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China has long held the mantle as the world’s manufacturing center. It's also the world’s largest carbon-emitting nation. After years of criticism, China has appeared to take the risks related to climate change seriously, and became a signatory on last winter’s COP21 agreement. Long an adversary of the U.S. when it comes to global climate issues, China joined American diplomats and those from 120 countries to ratify COP21 this April.

Meanwhile, China’s solar power sector is rapidly expanding. And evidence suggests China's overall renewables industry is surging overall, while coal consumption declined. Even the actor and longtime climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio praised China’s efforts earlier this year.

But according to Greenpeace, China is on pace to open one new coal-fired plant a week until 2020. The results mean the country’s government could waste at least 1 trillion Chinese Yuan, or $150 billion, on what the environmental group says is unneeded power capacity coming from fossil fuels. Such growth will continue, even after Greenpeace applauded China earlier this year for what the country called a crackdown on coal-fired power plant approvals.

The outcome of these new plants would reverse the largely downward trend of coal use in China. New energy policies implemented earlier this decade led to the plateau of coal consumption in 2011, and even a decline two years later. But Greenpeace says the green light for more coal plants has stayed on, largely because an updated directive in April exempted both projects in China’s western region and plants connected to the national grid by long-distance transmission lines. And not all of China’s provinces are subject to its labyrinth of energy rules. Combine these factors, as many as 660 new coal-fired plants could launch across the country over the next several years.

By 2020, China could have as much as 1,200 gigawatts worth of coal-fired power plants either fully operational or under construction. But Greenpeace estimates that the scaling-up of renewable power technologies means the country could see an overcapacity of a minimum of 400 GW. In addition to the money wasted, Greenpeace researchers claim that half of the new coal-fired plants under construction, or already approved, are in the country’s most water-stressed regions.

Furthermore, the addition of these new coal plants could slow the implementation of clean-energy technologies in many areas or compete with wind or solar power installations currently under construction. This means some areas could generate renewable power with no way to contribute efficiently to the grid. Utility managers, who are eager to keep the lights on and factories humming, will still gravitate to signing contacts with coal power plant operators, who are seen as more reliable than their next-generation counterparts.

This expansion of coal puts a damper on China’s pledge to generate 15 percent of its power from renewables by 2020, with an increase to 30 percent by 2030. It would also dwarf China’s pledge to retire 70 GW of coal-fired power capacity.

Such a surge in power generation from coal could put China’s renewable power commitment in doubt or, in a worst-case scenario, even mathematically impossible.

To stem what Greenpeace portrays as a financial and environmental disaster, the organization recommends several high-level changes in policy. The report’s authors suggest:

• The central government’s ban on new coal-fired plant construction should extend throughout all provinces.


• The government should cancel projects that started last year or later, as well as those in water-stressed areas.


• Energy officials should retire older coal plants rather than retrofit them.

Such advice goes above and beyond what China’s leading energy policymakers recommended earlier this spring.

Such recommendations, however, are akin to using a lasso to catch an Airbus A380 jetliner. Despite China’s recent manufacturing slowdown, its middle class keeps expanding and even Fortune magazine predicts the nation’s growing demand for energy will not slow down until 2030.

But if China expects continued cooperation from the U.S., European Union and its wary neighbors in Asia on issues, including those related to climate change and energy, the government needs to find a way to put the brakes on what environmental groups describe as a ravenous thirst for fossil fuels.

Image credit: Leon Kaye

It's hard to blame the oil companies for trying to find a way to avoid going out of business as the economy moves away from fossil fuels and toward low-carbon options. But doing so by suppressing vital scientific data that proved climate change was coming decades ago, spreading misinformation, or using heavy-handed lobbying tactics are unethical and should be illegal.

As their situation becomes more dire, groups like the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) are breaking records in the level of lobbying expenditures aimed at blocking clean-energy and climate programs in California. In 2015, WSPA spent $10.95 million fighting Senate Bill 350, which contained a provision for a 50 percent cut in petroleum consumption by 2030. This provision was ultimately stripped from the final bill. Chevron, a key WSPA member (along with BP, Exxon-Mobil and others), spent an additional $4 million in the effort.

The WSPA, wielding this lobbying clout as leverage (the industry reportedly spent $25 million in this legislative session alone), is now in private talks with California Gov. Jerry Brown over the low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS), which requires refineries to reduce carbon content by 10 percent by 2020. The industry group says it cannot be done without raising prices, a threat that tends to be effective with consumers whether or not it actually turns out to be true.

While it cannot be denied that money talks, it doesn’t always tell the truth. The Natural Resources Defense Council did some fact-checking on WSPA's claims and found three substantial “doomsday myths.”

First, back in 2013, WSPA predicted price hikes and fuel shortages would result from environmental-protection measures. The only production shortfall resulted from an explosion at an ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, California. The industry exploited this shortfall by raising prices and, according to a government-commissioned report, grabbed an additional $2.4 billion in windfall profits. The availability of low-carbon alternatives, such as biofuels, helped to offset the loss of capacity while allowing them to exceed the low-carbon standard by 80 percent.

Next, the industry said it was “likely” that gasoline prices would rise by $2.50 per gallon as a result of efforts to comply with the LCFS. The actual cost turned out to be around 3 cents. And a study by Consumers Union found a household savings of up to $1,530 as a result of LCFS, as well as $350 in avoided congestion costs per commuter and a projection of up to $4.8 billion in avoided societal harms by 2030.

Finally, if you can’t scare them with rising prices story, there’s always the old lost-jobs argument. WSPA repeatedly argued that falling demand for petroleum products would reduce California's refining capacity. That would mean both paying more for oil refined elsewhere and lost jobs in the state. However, the reality is that refinery capacity actually increased slightly since 2011. Meanwhile, the number of jobs added by the green economy has been amply documented.

These efforts will not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but will also reduce imports and provide for cleaner, healthier air.

Rather than drag their feet and do whatever they can to prolong the clean-energy transition, which is not only inevitable but also critically urgent, these companies should invest in clean-energy alternatives and develop ways they might contribute to the future of transportation.

In fact, many of them are doing that. But they are also hedging their bets with these delaying tactics, knowing that every day the transition is deferred represents many millions of dollars in their pockets.

If we are to survive this climate calamity that we ourselves created -- with ample assistance from these very companies, which have grown enormously wealthy and powerful in the process -- we need our government to stand up to them and draw a line in the sand. But in order for that to happen, we have to be sure that our lawmakers are not only incorruptible, but are also looking at actual facts and not disingenuous spin.

Image credit: Wendell: Flickr Creative Commons

Coming soon to your favorite distributor: nutrition labels on more brands of beer.

Everyone enjoys a nice cold beer now and then, or a bit more often here at TriplePundit. And that is especially the case with the proliferation of outstanding microbrews here in the U.S. and overseas. Many of these breweries are also serious about sustainability and their impact on the local environment and community. Some of the new beers on the scene are also quite creative, such as a collaboration between a famous chef and the head of a brewery that used food waste to concoct one such brew.

But for those who are health-conscious or making an effort to lose weight, the amount of calories and other nutritional information in that bottle or can of beer is often a mystery. Yes, a few brands disclose such information, but by and large most do not. Part of the reason is that alcohol is not regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), but by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which is a division of the Department of the Treasury.

Despite the fact that U.S. state taxes on booze vary wildly, such levies in the U.S. are overall lower than in much of the world. Nevertheless, the federal government’s annual amount of revenues collected from the sale of alcoholic beverages is nothing to sneeze at. The feds do not want those collections affected in any way, and for years they had an ally with many in the industry.

Until 2013, the TTB even banned nutritional labeling; now the agency leaves that decision up to individual companies.

But after years of foot-dragging, change is on the way. The Beer Institute, one of the leading trade associations representing the $250 billion beer industry, announced a set of guidelines that it says will “promote consumer choice and transparency.”

Companies that agree to these self-imposed rules will print information on total calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat and alcohol beverage volume (ABV, or the exact percentage of alcohol). In addition, the Beer Institute asked its members to disclose a list of ingredients, which the company can either include on the container’s label or outer packaging. A date of production or “freshness date” should also be stamped on the label, the trade group suggested. Companies that are backing these labeling standards include Anheuser-Busch, HeinekenUSA and MillerCoors.

Several leading breweries have already agreed to such labeling, or at least said they would do so across the pond. Last year, AB InBev (which owns Anheuser-Busch), Carlsberg, Heineken and SAB Miller agreed to a voluntary standard in Europe. Watch for more wine producers and spirits manufacturers to eventually follow suit -- for example, Diageo, the maker of famous brands including Bailey’s, Crown Royal, Johnnie Walker and Ketel One.

Breweries, whether they belong to a large conglomerate or are independent and have more of a local fan following, have until 2020 to comply with the Beer Institute’s mandate  – that is, if they wish to do so.

Image credits: 1) Al E./Flickr; 2) courtesy of the Beer Institute

Republicans will meet this week in Cleveland to nominate Donald Trump as their candidate for president of the United States. Many predict these 72 hours will be part-carnival, part-funeral and part-reality show. But one constituency is notably absent in the chatter: Silicon Valley leaders. [Ed note: except libertarian and Trump delegate Peter Thiel. We'll have more on his role at the upcoming RNC tomorrow] 

Silicon Valley's aversion to Trump can in part be explained by the South Bay’s politics. Once a bastion of moderate Republicans -- including William Hewlett, David Packard and Leo McCloskey -- for years the South Bay had an economy more reliant on defense contractors and their suppliers than the tech companies of today. Packard, in fact, briefly served as an undersecretary of defense under former President Richard Nixon. Then, the post-Cold War layoffs started. And meanwhile, the Republican party turned even more sharply rightward during the 1990s. Moderate and liberal Democrats became entrenched in the region. And many of the Silicon Valley residents who vote for them work at technology firms at which executives tend to wield more of a libertarian streak.

But that streak, in part, involves little concern over their employees’ or neighbors’ personal lives. Many of these executives also seek a more open and seamless immigration policy that allows more talent to work in the U.S., so these firms can stay relevant in a highly competitive market. They also blanch at the thought of any interference from what is seen as the invasive lackeys who work within government bureaus such as the National Security Agency.

Unlike their counterparts in the American energy or food industry, many leaders within the tech industry have the reputation of wanting to be free of the federal government, not embedded within it. Hence, the notion of the government demanding personal data or undertaking surveillance led some Silicon Valley types to flirt with politicians such as Sen. Paul Rand, as discussed a few years ago on Motherboard.

Trump’s rhetoric has therefore spooked those who believe there are close ties between immigration and innovation. Add his contempt for the tech industry and his threats to companies such as Apple if they do not comply with directives ordered by a potential Trump administration, and you have what the Los Angeles Times described as the man who did the unthinkable: unite Silicon Valley.

Tech leaders may not be in love with Hillary Clinton, but they remember the industry’s emergence and the wealth it generated during her husband’s administration. Hence the political donations streaming out of Santa Clara County have by and large flowed into her campaign coffers. It is better to have someone who will keep her distance from the barn than deal with the alternative, who is hell bent on burning it to the ground along with anyone stuck inside.

Of course, there are some tech company employees who will vote for Trump. But it looks like the election results in November will be similar to 2012. That year, Barack Obama won 70 percent of the vote — and Silicon Valley was one of the few areas where the percentage of those who voted for him actually increased from 2008.

Not that industry leaders are taking any chances considering how volatile this campaign season has been. In an open letter published last week, over 100 executives, CEOs and founders attacked Trump and his campaign for what they say is divisiveness, a hostility to the technology sector and the threats of “shutting down” portions of the Internet.

Critics noted that names attached to the likes of Apple, Facebook and Google are conspicuously absent, a surprise considering those firms have been the target of Trump’s invective over the past year. Of course, those companies are behind the tools Trump uses to run his campaign, whether they are tweets from an iPhone, images taken from the Internet or messages broadcast to the faithful.

Nevertheless, the reality is that most Silicon Valley workers do not work within the region’s largest firms. And while an occasional lone warrior such as Peter Thiel is vocally supportive of Trump, Silicon Valley has made it clear that this candidate is more of a dark knight who will extinguish years of progress than a man who can “make America great again.”

Image credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

By Jennifer Hermes

The role of energy in the sustainability field is a critical one. But for small- and medium-sized businesses, the prospect of heading up a sustainability strategy with improvements in energy management can be daunting.

For those companies, it sometimes makes more sense to focus on waste management problems as the first step in a comprehensive sustainability strategy, suggested Graham Russell, founder and principal of Trupoint Advisors, at the Environmental Leader 2016 Conference in Denver last month.

“So many solutions to waste problems are quick and don’t require an enormous outlay of money,” Russell said. “But many companies don’t see the reduction of waste as something that can enhance their financial performance.” In truth, with a good waste management program, companies can often earn payback in a short amount of time and begin achieving savings, he continued.

But how can a company begin with a waste management strategy if it’s something that it has never looked at before?

“The waste part of sustainability is very tangible,” said Ryan McMullen, environmental and safety manager for Toyota. “You hold the can in your hand, throw it in the correct bin, and you feel good. Other things, like energy management, are intangible. So waste is the ‘gateway drug’ for engagement in sustainability.”

A company might begin with basic questions and move up the hierarchy. For example:

• How can we avoid sending waste to landfill?


• How can we increase recycling?


• How can we create our product while creating less waste?


• What waste can be sold?


• What can we do with the waste that can’t be sold?


• How can we turn waste to energy?


• How can we reuse our waste?

With each of these questions, companies should consider not only whether they are engaging in these activities, but also whether they are doing them in the most effective ways, McMullen advised. For example, at one time Toyota reused its wooden pallets by turning them into mulch. “That’s reusing, but it’s not the best use,” he explained. The automaker has since revised its strategy to further lengthen the usability of pallets.

Also important is to learn to measure these activities accurately in order to understand your progress. Don’t just measure the things you’re not doing (sending as much waste to landfill). Measure the things you are doing as well (saving money on bills).

Look at your core business, and then analyze the waste that it creates, added Scott Chizanskos, environmental safety manager for Dish Network. “Our byproducts include excess cabling, set-top boxes, reflector mast and mount, vehicles, tools and installation supplies, offices, and more." All of those categories of waste must be handled in different ways, Chizanskos explained. Also consider how you handle waste after the customer is finished with the product. “For example, we take back old set-top boxes and remotes, which we treat as electronic waste. And we refurbish 6 million receivers and recycle 12,000 tons of electronics a year."

Chizanskos suggested auditing your waste streams for compliance. “We do daily visual checks, weekly written checks and yearly independent audits at our installation sites.”

“It’s not rocket science,” McMullen concluded. Do one of two things: engage in some “dumpster-diving” and make observations about your waste, or reach out to a consultancy. “Just look at your waste stream and get started.”

Image credit: Pixabay Jennifer Hermes is Program Director of Business Sector Media for Environmental Leader.

By Giles Hutchins

Over the last few weeks, I've had the pleasure of engaging with senior business leaders from a range of organizations. And I was struck by the consistency of the challenges they faced, regardless of their sector and company size.

Today’s leaders are holding an increasing tension.  This tension is caught in the reality of today, with the pressing need to quickly react to increasing volatility, disruptive innovations, changing expectations, system shocks and more.  It’s a challenge just to keep our heads above water in these business climes. Yet on the other hand, this tension is also about tomorrow’s reality -- not some distant future. In five years, that the ‘new norm’ of our future will likely unceasing transformation and increasing volatility.

And so today’s leadership challenge is framed by an inquiry: How do we keep our heads above water today while we begin to radically redesign for resilience, so that we don’t just survive but actually thrive in the times ahead?

This new set of business challenges requires a new set of leadership skills, as well as an overhaul of our approaches to organizational learning and development. To not just survive but thrive in this new norm of business requires our leaders to deepen their personal and organizational capacity to sense into the emerging field of future possibilities and attune to them.  Those organizations and leaders that hold on ever-tighter to outdated managerial mindsets rooted in separation, control and power-based hierarchy will be yesterday’s news.

So, how do our leaders equip themselves appropriately amid this increasingly challenging landscape?

The good news is that the insights we need for our pressing challenges are all around and with us, if we so choose to look. In opening up to more of who we naturally are, and also in opening up to how life really is (beyond the habituations, acculturations and control-based frames of yesterday’s logic), we allow a deeper perspective to form within us.  We learn how to reframe our meeting conventions, our strategic intent, and our day-to-day interactions. We move from a linear, control-based, mechanistic frame to a regenerative living-systems approach that embraces our humanity and our sense of place and purpose within this more-than-human world.

There is more good news: We now have ample and evidence-based studies, methods and approaches to help guide us in this transformation of leadership mindset. For instance, Joseph Jaworski’s work around synchronicity and flow in leadership, Otto Scharmer’s Theory U tool-set, Peter Senge’s work at the Society for Organizational Learning, Bill Torbert’s work on action inquiry and global leadership frameworks, and Frederick Laloux’s work on self-organizing Evolutionary/Teal organizations can all help business leaders evolve.

All of this boils down to our ability to tap into our deeper personal and organizational learning by reframing our mental models.

In my latest book, "Future Fit" (2016), I explicitly explore how we enable our leaders, teams, organizations and stakeholder relations to become more regenerative – not just inspired by the logic of living systems, but tending toward harmony with life.

Put simply, our leaders of today and tomorrow need to become more human. And in-so-doing, inspiring, they can facilitate and catalyze our teams to become more human within our firms of the future.

We can open up to more of who we truly are by cultivating our natural ways of knowing. Carl Jung referred to this as our four ways of knowing: intuitive, rational, emotional and somatic. Danah Zohar and others at Oxford University referred to it as our IQ/EQ/SQ. By doing so, we allow our deeper self to come through us.  We fertilize our daily ego-awareness with a more soul-infused awareness, which enriches the quality of our attention and the quality of our inter-relations, i.e. enhancing the ability to really listen, to engage in generative conversations, and to sense the flow of what is emerging rather than attempting to control it or polarize it in to me-versus-you thinking.

This is a subtle shift in awareness, yet it has profound consequences for how we behave in our organizations. It allows us to bring more of ourselves to work, so we can draw on more of our creative potential and innate collaborative intelligence, enabling our organizations to become vibrant and resilient living systems.

Otto Scharmer, and others, have referred to this quality of attention as ‘presencing,' as we are both fully present to what is in the moment now, as well as sensing into what is emerging. It is a spontaneous yet compassionate attention, heightened yet relaxed, receptive yet responsive. This is our opening up to the flow of life and to the intentionality of our deeper Self (our soul promptings).  It is a crossing of a threshold from an awareness dominated by the ego-self to an awareness that is infused by our soulful-self. The ego acts as a faithful assistant to what arises rather than a controller, judger and manipulator.  It is what Otto Scharmer refers to as a ‘letting-go to let come,' which is a surrendering process, a self-emptying so that we can be more receptive to what is emerging rather than beholden to our habituated ego-responses.

This subtle yet profound shift in awareness is the root of true leadership and essential for the times we face.  The origins of the word leadership find their root in the old European word ‘leith,’ which means to cross the threshold, to let go of old ways and embrace the new.

Whilst still inured in our hurry-up-and-get-on-with-it managerial mind, we may seek cookbook solutions to our pressing challenges. Yet we unwittingly apply the very logic to our solutions that created the problems in the first place.  For instance, I come across more and more organizations that wish to move toward self-organizing, adaptive approaches of operating. Yet many try to force-fit a holacratic approach through top-down operating models and processes, while overlooking the need for a deeper shift in mindset. In other words, we provide another mechanistic approach (albeit more inspired by living systems than conventional power-based structures) in our quest for regenerative outcomes.

This is why many organizations are really struggling with top-down approaches to self-organization. We need to turn this logic inside-out. We need to first work with ourselves as leaders, so that we can start to create the conditions conducive for regenerative living systems to flourish within our teams.

To summarize, the fundamental challenge for today’s leaders is to improve the quality of attention amid increasing tension.  There are myriad case studies, tools, techniques and liberating structures we can apply to do just this.  This is what "Future Fit" aims to directly equip our leaders and our organizations to deeply connect with our humanity, enabling us to become fit for our emerging future.

Image credit: Flickr/Kevin Doncaster

Graphic courtesy of the author

Giles Hutchins blogs at TheNatureofBusiness.org and his latest book is “Future Fit.” 

by Adam Woodhall - Influencing behaviour positively and successfully is accepted both as fantastic opportunity to make a difference and as often very challenging. So it didn’t come as a surprise that the recent Developing Behavior Change Campaigns conference in the London Docklands was a sell-out. This inspirational and informative events gave a platform to celebrate and learn from many organisations that have had success creating change across many areas of our society. 

After an engaging opening by conference director, Vicky Browning, we were introduced to David Hall and Rob Moore of the specialist consultancy Behaviour Change. They gave us 7 questions to ask ourselves when creating a campaign and then gave us illustrations of campaigns that worked.  The National Trust’s 50 Things to do before you're 11 3/4 was a great example. This campaign assumed that parents knew their kids should be outside more, so focused was on what they could do. We also learnt that part of the reason for the success was the quirky age they chose, which made it stand out. 

They also contrasted the success of household recycling and five-a-day fruit and veg campaigns. The latter did very well at raising awareness, but unfortunately didn't change many behaviours, whereas the former definitely did.  The main difference they identified was that councils made it easy and visible to recycle by putting new bins in front of houses, whereas eating healthier was left up to the consumer.

A particularly inspirational keynote was Josie Stevens of Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign.  It was clear that a key success factor was the investment made in understanding the barriers to women exercising, with the headline finding being fear of judgement. The aim therefore became to inspire with stories of other women like them, reshaping the language, which then creates exercise as a norm.  This was summed up by This Girl Can's rallying call of it being a "sassy celebration of active women everywhere" with a resulting 1.6 million women putting trainers back on.

This was a superb outcome and Josie gave us six tips on how they achieved it: 1. Plan, test, learn; 2. Insight is the foundation; 3. Understand your role models; 4. Language and tone crucial; 5. Create and curate conversations that charm; 6. Be bold, be brave.

A few other highlights were; Stonewall inspiring us with how attitudes regarding LGBT people have transformed over 25 years; Global Action Plan encouraging 8-14 year olds to save water; and how the attitudes of 3.4 million people had been improved regarding mental health by the Time to Change programme.

Closing the conference were Jac Dendle and Megan Inett of the RNLI.  The organisation had realised that pulling people out of the water wasn't enough, they wanted to stop them going overboard in the first place, with an ambition of reducing deaths by 50%.  

One great example was how they had changed the behaviour of commercial fishermen as very few were using life jackets. It was recognised that the best way to get them wearing them was to intimately involve the users, particularly the captains, in the design process and then crucially, get ex-fishermen to work directly with their colleagues to help them understand the new jackets. It was heartening to be given examples of how this had saved lives.  Jac and Megan shared that there is still work to go; whilst the new jackets fit great, by the end of a 10-hour shift, they would be rubbing uncomfortably, so the fishermen would often take them off. Therefore, a new, improved version is being developed.

At the end of their talk, Jac shared with us how he had nudged the conference attendees: he had put a mirror behind one of the platters of pastries, and hardly any were eaten, whereas the one without a mirror was completely cleared.

After a packed event, the consensus from the participants was a day very well spent absorbing how we can create a better society by changing behaviours. We went home a little lighter of spirit, and of body weight!

By Reynard Loki — A new report by Sustainalytics, a sustainability research and analysis firm, suggests that Brexit could prompt British companies to slack off on green schemes, which could ultimately harm the environment. Two key areas in particular—recycling and pollution—could be subject to downgraded policy changes now that the U.K. will not be required to fulfill the obligations that come with being a member of the European Union, which it has belonged to since 1973.

The researchers examined three different issues related to environment, social and governance (ESG), three factors generally used to measure the sustainability and ethical impact of an investment in a company. “U.K. companies represent some of the world’s top ESG performers, and their strong ESG pedigree is due in no small part to the progressive policy environment in Brussels and London,” write the report’s authors, Doug Morrow and Madere Olivar.

In environment, they examined three issues: climate change, recycling and air pollution. In social, they looked at human capital, product quality standards and health and safety. Finally, in governance, they evaluated corporate governance, executive remuneration and intellectual property.

On seven of the nine issues, they concluded that probability of a post-Brexit policy change was “low or moderate over the short run, which should support the continuity of U.K. firms’ strong ESG performance.”

However, there were two key issues that raised eyebrows: recycling and air pollution. In these areas, Brexit could lead to policy changes that might reduce the pressure on companies and local governments to decrease pollution and increase recycling.

In December, the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, rolled out the “Circular Economy Package,” an ambitious new policy meant to stimulate job growth, increase market competitiveness and foster sustainable development. According to an EC press release:

The proposed actions will contribute to "closing the loop" of product lifecycles through greater recycling and reuse, and bring benefits for both the environment and the economy. The plans will extract the maximum value and use from all raw materials, products and waste, fostering energy savings and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The proposals cover the full lifecycle: from production and consumption to waste management and the market for secondary raw materials.

More than €6 billion in funding has been set aside to aid the EU nations in the transition to the Circular Economy. However, the U.K. will likely not be seeing any of that money as it prepares to leave the EU.

In June 2015, Frans Timmermans, the first vice-president of the EC, vowed to take decisive action to establish a meaningful sustainability framework for the EU. "We will come up with a plan that bites, that has concrete measures, that really looks at the full circle of the circular economy," he said.

But on the day the Circular Economy strategy was unveiled, the World Wide Fund for Nature, a leading environmental nonprofit, slammed it, saying it fails on all of the aspects to which Timmermans had originally committed.

“We have been waiting for one year with the promise of a strong plan for a circular economy," said Geneviève Pons-Deladrière, director of WWF European Policy Office. "What we see today is disappointing. There are some good intentions, like the plans on innovation and research, but it is far too little and is not up to the challenge of reducing EU’s massive footprint. Binding targets on resource efficiency and measures on sustainable sourcing of raw materials are crucially needed to move Europe to a circular economy."

According to research obtained by EurActiv, the Circular Economy Package will create 110,000 fewer jobs in the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland and Italy than the scrapped bill it replaced.

The Sustainalytics researchers point out that when it comes to recycling, the U.K. “has expressed concern about EU policy direction,” noting that “there are indications that the Brexit could lead to a downgrade in U.K. recycling policy, targets and/or enforcement.” Specifically, Morrow and Olivar write, “The Cameron government has expressed concern over the proposed targets, which include a provision requiring 75 percent of packaging waste to be recycled by 2030, and some large recycling companies, including Suez, expect the Brexit will stall U.K. recycling policy.”

In 2014, Guardian's Eco Audit writer Karl Mathiesen noted "serious social and logistical barriers for [the U.K.'s] inner city boroughs to overcome" in order to meet the EU's new recycling target. Brexit releases the U.K. from having to achieve that goal.

“While we would not expect to see large U.K. corporates with advanced recycling programmes abandon their current initiatives,” write Morrow and Olivar, “a slowdown in the rollout of national recycling policies (and, perhaps more importantly, the enforcement of policies) could have negative knock-on effects for corporate recycling programs, particularly for smaller organizations.”

The separation from the Circular Economy plan could also lead to disincentivizing U.K. citizens from participating in community-based recycling programs that feed into EU-mandated targets. From 2000 to 2010, U.K. household recycling rates rose steadily. But over the past six years, the rates have remained flat. Today, the nation’s recycling rate lags behind half a dozen EU countries.

“Recycling rights in the U.K. trailed off in the last few years,” Morrow told the Huffington Post. “We wouldn’t be surprised if we found a relaxation of the recycling targets.”

Still, a 2014 study by the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat found that the U.K.’s efforts have remained effective, raising recycling rates to 46 percent, a few points ahead of the EU average of 42 percent. Meanwhile, several nations have simply ignored the EU targets and have continued to dump almost all of their municipal waste in landfills. The recycling rates for Greece, Croatia, Latvia, Slovakia and Malta, are all below 20 percent. Romania is the EU laggard, with a 1 percent recycling rate.

This inequity has made a few enemies of the Brussels mandates within the British Parliament. While the U.K. has been on pace to meet the EU recycling target, some politicians have expressed concern. During a U.K. Parliamentary meeting on March 7 about the EU's Action Plan for the Circular Economy, Conservative Party MP Maria Miller from Basingstoke said, “Many local authorities, such as mine in Hampshire and that of my Hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South, are looking for more certainty about the future of recycling.” She noted “the problems local authorities have with getting contracts to recycle Tetra [packaging] and other materials.”

Tory MP Douglas Carswell, a member of the official Vote Leave campaign, was particularly apprehensive about having to meet targets mandated by Brussels. “We, as a self-governing country, should be free to decide how much we recycle and in what way,” he said. “The figures from elsewhere in Europe are also instructive about how we deal with these things. … Every time we sign up to new regulations we create a rod for our own back because we have an army of officials to enforce them to the last comma.”

In addition to the concern over recycling, pollution is another other area where Brexit poses an environmental concern. Currently, the U.K. is subject to EU infraction proceedings covering ambient air pollution, a result of the nation's inability to comply with the Brussels' Ambient Air Quality Directive, which sets limits on the level of several airborne toxins that are a danger to environmental and public health, including sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter and lead.

The infraction proceedings stem from the U.K.'s failure to develop a plan to reach EU-mandated nitrogen dioxide limits by 2015. Though the directive itself has been incorporated in U.K. law, Morrow and Olivar point out that “Brexit could allow the U.K. to repeal existing legislation and relax air quality standards.”

“The UK’s withdrawal from the EU could lead to a weakening of domestic standards,” they warn, “which could blunt U.K. firms’ incentives to develop programs in [recycling and pollution]." They added, “Though the U.K. has a tradition of strong corporate governance, the U.K. government’s resistance to the EU ESG Disclosure Directive could be a concern for investors as the U.K. negotiates its withdrawal from the EU.”

John O’Connell, director of Taxpayers’ Alliance, a British campaign for a low-tax society and an end to wasteful government spending, criticized the EU mandates, as well as the laggard nations not holding up their end of the deal. "Arbitrary targets become even more useless when no-one else holds up their end of the bargain," he said.

"[A]s Brexit shows, when people feel they do not control their lives or share in the fruits of globalization, they strike out," The Economist recently asserted. "The distant, baffling, overbearing EU makes an irresistible target."

In the U.K., resentment towards Brussels has been brewing, since at least the 1980s, when then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher insisted on—and eventually won—a rebate on the EU budget. The environmental mandates stipulated by the European Commission in recent years have served to deepen the anger in Whitehall. As Mathiesen reported in the Guardian in 2013, “Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] minister Dan Rogerson wrote to waste management ‘stakeholders’ to tell them the government would ‘be stepping back in areas where businesses are better placed to act and there is no clear market failure.’ Essentially saying the imposition of targets was not part of the government's preferred approach.”

But beyond the specific and potentially harmful environmental policy or behavioral changes that may occur in the U.K. because of Brexit, there is another, possibly larger specter looming: Brexit’s potential domino effect. There is worry that the U.K.'s departure may lead to other national defections, and even a breakup of the EU altogether, which would leave EU environmental agreements and targets in shambles.

There is also another, more existentialist worry: Brexit could foster competition and suppress cooperation among nations, which could lead to several negative environmental outcomes. In the interests of individual domestic markets, for example, industrial production could intensify, overshadowing environmental stewardship and sustainability concerns. There would be little incentive, in the short term, for current environmental laggards, should they leave the EU, to establish their own meaningful sustainability targets. 

Increased competition, as well as problems arising from having to negotiate numerous new trade deals and the swelling populist movement that led the Vote Leave faction, could usher the U.K. into rough financial waters, at least in the short term. "If the UK experiences financial difficulties, as well as further populist upheavals," write Morrow and Olivar, "both enforcement of regulations, particularly environmental ones, and government investment in ESG-related programmes and technologies may suffer in the longer term."

Christian Felber is the founder of The Economy for the Common Good, an Austrian organization advocating for an alternative economic model based on cooperation instead of profit and competition, and the author of Change Everything: Creating an Economy for the Common Good. He warns that Brexit is a worrisome move away from cooperation and toward competition, which will hurt the ability to control the environmental costs of economic activity. Nevertheless, he considers a more optimistic post-Brexit scenario as a real possibility as well. He told AlterNet:

In the current paradigm, it is likely that the U.K. government uses the exit of the EU to lower its domestic environmental regulations in order to gain classical competitiveness, although this is a boomerang in the longer term. Less likely, but also an option, is that a more progressive government tackles the reform of the current economic model and shifts it towards sustainability and the common good, overtaking even the EU.

On the other hand, it is likely that EU member states and sectors of the society draw this very lesson from the Brexit, and the EU changes its economic and trade policy towards deeper sustainability, social cohesion and democracy. Otherwise, the disintegration will continue.

A survey conducted in Germany found that 67 percent of its citizens would like "Gross National Happiness" to replace Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the measure of the nation’s success. Such a "Common Good Product" would consider a wider range of well-being aspects, such as health, education, democratic participation, environmental and climate stability—or simply, "happiness." The French prime minister's “non” to TTIP, which views GDP as the highest measure of success, is a sign in this direction. The Brexit is also an opportunity for more ethical trade rules and an economy for the common good.

This article was originally published on AlterNet.

image: Rich Girard/Flickr CC

With a busy week behind you and the weekend within reach, there’s no shame in taking things a bit easy on Friday afternoon. With this in mind, every Friday TriplePundit will give you a fun, easy read on a topic you care about. So, take a break from those endless email threads and spend five minutes catching up on the latest trends in sustainability and business.

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump announced his running mate selection this morning. Those who already resolved to vote against the real estate mogul may have hoped for a pick with a bit more comedic value (Sarah Palin redux? Sheriff Joe Arpaio? Omarosa?). But it was Indiana Gov. Mike Pence who came away with the win -- despite the fact that he endorsed Trump's competitor, Ted Cruz, in the primary race.

Pence is a GOP mainstay, having served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 12 years before entering the governor's mansion, and his name appeared on multiple presidential short-lists. Some even pushed for him to take the bid over Mitt Romney in 2012. But Pence isn't exactly a household name, leaving many to wonder where he stands on the issues they care about and how he would perform as veep.

To answer all those burning questions, we took a look at Pence's voting record and his stance on environmental and social sustainability issues. Spoiler alert: It's not pretty.

Mike Pence on energy

While in the House of Representatives, Pence became known for a voting record heavily laden with fossil fuels. He backed the oil-soaked Bush-Cheney energy policy in 2003 and 2004. He voted against tax incentives for renewables three times, and consistently voted in favor of opening new oil refineries. His record on energy culminated during his last year in the House, when he voted 'yes' on both opening the outer continental shelf to oil drilling and barring the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. Yikes.

That said, renewable energy and energy efficiency have grown slowly in Indiana with Pence at the helm, whether he actively pushed for it or not. The state offers modest tax incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency (about $500 to $1,000 on average), and is now home to over a dozen utility-scale solar plants. The administration is also pushing for increased biofuel production through the Hoosier Homegrown Fuels Program.

Nevertheless, Indiana remains one of the nation's largest coal producers, and it still relies on coal for the lion's share of its power needs. As of January 2015, Indiana's Whiting oil refinery had the largest processing capacity of any refinery outside the Gulf Coast region, according to the Energy Information Administration. And Pence continued to push back against disruptions in this trend, even suing the Obama administration over the Clean Power Plan while governor.

Mike Pence on climate change

In 2009, Pence sat down with MSNBC host Chris Matthews to talk about the success of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and the future of the Republican party. Naturally, it wasn't long before the topic turned to climate change. And Pence, then chairman of the House Republican Conference, had this to say:

“I think the science is very mixed on the subject of global warming, Chris. I'm all for clean air. I'm all for clean coal technology. I'm sure reducing CO2 emissions would be a positive thing ... But on the global warming issue, I know that in the mainstream media there is a denial of the growing skepticism in the scientific community about global warming." Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Pence remains as confused on the science of climate change as his language. In a 2014 interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd, Pence said he doesn't know if man-made climate change "is a resolved issue in science today."

Mike Pence on the economy

You can say this about Mike Pence: When big business screws up, he won't be the one to bail them out. He represented the lonely GOP dissent against the Wall Street bailout, and also voted against the $15 billion bailout for GM and Chrysler. But it's hard to call him a bastion of economic foresight, either, as he also voted against the regulation of the subprime mortgage industry before the crisis.

An early supporter of the Tea Party movement, Pence pushed back against federal stimulus packages while in the House, saying lower taxes across the board would do more to lift the U.S. from its recession. And despite his qualms with using federal funds to bail out failing businesses, Pence received a 96 percent rating from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, indicating a pro-business voting record while in the House. But sadly, that pro-business view doesn't seem to extend to investors: Pence twice voted against allowing shareholders to weigh in on executive compensation.

In Indiana, Pence just signed a $31 billion budget -- and some breathed a sigh of relief after learning more than half was devoted to K-12 education. But those advocates weren't satisfied for long, as news broke that the package would shift money from struggling urban and rural school districts to those in the suburbs.

Mike Pence on LGBT rights

In 2008, Pence famously stated: "The future of conservatism demands traditional marriage." While in the House, he consistently voted in favor of defining marriage as one-man-one-woman and against prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation. In 2009, he even voted against enforcing anti-gay hate crimes. So, it's no surprise that his voting record earned a "0" out of 100 from the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT civil rights advocacy group in the U.S.

As governor of Indiana, Pence passed one of 2015's infamous "religious freedom" laws. He claimed the legislation extended legal protections to business owners who didn't want to participate in same-sex weddings, citing their religious beliefs. But opponents argued he was effectively legalizing discrimination. Following backlash from advocates and the Democratic party, Pence signed an amendment to the law, saying business owners can't use it to discriminate against queer people. But it did little to quiet his critics.

Mike Pence on women's reproductive rights

Pence has remained consistently vocal against a woman's right to choose, citing his conservative Christian values. After repeatedly voting to cut off federal funding to health providers that perform abortions and extend civil liberties to fetuses, Pence went full boar when he entered the governor's office.

This spring, Pence singed one of the nation's strictest abortion laws -- doubling-down on Indiana's policies that already severely limit access to abortion. Among other things, House Bill 1337 prohibits a woman from terminating a pregnancy due to genetic abnormalities in the fetus, which effectively means she could be forced to carry a pregnancy to term even a doctor tells her it is likely to result in a still birth. The law also mandates the cremation or burial of fetal remains following a miscarriage or abortion.

But many Indiana women were not having it. They took to social media to give the governor more detail about their lady-parts, since he seems so interested. Using the #PeriodsforPence hashtag, thousands connected with Pence and the bill’s author, state Rep. Casey Cox (also a man, in case that needs clarifying), to tell them about their menstrual cycles and ask for gynecological advice. Some were even blocked after calling Pence's office dozens of times to protest the legislation.

Mike Pence on homeland security

For those concerned about government overreach and privacy violations, Mike Pence's voting record is enough to induce shivers ... and possibly hives. For starters, he's a staunch supporter of the Patriot Act. He voted to make the act permanent in 2005 and to further extend wiretaps in 2011. He repeatedly voted against requiring warrants for wiretaps both in the U.S. and abroad, and pushed back against civil oversight of wiretaps and CIA interrogations. The ACLU gave Pence a mere 7 percent rating, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record while in the House.

He also voted against restricting no-bid defense contracts -- which increased from $50 billion in 2001 to $140 billion in 2010. Critics say such deals do little but line the pockets of defense contractors, and insist that disallowing competition among contractors is a waste of taxpayer money. Given Pence's stance on fiscal responsibility, this position is a bit odd, to say the least.

Oh, and when it comes to Trump's most infamous construction plan, he may have found a friend in Mike Pence -- who voted to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2006.

For more information on Mike Pence's voting record, check out On the Issues or Vote Smart.

Image credit: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

In the 21st century, we've become accustomed to technology developing at lightning speeds. But for every successful electronic device, there is a string of failures that didn't hit the mark. And not all of these devices flop due to bad engineering. The forces that shape product adoption go far beyond effectiveness into the sociocultural -- that is, the time and place of the release. 

“The technologies we use today aren't necessarily the best technologies that were available,” explains Maggie Koerth-Baker, science editor at BoingBoing.net, in the New York Times Magazine.  And we don’t necessarily use logic when deciding which technologies to adopt.

Take for example the Newton, Apple’s 'personal digital assistant' released in 1993. While developing the Newton, Apple pulled out all the stops to ensure success. It “hired psychologists to make sure that everybody on the team was mentally healthy and even started a 'buddy program' for engineers who were on the verge of burning out, ” tech reporter Tom Hormby wrote in Gizmodo. All the resources Apple poured into the Newton catalyzed a successful launch. But product sales fizzled and the Newton was discontinued nearly 10 years before the first iPhone hit the shelves. So, why didn’t consumers adopt it?

An Endegene whitepaper lists a number of reasons why the Newton didn’t take off with consumers, despite its technical promise:

• It was too big. The Newton was about 4.5 inches by 7 inches, nearly 1 inch thick and weighed nearly a pound.


• It was too expensive. It cost around $700 for the first model and up to $1,000 for later versions.


• It was cumbersome to use because it had software problems and operated slowly. The handwriting recognition, a featured part of the Newton, was notoriously inaccurate.


• It was announced too soon. Apple announced the Newton almost two years before its launch.


• It was just too premature. Despite a few competing products launched before the Newton, the market wasn't familiar with such a device.

“In the end, we cut corners and ignored problems to try to meet a price range and a ship date that we had prematurely announced to gain an edge in a reckless public relations battle,” Newton project leader, Larry Tesler, told Endegene.

“We were just way ahead of the technology,” Steve Capps, the Newton’s head of user interface and software development, told Wired. “We barely got it functioning by ’93 when we started shipping it.”

The dream of an electronic personal assistant was shattered by shifty hardware and software, but most of all by a timing mismatch with the market. But Apple learned from its mistakes and went on to produce the iPhone -- a technology well timed with customer tech budget and their desire for connectivity on the go.

Why sometimes superior products flop

The laundry-list of early product failures also includes Sony’s Betamax, which many describe as superior to VHS. But again, the Betamax just didn’t take off. Betamax is actually older than VHS. Betamax was launched in 1975, while JVC’s VHS launched a year later. For about a decade, the two VCR formats battled for market dominance. So, why didn’t Betamax claim victory? That’s a question many have tried to answer. 

One case study mentions a meeting seven months prior to the launch of Betamax. During the meeting, Sony chairman Akio Morita showed the Betamax to executives from Matsushita, JVC and RCA in an apparent attempt to get the rival companies to develop VCRs with Sony’s system. “Sony’s apparent arrogant attitude did not go over well with potential partners," the NYU Stern School of Business explained. This early reluctance to partner proved to be Sony's demise.

Another case study echoes the theme of inclusiveness.  VHS won out because it had a better choice of movies to rent than Betamax did. Sony chose to hold tight to its IP -- licensing titles for use, while VHS let its technology free allowing filmmakers to create their own VHS tapes. This tight-fisted approach to technology proved to be Sony's demise. “[Sony's] decision to not enable the format to be standardized negatively impacted distribution and availability, which resulted in a product failure,” Tim Berry of Palo Alto Software wrote.

While Betamax had the better functionality, it couldn't beat subpar delivery of a broader range of titles. By the late 1980s, VHS dominated the market.

Clearly, having a superior product just isn’t enough, as the Betamax case study shows. There are other ingredients involved. Investopedia lists reasons why products fail, and the top of the list is timing. Timing really is everything, as the Newton's failure reveals. It is equally clear that fulfilling consumer needs is important, and both of these unsuccessful products failed to do so. 

But maybe, just maybe, the failures of the Newton and the Betamax are okay in the long run. Both VCR formats ended up obsolete with the launch of DVRs, of which Sony is a huge manufacturer. And if Apple gave up after the Newton went belly-up, maybe we'd never have an iPhone or iPad. These case studies, and the dozens like them, prove what grandma always said: Sometimes the best things are worth waiting for.

Image credits: 1) Flickr/Travis Isaacs; 2) Flickr/Blake Patterson; 3) Flickr/hcalderonmeister; 4) Flickr/Windell Oskay