Apple, Blackberry, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Motorola, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba and other consumer electronics companies can be less unsustainable than their competitors and less unsustainable tomorrow than they are today. However, given:

1. The state of the art in manufacturing,
2. Electronics are made with designs that are supplanted before they wear out, and
3. Recycling consumer electronics is expensive and releases toxins,

the consumer electronics industry can not, almost by definition,  be "Sustainable." For what they need to do, click beneath the fold.

Here we go:

1. Design products in environmentally neutral facilities, powered by clean, renewable energy.
2. Manufacture the products in environmentally neutral facilities.
3. Use 100% biodegradable packaging.
4. Manufacture the products out of easily recyclable materials.
   

   

   SONY EX 7

5. Offset the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released in shipping
6. Pay employees a living wage.
7. Verify that contract employees, including those in third world manufacturing houses are paid a living wage rather than a slave wage.
8. And End the "Built In Obsolescence" / Consumer schtick.

The Apple iPad may point the way.   The suicides at the Foxconn manufacturing  plant in China, which also makes widgets for Dell, HP and others, nonwithstanding, the iPad has no moving parts, other than elementary particles, which are hard to keep stationary.

I use a 20-year old stereo and a 10-year old car. Development on the Newton platform started in 1987 and ended in 1998. You can still find them, used, and functioning. My 4-year old Blackberry works as well as it did when it was brand new. Why should the Blackberry or an iPad not last 20 years?

They would have to be upgradable in software via flash ROM. Apple would have to support it for a reasonable amount of time, but that's a management decision, not a technical question.

Farshad Manjoo, “10 Lessons from the Coolest Company, Anywhere,” in Fast Company, offers some interesting history and observations on Apple. He writes:

The one-time underdog from Cupertino is the biggest music company in the world and soon may rule the market for e-books as well. What's next? Farming? Toothbrushes? Fixing the airline industry?

As much as I respect Steve Jobs, I don't see him changing farming or fixing the government, as is suggested in the Fast Company article. The cool iPhone / iPad apps that identify trees and constellations can not tap a maple tree, milk a cow, slaughter and butcher a cow, hog, or chicken. The iPhone can't even scramble eggs or make a cup of coffee.

Apple makes mistakes, as the "Death Grip" on the iPhone 4 proves. And they are on and overloading the AT&T network; maybe they should switch to another carrier.  Be that as it may, as Manjoo says:

Right now, it seems as if Apple could do all that and more. The company's surge over the past few years has resembled a space-shuttle launch -- a series of rapid, tightly choreographed explosions that leave everyone dumbfounded and smiling. The whole thing has happened so quickly, and seemed so natural, that there has been little opportunity to understand what we have been witnessing.

The company, its leader, and its products have become cultural lingua franca. Dell wants to be the Apple for business; Zipcar the Apple for car sharing. Industries such as health care and clean energy search for their own Steve Jobs, while comedian Bill Maher says the government would be better run if the Apple CEO were head of state. (The Justice Department and FTC, which are both investigating Apple's tactics, might disagree.)

Apple Newton

Manjoo mentions the Newton,  the first commercial notepad computer, a revolutionary product – like every Apple product – but doesn't mention that the Newton and the Lisa – the first commercial computer with a GUI – while great – were commercial failures, or that the iPad appears to be the successor to the Newton (click here).

In discussing what might be termed "The Apple Way," Manjoo looks for magic bullets. There are none. Like Toyota, Boeing, and the other top companies, Apple is successful because of discipline and hard work. And simplicity, marketing, and customer service.

Apple iPad

Manjoo writes that Apple is killing the mouse, as if this is dramatic or horrific. He doesn't realize that the mouse is simply a peripheral that serves to move a marker, called a "sprite" in the X-Windows labs, around the screen. Is Apple "gunning" for the mouse? I don't think so. If it makes life easier, keep it. If it doesn't, then it has outlived its usefulness. I use a mouse on desktops, a touchpad on laptops. Moving my hand from keyboard to mouse is inefficient. A touchpad would be more efficient. The mouse is useful, but limited. (Click here for "Has the Mouse Outlived its Usefulness?")

Horse and Girl

Jobs quotes Henry Ford saying “If I asked people what they want they would say 'A faster horse.'” Apple doesn't use “Focus Groups” because they create faster horses. Consider the Macbook power cord. It's held in place by magnets. If you gently tug on the power cord it falls off. Hold it in proximity to the interface it leaps across space and fits automagically. If you gently tug a non-Mac laptop the power cord rips out or pulls the laptop off a desk. Often the motherboard – power cord interface breaks – requiring a new motherboard, and $200 or $300. The the magnetic power interface, while a great idea, is not an idea from a focus group.  If it was, then it would be on other laptops.

Regarding Open Architectures, Apple's OS X is a BSD variant of the Unix Operating System invented at AT&T Bell Labs in the 70's. Unlike Linux, which emulates Unix, OS X is Unix. But this is really only important to computer hobbyists. Most Mac users don't care. They like OS X because it works, it's secure, they don't need to worry about viruses.

In the Adobe Flash v HTML 5 and H.264 argument Apple is technically correct. Adobe Flash is a proprietary product, as is MS Windows, and OS X. HTML is an open language defined by Internet Request For Comments. But like the the Unix v Linux v Windows battles, it is only the computer geeks who really care.

What might be called "The Apple Way" is

• Discipline,
• Hard Work,
• Design for Simplicity,
• Good Customer Service,
• Making Our Own Rules,
• Products that Feel like Magic,
• Things People Love.

Think Different.

Jobs and company create a series of what James Collins an Jerry Porras in "Built To Last" (ISBN: 978-0060566104) called "Big Hairy Audacious Goals." When the team achieves one, they move on to the next. Apple doesn't "break the rules" as much as it makes their own rules, which is summed up in the "Think Different" mantra / zeitgeist.  The big question for me is "What happens after Steve Jobs? Will Apple fade like Westinghouse after Westinghouse or GM after Sloan or will it prosper like Disney after Disney, IBM after Tom Watson, Sr., and Tom Watson, Jr., and HP after Hewlett and Packard? I'm betting on prosper.

These speak for themselves, for the most part. But it might be worth noting that none we've noticed have electric assist, either by hybrid electric or solar electric, which are both, we believe, in limited use around the world.

From FrogMob, the mob-sourced section of the FrogDesign Blog¹, Work Bikes:

[[Show as slideshow]]

From the Cool Tools section of Kevin Kelly's site, kk.org:

The XtraCycle:

XtraCycle - Free Radical - after-market modification/accessory

This is only one of nine variations of the Free Radical Conversion kit. See that - and bicycles with cargo carrying included, at XtraCycle.

Cool Tools also has great suggestions about bicycle repair tools, and other modifications. Check their Autonomous Motion section, their Bikes/Trikes subsection of their Street Use archives for more work bike info, including Velowalla, an archive of bike/trike use for business in India.

1. From the reknowned design firm FrogDesign - where they design everything except frogs

This post will be updated as we gather more resources, and and attempt to make it more comprehensive and practical. - JS

There are, roughly, speaking, five types of solar cooking devices:

parabolic solar cooker

• Panels
• Boxes
• Parabolic Cookers (convex)
• Kettles
• Hybrids

Practical plans

Instructables.com - another reminder of the brilliance of the Instructables concept and execution, searching the site with the search terms "solar oven" yielded dozens of plans of varying type and sophistication.

How to make a really hot solar cooker in concrete - by GreatHub

DIY Plans from Solar Cooking.org (most in at least two languages)

How to Make a Pizza Box Solar Oven from Solar Now

The Science, Engineering and Math of Solar Cooking

Parabolic Solar Cookers at Approprepedia

Solar cooking and the development of solar cookers

panel design solar cooker - via Solar Cooking Atlas

Solar Ovens for Sale

List of Manufacturers and Vendors by Country

Global Sun Oven - which makes the household size Global Sun Oven, and a trailer-sized solar cooker capable of cooking 1,200 meals per day - The Villager Sun Oven.

Kyoto Box - see our earlier post.

Solar Cookers International sell a range from a $65 model intended for campers, a 23-pound, 2-pot model called the SOS Sport ($197), and the Tulsi-Hybrid, which can be powered by electricity if there's no sunlight ($307). Like SunOven, they sell an inexpensive Water Purification Indicator - knowing that water purification is a critical second use for solar cooking equipment.

The Solar Oven Society sells various configurations of its solar oven which (like Global Sun Oven and Solar Cookers International, clearly identifies itself as an anti-poverty, disaster-response organization; all are subsidiaries or projects of nonprofits) is designed to be shipped unassembled en masse:

The parts for approximately 2,000 SOS Sport solar cookers can be shipped in a 40-foot container. Assembly is simple and requires no electricity or dependence on large equipment. This provides employment opportunities in the host country.

Organizations and Information Hubs

Solar Food Processing and Conservation

Solar Cooking International

The Solar Cooking Archive Wiki - on Wikia.com

Cornell University - Engineers for a Sustainable World Amanecer Solar Oven Team

Solar Cooking Atlas (link is to English version; site also has versions in French and in Spanish)

Moreover, Mr. Read's understatement - the entire post is three short grafs and two images - makes his post more affecting, rather than less.

Here's a NASA image of the affected area as of August 14, 2009 (Mr. Read, without saying so, anticipates speculation that this caused by seasonal variation):

2009 image

h

One year and one day later, August 15th, 2010:

Max Read's exemplary post, The Satellite Pics of Pakistan's Devastasting Floods, from Gawker.com

The Zero Race, a competition between automobiles powered by sustainable energy sources, begins today in Switzerland. There are, we regret to report, only four teams, none from the United States.  The ZeroTracer is the Swiss entry; the Power Plaza Team is from South Korea; Team Trev is from Adelaide, Australia and the Vectrix Team is from Berlin. Additional details about the race, including route, which is intended to take 80 days, are taken from the Zero-Race website:

The Zero Tracer from Team Orlikon (Switzerland)

The Zero Race will start in Geneva (Switzerland) on 16. August 2010, and continue eastwards for a total distance of about 30 000 km. The event is planned to be completed in 80 days (excluding maritime crossings) across 16 countries with stops in approximately 150 major cities en route.

Zero Race will visit places of all sizes, such as major cities including Bruxelles, Berlin, Vienna, Kiev, Moscow, Astana, Shanghai, Vancouver, San Francisco, Austin and Madrid.

The Zero Race will visit the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun at the end of November and end it will finish in Geneva at the end of January 2011.

In each Zero Race stop along the route, there will be press conferences and events.

Matthew Wald of The New York Times, assisted by Liz Robbins, adds some details to current knowledge of the Alaska plane crash of August 9th. From Communication Problems May Have Delayed Search Following Alaska Plane Crash:

The search for the plane that crashed on an Alaska hillside Monday night, killing former senator Ted Stevens and four others, may have been delayed by hours due to communication breakdowns on the ground and a problem with the plane’s emergency beacon, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday.

Two investigators for the safety board were briefly on the site Wednesday, while other investigators are waiting to interview the four survivors who are at Providence Alaska Medical Center. The crash killed the pilot, Theron “Terry” Smith, 62.

The conditions of two of the survivors improved on Thursday, as a spokeswoman for the hospital said that James Morhard and Kevin O’Keefe were upgraded from serious to fair condition. Kevin O’Keefe’s father, Sean O’Keefe, the former NASA administrator, is still in critical condition. William Phillips, 13, is still in good condition. His father, William, died in the crash.

Board investigators are having trouble piecing together a timeline of the crash, because they say they have received conflicting reports of when the plane took off and when rescuers reached the scene, said the chairwoman, Deborah A.P. Hersman.

Reports have put the plane’s departure from a hunting lodge anywhere from 2 p.m. to 3:15 p.m., and discovery of the plane between 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. It would have taken the group about 15 minutes by air from the take-off to the crash scene, unless they had “flown around a little bit, trying to make their way” in the poor visibility,” Ms. Hersman said.

A flight plan, according to the Times, was not required, "was not required and would not have made the crash any less likely, but would have alerted authorities earlier that it was overdue."

What inferences can we draw based on current information? What questions are raised?

• Not filing a flight plan would seem to be erring away from caution - and also raises the question of whether anyone connected with the flight was interested in preventing the creation of a paper trail;
• the gross variations in recollections of departure time (two hours, in accounts given hours after a memorable event, with the ready availability of other records (mobile phone records, for instance) suggest the possibility that one account is false, or otherwise unreliable.

We'll try to keep up with this story as it unfolds.

Open Jason lists sites which read the Web, with various emphases (with respect to sourcing), and let you know.

13 Alerting Sites | OpenJason.

The brilliant David Stephenson has, as some readers may know, done some serious thinking and writing about new media/social media and disaster response. (Put "Stephenson" in our search box and you'll get some of our earlier pieces. Better yet, go to his site and read his work).

Apart from Google Alerts, which I use, for instance, to track public developments in the Robert Levinson case, I haven't used these. But I think they generally need to be tweaked a bit, depending on the search terms involved, to get the signal-to-noise ration under control. In some cases, duplication and republication may be a problem.

There's a good opportunity here to do some objective testing with a common set of search terms. Does this sound like a decent crowd-source project?

The Pakistan Red Crescent Society reports as follows on the current floods in Pakistan:

Period covered by this update: 21st July to 10th August, 2010

PRCS along with its Movement Partners (IFRC and ICRC) and Partner National Societies (PNSs) is jointly responding to the Monsoon Floods 2010. CHF 250,000 (USD 239,406 or EUR 183,589) has been allocated from the IFRC's Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) to support the Pakistan Red Crescent Society National Society in delivering immediate assistance to some 35,000 beneficiaries.

Heavy rains starting from 21 July 2010 have triggered both flash floods and river floods in several parts of the country resulting in a loss of life and widespread displacements. It is estimated that more than 300 people have perished and well over 1 million others have been affected. Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa (KPK), Baluchistan and Punjab have been the worst- affected areas. Thousands of people have lost their homes and livelihoods.

Note that this is dated August 10th; we're trying to provide more complete and current information as possible.

Via ReliefWeb. Link to ReliefWeb post here.

Unlike Warren Buffett, Jeremy Grantham, chairman of Grantham Mayo van Otterloo, GMO.com, is not a "celebrity investor." And also unlike Buffett, Grantham is an environmentalist. Jeremy and his wife, Hannelore, established the Grantham Foundation for the protection of the environment, and The Grantham Research on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. Like Buffett, Mr. Grantham talks to investors who hire him, and via his investments, charities, and other work, he talks to the world.  Mr. Grantham recently wrote "Everything you want to know about Global Warming in 5 minutes",

Two ideas stand out:

Climate warming involves hard science. The two most prestigious bastions of hard science are the National Academy in the U.S. and the Royal Society in the U.K., to which Isaac Newton and the rest of that huge 18th century cohort of brilliant scientists belonged.  The presidents of both societies wrote a note recently, emphasizing the seriousness of the climate problem and that it was man-made. ...  Both societies have also made full reports on behalf of their membership stating the same.  Do we believe the whole elite of science is in a conspiracy?  At some point in the development of a scientific truth, contrarians risk becoming flat earthers.

Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for … what?  Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs, and by right-wing politicians and think tanks?

The full text is below:

1) The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, after at least several hundred thousand years of remaining within a constant range, started to rise with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.  It has increased by almost 40% and is rising each year.  This is certain and straightforward.

2) One of the properties of CO2 is that it creates a greenhouse effect and, all other things being equal, an increase in its concentration in the atmosphere causes the Earth’s temperature to rise.  This is just physics.  (The amount of other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as methane, has also risen steeply since industrialization, which has added to the impact of higher CO2 levels.)

3) Several other factors, like changes in solar output, have major influences on climate over millennia, but these effects have been observed and measured.  They alone cannot explain the rise in the global temperature over the past 50 years.

4) The uncertainties arise when it comes to the interaction between greenhouse gases and other factors in the complicated climate system.  It is impossible to be sure exactly how quickly or how much the temperature will rise.  But, the past can be measured.  The temperature has indeed steadily risen over the past century while greenhouse gas levels have increased.  But the forecasts still range very widely for what will happen in the future, ranging from a small but still potentially harmful rise of 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit to a potentially disastrous level of +6 to +10 degrees Fahrenheit within this century.  A warmer atmosphere melts glaciers and ice sheets, and causes global sea levels to rise. A warmer atmosphere also contains more energy and holds more water, changing the global occurrences of storms, floods, and other extreme weather events.

5) Skeptics argue that this wide range of uncertainty about future temperature changes lowers the need to act: “Why spend money when you’re not certain?”  But since the penalties can rise at an accelerating rate at the tail, a wider range implies a greater risk (and a greater expected value of the costs.)  This is logically and mathematically rigorous and yet is still argued.

6) Pascal asks the question: What is the expected value of a very small chance of an inf nite loss?  And, he answers, “Infinite.”  In this example, what is the cost of lowering CO2 output and having the long-term effect of increasing CO2 turn out to be nominal?  The cost appears to be equal to foregoing, once in your life, six months’ to one year’s global growth – 2% to 4% or less.  The benefits, even with no warming, include: energy independence from the Middle East; more jobs, since wind and solar power and increased efficiency are more labor-intensive than another coal-fired power plant; less pollution of streams and air; and an early leadership role for the U.S. in industries that will inevitably become important.  Conversely, what are the costs of not acting on prevention when the results turn out to be serious:  costs that may dwarf those for prevention; and probable political destabilization from droughts, famine, mass migrations, and even war.  And, to Pascal’s real point, what might be the cost at the very extreme end of the distribution: Definitely life changing, possibly life threatening.?

7) The biggest cost of all from global warming is likely to be the accumulated loss of biodiversity.  This features nowhere in economic cost-benefit analysis because, not surprisingly, it is hard to put a price on that which is priceless.

A special word on the right-leaning think tanks:  As libertarians, they abhor the need for government spending or even governmental leadership, which in their opinion is best left to private enterprise.  In general, this may be an excellent idea. But global warming is a classic tragedy of the commons – seeking your own individual advantage, for once, does not lead to the common good, and the problem desperately needs government leadership and regulation.  Sensing this, these think tanks have allowed their drive for desirable policy to trump science.  Not a good idea.

9) Also, I should make a brief note to my own group – die hard contrarians.  Dear fellow contrarians, I know the majority is usually wrong in the behavioral jungle of the stock market.  And Heaven knows I have seen the soft scientists who lead ?nance theory attempt to bully their way to a uniform acceptance of the bankrupt theory of rational expectations and market efficiency. But climate warming involves hard science. The two most prestigious bastions of hard science are the National Academy in the U.S. and the Royal Society in the U.K., to which Isaac Newton and the rest of that huge 18th century cohort of brilliant scientists belonged.  The presidents of both societies wrote a note recently, emphasizing the seriousness of the climate problem and that it was man-made.  (See the attachment to last quarter’s Letter.)  Both societies have also made full reports on behalf of their membership stating the same.  Do we believe the whole elite of science is in a conspiracy?  At some point in the development of a scientific truth, contrarians risk becoming flat earthers.

10) Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for … what?  Being needled by nonscienti?c newspaper reports, by blogs, and by right-wing politicians and think tanks?  Most hard scientists hate themselves or their colleagues for being in the news.  Being a climate scientist spokesman has already become a hindrance to an academic career, including tenure.  I have a much simpler but plausible “conspiracy theory”: that fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profi ts, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results.

11) Why are we arguing the issue?  Challenging vested interests as powerful as the oil and coal lobbies was never going to be easy.  Scientists are not naturally aggressive defenders of arguments.  In short, they are conservatives by training:  never, ever risk overstating your ideas.  The skeptics are far, far more determined and expert propagandists to boot.  They are also well funded.  That smoking caused cancer was obfuscated deliberately and effectively for 20 years at a cost of hundreds of thousands of extra deaths.

We know that for certain now, yet those who caused this fatal delay have never been held accountable.  The pro? ts of the oil and coal industry make tobacco’s resources look like a rounding error.  In some notable cases, the obfuscators of global warming actually use the same “experts” as the tobacco industry did!  The obfuscators’ simple and direct motivation –  making money in the near term, which anyone can relate to – combined with their resources and, as it turns out, propaganda talents, have meant that we are arguing the science long after it has been nailed down.  I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?”

12) Almost no one wants to change.  The long-established status quo is very comfortable, and we are used to its de?ciencies.  But for this problem we must change.  This is never easy.

13) Almost everyone wants to hear good news.  They want to believe that dangerous global warming is a hoax.  They, therefore, desperately want to believe the skeptics.  This is a problem for all of us.

Postscript
Global warming will be the most important investment issue for the foreseeable future.  But how to make money around this issue in the next few years is not yet clear to me.  In a fast-moving field rife with treacherous politics, there will be many failures.  Marketing a “climate” fund would be much easier than outperforming with it.