While I’m on my career journey through sustainability and sustainable energy I’d like to share a few notes others may find interesting. Feel free to comment on my blog or to the original site if pointing to a specific subject. The disclaimer is that I am definitely still learning, and may find myself backtracking on things I initially thought useful, invaluable, or even senseless.

SUMMARY

1. World Oil production/consumption graph and several other fantastic world data graphs by Hans Rosling. Don’t stop there! Play with the graph axes to analyze many other national indicators vs. oil consumption, GDP, etc. Also breakdown within states or regions.
2. www.ted.com – Free World-class online speeches and lectures on a broad range of world-changing ideas.
3. Jared Diamond video presentation on “Why Societies Collapse”.

Stop here if you’re busy (or better yet spend a few minutes playing with link #1).

MORE INFORMATION

www.ted.com – A wonderful collection of inspirational speeches and lectures on a broad range of world-changing topics… many of which I’m quite interested in. Don’t follow any one person or ideal blindly, but don’t close your eyes to diverse and sometimes contrarian viewpoints either. I’ve just started watching through some of these. Read a few of the comments below each speech for commentary from both sides of the position. I LOVE that!

Jared Diamond on “Why Societies Collapse” – I’ve always believed that history repeats itself AND is a great teacher for those who do not wish to repeat past lessons. This little video summarizes a few past civilization collapses and postulates common themes that frequently contribute to their collapse. In a nutshell, listed indicators are:

• Natural Resource depletion
• Climate change of some sort
• Friendly relations reduced with neighboring societies
• Hostile relations increased (or inability to adapt/manage/accommodate relations with enemies)
• Inability to see or change to address situations that threaten society’s own existence

Notes that society can’t just solve one threat to survive. It must see and resolve all threats. One of two states happen: Society changes to address the problem, or society is forced to accept or manage whatever consequences the problem brings about. Overall good foundational principals to apply to variety of topics. While No one person can solve all problems, individuals can make a huge difference in driving solution to one or more threats.

Hans Rosling: “Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen” - Hans provides multiple levels of goodness:

• Global Lifespan, infant mortality, and other measures graphed over time and by individual wealth and GNP health – illustrates trends brilliantly.
• Founded GapMinder (http://www.gapminder.org/) to help visualize public world statistics to identify trends, problems, and which nations and regions are doing things well (or poorly). If you follow only one link, play with the World Oil production/consumption graph on Gapminder world. Other interactive worthwhile graphs include World Life Expectancy chart, Family size & length of life, or Who has the most oil, etc.

Notice in Oil chart the US stands alone in oil consumption (right edge of x axis) while Saudi Arabia and Russia clearly stand out in top left corner as producers. Per 2003 presentation we need Search functionality to public databases to enable discoverability and analysis to find and solve problems. The problem (in 2003) is many database owners won’t grant ability to copy and search their data… “Our data is too peculiar to be searched.”

I’ll add to this list from time to time. Hope you enjoy! -zs