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Thoughts For The Future
Published November 9, 2020
I spoke at the 2020 Friends Of Kloofendal annual general meeting. I had a few requests for a copy of the presentation. Instead of emailing text, I recorded an audio file of the presentation.
Since lockdown, we have all discovered that Zoom and other virtual presenting platforms are like Powerpoint. You can bore someone to death, inflect torture and pain on an unimaginable level, and someone else can wow and connect to the audience. The difference is not the technology, but the speaker. If your online meetings have been […]
Just as a spoiled child demands a new toy or a bar of chocolate at the checkout counter, mankind has viewed natural resources with much the same childish bravado. The temptation to desire something, or to exploit a resource as we see fit, is justified by the human perception of ownership. In our attempts to […]
When I was growing up in England in the 1970’s I, like everyone else at that time, watched the news on TV before dinner. From Ethiopians starving to death in their war-torn country, commercial loggers chopping down the Amazon rain forest, and Green Peace harassing Japanese whaling ships, it seemed terrible that mankind could inflict […]
The question of how much do we impact upon the environment can be tricky to answer, simply because we are rarely cognisant the consequences of our actions. So much of our impact is hidden from us either through society, or by the organisations who manufacture the products that we use. For example, consider where your […]
Sustainability is a journey that consists of a bold series of steps that are built on change management, innovation and responsible leadership. It is not something that just happens overnight, but rather a process that all organisations and individuals must undertake.A few years ago, I was taking out my rubbish for collection and decided to […]
When we think about the value of nature in terms of human perception, an automatic thought process rates one aspect over another. Consider the following ways in which we place value on aspects of the natural world: Emotional Value Direct Value Indirect Value Bigger Is Better To answer the question of how much a natural […]
If we think about the relationship between the impact that we have, how we consume and the technology that we use, you’ll see that it’s all interconnected. Irrespective of our lifestyle, the amount of money we earn, or where we live on planet Earth, our impact can be expressed as the following equation: Your Impact […]
Modern man has accomplished many great things. We have been to the moon and back, we fly around the world at supersonic speeds and have even managed to alter life itself in the form of genetically modified organisms. However, if we think that modern civilisation is impervious to the changes that we are all responsible […]
From a pure monetary point of view, a puppy is worth more than a spider. However, which one offers the most benefit to humans and in what way? Which contributes more to human survival and which would have the greater impact if it became extinct? We can answer these questions by considering the benefits that […]
Another way that we abuse the world’s capacity to withstand human activities is by treating it as a place to dispose of our waste. We create huge amounts of waste that is not designed to be disposed of, and then hide it in the ground, release it into the air, or dump it into a […]
There is pattern, and a common trend in the way that we abuse the environment for profit; something that was written about almost 200 years ago. In 1833, William Forster Lloyd published an article in which he described the effects of the overuse of a common resource. In the early 1800’s, common land was used […]
The miracle of nature is that whenever there has been a challenge, there is an organism that has found a way to conquer it. There are an estimated 30 million plants and animals on Earth which are essentially individual science experiments, perpetually testing out new ways of doing things in order to find a better […]
Biomimicry is the replication and application of nature for our own benefit. Since nature operates under the same laws that govern our own lives, it makes sense to learn from these tried and tested design principles. Inspiration from nature has given us some of the most fundamental design principles that we take for granted. Velcro […]
Another area of great interest is the application of biological aspects of nature to create new technologies. New technologies are being discovered from areas of the natural world that we once thought were of no benefit to mankind. It is an exciting field of study simply because it is limited only by our imagination and […]
The human population has been increasing at an alarming rate. From 1804, it took just over 100 years for the human population to increase from 1 billion to 2 billion in 1927. In 2016, it was projected that we will increase our population by 1 billion in about 12 years. This exponential growth is having […]
Imagine that you are driving your dream car down a dark and misty road. You could be driving anything from a Prius, to a Hummer. All of a sudden, from the left a fluffy bunny rabbit jumps into the road, and from the right a snake slithers into the road. What do you do? If […]
Sustainability not only represents a new way of doing things, but also an opportunity to be better than average and to take aim at bold and audacious targets. An average student will not find a job in today’s world, an average job performance will not get a promotion, an average organisation will not muster the […]
For many of us, nature has become a destination. It is somewhere we go for a holiday or over a weekend. We leave our preoccupied lives behind and venture off to a national park or game reserve in our fossil fuel guzzling 4×4 laden with all the necessary gadgets and accessories. In reality however, nature […]
I'm proud to announce that I'm one of the finalists in 2020 for an award. The nomination is for One World and the activities on this website.
The Eco-Logic Awards identify individuals, organisations and communities that positively contribute towards a sustainable world – and we encourage consumers to support them by purchasing their products and services.
