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Why Rudd's 2020 Summit missed the mark |
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Written by Richard A. Slaughter
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Friday, 15 August 2008 |
 When I first heard that a summit was being planned I felt that it could
be good news – a sign, perhaps, of new options for Australia after the
long and depressing Howard years. How wrong can you be?
Two things were immediately apparent when I looked at the summit
outline. First, there was the list of ten conventional categories
clearly reflecting the bureaucratic origins of the exercise. Second,
there was nothing original – such as any attention to futures concepts,
methods and capability. As a result my initial hopes for the summit
nose-dived right away. Far from being ready to put my name forward, I
realised that there was really no point. And so it proved.
When the weekend of the summit arrived, and like others perhaps who’d
considered applying, I felt a certain sense of disappointment at NOT
being there. Perhaps I’d been mistaken. Perhaps some chance meeting
might have opened doors, aired new ideas. Yet when the early reports
came in I knew that my initial decision was correct.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 15 August 2008 )
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From challenge to opportunity -- new ways to invest |
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Written by Hazel Henderson
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Friday, 15 August 2008 |
“Even if you were lucky and got your money out of a failed bank... what
are you to do with it?”, asks Hazel Henderson, a leading futurist who has been challenging conventional economics for more than 30
years. In this article she explores
risks and opportunities and argues that the best new asset class is all the
entrepreneurial companies that make up the Sustainability Sector – many
of which have quietly outperformed the Dow and S&P indices.
We all know the story of the tulip mania, a favorite but short-lived
asset of Europeans in the 1700s. Gold has always been a favorite safe
haven in spite of its volatility and recent efforts of central banks to
devalue the yellow metal by leasing it and selling off their reserves.
We have lived through bubbles in art, antiques, jewelry, junk bonds,
dot.coms and housing, as investors continually search for safety and
diversification.
Today, it's commodities – oil, corn, wheat, rice – that are in the
news as ETFs (exchange-traded funds), hedge funds and even our pension
funds pour billions into futures contracts. Most of these
institutional investors don't ever want to take delivery of the barrels
of oil or bushels of grain. They just roll over the contracts and buy
and sell them, betting on higher prices.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 15 August 2008 )
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More green jobs than brown |
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Written by Jan Lee Martin
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Friday, 25 July 2008 |
 Remember when commercial fishing interests were opposing
restrictions on their operations on the grounds of job losses? We
can’t stop depleting fish stocks, they said, because if we do we’ll
lose our jobs. Uh-huh. And then?
Now we are seeing the same argument applied to carbon-producing
industries. We can’t stop destroying our natural environment because
if we do we’ll lose our jobs. Uh-huh. And then?
The fact is there are already millions of new, green jobs in the
sustainable economy while jobs in the old, industrial economy are being
replaced by machines. And the new ones are jobs people might actually
want to do. What’s more, they are less likely to be exported.
The Worldwatch Institute reports that the coal, oil and natural gas
industries have been offering fewer and fewer jobs as high-cost
production equipment takes the place of people.
“Many hundreds of thousands of coal mining jobs have been shed in
China, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and South Africa
during the last two decades, sometimes in the face of expanding
production,” says the Institute’s latest update. In the US alone, coal
industry employment has fallen by half in the last 20 years, despite a
one-third increase in production.
Renewables, on the other hand, are poised to tackle our energy
crisis and create millions of new jobs worldwide. Senior Researcher
Michael Renner argues that fossil fuel jobs are increasingly becoming
fossils themselves, as coal mining communities and others worry about
their livelihoods.
Unlike Australia, whose Coalition government stood loyally by its
industrial age partners to the very death, strong government support
has allowed Germany, Spain, and Denmark to emerge as leaders in
renewable energy development - and green jobs.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 25 July 2008 )
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