By John Grant and Jules Peck Introduction: “There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.”
Shakespeare sums up well the scale and urgency of change we envisage but also the opportunities for those nimble and innovative enough to spot and ride this great wave. In this report the authors examine the critical role of entrepreneurial ventures as one of the key sources of the radical-enough responses required to deal with issues like Climate Change. The term carbon-positive is used as carbon is a good proxy for all sorts of other issues and ‘positive’ because ‘carbon- neutrality’, especially merely through offsetting, is surely not going to be sufficient. Ambitious companies of the future will need to seek to be restorative and to bring something positive to the table not just seek to be at best neutral players.Although carbon is a good proxy it is far from the only issue facing us - species and
habitat loss, water scarcity etc are all real concerns. A fixation on carbon which ignores these other concerns will be a pyrrhic victory. A zero carbon renew- able energy world which merely en- courages more and more electric bat- teries will soon lead to ‘peak lithium’. We need to learn to recognize absolute limits to growth – but that’s a big politi- cal and economic debate and not one we look at here. Some of the solutions are complex and bring with them trade- offs (reducing ‘food miles’ versus cash crops for Kenyans) which will need to be worked out in debate between consumers, government and business. Governments and corporates, for all that they are now increasingly making the right noises, are still moving at lumbering pace, if at all. The
‘innovators dilemma’ applies; incumbents will never properly commercialise technologies that fundamentally undermine their industry. There are huge gaps already in what is needed to become a low carbon economy. Ultimately will this crisis and these shifts represent boom or bust, hopeor glory, danger or opportunity - or both? There are inspiring examples of pioneering green ventures but they are often under-funded, undersupported by regulators, under-recognised. In the next ten years we need expansion at least as big as the dotcom boom. It’s already starting to happen notably in the US and China. Google has just announced millions of dollars investments into renewables with the intention of pushing coal out of the market and Shi Zhengrong, who in
Paul Chatterton Biography, Human Geographer Paul Chatterton teaches and researches in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds on international protest movements mainly looking at the popular uprising in Argentina since
2001 and the Zapatistas autonomous communities of Mexico; the ways in which city centres are increasingly becoming privatised and corporatised; and alternative models of development focusing on self-management. (Find out more).
Thomas Sandell
Paul Chatterton; Human Geographer Biography, thoughts, teachings and life.