This column began with a Rogers bill. I was paying $200 a month for cable and a PVR, and feeling gouged. I set about to explore alternatives. The term “cutting the cable” has become popular—a Google search nets 63.6 million results—and there are many alternatives for people frustrated with traditional cable providers.
Green
Smart TV’s are re-inventing TV
The TV has been left behind. It’s a dumb device in an era when notebooks, tablets and smartphones can do so much more, and younger people have responded, surfing the Web, watching YouTube and engaging in social media more than they watch television. All this means TV has been losing its relevance in the digital era.
Going green is expensive – myth or not?
Some executives believe the myth that going green is expensive—and I don’t blame them. When Conservative MP John Baird was Environment Minister, he told a 2007 Canadian Senate hearing that meeting our Kyoto goals would manufacture a recession. I ran into John in Toronto shortly thereafter and asked if he’d seen the just-released McKinsey & Company study showing that 40 per cent of the CO2 we have to cut in North America to meet our Kyoto goals would be highly profitable, and if society invested those profits in the next lowest-cost solutions, we’d get all the way to achieving the Kyoto targets at no cost to society.
He hadn’t seen the study and wasn’t interested when I offered to send it to him.
LED Retrofit Revolution Signalled by Sears $4.5M Lighting Project
My latest column in Green Building and Sustainable Strategies (Spring 2012) is focused on the plan Sears implemented, as well as the astounding savings they have received, it truly is a plan more stores and companies must take on.
Please find my column at http://bit.ly/JCjDb8 pg 32
How Skeptics v Realists view Global Warming
Here is a great graphic from Think Progress Green from an article by Brad Johnson “AMS Certified Meteorologist Mark Johnson Claims ‘Earth Hasn’t Warmed In 15 Years’ “. It shows how the skeptics make deliberate misinterpretations of temperature data. The graphic can be seen originally at Skeptical Science: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
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How economics drive green adoption more than guilt
The Globe and Mail’s Leading Thinkers series on Corporate Responsibility video features Jim talking on why economics is a far greater driver of sustainability than guilt. See http://bit.ly/ltG909
Two videos that follow it are:
1) Energy efficiency mitigates the risk of rising energy prices http://bit.ly/l9h1iF
2) Shifting the debate from cutting carbon to cutting cost http://bit.ly/jdtpQW
