Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Things I Learned in 2015, A Very Hot Year

The head of the Senate Environment Committee:
If climate is changing, it's because of God, not man.
These are some of the things I learned in the year 2015.

It was the warmest on record, and by a staggering margin.  As of November, no one under 29 years of age had ever lived through a single month that was cooler than its 20th-century average.  

The rainforest in Washington state’s Olympic National Park caught fire for the first time in living memory.  London reached 98F during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.  Miami Beach may have less than 50 years to go before it's completely underwater.  Poison ivy under high carbon conditions is now growing bigger and more toxic.  Warmer temperatures are helping bark beetles destroy thousands of acres of Western pine forest in the US.  In America's Southwest, evergreen trees may virtually disappear in the next century.  Cranberry farmers in Massachusetts are facing warmer springs, higher incidents of fungus and pests and warmer falls; Ocean Spray has begun growing cranberries in New Brunswick, Canada.  Meanwhile, Canadians are losing their reputation as winter people.  

A blue marlin was caught near Catalina Island--1,000 miles north of its typical range.  The shells of pteropods are dissolving due to ocean pH.  Six percent of the world's reefs could disappear before the end of the decade.  Mount Everest’s glaciers are turning into lakes.   If the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru continues to melt at its current rate, it will be gone by 2100.  Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is at its lowest level in 500 years.  There is a“high probability” that the planet’s 26,000 polar bears will suffer a 30% decline in population by 2050 due to the loss of their habitat, which is disappearing at a faster rate than predicted by climate models. (As a small consolation, they can now at least mate with grizzly bears.)  China released a detailed scientific report on climate change that predicted disastrous consequences for its 1.4 billion people, including rising sea levels and the likelihood that more than 80 percent of the permafrost on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau could disappear by the next century.  Glacier retreat in western Asia now threatens China’s water supply.  The International Energy Agency recently reported that the global energy sector emitted as much CO2 in the last 27 years as in all previous years of the Industrial Revolution.  Climate change is slowing down the rate of the earth's rotation.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Senate Environment Committee brought a snowball into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax.  He noted, "It's very, very cold out.  Very unseasonable."  Chris Christie announced, “Hell no,” America shouldn’t lead on climate change.  Ted Cruz said, “If you look at satellite data for the last 18 years, there’s been zero recorded warming.”  Donald Trump said, “I believe in clean air, immaculate air, but I don’t believe in climate change.”  Ben Carson said, “There’s always going to be either cooling or warming going on,” and that “as far as I’m concerned that’s irrelevant.” Marco Rubio said, “I believe climate is changing because there’s never been a moment when the climate is not changing,” but “we’re not going to destroy our economy the way the left-wing government we’re under wants to do.”  And Carly Fiorina added, “Here we have a bunch of liberals and people in the EPA who are willing to sacrifice other people’s lives, other people’s livelihoods at the altar of their ideology.”  

Mark Twain (or maybe Robert Heinlein) once said, “Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.”  Perhaps they meant that weather is what you get but climate is what you deserve.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

From Both Sides Now: A Note on Whack-a-Mole Leadership

I was fed in the 1980s on a diet heavy in strategy.  It was the heyday of GE’s Reginald Jones, who had introduced something called strategic planning into one of America’s great companies--and would later introduce a successor by the name of Jack Welch.  And just up the coast, the Boston Consulting Group was organizing the world into growth-share matrices. 

When I graduated from business school I believed it was a mortal sin to run a company without a strategic plan: Envision an End State 3-5 years out.  Decide where you wanted to compete.  Decide how you wanted to compete.  Write it all down, carve it all up, and make it all so.

This was how the world ran, or ought to run.  Leading a business without a strategic plan was like driving blindfolded on the interstate.

I have since learned that the way we wish the world to work and the way it actually works are two entirely different things.  I would guess, in fact, that far more businesses lack strategic plans than have them.  Some have plans that aren't strategic.  Others have plans but don’t read them.  Some that read them don’t follow them.  Some that follow them execute so badly that the plan might as well not exist.

In other words, the world I was taught to create--and expect--might represent the smallest share of all global business activity.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Food Foolish #5: Some Lessons from the Field at Thanksgiving

Thanks to Gettysburg College and the Gettysburg Foundation
for hosting an evening of Food Foolish discussion.
Since we published Food Foolish in July 2015, my co-author John Mandyck and I have been on a variety of calls, Webex’s and in-person lectures to talk about the issues of food waste and climate change.  John has been especially busy, so if you have an interest in these topics, you should be sure to connect with him on Twitter (@JohnMandyck).  (And I'm on Twitter here.)

As I meet with folks, I get asked a lot of questions that, frankly, I can’t answer.  So I've been studying up on everything from food security, ugly fruits and vegetables, drought, precision farming and composting, to agroecology, urban gardens, food banks and even so-called Frankenfish.  I have found Twitter to be especially helpful in channeling the daily flood of material being generated.  Food + Tech Connect in particular is a terrific feed for entrepreneurial news, and the Guardian in London seems to have the broadest coverage of food and climate change news.

Now, as the season of food (and thanks) is upon us here in the States, I thought I might share just a few of my many lessons from the field.

Getting Mom to Waste Less.  Let’s begin with the very nice woman in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who asked me how she should deal with her mother, who refuses to eat the dark meat from the turkey.  I am still formulating my answer, which might require as much Dr. Phil as Michael Pollan.  (My own dear mother hated parsnips, though it never came to a crisis stage.)  

It’s worth noting, however, that Americans toss out 204 million pounds of turkey annually, worth nearly $300 million and containing about 105 billion gallons of embedded water.  In fact, if we start counting embedded water on our Thanksgiving plate, we’ll find that a can of cranberry sauce has 1,559 gallons, a gallon of apple cider nearly 1,500, and a bowl of mashed potatoes some 2,528 gallons.

So, as I think about how to motivate Mom, let's all plan and shop wisely.  And once the big event is over, work on those leftovers.  I discovered in my travels that many folks now plan “Leftover Parties” on the Friday after Thanksgiving to insure that they reduce things down to the carcass.  This, along with the budding “Meatless Mondays” movement, are small signs that there is a fundamental change in the way Americans are thinking about their food.  (See “The War on Big Food” from Fortune here.) 

Friday, November 6, 2015

Ages Matter: The New Anthropocene

What Ages do we live in?

It seems like a silly question, but think of it this way:  How many people can you name who lived between 500 AD and 1000 AD?  Yes, Charlemagne; everybody gets Charlemagne. 

Joan of Arc?  Sorry; off by 400 years. 

Venerable Bede?  Well yes, but now you’re Googling.

There were maybe 200 million human beings alive in 500 AD and 300 million alive in 1000 AD.  If we figure on a good 30-year life span, that means several billion were born and died across those 500 years. 

This period is traditionally called the Dark Ages.  It’s a half-a-millennium stretch in which most of us can remember the name of exactly two people who lived--and on one we had to cheat.  This was not mankind's happiest era.

Ages matter.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Treasures of Innovation at the Smithsonian

We had the opportunity last weekend to visit the Smithsonian's current exhibit on innovation and enterprise.  What a treat!   Below are just some of the items on display.

This is the 1837 prototype receiver for Samuel B. Morse's telegraph.  By sending electric pulses, Morse was able to record a message as a wavy line on a strip of paper.  Morse was an excellent artist, so it's no surprise the frame is an artist's canvas stretcher.

Monday, October 12, 2015

A Thin Slice of the Industrial Revolution: The Rowley Village Forge Site

I've made it my hobby these last few years to visit historic sites related to the Industrial Revolution in New England.  Some of the locations I've written about on this blog include the Saugus Iron Works, Slater Mill, Mount Hope Finishing CompanyAmes Shovel Collection, the entrepreneurs buried at Mount Auburn here and hereLowell mills, and homage to the steam age at the Waltham Watch Company and the Yankee Steam-Up. With a perfect Columbus Day weekend upon us, it seemed like a good time to organize yet another great Industrial Revolution adventure--but this one only about 2.5 miles from home.

Lockwood Forest is a conservation area of 100 acres which abuts Fish Brook, a tributary of the Ipswich River, and some 2,000 additional acres of conversation land in my hometown of Boxford.  There are miles of trails and, depending on the season, hikers and horses or snow-shoe-ers and x-country skiers.  This weekend the horse-and-riders were out and about.

In 1670, local entrepreneurs constructed the Bromingum Iron Forge on Fish Brook.  Better known as the Rowley Village Forge, it was run by Henry Leonard, a skilled English ironworker who also played an important role at the ironworks in Braintree, and at the the Saugus Iron Works.

Here's the trail in to the forge site.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Food Foolish Files #4: Can AgTech Really Save the World?

Earlier this week, a Silicon Valley investor wrote an excellent article entitled “The Next Food Frontier: How AgTech Can Save the World.”  (See here.)

In it, he discussed some of the problems facing Big Agriculture in America.  For example, corn farmers in Iowa are feeling the effects of increased costs for seeds, fertilizer and herbicides.  Environmental costs are also growing, especially greenhouse gas emissions.
 
The solution, we’re told, lies in low cost sensors, improved computational capabilities and advanced machine learning techniques.  “The advancements,” the author wrote, “are enabling farming to be run as efficiently as a Silicon Valley tech company—with precision, data-driven decisions and automation.”

Some of you may have gulped hard thinking the standard of excellence for efficiency is a “Silicon Valley tech company,” but we get the point.  Efficiency can and should be improved on corn farms in Iowa.  Precision farming is one good solution.

Others problems the article noted are a decrease in yields, and improving options for more health conscious Americans.  Solutions include genetically engineered microbes for improving seeds and soil, computational biology, tissue engineering, and automation.  From this we can create things like biofabricated meats to replace traditional, often inefficient animal-based proteins.

Again, all promising and cool ideas.  (Though when it comes to cutting into a big slab of biofabricated beef—you first.)

“Technology is the answer,” the author concludes.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Food Foolish Files #3: Summer 2015 Update

I call it the "Diaper Syndrome." It works like this.

You get married and are going along just fine when one day your wife announces she's pregnant.  On your drive to work the next day you see a billboard for diapers.  First time everMust have been erected the night before.  Then a bus goes by and it has a diaper ad on its side.  Weird.  And then there's a lady at the park who is diapering her baby.  Do people diaper babies outside? 

Then, of course, you make the mistake of typing “we’re going to have a baby” in a Gmail to a friend and you are inundated with on-line ads for diapers.

Been there?  Who knew anyone thought about diapers that much?

Well that's exactly what’s happened with Food Foolish.  John Mandyck and I researched and wrote about food waste and its connection to hunger and climate change.  Now, everywhere I look, I see, well--food waste.  Or more importantly, people, organizations and countries trying to solve the issue of waste food. 

I've been keeping a log of clippings, and here's just a few you might find interesting.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Food Foolish Files #2: The Magnificent 7th Banana (A Parable)

In chapter 4 of Food Foolish, John and I write about the magnificent banana.  It happens to be the world’s favorite fruit.  Americans eat 27 lbs. of bananas on average each year.

Me, I eat a banana most every morning.  I talked myself into thinking that bananas stop my legs from cramping after I run or bike, but the truth is I just like them.   I figure at 300 a year, I eat about 936 ounces (@ 4 ounces each less 22% for the peel), or about 58 lbs. of banana.  That makes me very close to an expert on the topic.  A 58-Pound-Gorilla, so to speak.

Bananas come in bunches.  (You can quote me on that.)  So when I buy a bunch I might get, say, seven bananas.  (Remember, this is a parable.)  The first banana on the first morning is kind of hard and not real sweet.  The third and fourth morning’s bananas are perfect.  And the last morning?   Well, sometimes it’s not pretty.

But first, skip ahead in Food Foolish to page 125.  (What?  No copy yet?  See here!)  A study done in 1939—in the midst of the Great Depression—determined that the average UK household wasted about 3% of its weekly groceries. 

A recent study pegged the average weekly UK household food waste at about 25%.  What happened?

Friday, July 17, 2015

Modern Air Conditioning 113 Years Later: It Smells Like a Spring Day

Brooklyn, NY.  Now an artist co-op.  In 1902 it housed
the printing presses of Sackett & Wilhelms--ground zero of
modern air conditioning.
July 17 is the day we celebrate the invention of modern air conditioning, courtesy of entrepreneur Willis Haviland Carrier (1876-1950).  His first installation was at a Sackett & Wilhelms printing facility in Brooklyn, New York, in 1902.  

Our story of this seminal event and the extraordinary impact of modern air conditioning appeared in 2012’s Weathermakers to the World, part of the 110th anniversary celebration of modern air conditioning.   See Amazon for the book, or here for an interesting timeline and samples from the book.  I also wrote blog posts called Behind the Scenes, Visiting Ground Zero, and Taking Weathermakers to Basel.  And this is the video we did with CBS This Morning back in 2012.

Meanwhile, my Food Foolish co-author, John Mandyck, posted some thoughts on the 113th here.

It’s hard for most of us navigating through air-conditioned homes, cars and offices to comprehend just how miserable life was before a/c, even in temperate regions of the world.  And it’s also a measure of the pigheadedness of our ancestral grandparents that they were perfectly willing to cool a textile mill or bakery--but a front office or their home?  Never.  After all, what was life without a little suffering?



How Did We Cope?

Friday, July 10, 2015

Food Foolish Files #1: It's a Panacea

A panacea.  Not.
In Food Foolish we try to deliver two simple messages.

First, when we waste food, we harm people, damage the environment, deplete our land and water resources, reduce national security and slow the growth of livable, sustainable cities.  That's the bad news--and we spend considerable time in Food Foolish detailing where and how some of this harm is occurring.  (As Einstein said, or should have said, "If I had 60 minutes to save the world, I'd spend 55 minutes defining the problem.")  

But the second message, and the really good news is this: We don't have to waste food--at least not at the astonishing rate of one-third of everything we produce today.  Food Foolish profiles work being done by good people all around the world to improve harvests, enhance distribution, and change buying and eating habits.  

In a world where 800 million people are hungry and millions malnourished, food waste is one of the truly "big problems" facing humankind.  What makes it an especially compelling issue, however, is that reducing food waste is a panacea.

Panacea.  That's a word we don't get to use that often.  It means universal cure.  Elixir.  Wonder drug.  Magic bullet.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Autos and Smartphones: Comparing Adoption Through Narrative

Chillicothe, Missouri, paved and tidy for the automobile,
was also home of the first sliced bread in 1928
Sometimes it's easy to measure the speed of technology adoption. We know, for instance, that there were 8,000 automobiles on American roads in 1900 and about 25 million in 1950.  That’s very rapid growth for a capital item in the first half of the twentieth century.   Likewise, U.S. smartphone penetration in 2005 was 20.2% and in 2014 was 50.1%, another technological blur.

Speed, penetration, and adoption are a function of numbers and can be charted. What’s harder to measure is the speed at which technology changes our behavior, or our ideas about how the world should work.   Behavior is a function of opinion and emotion, and for that we need narrative.

In 1950 journalist Clyde Brion Davis (1894-1962) wrote a colorful biography, The Age of Indiscretion, about growing up at the turn of the twentieth century in Chillicothe, Missouri.  Davis’s folksy story of the coming of the automobile provides a textured narrative for how one small Midwestern town adapted to one of the big ideas of the modern world.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Gone With the Hogshead Cask and Demijohn

Over the last week I have breezed through about twenty issues of The Outlook, a national magazine published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The Outlook had broad appeal as a general interest magazine, but paid particular attention to the social ills of the Industrial Revolution.  I had a special interest in getting a good feel for life in America in the opening years of the twentieth century, and had acquired on eBay a cluster of issues ranging in dates from 1898 to 1908. 

It only takes a few hours to get drawn into the old century.  Queen Victoria died in January 1901, the end of an era.  President McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo nine months later.  The Boer War raged in South Africa.  America struggled with what to do in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, how to deal with Hawaii, and whether to pick up work in Panama on an abandoned French canal.  The Outlook detailed the so-called "Japanese problem” and “Chinese problem,” wrestling with how America could assimilate tens of thousands of immigrants whose cultures seemed so different.  The lynching of blacks in the South and West was becoming more violent and pervasive.  Labor and “capital” were at each other’s throats from the mills of Pennsylvania to the textile factories of New England to the mines of Colorado.  There were features on skyscrapers, the nascent automobile industry, women’s education, and the ten greatest books of the nineteenth century (with the consensus #1 being Darwin’s Origin of the Species followed closely by Goethe’s Faust).