Friday, August 6, 2004

There's money in climate change In fact now there are markets. The Chicago Climate Exchange, the world's first multi-national and multi-sector marketplace for reducing and trading greenhose gas emissions is open for business. And The New Business Climate, a new book from Rocky Mountain Insitute, focuses on how companies can reduce carbon emissions and trade their surpluses. Once Kyoto is in effect, any U.S. business hoping to attract clients in member nations will be placed at a competitive disadvantage. Some European Union members have already begun to impose greenhouse gas emission limits or carbon taxes on transactions within their borders, and businesses that are first to deploy low-carbon technologies are most likely to remain competitive. By the way, we told that BP met its 2010 Kyoto goals last year -- at a profit. 4:16:40 PM    comment []  trackback []

More ecodesign Meanwhile, across the Bay at Merrit College, Aug 5-8: EcoWave2004, sponsored by the San Francisco Institute of Architecture. The hits just keep on comin' 4:06:54 PM    comment []  trackback []

Sustainable design The Natural Step hosted an intriguing sustainable design summit this morning, part of their initiatives in that direction to get more design firms taking sustainability issues into account. Luke Williams of frog design took us through part of their systematic 'frog think' innovation process; his introduction paraphrased: Does design innovation need further analysis? Or more creativity? Removing inhibitions can help -- but it's insufficient Flopping about may seem creative, but is not most the productive Brainstorming was designed for the advertising world (!) (which seeks novelty above all) Scattershot approaches are like relying on enough monkeys with enough typewriters Rebels? Conformists can be more creative than rebels, once they know the rules FrogThink: purposeful, systematic search for ideas Philip White talked about the Okala ecological design curriculum and the IDSA ecodesign strategy wheel. And many more goings on, but that's all I have time for right now. Natural Step, meet ThinkCycle. 4:03:23 PM    comment []  trackback []