What is this blog about?


Environment. Business. Politics. Growth. Decline. My views @LaniBusyB

Monday 22 April 2013

Green drinks in Joburg - not too much liquor and not veggie drinks... check it out and join up!

Green Drinks with the EGF in Johannesburg

The next Green Drinks Johannesburg will feature EGF Chairperson, Justin Hawes, presenting ‘An Event Greening Case Study: the COP17 CCR Expo‘.

Place: Stanley Bar, 44 Stanley

Date: Thursday, 02 May 2013

Time: 6.30pm 

Cost: There is no cost to attend, and a cash bar will be available

Green Drinks is an informal monthly opportunity for green drinkers to meet, chat & network. There are no fees. It is a self-organising network across the globe, and is currently active in 822 cities. 
Justin’s presentation will cover a number of event greening strategies that were implemented at the South African Climate Change Response Expo at COP17, some of which were standard practice while others were never-done-before innovations. This case study will discuss:
  • What measures were put in place to ‘green’ the event
  • What was successful
  • What was not so successful
  • What lessons can be taken away from this experience

For more information or to RSVP, please contact Pippa Walker on  011 447 4777  or on pippa@eventgreening.co.za.

Find out more about the Johannesburg chapter of greendrinks, visit their Facebook page here.


Don't miss the Earth Day movie: Thin Ice today



Join me at http://www.350.org

Monday 15 April 2013

The climate right for PR change?

UN Foundation Calls In PR Firms And Ex-Gore Aide For Global Climate Change Project

 
Switzerland's decreasing glaciers: UN photo by Jean-Marc Ferré
 
Arun Sudhaman reported over the weekend from Washington that the UN has pulled in three new PR firms and a new senior executive to drive a major new global assignment focusing on climate change.The public charity that supports the UN's causes is set to begin a two-year project to boost awareness and understanding of climate change problems.

The UN Foundation has named former Al Gore spokesperson Kalee Kreider to head the effort. Kreider arrives after rejoining Fenton Communications last year. It has chosen Havas PR to lead global PR for the effort, supported by Grayling in Asia and Glover Park Group to provide specialist research.

The climate change initiative will be the latest in a series of high-profile campaigns from the UN Foundation. Previous efforts have focused on such areas as child health; energy; and female development. UN Foundation communications and PR VP Aaron Sherinian told the Holmes Report that one of the challenges the programme will tackle is ongoing climate science scepticism.
 
Last year, Weber Shandwick was hired to lead the Sustainable Energy for All project, which seeks to improve energy efficiency and achieve universal energy access. The climate change project will also attempt to enable "the community to work to improve messaging and communications around those issues, particularly in a digital media era." Defining that community will form part of the challenge. Iceberg?

Sherinian pointed to a diverse stakeholder group, including "organizations large and small; the science community; the business community; and government leaders at a local and global level." The UN Foundation selected the three firms following what Sherinian characterised as a "limited RFP." The organization works with numerous PR agencies.  

APCO leads the Shot@Life campaign, while Fenton Communications oversees the #GivingTuesday push. Fleishman-Hillard handles the Foundation's corporate PR requirements.

FYI... the UN Foundation launched in 1998 with a $1bn grant from Ted Turner, and aims to encourage donations that support the United Nations in executing its programs worldwide.

42

Having chuckled through the Douglas Adams movie some time this weekend, Science & Technology Minister's choice of Business Day headline appealed to me: "South Africa helps to understand life, the universe and everything".

I quote Derek Hanekom: "Through our increasing mastery of the two disciplines of palaeontology and astronomy, we are fast becoming the world’s leaders on unveiling the mysteries of the past — how the universe came to be, what made us what we are today and what significance this knowledge may have for our decisions about our future."

... if only...

We made our mark in the field of palaeontology when an eminent scholar from Wits University, Prof Lee Berger, and his team made the remarkable discovery at the Cradle of Humankind of two fossil skeletons of a previously unknown hominid species, now known as Australopithecus sediba. These early ancestors of ours lived in the area about 2-million years ago.

Last year, on Africa Day, South Africa was announced as the host country for the lion’s share of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, one of the great science projects of the 21st century. This project is so huge that the SKA central computer will have the processing power of about 100-million personal computers, and the dishes of the SKA will produce 10 times the data of present global internet traffic. The SKA will be far more sensitive than any existing telescope.

It will serve as a giant magnet for science in South Africa.  It will enable scientists to address fundamental, unanswered questions about our universe, including about the formation and evolution of stars, galaxies and quasars and the nature of gravity and dark matter, and it may even answer the perennial question: is there intelligent life out there?




 Back to Douglas Adams!Quoting Fit the Seventh of the radio series, on Christmas Eve, 1978:
Narrator: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory, which states that this has already happened.

There is the persistent tale that 42 is Adams' tribute to the indefatigable paperback book, and is the average number of lines on an average page of an average paperback. Another common guess is that 42 refers to the number of laws in cricket, a recurring theme of the books. Douglas Adams was asked many times why he chose the number 42. Many theories were proposed, including that 42 is 101010 in binary code, that light refracts off water by 42 degrees to create a rainbow, that light requires 10−42 seconds to cross the diameter of a proton. Adams rejected them all.



Adams - 1994: "Everybody was looking for hidden meanings and puzzles and significances in what I had written. So I thought that just for a change I would actually construct a puzzle and see how many people solved it. Of course, nobody paid it any attention. I think that's terribly significant."

To thwart all attempts at taking this particular blog post any more seriously than is advisable at 01:32 on a Monday morning, my favouritest concept of all:

After mice, the second most intelligent species on Earth were the dolphins.
The dolphins had long known of the impending demolition of Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger...The last ever dolphins message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault through a hoop whilst whistling "The Star-Spangled Banner," but in fact the message was this: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish."
My point exactly? As data explodes and information overflows, spare a thought for humor :)