Un modelo de sostenibilidad para las empresas

Ernst & Young nos trae su análisis de cómo la empresa debe organizarse mejor para reforzar su responsabilidad social en todos los aspectos. Como ya he dicho:

En estas páginas he hablado de la importancia de la responsabilidad social de las empresas (RSE), es decir, la responsabilidad fundamental de la empresa, no sólo de seguir las leyes que rigen donde operan, pero de seguir unas normas aceptables de trato de las partes interesadas que la rodean, especialmente, los trabajadores y el medio ambiente que le rodea.

El discurso normal de las empresas ahora es que estos temas son importantes y que apoyan políticas para proteger contra casos de mala responsabilidad social empresarial.

Ver Artículo completo.

Ethical consumers preferring the carrot over the stick

The latest GlobeScan tracking data suggest that a shift may be taking place among ethical consumers, from a focus on punishing irresponsible companies to one characterized by rewarding those companies seen as socially or environmentally responsible.

Since the early years of the last decade, there has been a marked increase in self-reported rewarding and punishing of companies on ethical grounds by consumers across 14 developing and industrialized countries. The numbers punishing companies have been much more volatile, however, likely driven by the periodic emergence of high-profile scandals affecting individual companies. But since 2005 such punishment, rather than reward, has been the dominant expression of ethical consumerism.

See full Press Release.

Financial Stability Board publishes recommendations to strengthen oversight and regulation of shadow banking

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) published today a report on Shadow Banking: Strengthening Oversight and Regulation. This report provides the FSB’s recommendations on this subject that were requested by the G20 Leaders at the November 2010 Seoul Summit.

The “shadow banking system” can broadly be described as “credit intermediation involving entities and activities outside the regular banking system.” According to one measure, the global shadow banking system grew rapidly before the crisis, from an estimated $27 trillion in 2002 to $60 trillion in 2007, and remained at around the same level in 2010.

See full Summary.

Sustainability Experts’ Views: Resource Agenda Will Continue to Dominate

Energy issues are seen by sustainability experts as the most important sustainable development challenge facing their country, the latest findings from the SustainAbility Survey reveal. But the findings also highlight some significant differences from region to region in perceptions of what the pressing issues are, and confirm that use of resources of all kinds is likely to dominate the agenda as emerging economies continue to develop.

Several times a year, GlobeScan and SustainAbility interview a panel of experts from around the world who work on sustainability issues within corporations, NGOs, academia, government departments, and scientific institutions. They are regularly asked to predict what the most critical sustainability issues will be over the months and years to come.

See full Press Release.

Boardroom Lessons from a Social Media Misstep

Board members need to understand the factors that impact their businesses. Economics, politics, and sector shifts are all vital issues on the agenda in the boardroom. But the agenda needs to keep pace with what is influencing business, and amongst the things that board members need to fully appreciate is the growing influence and power of social media. It is not just about political uprisings any more.

Let me illustrate with a real world experience that has confirmed some of the discussions I've been having around the boardroom table:

See full Article.

Human development in Africa: A long-run perspective

How has Africa performed over the long-run in terms of wellbeing? This column aims to answer this question by improving the UN’s Human Development Index. By looking at data stretching from 1870 to 2007, it argues that human development in Africa is lower than previously thought and that compared to the developed world, Africa stopped catching up in 1980 and began to fall behind.

Concern about sluggish growth in Africa has led economists to investigate its performance and its determinants over the recent past (an exception is provided by Ndulu et al (2008), which covers the last half century). The dearth of data, however, has not discouraged economic historians from investigating earlier periods and providing explicit hypotheses about African long-run performance (Acemoglu and Robinson 2010, Austin 2008, Jerven 2010, Nunn 2008). Research, though, has focused on GDP per head and other dimensions of development have been largely neglected. Thus, questions such as “How has Africa performed over the long-run in terms of wellbeing?” and “How has Africa behaved vis-à-vis other developing regions?” have never been addressed.

See full Article.

Climate change 'grave threat' to security and health

Climate change poses "an immediate, growing and grave threat" to health and security around the world, according to an expert conference in London.

Officers in the UK military warned that the price of goods such as fuel is likely to rise as conflict provoked by climate change increases.

A statement from the meeting adds that humanitarian disasters will put more and more strain on military resources.

See full Article.

Macroprudential Policy Tools and Frameworks

Progress Report to G20

In November 2010, G20 Leaders “called on the FSB, IMF and BIS to do further work on macroprudential policy frameworks, including tools to mitigate the impact of excessive capital flows, and update Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors at their next meeting.” They noted that “these frameworks should take into account national and regional arrangements” and looked “forward to a joint report which should elaborate on the progress achieved in identification of best practices, which will be the basis for establishing in the future international principles or guidelines on the design and implementation of the frameworks.”

See full Summary, in pdf.

EU should take lead in global fight against illegal fishing

Illegal fishing distorts trade, hurts efforts to rebuild depleted stocks and conserve species and will have a long-term impact on the environment and food security, the Fisheries Committee warned Tuesday. An estimated 11-26 million tonnes of fish a year, representing 15% of global catches, comes from illegal fishing. The committee calls on the EU to promote global action, including more inspections at sea and closing markets to illegal fisheries products.

The own-initiative report by Swedish Green Isabella Lövin says international cooperation is the only way to tackle the problem because of the mobility of fish stocks and fishing fleets and because around two thirds of the world's oceans are outside national jurisdictions. It also says that as a major fishing power and the biggest importer of fisheries products, the EU should play a key role.

See full Article.

Factoring sustainability in IPO planning: PwC

Those looking to become a part of the renewed vigor in the IPO market may be unprepared for the public scrutiny they are likely to encounter. Mounting interest in companies' nonfinancial disclosures, such as sustainability and corporate responsibility, leads to a simple question: Is your company prepared?

See full Summary.

Environmental goods and services sector - Statistics Explained

This article presents the main results from annual statistics on environmental goods and services in ten European Union (EU) Member States as well as the EFTA country Norway. They provide a first picture of the environmental goods and services sector (EGSS), also called "environment industry" or "eco-industries", in Europe. The environmental goods and services sector consists of a heterogeneous set of producers of goods and services aiming at the protection of the environment and the management of natural resources.

Environmental goods and services are those products that are produced for the main purpose of:

See full Press Release.

FSB: More work on systemic risks

More work needs to be done to improve the implementation of frameworks to monitor and prevent systemic risk, the Financial Stability Board has declared.

While "important steps" have already been taken in developing macroprudential tools, systemic risk monitoring and on improving economic governance, global regulators' inexperience in tackling systemic risk oversight means that further improvements need to be made.

See full Article.

Global Financial Strategy - Why are agricultural prices so volatile?

Rising agricultural commodity prices are not only the cause of derivatives traders, notes Carmel Cahill, senior counsellor in the OECD's directorate for trade and agriculture. Nonetheless there is widespread agreement about the need to strengthen oversight.

In the mid-1990s the long term trend, whereby both the absolute numbers of undernourished and their share in the population in developing countries had been falling, reversed.

See full Article.

Why America lags on climate change

Why doesn’t the United States care about global warming? That’s a common question nowadays. Poll after poll has found that concern about the climate has tumbled. On the policy front, the United States is doing less than even China and India at this point, as a recent report from HSBC details. Over the weekend, Elisabeth Rosenthal tried to explain America’s carbon exceptionalism in a great piece in the New York Times. As you’d expect, it’s a complex, multi-layered story. But two factors — the Senate and the recession — seem worth highlighting here.

First, there’s the question of “Why hasn’t the United States taken large steps to curtail carbon emissions?” One drudging-but-important reason is that large contentious bills are just plain harder to pass here in the United States.

See full Article.

What Will Turn Us On in 2030?

Billions of dollars each year are poured into the development of solar, nuclear, biological, and other energies to substitute for fossil fuels. But so far, issues of cost, efficiency, and scalability call into question the arrival of the next era of energy. Can any alternative sources become viably competitive with fossil fuels? What can we – as individuals, businesses, and governments – do to accelerate the rise of clean energy?

See full Article.

US IFRS choice to sway China and India

Upcoming decisions by Chinese and Indian regulators on whether to adopt IFRS accounting standards could be heavily swayed by a similar decision taken by US policymakers.

International Accounting Standards Board chairman Hans Hoogervorst declared on Thursday that the organisation will "do all that it can" to help the world's biggest economies adopt its standards.

However Hoogervorst warned that while he believes "the prospects are good" for the US to endorse the IFRS standards, its decision could influence the direction of other major world economies.

See full Article.

Carbon: What price simplicity?

Is there a simpler way to put a price on carbon?

The biggest carbon trading project in the world - the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) - has brought small declines in emissions across the bloc, but has few fans.

Opponents of climate regulation hate it because they see it as an expensive white elephant; proponents of tougher regulation hate it because EU member states have secured emission caps high enough that the carbon price (currently around 10 euros per tonne) remains below levels that could drive fundamental change.

See full Article.

Malaria deaths fall nearly 40% worldwide in last decade

There has been a fall of nearly 40% in the number of deaths from malaria worldwide in the past decade, the World Health Organization says.

A new report said that one-third of the 108 countries where malaria was endemic were on course to eradicate the disease within 10 years.

Experts said if targets continued to be met, a further three million lives could be saved by 2015.

See full Article.

Conservation groups attack government green pledges

Ministers are failing to keep to most of their promises to help wildlife, leading nature groups have said.

Failures include culling badgers to tackle bovine TB and attempts to sell off publicly-owned forests in England to businesses.

The group of 29 of the UK's leading environmental groups say just two out of 16 key commitments made by the government are being fully met.

See full Article.

Website The Vanishing Arctic - Stefan Rahmstorf - Project Syndicate (via HootSuite iPhone)

Largely unnoticed, a silent drama has been unfolding over the past weeks in the Arctic. The long-term consequences will far outstrip those of the international debt crisis or the demise of the Libyan dictatorship, the news stories now commanding media attention. The drama – more accurately, a tragedy – playing out in the North is the rapid disappearance of the polar ice cap, the Arctic Ocean’s defining feature.

In September, the sea-ice cover on the Arctic Ocean melted all the way back to the record-low level recorded in September 2007. At 4.4 million square kilometers, it was the smallest ice cover since satellite observations began 40 years ago, with 40% less ice than in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

See full Article.

The shrinking effects of climate change

Despite the claims of a few grandstanders, it's clear that our planet's thermostat is dialing up. Some plants and animals have already responded to this change by modifying their distributions away from the Equator, towards the cooler poles, and by shifting the timing of their breeding or flowering cycles. But beyond their location and behaviours, the physical stature of some organisms is also affected by climate change — which could play havoc with ecosystems and even global food security.

The more we can predict and prepare for such changes, the better we will be able to mitigate their effects, argue Jennifer Sheridan of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and David Bickford of the National University of Singapore. In a Perspective published today in Nature Climate Change, the conservation biologists outline the evidence for past and present downsizing of organisms in response to warming environments and how these changes could affect ecosystems as well as human health.

See full Article.

OB/GYN's solar suitcase saves lives in poor nations

In March 2008, Dr. Laura Stachel arrived in the obstetrics ward of a state hospital in Zaria, Nigeria, determined to find out why so many women were dying in childbirth.

The poverty-stricken country on the coast of West Africa accounts for 2 percent of the world's population but 10 percent of maternal deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Stachel, an obstetrician-gynecologist then pursuing a doctorate of public health at UC Berkeley, expected to provide clinical advice on ways to improve procedures.

See full Article.

10 Communication Strategies to Engage Employees in Sustainability

Committing to sustainability, and taking action on it, is a critical element of today's corporate world, but without getting employees on board through a successful internal communications program, green and other social good initiatives are much less likely to succeed.

Weinreb Group sat down with Susan McPherson, a Senior Vice President at Fenton whose focus is CSR and sustainability communications. We asked her to come up with a 10-point checklist of how the sustainability function or department can best communicate sustainability to its employees.

See full Article.

GOP Members Gird for Battle Against Fossil Fuels

Oil is ammunition,” read a World War II poster encouraging conservation. That message is just as appropriate today, according to John Warner, the former five-term senator from Virginia.

The United States must reduce its consumption of fossil fuels not only for environmental reasons, but to improve its economic and national security, said Warner and former Secretary of State George Shultz, a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor emeritus at the Graduate School of Business. The two senior Republicans outlined their vision for how to enact a national energy policy at a conference hosted by Stanford last week.

See full Article.

Do not buy carbon permits - Abbott

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has urged business not to commit to buying carbon offsets.

The House of Representatives this week passed the government's clean energy legislation, which will put a $23/tonne fixed price on carbon emissions from July 1, 2012, and bring in an emissions trading scheme from 2015.

Under the scheme, which is set to pass the Senate in November, a large portion of emissions reduction will come from Australian businesses buying carbon offsets from overseas.

See full Article.

The Economics of Piracy

Website Where are the hungry people?

Oxfam's new report: Growing a Better Future describes a new age of growing crisis: food price spikes and oil price hikes, devastating weather events, financial meltdowns, and global contagion. Behind each of these, slow-burn crises smoulder: creeping and insidious climate change, growing inequality, chronic hunger and vulnerability, the erosion of our natural resources.

See full Article.

How sustainability has expanded the CFO’s role

Five actions CFOs can take now to enhance corporate value through sustainability

As companies continue to recognize the benefits of sustainable business practices, they will begin to develop the tools needed to evaluate and measure their sustainability efforts.

As they do, their finance functions will become more deeply involved in decisions surrounding sustainability initiatives. The changing landscape means that sustainability, and the accounting related to it, have begun to resemble a new business function being rolled out to the overall accounting organization.

See full Press Release.

Are biofuel flights good news for the environment?

Airlines are starting to test biofuels on commercial routes, but 'sustainable' alternatives to kerosene remain controversial

Are biofuel flights really a good thing for the environment? How can we ever produce enough biofuels to power all flights? And won't they just consume precious land that could be used to grow food instead?

See full Article.

Website Abolish the death penalty

The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state in the name of justice.

The use of the death penalty is often discriminatory, disproportionately targeting the poor and marginalized. It has not been shown to be an effective deterrent against crime and denies the possibility of rehabilitation and reconciliation. It adds the suffering of the condemned prisoner’s family to the suffering of the victim’s loved ones. Above all, as long as human justice remains fallible, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated.

The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. It is an affront to human dignity. It should be abolished.

See full Press Release.

The 10 Worst Stereotypes About Powerful Women

“I’ve been in this field for more than 30 years,” said co-anchor of Today Ann Curry. “I’ve heard a lot of stereotypes.”

Women continue climbing the rungs of power—building their ranks as heads of state, corporate leaders and media influencers—but their minority status means they still face harsh, limiting assessments based on their gender. “Women are being judged more, even by other women,” said Valerie Young, Ed.D., author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women. While male leaders are allowed to have complex personalities, powerful women are often summed up by hackneyed stereotypes that undermine them and their power.

See full Article.

Bill Gates, Guardiola y Rosell, en el Día Mundial contra la Polio

La Fundación FC Barcelona y la Fundación Bill & Melinda Gates han lanzado un video de sensibilización contra la polio aprovechando el Día Mundial contra esta enfermedad. Bill Gates, Pep Guardiola y Sandro Rosell son los portavoces de la campaña

Este lunes 24 de octubre se celebra el Día Mundial contra la Polio. Aprovechando esta fecha la fundación azulgrana y la del fundador de Microsoft han puesto de manifiesto el compromiso que firmaron el mes de julio pasado para luchar contra esta enfermedad.

Ver Artículo completo.

MPs warn of 'schizophrenia' over climate change targets

The government's "schizophrenic attitude" to climate change is undermining investor confidence in low-carbon industries, MPs have warned.

The UK is committed to cutting emissions in half by 2025 but has said it will review that goal in 2014.

Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said a review was needed to ensure UK industry was not losing out by cutting much faster than the rest of Europe.

See full Article.

Victorian MP Anna Burke sent carbon tax death threats

AUSTRALIAN Federal Police (AFP) have been asked to investigate death threats made to a federal Labor MP over her support for the government's carbon tax.

Victorian MP Anna Burke told federal parliament under privilege today she had received numerous emails containing death threats over the past week from a person calling themselves Frank Johnston.

One of the emails was opened by her 12-year-old daughter Madeleine.

``People like Frank Johnston, who sent me a death threat in bold capital red letters today, is beyond the pale,'' she told parliament.

See full Article.

Facing up to carbon reality

For much of the past decade, and particularly the last three years, the cheapest and most effective means of reducing carbon liability has been to try and avoid it altogether.

That’s given handsome bonuses and fees into the hands of PR spinners and lobbyists across the globe, and the party is likely to continue for another few years yet in the US and elsewhere. So given that this option will effectively expire in Australia sometime on Wednesday, should the House of Representatives pass the Clean Energy Future Package, it is not surprising that the anti-carbon tax brigade have given it one last big shove.

See full Article.

A blokey culture that costs the country billions in wasted resources

Paul Hogan's reptile-wrestling tough guy from the 1986 movie Crocodile Dundee typified Australia's reputation for "mateship", a creed of male friendship that often excludes women. A quarter of a century on, it's costing the country billions.

Don't take my word for it - take the Prime Minister's. ''I've always thought the Australian culture is blokey," Julia Gillard said last month. "It's not acceptable to me in the modern age that we can look at boards of major corporations and not see one woman."

Nor should it be to the men ruling over those corporate suites. If basic fairness won't convince them, hit them with something harder to ignore: money.

See full Article.

Abbott a headless chook on carbon tax: Gillard

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says that, although Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is carrying on like a hyperactive headless chook, he won't actually carry through on his promise to repeal Labor's carbon tax if elected.

Meanwhile, the lower house will spend extra time considering amendments to the government's carbon pricing package this evening.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Mr Abbott kicked off the last question time before the lower house votes on the tax by asking Ms Gillard if she would honour her pre-2010 election pledge not to introduce a price on pollution.

See full Article.

Carbon Tax To Go To Vote

It was spruiked as a new industry group making an eleventh-hour plea to the Gillard government to defer the carbon tax, but Manufacturing Australia has been working as a voice of political attack for big manufacturers for at least six months.

Now chaired by Dick Warburton, businessman and more recently climate adviser to the Coalition leader, Tony Abbott, the group says it will lobby on several issues affecting manufacturing even after the expected passage of the carbon tax bills through the House of Representatives tomorrow and the Senate by the end of the year.

See full Article.

Making Solar Panels As Ubiquitous And Efficient As Leaves

Leaves are the ultimate solar panel. If we're going to power more of the world with the sun, we're going to need to imitate plants, one way or another.

Enough solar energy strikes the earth in one hour to power our civilization for a year, and futurists like Ray Kurzweil see us moving to an all-solar civilization in the span of a single human lifetime.

But getting to a civilization powered entirely by renewables isn't going to happen with current technology. Traditional solar panels might become cheaper, but the laws of physics say they can't become that much more efficient. Not to mention that the resources required to build the kind of desert-spanning solar farms that would be required to replace even a percentage point or two of our current energy mix boggle the mind.

See full Article.

What lessons from history's climate shifts?

Earlier this week, the journal Proceeedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a study on climate change that is at the same time scary, comforting, insightful and a statement of the obvious.

To be more accurate, I should probably say that the paper is capable of being interpreted in all of those ways, rather than risk implying that the authors intended to do more than run the numbers and see what popped up.

What they're talking about is climate change in Europe, specifically between 1500 and 1800 AD - a period that encompasses the so-called Little Ice Age.

See full Article.

Climate Change Vote In Parliament

Australia is more likely to make a difference by being a broker, not a leader.

As the government's carbon tax finally goes to a vote in Parliament this week, remember two tough truths. First, nothing Australia does by itself will materially affect carbon emissions or the trajectory of the world's weather. Only concerted global action will make any difference.

Second, the chances of concerted global action are low and trending lower. Two years after the collapse at Copenhagen, momentum for a global plan is stalled.

See full Article.

Sustainable industry: delivering resource-efficient growth and jobs

Europe needs more growth and jobs but these cannot come at the expense of the environment. That is why an effective industrial policy needs to embrace resource efficiency. Two recent studies provide a valuable insight into the progress that has been made in Europe, and the opportunities that exist for future sustainable growth and job creation.

The EU aims to encourage European industries to continually improve their environmental performance and to deliver innovative solutions to environmental challenges. To that end, a great deal of effort has been spent on ensuring not only that Europe is on its way towards a resource-efficient future, but also that businesses are in a position to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by the ongoing transition to a more sustainable, resource-efficient and low-carbon economy.

Two recent research studies funded by the European Commission under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) provide valuable insights on the overall environmental performance of European industry in recent years, and highlight the potential for further improvement.

See full Article.

Climate Change and the End of Australia

Want to know what global warming has in store for us? Just go to Australia, where rivers are drying up, reefs are dying, and fires and floods are ravaging the continent

It's near midnight, and I'm holed up in a rickety hotel in Proserpine, a whistle-stop town on the northeast coast of Australia. Yasi, a Category 5 hurricane with 200-mile-per-hour winds that's already been dubbed "The Mother of All Catastrophes" by excitable Aussie tabloids, is just a few hundred miles offshore. When the eye of the storm hits, forecasters predict, it will be the worst ever to batter the east coast of Australia.

I have come to Australia to see what a global-warming future holds for this most vulnerable of nations, and Mother Nature has been happy to oblige:

See full Article.

It Is Time to Fix Our Boardrooms

As board members we are living in interesting times. For years, we have conducted our business in a black box well away from public scrutiny. Now a hot light is shining upon us and it makes for deeply uncomfortable viewing for both directors and those outside the boardroom.

From Yahoo we get descriptions of a weak and indecisive boardroom that could never get its act together.

From the HP boardroom we get a picture of a group that is at war with itself and "just too exhausted from all the infighting."

See full Article.

Nuevo libro digital echa luz sobre la cobertura del narcotráfico en América Latina y el Caribe

Reportar sobre la industria ilegal de narcóticos y el crimen organizado en América Latina y el Caribe es mucho más difícil, complejo y peligroso de lo que parece, según un nuevo libro digita en español e inglés lanzado por el Centro Knight para el Periodismo en las Américas, en conjunto con las Fundaciones Open Society.

El libro, Cobertura del Narcotráfico y el Crimen Organizado en Latinoamérica y el Caribe, da cuenta del intenso y violento clima de trabajo que enfrentan periodistas de la región en forma diaria, un ambiente genera autocensura e interrogantes sobre cómo la cobertura puede informar mejor a la audiencia. La publicación es resultado de la reunión de periodistas, académicos y expertos en el 8º Foro de Austin de Periodismo en las Américas, celebrado en la Universidad de Texas en Austin en septiembre de 2010. El libro se puede descargar gratuitamente en formato PDF desde la la Bilbioteca Virtual del Centro Knight.

Ver Artículo.

The Most Energy Efficient States In The Nation

A new report details which state governments are doing the most to be energy efficient. Hey, Alabama's not such a fuel-guzzling planet-killer anymore!

Energy efficiency--it's all the rage these days. From CFL light bulbs to Energy Star fridges, it's easy to try to reduce your personal energy consumption. But those advances stem, in large part, from regulations and subsidies from local, state, and federal governments. At the state level, there's a tremendous differences in how those regs and dollars hare doled out.

A new study from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranks all 50 states in terms of how energy-efficient friendly their policies are. These metrics include how much the state is doing to increase efficient transportation, building, and power production, as well as the standards it enforces on appliances and the programs it has in place to help citizens be more efficient.

See full Article.

Are We There Yet?

In 1970, 46 women filed a landmark gender-discrimination case against NEWSWEEK. Forty years later, three writers ask what’s changed for women at work.

They were an archetype: independent, determined young graduates of Seven Sisters colleges, fresh-faced, new to the big city, full of aspiration. Privately, they burned with the kind of ambition that New York encourages so well. Yet they were told in job interviews that women could never get to the top, or even the middle. They accepted positions anyway—sorting mail, collecting newspaper clippings, delivering coffee. Clad in short skirts and dark-rimmed glasses, they'd click around in heels, currying favor with the all-male management, smiling softly when the bosses called them "dollies." That's just the way the world worked then. Though each quietly believed she'd be the one to break through, ambition, in any real sense, wasn't something a woman could talk about out loud. But by 1969, as the women's movement gathered force around them, the dollies got restless. They began meeting in secret, whispering in the ladies' room or huddling around a colleague's desk. To talk freely they'd head to the Women's Exchange, a 19th-century relic where they could chat discreetly on their lunch break. At first there were just three, then nine, then ultimately 46—women who would become the first group of media professionals to sue for employment discrimination based on gender under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Their employer was NEWSWEEK magazine.

See full Article.

Climate Jeffrey Sachs: The Murdoch Legacy

At age 80, Rupert Murdoch will be long gone in coming decades when the planet is grappling with greatly intensified climate change. The recent spike in world food prices and increasing intensity of famines, heat waves and mega-floods has already increased hunger and death in places like the Horn of Africa, far from Murdoch's cares. Yet climate calamities are likely to spread and intensify as the planet continues to warm and the hydrological cycle is increasingly perturbed. The Murdoch name, carried by James and the grandchildren, will live on in global infamy for having used corporate propaganda to disguise the truth from the public until too late.

See full Article.

New Technology To Save--Not Just Catch--Marine Life

After decades of more and more powerful fish-catching innovation, scientists are now developing ways for fisherman to catch just the amount, and type, of fish they need.

Technological advancement on the high seas has advanced almost in lock step with the decline of healthy fisheries around the globe. Since the 1950s, fishery collapse has been predictably preceeded by new advances that allow fisherman to hoover up ever-increasing catches: floating freezer ships, 30-mile drift nets, and open season in international waters.

But technology is also offering a glimmer of a second chance.

See full Article.

If Steve Jobs Had Applied His Talents To Energy And Climate Change

Steve Jobs created innovative products that change the world of technology. Imagine the other industries he could have disrupted.

The anecdotes and stories of Steve Jobs’ career continue to pour in, with the sad news of a life cut too short by cancer. Like many Fast Company readers, I have been a fan of what Steve Jobs and Apple have managed to do over the past decade or so. I also own an iPad 2, an iPhone 4, and a MacBook Air. As has been written many times, Jobs's genius helped Apple to reinvent at least three different industries (computing, mobile phones, and music).

I began to reflect today on what Steve Jobs meant to those industries he reinvented. Even competitors like Bill Gates have praised Steve for how he has innovated and changed the face of so many industries. He set a high bar inside Apple and forced his competitors to "innovate or die." Given that my focus is on profitable innovations for the low-carbon economy, I thought it would be interesting to consider what the U.S. would look like if Steve Jobs had applied his passions to reinventing the energy industry and related systems.

See full Article.

Marine ecology: What a gas!

MOST biological molecules—and hence, most living organisms—are ultimately the result of photosynthesis. Most, but not all. Some creatures are part of food chains that begin with methane gas which seeps from the Earth’s interior in particular places, frequently at the bottom of the sea. Bacteria living in these seeps process the methane into complex molecules, and worms and clams feast on the bacteria. It now seems, though, that such methane-based food chains may stretch farther up the tree of life than mere invertebrates—and may have done so for millions of years.

Recently, as they report in Marine Ecology Progress Series, Tina Treude of the IFM-GEOMAR marine-research institute in Kiel, Germany, and her colleagues sent a remotely operated vehicle called Cherokee to investigate a seep known as the North Alex mud volcano, which is located in the Mediterranean, to the north of the Nile delta. Cherokee, which was equipped with a digital camera and a flashgun, started transmitting images of golden and dark-brown objects, 50-70mm across, that were scattered among the worms and clams (see photograph). The researchers quickly realised that these were sharks’ eggs. Moreover, on closer examination they were able to see yolks, indicating that the embryos inside the eggs were alive and developing.

See full Article.

Manufacturers step up anti-carbon tax campaign

A new Australian manufacturing industry group has launched a fresh attack on the proposed carbon tax.

Manufacturing Australia is a new group which has brought together manufacturers Amcor, BlueScope Steel, Boral and several other companies.

The carbon tax is expected to be voted on in the House of Representatives this week.
Advertisement: Story continues below

The group's new executive chairman, former Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) board member Dick Warburton, says the bills should at least be deferred until it's clear how other countries are going to deal with carbon emissions.

See full Article.