The Good Future is entirely possible – we just need to make the right decisions today!
Tropical rainforests play a vital role in the fight against climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Gabon plans to sell 90 million tonnes of carbon credits, with the hope that the funds raised will go towards conserving its forests and fuel its economy.
What are carbon credits and how did Gabon earn them? BBC Africa’s Senior Business Journalist, Claire Muthinji, tells us more.
Producer: Jewel Kiriungi
Filming: Jeff Sauke
Graphics: Ian Njuguna
There’s something oddly comforting about the idea that “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product,” namely, the corollary: “If you can afford to pay for a product, you won’t be the product.” But it’s bullshit. Companies don’t make you the product because you don’t pay — they make you the product because you can’t stop them.
The theory behind “if you’re not paying for the product…” is that old economist’s saw: “incentives matter.” Companies that monetize attention are incentivized to manipulate and spy on you, while companies that you pay just want to make you happy.
“Social media turned you, me, and everyone into broadcasters (if aspirational ones). The results have been disastrous but also highly pleasurable, not to mention massively profitable—a catastrophic combination.
The terms social network and social media are used interchangeably now, but they shouldn’t be. A social network is an idle, inactive system—a Rolodex of contacts, a notebook of sales targets, a yearbook of possible soul mates. But social media is active—hyperactive, really—spewing material across those networks instead of leaving them alone until needed.”
Read more
COP27: US works on plan for companies to fund emerging nations’ fossil fuel switch…
From nuclear power to bamboo: The climate solutions at COP27…
We have an existence proof which suggests that this rationale is flawed.
We did scale agriculture all over the globe, band by band, in parallel, in similar ways and in different ways. In fact, we have gotten so good at it, we can adequately feed six billion people, and overfeed a further one billion of them. And we even need less land than before.
To believe that it is impossible to decarbonise the global economy quickly because we won’t be able to scale up clean energy requires the same flawed rationale to argue that agriculture never happened.”
Can the clean transition happen?
Read more
Read more
Tuesday 15 November marks the day that the global population is projected to reach 8 billion, according to the United Nations – meaning the number of people in the world has more than tripled in the past 70 years. The impact of this is far-reaching, putting additional pressure on already stretched resources and challenging efforts to reduce poverty and inequality.
The average woman now gives birth to two children, down from five in 1950. We spoke to parents around the world who have welcomed a new child in recent months about their hopes and fears for their family.
Lately more and more people have been turning to me for career advice particularly those who are around 40-70. While I’d like to believe that this is because of my fast-growing reputation for dispensing good advice, a lot has to simply do with the fact that more people are struggling to navigate a rapidly changing landscape and simply don’t know what to do next. ‘Work’ is being disrupted like never before. Not so long ago, the market for talent was red hot; now even once mighty tech firms like Meta (the Facebook parent), Netflix and even Microsoft are laying off employees, not to mention startups that are facing a ‘funding-winter’.
To make the world as sustainable and inclusive as we hope, a certain kind of economic growth will be necessary—and companies will play a vital role in generating it.
An answer lies in sustainable, inclusive growth—that is, economic growth that provides the financial resources needed to contain climate change, promote natural capital and biodiversity, empower households, and promote equitable opportunity. Any effort to usher in such growth will need many stakeholders, but businesses, which drive more than 70 percent of global GDP, will be a key player.
The Good Future Project 