Saturday, 14 July 2007

Industry Bids to address climate chaos impact - Martin Talbot MUSICWEEK

The music industry has come together to launch its first coordinated response to climate change in the form of a brand new pan-industry pressure group. Senior executives from across the business attended the launch last Friday for Julies Bicycle, a new association which will aim to engage the music industry and help affect change. With former Creative & Cultural Skills Director Al Tickell as its full-time Director the organisation includes Big Life's Jazz Summers, Universals David Joseph, Chrysalis Group's Jeremy Lascelles, Live Nation's Stuart Galbraith, BPI's Jon Webster, Greenerfestivals.com's Ben Challis, EMI's Ayesha Hazarika, and PDT's Neil Johnston. Launched the day before the Al Gore-backed Live Earth Concert at Wembley Stadium, Julies bicycle will aim to create an industry-wide consensus of emission reduction targets and low energy use, from the creative process through to the music consumer, as well as promoting industry leadership on the issue. The group, a not-for-profit company, has already commissioned research from Oxford's Environmental Change Institute to map emissions of the music industry and identify steps needed to become climate positive, says Tickell. Evidence from the research will highlight levels of current emissions, targets for reduction, and an Action Plan for the industry, part of which will see the Board working with various subsectors - including publishing, promoting, recording, management and retail - to help develop their own plans for emissions reduction. Jazz Summers, one of the driving forces behind the initiative said at the launch, "I am really amazed at all the faces in this room - the whole of the music industry is here. This is important for our future, our kids' future, and our grandchildrens." Live Nations Stuart Galbraith took to the stage to explain how his organisation is aiming to change the way it does business, revealing that he is on the edge of appointing an environmental management director. Al Tickell, Julies Bicycle Director said, "Anyone in the music industry who wants to make a stand and be part of effecting change can register on-line at juliesbicycle.com." Funded through private, public and corporate sponsorship the company has applied for charitable status.

Photo - Jazz Summers Big Life Management & Chair of Julies Bicycle addressing the industry at the recent breakfast event sponsored by the Berkely Hotel

Posted by Picasa

Friday, 13 July 2007

PICNIC Green Challenge

To encourage and aid the introduction of new climate-friendly products and services, the Dutch Postcode Lottery and PICNIC, Europe’s top event for cross-media creativity and innovation, have launched the PICNIC Green Challenge.
The challenge is calling all creative entrepreneurs to dream up new consumer friendly, greenhouse-gas-reducing products and services. The organisers are looking for entries that have something to do with IT or new media, and the winning entry will receive €500000, coaching from business leaders and a starting list of customers.
The Picnic Green Challenge is unique for two reasons. Firstly it calls on an untapped target group – the creative minds of the new economy – to help the planet in their own distinctive way. Second, its aim is big and broad, to give the world its next must-have product or service which also helps to save the planet.

Thursday, 12 July 2007

Guster: 'It's cool to be green'

One theme that has always run through rock music is freedom. Freedom of expression, freedom of thought and freedom to do whatever the hell you want.

But what would happen to freedom if every gig you played, every CD you sold and every track listing you printed on a CD cover had to be meticulously thought out so that it is carbon neutral, biodegradable and 100 per cent eco friendly?

Boston-based band Guster is on a mission to find out. Not content with just preaching about green issues, they have decided to put their money where their mouth is and lead their fans by example.

And fans are one thing they are not short of. They played to 100,000 people when they headlined a festival in Boston and MTV describes them as one of the most successful bands to hit the East Coast of America in recent years.

But the indie rock four-piece also manages to be arguably the greenest band in the world. They are deadly serious about everything from the first strum of a new melody to their sell-out tours being fastidiously environmentally friendly.

They believe the future is eco-rock. Their crusade leaves nothing to chance. When they arrive at the next tour date it will be on their bio-diesel tour bus. Inside you will find biodegradable tableware made from corn and potatoes and fans are invited onboard to see for themselves.

Naturally there are recycling facilities on the bus and at the venue, and the vehicles are cleaned using non-toxic, eco-friendly cleaning products. The equipment will be rigged up to rechargeable batteries and in between songs they'll be swigging from aluminium reusable water bottles. Backstage are biodegradable cups and utensils.

Meanwhile the concerts have been made carbon neutral - offsetting global warming emissions with wind power by buying energy credits from Native American renewable energy company NativeEnergy.

"As we learned more about the viable options we had to reduce our footprint, we got excited to try these options such as using bio-diesel in our tour bus and truck, eco-friendly merchandise, supporting renewable energy, using biodegradable cups, bowls, plates, and utensils, and reducing our plastic waste," singer and guitarist Adam Gardner tells me.

The band urges fans to take public transport and to turn up to their gigs early to pick up litter around the venue. If they really must travel by car, fans are advised to buy carbon credits to offset their journey to the concert.

Guster's entire catalogue, including the new album, is completely carbon neutral. Liner notes are even printed in soy ink on sustainable paper. But while other musicians are only just coming round to green issues, Guster sees environmental awareness and rock and roll as one and the same. "It's cool to be green, it's definitely smart to be green and I'm glad to be making it more cool and hip," explains 34-year-old Gardner.

"If you want to fuck the system, then run your car off cooking oil instead of buying it from a gas station. That is screwing the system - that is cool. We are in a unique position where we are in front of tens of thousands of people and we can spread the awareness."

The idea of green-rock is starting to spread.As if eco-fuel isn't enough, bands such as Britain's Gomez are reportedly making changes like reducing the idling time of their bio-diesel tour bus. The hugely successful Barenaked Ladies from Canada have also metamorphosed into a green band. Like Guster, they are also pained to see a used guitar string go to waste and, instead, recycle them into jewellery with a percentage of the proceeds going towards offsetting carbon emissions.

They also offset the energy used at each of their shows with wind power. Gardener doesn't want to stop at making Guster as green as possible, he wants to help other bands achieve eco-nirvana. Along with his wife, the environmentalist, Lauren Sullivan, he has founded a non-profit organisation called Reverb that helps musicians such as Sheryl Crow, Coldplay, Jack Johnson, Red Hot Chili Peppers and many others make their tours greener.

Reverb is a non-profit organisation that seeks to raise awareness and support for the environment through building upon the powerful connection between musicians and their fans. Through Reverb's Fan Offset Program, Barenaked Ladies Fans alone neutralised 8.5 million miles of driving in past six months.

In the past year, through bio-diesel in the busses and carbon neutral concerts, Guster has reduced or neutralised over 2,100 tons of CO2, the same as not driving 4.2 million miles. But for these bands, whose main audiences generally spend their spare time getting drunk and getting laid, is this hardcore eco message not falling on deaf ears?

According to music culture expert, Dr Harvey G Cohen of King's College London, part of being young and cool is having one eye on climate change. "Of course being green is cool," he says. "It's sexy, especially with the young people who have to inherit the Earth."

As a result green issues are becoming essential in PR and make sense economically. "People have to be educated with what is happening in the world," Cohen adds. "Artists are leaders and they think about the world and want a roll in saving it. Guster are walking the walk and talking the talk. I think they are sincere but it has other advantages too. The smarter groups don't want to be part of the world's problems."

Guster has become a highly successful pop/rock band that comprises mainly of two guitars and a bongo, although they have brought in a number of other instruments. They are Gardner; Ryan Millar, 34, on guitar and vocals; drummer Brian Rosenworcel; and bassist (and multi instrumentalist) Joe Pisapia, 38.

They have toured with Bob Dylan and their music oozes vintage harmonies and sunny melodies that echo the free-spirited sound of the Sixties and Seventies. It's 38-year-old Rosenworcel's trademark to play the drums predominantly with his hands until they blister and bleed. It is not unknown for him to place them in a bucket of ice water after a particularly vigorous session. Like most rock bands, the group likes to party and have plenty of tales of past excess. Adam scoffs when I ask him if his idea of relaxing is sipping on a fairtrade smoothie.

"We do sometimes drink a non-organic beer when we are feeling particularly crazy," he laughs.

It seems that going green never sounded so good. Guster's latest album, Ganging up on the Sun, went to number 25 in the US Billboard 200 album chart. No mean feat for a bunch of guys who met at college studying religion and psychology.

"Green is the new black in rock," says Dr CP Lee, author of Shake, Rattle & Rain - Popular Music in Manchester. "The times they are a changing. We only need to look at this year's Glastonbury which was themed around awareness of green issues to see how much effort is being put into the eco-debate and changing public consciousness."

Even though certain parts of the American establishment are dragging their heels on the subject of climate change in the US, Guster has got the jump on the rest of the world when it comes to green rock.

The band is now looking to bring their message to Britain and the response is extremely positive - they've just played a sold-out tour of the UK. Guster have definitely done their research when it comes to making themselves known this side of the Atlantic. "Having a green side only enhances the rock and roll," says Rosenworcel.

"If the Gallaghers would go carbon neutral maybe they wouldn't look like a couple of twits on stage. Isn't that what we're supposed to do here in England? Try our best to provoke Oasis into a pissing match?"

Sir Crispion Tickell Dinner Keynote Speech at the March 2007 Energy Challenges international conference, Seattle; 30 March 2007.

Looking forward a thousand years may be difficult, if not impossible, but at least none of us will be here to see whether any of our guesses are right or wrong. Two thousand years ago it might have been possible to guess something of the world a thousand years later; but a thousand years ago it would have been impossible to guess what the world looks like today.

There has been a steady acceleration since organized human society began: from hunter gatherers to farmers and fishermen, to town dwellers, to the creation of hierarchies in cities, and in the last 250 years to the industrial revolution. Throughout small environmental, in particular climatic, variations have been critical. Throughout the use of resources, particularly for generation of energy, has greatly affected the character of each society. In the past such energy came from

fire
wind
water (and hydro power generally)
animal including human muscle
wood
coal
oil and gas

In one way or another all such sources contained environmental penalties as well as advantages. More recently energy systems have included

terrestrial solar panels large and small
tide round coastlines, and waves
geothermal to make use of the heat beneath our feet
nuclear with prospects for new fission technology (such as pebblebed), and later fusion technology using tritium and deuterium
even use of seawater for agriculture as well as for generation of energy.

For the future there is a range of exotic possibilities which we have had fun in discussing at this conference. They include solar space power and even gravitational energy.

Earlier I referred to the acceleration of history. In this energy has played a major role. Accompanying it has been population increase on an epic scale, increasing damage to the natural environment, depletion of resources ranging from topsoils to fish stocks, accumulation of toxic wastes, pollution of water both fresh and salt, changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere with climate change, and destruction of the diversity of other living organisms on which we totally depend.

We were each of us asked what we thought the three most important factors will be in the future. As I shall explain, I doubt whether it will be energy. More important by far are human population increase and the exploitation of natural resources. Is our small animal species capable of establishing a lasting relationship of mutual benefit to the living Earth and those of its unruly inhabitants who are ourselves? How are we to recognize that the last 200 years or so may have been a bonanza of inventiveness, exploitation and consumption in countries which have learnt the tricks of industrialization, but that this may not continue, indeed cannot continue on a world wide basis?

We still cherish a consumer philosophy, and conventional economics of a kind which takes little account of externalities or true long term costs. We still talk about growth and GNP as if they were useful measures of human welfare. At present rates of consumption, we would need three planets rather than one if we had a truly equitable society.

All successful species, whether bivalves, beetles, elephants or humans can multiply until they come up against the environmental stops, reach some accommodation with the rest of the environment and willy nilly restore some balance. Malthus may yet have the last laugh. In the long history of the Earth we are the only species capable of recognizing this, and that sooner rather than later we have to do something about it. Thinking differently, particularly about economics and technology, may be painful but it is indispensable. Otherwise we risk being trapped in out of date ideas and technology (the so-called techno-locks).

Looking ahead a thousand years, we must first assume that the human species still exists. Most species have a limited time span, and with the current rate of accelerating change there is no reason to believe that the human species will last for ever. But let us peer ahead all the same. First we should recognize that so long as there are humans to generate and use it, there will never be a shortage of energy. Exploitation of fossil fuels cannot be more than temporary, and there are more possibilities than we can count to replace coal, oil and gas. We have heard a lot about them at this conference.

The key question is not which technology to go for, but how many people there are to use it, and what other resources are available to support society in any form that we can recognize. We must not therefore assume an endlessly rising curve of energy demand to satisfy the needs of a society of anything like the size of ours in the 21st century. Nor should we assume that the world will be necessarily warmer or even cooler by then. All that we can be sure of is that it will be very different.

By AD 3000 there will probably have been sudden disruptions, whether volcanic explosions, earthquakes, impacts of extraterrestrial objects, epidemics, or even destructive wars using unimaginably horrible weapons. World wide the relationship between land and sea will be different. Compare the shape of the Earth's surface 125,000 years ago in the last warm period, and then 20,000 years ago in the last glacial spasm. There will be new hubs of power, wealth and culture.

Ecosystems will be drastically changed, and agriculture to support our species with them. Already the rate of extinction of other species can be compared to those of the five great extinctions in the geological history of the last 500 million years. Human health and welfare will be affected by these changing conditions. There is a powerful synergy between pathogen transmission and environmental change. Old diseases will return, new ones will arise and spread.

How our successors will react to these new circumstances is anyone's guess. If all goes as reasonably as we must all hope, they are likely to be living in a more globalized world of rapid communication. Ideas, units of information - or memes - will pass almost instantaneously between countries, communities and individuals, and for the first time there will be something like a single human civilization.

Human numbers in cities or elsewhere will almost certainly be reduced, and their distribution will almost certainly be very different. It has been suggested that an optimum population for the Earth in terms of its resources would be nearer to 2.5 billion rather than - as now - over 6 and a half billion, or even 9 billion later this century. Communities are likely to be more dispersed without the daily tides of people flowing in and out of cities for work. Generation of energy will likewise be dispersed with more micro systems and less dependence on national or other grids. Transport systems will also be different. Archaeologists of the future may even wonder what all those roads were for.

Then there are other developments in information technology. Here come the most radical possibilities of all. So far evolution has proceeded by natural selection in its various aspects. In the last few thousand years humans have played games with it through artificial breeding of organisms - from cereals to cows and dogs - to suit their purposes. Such processes were always slow. But now through lateral gene transfer, humans may rapidly be producing new varieties, sub species and even new species. This could apply to humans themselves.

H. G. Wells invented Eloi and Morlocks (those up above and those down below). At the time, more than a century ago, it seemed an amusing fantasy. No longer. Redesigning humans has become a real possibility. It is worth remembering how vulnerable even the Eloi were. In his book The Meaning of the 21st Century James Martin suggested that there were three broad patterns of evolution. First there is primary evolution, or the Darwinian process of mutation, drift, symbiosis and natural selection of species over billions of years. Next comes secondary evolution, by which, in the author's words

" ... An intelligent species learns how to create its own form of evolution. It invents an artificial world of machines, chemical plants, software, computer networks, transport, manufacturing processes, and so on. It learns how to manipulate DNA ... There is a great diversity of evolutionary tracks."
Thirdly there is tertiary evolution in which an intelligent species learns to automate evolution itself. Once initiated, this could take place with great speed, and could lead to what is called a singularity with unknowable but possibly explosive results.

Obviously we are now somewhere into stage two, but stage three may well lie before us. The challenges and risks are enormous. It does not mean that computers will eventually become more intelligent than people, but it does mean the creation of a new kind of intelligence with a variety of associations with the human brain. Whether all this awaits us remains to be seen.

It also remains to be seen whether by 3000 humans will have worked out, and will practice an ethical system in which the natural world has value not only for human welfare but also for and in itself. They may also be involved in spreading life beyond the Earth and colonizing Mars or other planets. The opportunities for our species seem as boundless as the hazards.

I sometimes wonder how long would it take for the Earth to recover from the human impact? How soon would our cities fall apart, soils regenerate, the animals and plants we have favoured find a more normal place in the natural environment, the waters and seas become clearer, the chemistry of the air return to what it was before we polluted it? Life itself, from the bottom of the seas to the top of the atmosphere, is so robust that the human experience could become no more than a short and certainly peculiar episode in the history of life on Earth.

Above all let us remember how small and vulnerable we are as creatures of a particular environment at a particular moment in time. We are like microbes on the surface of an apple, on an insignificant tree, in an insignificant orchard, among billions of other insignificant orchards stretching over horizons beyond our sight or even our imagining.

Sun's activity rules out link to global warming

10:44 11 July 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Catherine Brahic


Direct satellite measurements of solar activity show it has been declining since the mid-1980s and cannot account for recent rises in global temperatures, according to new research.

The findings debunk an explanation for climate change that is often cited by people who are not convinced that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are causing the Earth's climate to warm.

"If you change the output of the Sun you will undoubtedly change the climate it's just a matter of how much," says Mike Lockwood, of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK.

Sceptics commonly point to climate research's reliance on computer models as a reason for doubting the link between global warming and human greenhouse gas emissions.

"We decided to do a simple and direct analysis of the potential role of the Sun in recent climate change without using any model output," says Lockwood.

Lockwood and colleague Claus Fröhlich, at the World Radiation Center in Switzerland, used direct measurements only for their study. As Lockwood puts it: "This is just what the spacecraft have seen."

U-turn
Looking at data from the past 40 years, the two researchers noticed that solar activity did what Lockwood describes as a "U-turn in every possible way" in the mid-1980s.

"The upshot is that somewhere between 1985 and 1987 all the solar factors that could have affected climate have been going in the wrong direction. If they were really a big factor we would have cooling by now," Lockwood told New Scientist. He adds that he wishes he knew why the Sun's activity had changed in this way.

The number of sunspots peaked twice during the 20th century, once in 1960 and then again in 1985, but have been dropping since.

Sunspots are used as indicators of solar activity, and people have tried to link the growing number of sunspots during the 20th century with rising global temperatures (see Global warming: Will the Sun come to our rescue?).

Others have suggested that cosmic rays help generate clouds, which would cool the atmosphere. But Lockwood and Fröhlich's results show that cosmic rays reached a minimum around 1985 and have risen since.

Correspondingly, the magnetic field that shields Earth from cosmic rays also reached a maximum at about the same time, in 1987.

Negligible role
Measurements of the Sun's brightness – which indicates of the amount of energy coming from the sun – only began in 1977. Yet here too the data suggests solar activity is playing a negligible role in current global warming: irradiance rose between 1977 and 1985, but has been dropping since.

Lookwood says the only way of reconciling the data with the idea that solar activity is causing global warming is to propose that there is a time lag between the Sun's activity changing and those changes affecting the Earth's climate. But even with a lag, climatologists would have noticed a slow-down in the rate at which temperatures are rising around the globe, says Lockwood.

"We have had 20 years of the cosmic rays and the irradiance going in the wrong direction, and yet we've not yet seen any effect on temperatures," says Lockwood. "It would have to be an extremely long lag – at least 50 years – which would invalidate a lot of the previous sun-climate proposals."

Lockwood and Fröhlich's results suggest that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has overestimated the Sun's influence on the Earth's climate. In February, the IPCC published a report stating that the Sun had roughly 10% of the warming effect of human activities.

NEW STUDY FORECASTS TO THE YEAR 2027, ASKS—

31 May 2007


Are Globalization and Sustainable Development on a Collision Course?

In a blunt assessment of the business operating context in 2027 – sponsored by Shell, Ford, Novo Nordisk, Vodafone, The Skoll Foundation and others – SustainAbility, Ltd., reports that not only will there be new rules for sustaining business success over the next twenty years, but that “the game itself is poised to change profoundly. There will be winners and losers; but there is no more business as usual.”

More than two years in the making, Raising Our Game: Can We Sustain Globalization? will be released on May 31st in London and thereafter in Washington, D.C., Berlin, Sao Paulo, and New York. The authors are from SustainAbility, widely known as the leading consultancy to the world’s major multinationals on corporate responsibility and sustainability. It exposes the interplay of sustainable development and globalization that will define the future. “Navigating this terrain will challenge the global business community like nothing previously experienced,” said co-author John Elkington.

The study depicts four alternate scenarios for the year 2027 in a card game format, where clubs, hearts, diamonds, and spades represent various combinations of environmental and societal wins and losses.

“Grounded in the hard realities that business and policy leaders face now and through 2027, Raising Our Game is neither a starry-eyed look at a rosy future, nor a “chicken little” prediction of inevitable calamity,” said Jonathan Halperin, SustainAbility’s Director of Research and Advocacy in Washington. “It is about the hard choices we face, and what they mean for us all down the road. As the stakes rise, innovation, entrepreneurship, and effectively sourcing ideas and talent from emerging economies will be essential to managing the worsening divides that now threaten global stability.” These threats are catalogued in section three of the report.

The Executive Summary of Raising Our Game can be downloaded from ther JB RSS Feed Link

Wednesday, 11 July 2007

Ipod Wars

By Andrew Orlowski
Published Monday 2nd July 2007 10:34 GMT


Universal Music Group (UMG) has dealt a serious blow to Apple's music ambitions by refusing to renew its contract with the iTunes Store.

The New York Times reports that the decision not to continue the annual contract was made by UMG executives last week.

It appears likely that Universal's repertory will disappear from the online store, unless the two parties can reach a new agreement. Embarrassingly for Apple, the removal of its catalogue will mean the loss of Apple poster child U2.

Owned by French media giant Vivendi, UMG is the world's biggest record label and claims to sell one album in four. It grew through a series of mergers, acquiring Polygram, A&M, Geffen, Motown, Island, and Verve.

Further details are scant, but the Times reports that Sony BMG recently renewed its annual contract with Apple.

Music executives have chafed at being forced to sell to iTunes at the one price set by Apple. They're also wary of the "cherrypicking" model, permitting single song downloads, that's destroyed the lucrative "bundle" of the album. They're keen to see more regular, service-based models succeed, even though these offer lower per-unit returns.

The four major labels have licensed their catalogues to Omnifone's global mobile music service MusicStation, set to launch in 30 territories over the coming months. MusicStation offers unlimited downloads for £1.99 a week, and provides the labels with a more predictable income stream than single song download stores. Apple isn't the only game in town, anymore.

Last year, UMG succeeded in extracting a $1 license fee from Microsoft for every Zune player sold. It's rumoured that Nokia declined a similar arrangement. If UMG gained a similar amount from Apple, that's still only around $40m a year. ®