People are still thinking about alternative energy as alternative to oil, but what if there isn't one? Higher prices are the likely new reality.
Brands thinking about the future are going to have to realize that consumer's disposable income is going to decrease based on increased expenditures on items that we've previously taken for granted; fuel, energy and food. In addition, the knock on impact of this on costs of goods will be significant.
The prospect of decreasing standards of living looms large, but this appears to be the price we are paying for a reliance on an oil-based economy.
"Almost everyone seems to agree: governments now face a choice between saving the planet and saving the economy. As recession looms, the political pressure to abandon green policies intensifies. A report published yesterday by Ernst & Young suggests that the EU's puny carbon target will raise energy bills by 20% over the next 12 years. Last week the prime minister's advisers admitted to the Guardian that his renewable energy plans were "on the margins" of what people will tolerate.
But these fears are based on a false assumption: that there is a cheap alternative to a green economy. Last week New Scientist reported a survey of oil industry experts, which found that most of them believe global oil supplies will peak by 2010. If they are right, the game is up. A report published by the US department of energy in 2005 argued that unless the world begins a crash programme of replacements 10 or 20 years before oil peaks, a crisis "unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society" is unavoidable.
If the world is sliding into recession, it's partly because governments believed that they could choose between economy and ecology. The price of oil is so high and it hurts so much because there has been no serious effort to reduce our dependency."Posted by Ed Cotton
The site explains the multiple benefits of walking.
Posted by Ed Cotton
It was planned to be the world's largest and it now sits under-used (planned to house 1,500 stores and currently has just 12), the victim of a dream that failed to materialize.
Many speculators had big plans for China and wanted to capitalize on the supposed massive growth of the new middle class. Sadly, this growth didn't happen fast enough to propel this new mall to greatness.
It's perhaps a lesson that shows just how easy it is to get carried away with projections of potential and suggests that China's amazing growth can continue for ever.
"On a recent Friday afternoon, an amusement-park employee, slouched in a forsaken ticket booth, tried to kill time by making origami. Another worker slept, with perfect impunity, on a table. In front of the haunted house attraction, one attendant was doing hand-stands while two others looked blankly on.
There was nothing else to do,
because the South China Mall, which opened with great fanfare in 2005,
is not just the world’s largest. With fewer than a dozen stores
scattered through a space designed to house 1,500, it is also the
world’s emptiest – a dusty, decrepit complex of buildings marked by
peeling paint, dead light bulbs, and dismembered mannequins.
“They
set out to be the biggest, and hoped that being the biggest would be
the attracting factor,” says David Hand, a retail analyst at Jones Lang
LaSalle in Beijing, who has followed the project. “It hasn’t delivered.”
The world has plenty of empty malls; there’s even an American website, deadmalls.com, where connoisseurs of desolation post photos and reminiscences of the once-great, now-gutted places where they spent the Saturday afternoons of their youth. What sets the South China Mall apart from the rest, besides its mind-numbing size, is that it never went into decline. The tenants didn’t jump ship; they never even came on board. The mall entered the world pre-ruined, as if its developers had deliberately created an attraction for people with a taste for abandonment and decay. It is a spectacular real-estate failure – but it is also, as I saw when I spent two days exploring the site in May, a strangely beautiful monument to the big dreams that China inspires."
It's a strange coincidence that the story appears in a Dubai based publication- a country that has pushed development to the limits in the hope of becoming THE new tourist destination.
This story came from the amazing BLDGB blog, who has its own post on this incredible story.Posted by Ed Cotton
Basically, business gets to place stress and wear and tear on the earth and its atmosphere, without having to pay for the privilege.
The Guardian has an interesting factoid about this phenomenon in the chewing gum industry where it apparently costs 3p to make and 10p to clean up.
It's interesting when you see the huge gap between cost and cost of clean-up and it would be great to see more examples of the gap between the cost of production and disposal.
Posted by Ed Cotton
The future for consumers looks tough with airlines taking more planes out of service leading to overcrowding and fare increases many business travelers will be asking themselves is they really need to travel. The video conferencing industry, so long talked about as a viable alternative, may at last see the boost it has been promised for so long.
This quote is from the Business Travel News 2008 survey.
"The Air Transport Association last month projected the domestic industry's fuel bill this year will be 72 percent higher this year than in 2007, while JP Morgan's Baker last month projected the cost of fuel to bleed industry profits dry in the next two years, forecasting a "an all-time record" $7.2 billion operating loss this year and a 2009 operating loss of $8.1 billion.
"Certain more modest forecasts are difficult to reconcile absent heroic fuel declines or unprecedented demand growth," Baker said. "A war of attrition appears to be underway. One belief is that airlines will act collectively to massively reduce capacity, leading to near-record fare improvement, but management may instead engage in value destructive behavior as they attempt to merely outlast one another—after all, capacity cuts thus far fall meaningfully short of what we and most executives deem necessary. At current fuel prices, legacy bankruptcies and/or merge-at-all-cost attempts are a question of when, not if."
Rising costs may have one positive effect, reducing the carbon footprint.
Posted by Ed Cotton
It's surprising how live events are becoming more intriguing than ever before.
Organizers are playing with the concepts and bringing unique experiences to lucky attendees.
The important thing here is that these events are very different. They are eclectic, entertaining, sometimes shorter than their conventional cousins and way more interactive.
Here are some that Influx likes:
Dorkbot- Science and technology evenings happening all over the world
Pecha Kucha- Design focused- 20 images only- 20 seconds each
Bar Camps- Originally developers weekends where stuff got made, now all kinds of people are running them
Interesting Amsterdam- Russell Davies and his wonderful circus
Posted by Ed Cotton