Category Archives: Convergence 2050

Leadership 101 for Global Sustainability

2050 transitions require cross-sector leadership, collaboration and courage to fail Continue reading

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Exxon Advocates Climate Adaptation

Exxon and Shell conclude that society get serious about climate adaptation.  Mitigation just is not working.  These two corporations—two of the largest economic entities in the world with access to the best science and analysts that money can by—now admit … Continue reading

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Response to Climate Skeptics

Organizations around the world are adapting to climate change, lending credibility to climate science. These organizations buy, study, and use the best available science to inform their multi-billion dollar decisions and strategies. They not only have access to all the … Continue reading

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Conversations with Climate Skeptics

Climate is right up there with religion and politics as topics to be avoided at polite gatherings, but I still find myself talking with climate skeptics while passing time beside beer coolers at various events.  Regardless of the setting or … Continue reading

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Leadership in an Age of Black Swans and Emergent Systems

Leadership for sustainability requires courage to admit we do not know what we do not know: that unknown unknowns exist. Socrates, the celebrated father of Western philosophy could admit it, “I know that I know nothing,” so perhaps the rest … Continue reading

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Who Do You Screw?

Watch this short video and then come back. Aren’t the Aussies clever? Certainly, this video makes its point—we are screwing the future.  But sadly, the video ignores an even bigger issue that makes the challenge of sustainable development particularly vexing: … Continue reading

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Not an Either-Or Question: Climate Mitigation AND Adaptation

It is now difficult to imagine a future where climate chaos won’t be flooding cities, raising food prices, killing humans, decimating biodiversity, and generally wreaking havoc. We will soon experience the consequences of carbon dioxide levels in excess of 450 … Continue reading

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Two Reasons I Cried in Shanghai

I admit it: I am a sustainability nerd.  Instead of shopping during my one free afternoon in Shanghai, I instead toured its Urban Planning Exhibition Center. Chinese celebrate urbanization—how refreshing—so most Chinese cities have similar exhibits. This one teemed with … Continue reading

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Pain, Bitterness and Sustainability In China

“Sustainability is the reaction to pain,” says Richard Brubaker, sustainability guru in China, who is optimistic about sustainable development because he now sees governments and businesses responding to the pain inflicted by economic growth, pain that includes crises in public … Continue reading

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The Future & 10 Billion

Warning: uncertain times ahead!   The Future and 10 Billion belong to spurts of literature that periodically erupt, spewing warnings that the end is near and that sustainable development is not possible; classics of this genre include Malthus’ Principle of Population, … Continue reading

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