Children who are forced to pick cotton in Uzbekistan, farmers scratching out a living in Guatemala and salmon fishermen in Bristol Bay, Alaska, would not seem to have much in common. But all are feeling the global impact of Wal-Mart.
As the world’s largest retailer, with $379 billion in revenues last year, Wal-Mart has long been a powerful force in the global economy - a bully, its critics would say. For years, they assailed Wal-Mart for squeezing suppliers over costs, driving mom-and-pop stores out of business or crushing efforts to organize its workers.
These days, though, the company is winning praise for using its leverage - that’s a polite term for bullying - to protect the environment and help the poor.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the technology industry today is all about smart phones and Web 2.0. But the smartest minds in Silicon Valley have their eyes and wallets on a bigger prize, and it’s a century-old resource called electricity.
Hawaii has unveiled plans to be first in the nation to roll out electric car stations statewide — a move the governor hailed as a major step toward weaning the islands off oil.
My talk is titled “How to build a hyper Energy-efficient Data Center” and is based on the CIX data center which I helped develop (and am still a director of).
This is the slide deck I will be presenting there.
an intriguing new report from the U.K.-based Forum for the Future and the consultancy Capgemini. The free report, Acting Now for a Positive 2018, Preparing for Radical Change: The Next Decade of Business and Sustainability, examines four scenarios of what the world might look like from a sustainability perspective and offers advice on how to be ready for any of them.
One of the highest tides in its history brought Venice to a virtual halt, rekindling a debate over a plan to build moveable flood barriers in an effort to save the lagoon city from high tides.
City officials said the tide peaked at 61 inches (156 centimeters), well past the 40-inch (110-centimeter) flood mark, as strong winds pushed the sea into the city.
The idea, as outlined in the video above was so well received that we decided to create a site to promote it and encourage anyone who also thinks it is a good idea to become involved. The site is at megatom.ning.com.
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My guest on this podcast is Stan Litow. Stan is IBM’s VP for Corporate Affairs and Corporate Citizenship.
IBM recently issued their 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report. It is an extremely interesting, very comprehensive overview of IBM’s work in this space. You can download the entire report here (PDF warning!).
Having gone through the report, I was interested to discuss it with Stan and he graciously agreed to come on the show and gave a fascinating look at some of the thinking behind IBM’s initiatives in this space.
Greenmonk is a new line of business for RedMonk, the first open source analyst company.
GreenMonk offers advisory services to help a range of organisations better understand how sustainability issues will affect them.
@mickmoran Twitter is an incredibly fast way to get news out and verifiable alerts for missing kids wld spread v quickly indeed
about 50 minutes ago from twhirl
Btw, look out for a massive announcement from CIX (startup data center I'm a director of) which condenses 5 yr business plan into 1st yr!
about 2 hours ago from twhirl
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