April 21, 2020
How is what we're experiencing different from what people have been calling the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) nature of the world?
It's fundamentally different.
April 17, 2020
Heading into the weekend, you may as well relax with climate-positive gin and tonic. Only a thousand bottles of this Scots gin has been shipped so far, but more is on the way. The difference? It's all in the garden peas.
April 5, 2020
The advent of DNA in forensics gave courts powerful tools for attributing blame or establishing innocence. The same is now true of forensic climate attribution. Experts can sit in courtrooms and say with “increasing statistical certainty,” that X event was increased in likelihood and severity by anthropogenic climate change.
March 25, 2020
We were warned, by Bill Gates and others, that we were unprepared for the next pandemic. Why did we fail to heed these prophetic warnings? Hubris: in this case, the presumption that humans control nature and not the other way around.
The response to this crisis makes it clear that countries, sufficiently motivated, can unleash the full range of human knowledge and expertise to solve problems. The trick that has eluded us is convincing lawmakers and citizens that the climate emergency rivals that of this pandemic.
March 16, 2020
It’s possible to apply scientific rigor to thorny issues such as the ‘glass ceiling,’ the lack of women reaching pinnacle positions of power.
There’s no doubt whatever about the problem. However, as Sloan Professor of Organization Studies Roberto Fernandez told MIT Management in August, “the glass ceiling, like dark matter in physics, cannot be observed. We know it’s there, but we’re not sure what’s causing it to endure.”
March 11, 2020
‘Close’ is – famously – only good in horseshoes. However, I’ve done enough valuation to know that hitting close to the mark on the right target – to paraphrase the late mathematician John Tukey – is better than a bullseye on the wrong one. There is value in approximate answers, as long as they're answering the right questions.
March 4, 2020
As unlikely as it sounds, a single water droplet falling from only 15cm, “can light up 100 small LED light bulbs.” Though this technology is a few years away from market, it could be the next major renewable energy source.
March 3, 2020
The 'hard part' of science-based targets should be achieving them, not setting them. Our Science Based Target Setting & Tracking Tool was designed to reduce the time for target setting from weeks or months to a few hours. Most importantly, it makes it far more likely your organization will be willing to set SBTs.
March 3, 2020
Over the years, when working to drill down on sustainability, we’d reach into the toolbox...but the right tools weren’t there. Accordingly, Valutus set out to create tools that were scalable and could be applied to almost any company’s sustainability work, to help them drill powerfully through those barriers.