#Econ

Great animation on the “we know that we don’t know” dangers of global warming. Really well done.

You can hear more about this campaign from Leo Murray on the site.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Warren Buffet as a businessman (even though I’m not personally thrilled at a lot of the companies or industries he invests in). Besides coining my favourite quote about the entire sub-prime Wall Street fiasco, I think his shareholder letters are a study in clear, concise communication to people with honesty, integrity and directness.

His latest shareholder annual shareholder letter is a study in how to plainly deliver bad financial news and still find a silver lining (like the others they’ve been writing).

I have to admit I am pretty impressed at the number of educational videos that have been created to explain to people what actually happened with the mortgage-backed securities crisis and how it affects everyone.

And Part II of the video .

Re-posted from BoingBoing. This is, as they say, one “scary-ass job-loss chart.”

{{ figure src="/images/farm4/3472/3264714648_c0f939cee2.jpg" title=“Comparative job losses across recessions” }}

This is from Nancy Pelosi, the current Speaker of the House’s blog. This is what 3.6 Million jobs lost over 13 months looks like . It plots the last two recessions against the current recession (the green line doing the scary death dive.)

OK, as more than casual readers know, I’m a huge fan of Warren Buffet. Not only do I try and invest like him, but I think he’s very sharp beyond being an astute and wiley investor. Great, but very long interview with him here on the Warren Buffett CNBC Interview :

“… you only find out who’s been swimming naked when the tide goes out. Well, we found out that Wall Street has been kind of a nudist beach.”

Meant to this a while back from an email that went round at work.

Love the idea. Simply… Offer to bring in a whack of business for one day to one business if they’ll pay for environmental improvements to their business with the proceeds.

Seems like the first run went well (and you have to love the Lil Wayne video spoof). Have to see whether it’s sustainable, but it is an interesting idea in crowdsourcing.

Silicon Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital has a fabulous presentation to scare the bejesus out of their startups on what the current financial crisis means for their fledglings.

While I don’t agree with all of it, it’s got some excellent economic analysis in it of the real reasons there is a very real and serious problem at the moment and why it’s going to be hard for new companies to borrow and in general why we’ve all had perverse economic incentives to take on debt rather than save (I notice it missed deregulation in there, but hey, no one’s perfect).

I think it was Lawrence Lessig who said words to the effect that open source is good, but Open Culture is everything… and the Creative Commons will become a much bigger battle with private firms and IP advocates in the coming years (and this is why you need copyright laws that favour innovation rather than dusty old companies lobbying to extend their tired old revenue streams ad infinitum).

Examples abound of how it has changed how we do with knowledge, for example take a look at how transformative Wikipedia or Open CourseWare at MIT has been, but where does the rubber hit the road in terms of changing the world in real, substantive terms (ie. stuff that doesn’t just matter to geeks)?

Without question, one of the worst things for the environment is air travel.

Air travel is the world’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which cause climate change. Globally the world’s 16,000 commercial jet aircraft generate more than 700 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the world’s major greenhouse gas, per year. Indeed aviation generates nearly as much CO₂ annually as that from all human activities in Africa. One person flying a return trip between London and New York generates between 1.5 and 2 tonnes of CO₂.

Ah yes, combining popular civil disobedience and positive environmentalism, I am *compelled<*to point to the this great little howto on setting up your own solar panels and feeding back into the grid. Very handy if you’re out in the boondocks and no one is looking. Of course, today is the first sun we’ve had in quite a few weeks here.

As pointed out in the article, this is probably not legal where you are without proper permits, but let’s face it, microgeneration and conservation are probably a big part of the future and aren’t you just a little tired of the big dead dinosaur co’s and big utility inc. dragging their feet over making it easier for you ? I know in the Valley here, Fortis has yet to allow net metering which is a crime.