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Creating Sustainable Organizations - Sara Schley and Joseph Laur
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Creating Sustainable Organizations - Sara Schley and Joseph Laur
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The Automobile Industry
In the auto industry, reducing carbon dioxide emissions will require multifaceted solutions, including improving fuel economy further, reducing the number of cars on the road, and conceptualizing a totally new kind of transportation system. Amory Lovins and his colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Institute have responded in a unique way to the challenge of rethinking automobile design. They began by asking the question, ?Why not redesign the car from scratch, rethinking it from the wheels up, making it radically simpler?? They have developed a prototype for a new automobile called the hypercar. Thanks to its lightweight and strong, efficient design, the hypercar can cross the U.S. on just one tank of gasoline. According to Lovins, people will buy hypercars not because they save 80-95 percent on fuel and cut 90-99 percent of smog, but simply because they are superior cars—the same reason we now buy CDs instead of vinyl records. The Logging and Power Industries |
Trees absorb carbon dioxide through the process of photosynthesis. As trees grow, they give off oxygen into the air and build up wood fibers, thus sequestering carbon in their trunks and branches. Decreasing the number of trees in the world through deforestation changes the natural balance in at least two ways: (1) Trees are often burned, which increases atmospheric carbon dioxide, and (2) as we lose trees, we decrease photosynthesis, thereby further increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If we think of atmospheric carbon dioxide as filling a kitchen sink, we can imagine it rising to overflow not only because we left the tap on (burning trees) but also because we?ve plugged the drain (reducing photosynthesis) (see "The Dynamics of Deforestation").
Total forest area on the Earth is now 23 percent smaller than it was in 1700 and declining at a whopping 11.3 million hectares, or 30 million acres, per year. Deforestation also contributes to soil erosion, siltation in rivers, flooding, and drought. It is easy to see how, in the long run, uncontrolled logging can have dire consequences for our economies. Numerous logging towns in the U.S. |
have been wiped out by unsustainable logging policies.
As one example, Winton, Minnesota, a thriving American town of 3,000 people in the 1920s, has dwindled to a ghost town of 150. Only the liquor store and feed store remain as commercial establishments. Even the post office is gone. Another innovative response to the issue of global warming has come from AES, an independent power producer with a large inventory of coal-fired, cogeneration plants. CEO Roger Sant decided to support a research effort at the company to find the least expensive way to reduce AES?s carbon dioxide emissions. The research indicated that something as simple as planting trees would be the most cost-effective solution! Accordingly, AES has launched a tree-planting effort. |
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