click to enlarge
Ta dah! I am delighted to announce that my new website is ready for prime time. After months of ingenious design and coding work by a couple of very talented folks, Joanne Burgess and Andrew Gray, it looks fabulous. It has great graphics in the homepage slider, rotating graphics on other pages, it’s generally easier to navigate and has a much cleaner look and feel. I love it. There are 3 aspects of the new site that will be of most interest to visitors.
1. It is now fully responsive on multiple devices
Internet access by mobile devices is exploding, especially by smart phones. Several of my web pages did not display well on smaller devices, especially the blogs. So we have converted all of my years of blogs to a format that is mobile-device friendly, and reworked other web pages to be the same. Gorgeous. Read more
Wisdom from Kindergarten for a Future-Fit, Sustainable Life
/by Bob WillardMany years ago, I read Robert Fulghum’s humorous collection, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, published in 1988. These days, I am co-authoring the Future-Fit Business Benchmark with Geoff Kendall. Public Draft 2.0 will be released shortly. As part of that work, we have been wrestling with the science-based social system conditions for a healthy, resilient human society on our finite planet. We are rediscovering truth.
Fulghum is an insightful, humorous story teller. Here are his 16 maxims to live by that he learned in kindergarten. Read more
3 Reasons I’m Excited about My New Website
/by Bob Willardclick to enlarge
Ta dah! I am delighted to announce that my new website is ready for prime time. After months of ingenious design and coding work by a couple of very talented folks, Joanne Burgess and Andrew Gray, it looks fabulous. It has great graphics in the homepage slider, rotating graphics on other pages, it’s generally easier to navigate and has a much cleaner look and feel. I love it. There are 3 aspects of the new site that will be of most interest to visitors.
1. It is now fully responsive on multiple devices
Internet access by mobile devices is exploding, especially by smart phones. Several of my web pages did not display well on smaller devices, especially the blogs. So we have converted all of my years of blogs to a format that is mobile-device friendly, and reworked other web pages to be the same. Gorgeous. Read more
Future-Fit Companies Require Future-Fit Boards
/by Bob Willard(This blog by Geoff Kendall and Helle Bank Jorgensen was originally posted to the Sustainable Brands website on March 9, 2015, entitled “What Makes a Board Fit for the Future?” It is reposted here with permission. In the interest of full disclosure, and as the blog references below, Geoff and I are working together on the Future-Fit Business Benchmark. Bob)
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Unburnable Fossil Fuels Necessitate Zero-Carbon Goals
/by Bob WillardIn their article in the January 2015 of Nature magazine, “The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2°C,” Christophe McGlade and Paul Ekins confirm our global carbon budget. They quantify unburnable fossil fuels both globally and regionally. The writing is on the wall. To prepare for an inevitable low-carbon future, smart companies will integrate zero-carbon goals into their business models.
The authors estimate that there are 11,000 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (Gt CO2) trapped in known fossil-fuel resources in the world. By 2050, we can only add about another 1,100 Gt CO2 to the atmosphere before we exceed a 2ºC rise in the average global temperature above pre-industrial levels. That is the upper limit beyond which climate scientists and policy makers unanimously agree that there is at least a 50% chance of catastrophic and irreversible global climate destabilization. That means that 90% of the CO2 that is trapped in worldwide fossil resources must stay in the ground as stranded assets. Read more
Sustainability – Announcing the Future-Fit Business Benchmark
/by Bob Willardclick image to enlarge
Ta-dah! As promised in my last blog, Public Draft 1.0 of the Future-Fit Business Benchmark is now available for use and feedback. This free, open-source resource defines science-based, aspirational, sustainability goals for a company that desires to be fit for the future on a scarcer, more crowded, and hotter planet. We invite your feedback on the goals and your ideas on appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) by which to assess progress toward each goal.
To recap, here is the what, why, who, how, and when of the Future-Fit Business Benchmark. Read more
Future-Fit Business Benchmark… It’s Time
/by Bob WillardIt’s time for a Future-Fit Business Benchmark. The reality of planetary boundaries presents one of the most daunting challenges of the twenty-first century. We are damaging the carrying capacity of the planet faster than it can repair itself. We are exceeding planetary boundaries. We are denying our nested interdependencies. For the first time in human history, the future of a healthy resilient human society is in question. This is not sustainable, neither for society nor for business.
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Frankly, a Low-Carbon Economy Creates Jobs and Growth
/by Bob WillardHarper was refreshingly frank recently. As reported in the Globe and Mail, he used a June 9 joint news conference with visiting Australian Prime Minister Abbot to declare, “No matter what they say, no country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country. We are just a little more frank about that.
… It’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change, but we seek to deal with it in a way that will protect and enhance our ability to create jobs and growth, not destroy jobs and growth. Frankly, every single country in the world feels the same way.” Read more
7 Ways to Get Credible and Stay Credible
/by Bob WillardIn The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook, I explain seven leadership practices used by successful change agents. They are all important, but the one that tops them all is “Get Credible; Stay Credible.” Leadership gurus Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner agree. After writing their landmark book, The Leadership Challenge, they wrote Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, and Why People Demand It.
Without credibility, leaders are not trustworthy. Based on my years of leadership experience and hundreds of books and articles by sustainability leaders, here are 7 ways to become, and stay, a credible sustainable champion. Read more
7 Bold Strokes to Avoid Climate Destabilization
/by Bob WillardWhat would we expect governments to commit to at the 21st United Nations climate summit in Paris in December 2015 if they are serious about avoiding climate destabilization? In this blog post, we’ll discuss 7 bold strokes they could and should consider.
Let’s suppose they take April’s last-chance-before-it’s-too-late IPCC report seriously. Let’s suppose they act on the Pentagon’s warning that climate change is a bigger threat to national security than terrorism. Read more
5 Fixes for Dangerous Wealth Inequality
/by Bob WillardMy last blog was about fixing risky and unsustainable income inequality. Its twin problem is a dangerous wealth chasm between the haves and have-nots. Wealth inequality is related to, but different from, income inequality. Income is what we earn every year; wealth is how much our estate would be worth if we were to die tonight. It’s our net worth, calculated by subtracting our liabilities and debts from our assets. Income inequity is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) issue; the wealth chasm is closely tied to CSR because the super-wealthy are corporate executives.
The ultra-rich are staggeringly wealthy. A recent Oxfam report revealed that the richest 85 people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest half of the world—that is, their $1.8 trillion is equal to the net worth of 3.5 billion people. Further, the wealthiest 1% own $110 trillion, or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world. Read more