lose sight of where we are today."

'We will have some bickering," said Lubber, "some hand-wringing over the next several days. But I believe, based on everything we're seeing here, that the world is ready and the time is now."

Lubber stressed the groundswell of support from beyond government commitments is the key driver of the transformative change reflected in Paris.

"The debate is changing, the message is changing and the messengers are piling on, Lubber said. "When we were in Copenhagen it was about the environment. Here it is about the environment... but it is about health, it is about national security, and this is about the economy as well."

The business community has found its collective voice, Lubber said. "They are saying quite publicly that they want climate action today, not tomorrow."

Indeed, COP21 looks nothing like COP15, where business, to the extent it was represented in Copenhagen, was outside, almost beside the point. In Paris it is cities, states, business and the private sector that inhabit Le Bourget in force, ready and willing to drive the conversation as negotiations move to the next level.

Taking a breath at Le Bourget

With Sunday comes relative quiet here at Le Bourget, as delegates, NGOs and many (but not all) journalists take a breath before ministers arrive in the morning to push the ball the last bit over the hill to an agreement. There is a sense of guarded optimism but a realization that Copenhagen may yet come home to roost, despite everyone's avowed desire otherwise. The same issues lurk; finance, loss and damage, transparency, differentiation, a mechanism to "ratchet" ambition above current committment.

Right now it seems to me that, whatever the Paris Outcome is, the haunted halls of Copenhagen will remain quiet as the transformation takes shape takes shape here in Paris, even if kicking and screaming by some.

 

Image credit: Nicolas Bonnement, courtesy flickr

By Byron Auguste and Tyra Mariani

How do we ensure that motivated Americans get the skills they need to find meaningful work, to thrive in the workplace, and to move forward in our job market?

We need to ask deeper questions about our labor market’s role in upward mobility (or immobility), because the way we assess unemployment and underemployment doesn’t tell the full story of the U.S. economy’s loss of dynamism in the past 15 years. For example, how many people are engaged by the work they do, and see a career path ahead of them? Who can clearly say: If I make the extra effort to do X, I can learn Y, and then be hired or promoted into job Z? How many can confidently quit their current job to take a better one?

Too many Americans lack that confidence, because when it comes to work, they are “stuck” without a way to translate their best efforts into economic progress. This situation undermines U.S. economic dynamism and growth, because human capital  —  the most valuable asset on America’s economic balance sheet  —  is not realizing its full value.

Right now our job market works best for those Americans who follow conventional paths to four-year college degrees and who have the social capital and mentorship that encourages employers to take a chance on hiring, training and advancing them. It works poorly for the growing number of people whose journeys are less linear or gilded, including the 35 million people with “some college” but no degree, mid-career industry switchers, un-credentialed workers who mastered their skills on the job, full-time parents re-entering the workforce, the long-term unemployed, skilled immigrants, and young people reaching for the first rungs on the career ladder.

With U.S. job openings at their highest levels in at least 15 years, how can so many American workers find themselves so stuck? It seems like a paradox, but a few statistics and recent human-resource analytics research offer some clues.

In the United States, voluntary job changes  —  quitting to seek a better job  —  are down by 28 percent since 2000. While only 19 percent of administrative assistants have four-year college degrees, consulting firm Burning Glass found that almost two-thirds of new assistant jobs require a four-year degree just to be considered. Less educated workers receive only half the formal on-the-job training that more educated workers receive. Employers are only half as likely to grant an interview to a long-term unemployed candidate when compared to someone more recently employed with identical education, skills and experience  —  yet, an Evolv study of 20,000 hires found that this distinction made no difference in likely job performance.

What these startling data  —  and the dysfunctions they reveal  —  all have in common is an origin on the “demand” side of the U.S. labor market:  how employers recruit, hire, train and promote. Yet most policies that aim to improve employment outcomes focus on the “supply side”  —  education and job training. These efforts are important, but they can’t “close the skills gap” without demand-side reforms. We need smarter employer practices and the partnerships and public policies to support them.

Re-wiring the demand side of U.S. labor market is the goal of Opportunity@Work, our civic enterprise based at New America. Employers are now experiencing a classic market failure, in which hiring and training practices are inadvertently limiting the collective talent pipeline and creating “skills mismatches” with economy-wide ripple effects. These mismatches are a key reason why nearly half of U.S. employers report difficulty hiring employees who have the skills their companies need to compete.

While focusing on the demand side, we aren’t overlooking the many employers who are already investing in workforce skills by partnering with educators or unions to shape vocational training curricula or offering apprenticeships or other work-based learning. Some are also innovating more inclusive ways to identify talent. There are now many pockets of success to emulate, but adopting these strategies remains too slow, costly and complex  —  as each one invents (or re-invents) its own approach.

Re-wiring the U.S. labor market at scale will require more than replicating best practices. We need to build a flexible, dynamic and common “operating system” for the labor market that employers, educators, workers and job-seekers can plug into as a tool to better align their own investments with each other’s priorities, recognize potential and respond to market needs. If achieved at scale, such alignment would result in higher-value education and training programs; more inclusive and better-matched pools of candidates to hire; and a more engaged and productive workforce.

With such a broad goal in our sights, we’re starting with information technology jobs, which constitute 12 percent of today’s open jobs  —  over 680,000 of them – in the U.S. As part of the TechHire Initiative President Barack Obama launched in March 2015, we have created a learning network for 35 communities from Wilmington to Chattanooga to Albuquerque. This network will help align employers to hire for middle-class IT jobs based on competence and readiness, rather than pedigree.

When President Obama announced TechHire he said, “If you can do the job, you should get the job.” LaShana Lewis could do the job, but after being unable to get a job interview for the IT work that was her passion, she worked as a bus driver and in customer support for over a decade. Today, Lewis is a systems engineer at MasterCard, after being matched by hiring on-ramp LaunchCode, a TechHire partner in St. Louis that connects non-traditional job seekers to job openings.

Opportunity@Work will be part of the movement to realize the full capabilities of our country’s leading institutions of technology, education and training, business services, and workforce development to enable employers to institute “hire when ready” practices in communities nationwide, to reach millions of Americans who could learn and excel at jobs that employers struggle to fill. Talent like Lewis' should never be invisible. Bringing potential like hers out into the open is essential to bringing America’s founding promise of opportunity through work into the 21st century.

Image credit: Flickr/Steve Wilson

Byron Auguste is the Co-Founder & MD of @OpptyatWork, ex- Deputy Director of @WhiteHouse NEC, ex-Director of @McKinsey, co-founder @HopeStreetGroup, and featured speaker at the upcoming Closing The Gap: Solutions For An Inclusive Economy".

The COP21 climate talks in Paris run the gamut, as delegates, state and local governments, business and NGO leaders, and policy makers discuss everything from sustainable agriculture and forestry to divestment and climate finance. All of these discussions are aimed at a single goal: to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, which scientists consider to be the tipping point to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

But when we look decades into the future, it's important to remember how our world will change. For example, in 1950, 30 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas. By 2050, nearly 70 percent will call urban areas home.

Our rapidly urbanizing world presents both challenges and opportunities. City-dwellers tend to live more sustainable lifestyles overall, shunning oversized homes for flats, condos and duplexes, and often ditching cars in favor of public transportation. But as cities around the world face massive population booms, governments must figure out to how to house all of their new residents, maintain a good quality of life for them, and do all of this without an undue impact on the planet.

This presents a significant dilemma, as construction is historically a very dirty industry: The buildings and construction sector is responsible for 30 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be this way.

The industry has the potential to avoid about 3.2 gigatons of CO2 equivalent by 2050 through mainstreaming state-of-the-art policies and technologies that are already available today, experts said during a media briefing on Thursday for the Lima-Paris Action Agenda's Focus on Buildings. In fact, they added, reducing energy demand in the building sector is one of the most cost-effective strategies for achieving significant worldwide greenhouse gas reductions.

"This sector has a huge potential to provide solutions," Naoko Ishii, CEO and chairperson for the Global Environment Facility, said on Thursday. "By 2050, building demand can be reduced by a third if already-known technologies and best practices are fully implemented."

So, why is this not happening already? "Because," Ishii continued, "if we don't do anything and just sit and wait, these stakeholders, particularly city regulators and businesses, are not always coming together."

Under the Lima-Paris Action Agenda (LPAA), 18 countries and more than 60 organizations have set out to change that -- launching an unprecedented Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction to speed up and scale up the sector’s potential to reduce its emissions. This is huge news for a crucial sector that already employs around 110 million people, a number that will only grow in the coming years, said Ibrahim Thiaw, assistant secretary-general of the United Nations and deputy executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.

"What we do in the building sector will be crucial for not only developing countries but for cities around the world," Thiaw said.

Coming together for better cities

Real estate represents about 50 percent of global wealth. Creating this transformation requires investing around an additional US$220 billion by 2020 – an almost 50 percent increase on 2014 investment in energy-efficient buildings – but less than 4 percent of the current total global annual investment in construction activity (pegged at $8.5 trillion annually). Returns on this investment could be as high as 124 percent if investments in ambitious policy and technology actions are made now, the LPAA said.

Next-generation cities could mean an even bigger financial boon in the form of savings for local governments: The global economy could save $18 trillion by making cities more efficient by 2050 -- as $7 trillion from improving buildings and the remainder coming from improvements to the transportation sector, Ishii explained.

As of today, 91 countries have included elements of commitments, national programs, or projects and plans relating to buildings in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), the declarations by countries of the commitments they're prepared to make coming into Paris.

With support and greater awareness, many more may realize the potential for the building sector to contribute to realizing national targets, the LPAA said. Yet, as Ishii pointed out, the building sector is very local and needs to align many different actors, which is a primary objective of the new alliance.

Pierre-André de Chalendar, CEO of Saint Gobain, agreed: "What is very interesting about the building sector is that there are indeed solutions. We know how to make buildings that consume less energy. This technology already exists. Why doesn't it work? It's because we don't work together enough -- and this is why this alliance is so important."

Equity takes center stage

While creating more efficient buildings, and even net-positive structures and smart cities, is important, experts also underscored the need for equity in rolling out new technologies -- which will be a key focus of the alliance.

"New buildings have all of these new standards, but we have to think about people living their daily lives. They can't necessarily afford these new technologies ... right now they're using coal for heating," said Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera. "So, what we need to do now is not create unequal societies, but we have to use these technologies and make them available for everybody, so that we can produce social housing with all this technology in it."

Mohammed Nabil Benabdallah, minister of housing and cities for Morocco, which plans to surge its provision of affordable social housing from 1.2 million units to 5 million, agreed: "We need to work so that we can use intelligence and smarts to ... improve access to housing and to make sure that we improve conditions in that housing," he said at COP21 on Thursday. "We don't want to use this approach just for certain neighborhoods, richer neighborhoods. So, using this technology, we need to create more inclusive, fair and more equitable cities."

Thiaw concurred with these calls for equity in the roll-out of next-generation cities, but he said existing technologies -- and new partnerships such as this one that help bring them to scale -- can make this dream a reality:

"The good news is that the cost of technology has gone down a lot in the last few years. Access to renewable energy, for example, is now real because the cost has gone down ... It means also having more equality. You can't have two cities -- one is smart and the other next to it is a slum -- so it means having better management of the cities."

Image credit: Mary Mazzoni

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on the EDF+Business blog.

By Victoria Mills

The chorus of business voices calling for climate action has grown steadily in size and strength in the months leading up to the Paris climate talks. Now that COP21 is finally here, companies have pumped up the volume even more, with a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal (pictured right) and a wave of new commitments to the American Business Act on Climate Pledge.

Championing a low-carbon USA

In the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 1, over a hundred U.S. companies placed a full-page advertisement calling for a shift to a low-carbon economy. The ad’s message is simple: Failure to act on climate change puts America’s prosperity at risk, but the right action now will create jobs and boost competitiveness.

Companies as diverse as Colgate-Palmolive, DuPont, eBay, General Mills, Ingersoll-Rand, Microsoft, Owens Corning and Pacific Gas & Electric signed on to the ad, which encourages the U.S. government to:

1. Seek a strong and fair global climate deal in Paris that provides long-term direction and periodic strengthening to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.


2. Support action to reduce U.S. emissions that achieves or exceeds national commitments and increases ambition in the future.


3. Support investment in a low-carbon economy at home and abroad, giving industry clarity and boosting the confidence of investors.

These companies recognize that their efforts alone can’t solve an issue like climate change. Businesses need governments around the world to act as well. By setting ambitious goals and providing regulatory certainty, governments can unleash the power of the marketplace to deliver the necessary reductions in emissions, while also boosting competitiveness and economic growth.

Walking the talk with the White House

This week, the White House announced that another 73 companies – including Amazon, Cisco Systems, Genentech, News Corp., Rio Tinto and United Technologies – have signed on to the American Business Act on Climate Pledge.

By signing the pledge, businesses not only declare their support for a strong outcome in Paris, but also commit to cut greenhouse gas emissions in their own operations. With this third wave of pledges, 154 companies are saying that a low-carbon economy is good for business. These companies have operations in all 50 states, employ nearly 11 million people, represent more than $4.2 trillion in annual revenue and have a combined market capitalization of over $7 trillion.

Aiming high for best results

One final point about goal-setting: Ambitious goals drive superior results. Just ask Walmart. The retailer recently surpassed its goal of reducing its global greenhouse gas emissions by 20 million metric tons by 2015, reducing them instead by 28 million metric tons. The company achieved these reductions through a wide range of initiatives, from improving energy efficiency to greening its fleet to working with EDF to cut fertilizer use across 20 million acres of farmland.

If you had asked Walmart 10 years ago how it was going to deliver the 20 million metric tons, it’s unlikely the company could have told you. But having an ambitious goal sealed its commitment and unleashed the creativity needed to get it done – and then some.

And that's exactly the message our negotiators in Paris need to hear: Set the targets needed to stabilize the climate, and let business innovate to meet them. Whatever the outcome of COP 21, the leadership these companies have demonstrated through their public commitments to address climate change will be even more important after the delegates come home and it’s time to turn talk into action. We look forward to seeing that leadership continue in the months and years ahead.

Image courtesy of the author. 

Victoria Mills is Managing Director of Corporate Partnerships at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).