snow and comments

There is nothing much in common between snow and comments, to be honest, apart from that I feel the urge to write about both of them.

After getting back from Paris for some more meetings for a day and the chance to try out some more of the more interesting and innovative chains of restaurants that have opened in the last 5 years serving anything from healthy food to Mexican food, I headed up to the Peak District for a stag party, which entailed rather a lot of drinking, playing poker, watching sport down the pub, some more drinking and some fun about 15 metres up in the air in the woods doing something called Go Ape. A simple concept really, that we all enjoy a bit of scrambling around in playgrounds when we are older, so its about time someone made a playground for adults, and to make it a bit more exciting, put it up in the trees -though give everyone a safety harness just in case (well, we are adults after all).

Its being incredibly successful and is going global -and after 2 hours or so scrambling across rope bridges, zipping down zip lines and the like, i fully understand why and recommend it for an enjoyable afternoon with some friends. We arrived in the snow, not something I was expecting to be honest, and dressed up like we were in the himalayas. Thankfully the snow stopped and we made it to the pub just a few minutes late for the six nations. A taxi through the peak district early in the morning revealed glimpses of some of the beauty of the British countryside -especially in the snow- and a nice fast train took me back down South where I had to catch a flight back to Beijing, where, of course, it was snowing. And again, a week later, it has snowed again. So rather a lot of snow really. Having said that there seemed to have been rather a lot of earthquakes recently too: haiti, chile, taiwan, turkey... i guess i prefer the snow to an earthquake. Though i do have fond memories of the 13 earthquakes in Manchester that occurred over 24 hours on October 22, 2002. Not that the earthquakes (biggest hit 3.9) did much damage apart from knocking a plate onto the floor!

Ah yes, the British countryside -much more of it than one realizes, and it never seems to have much of a purpose -often seen laying fallow or with a few sheep grazing in the fields. None-the-less I assume it must be productively used at other times of the year (i.e. when i am not visiting) since Britain is at the forefront of efforts over the last few years to source more food locally and not import it. And for those of you interested, that is just one element of being a responsible business -reducing travel for products and being more responsible to local communities by creating jobs and keeping money in the communities- which is what BSR (who i work for) help companies do.

Another element of our work is helping investors invest in more responsible businesses, because they are more profitable business (a simple example being the Co-op bank who refuses to loan money to projects or companies who are irresponsible and does not take big risks and did not almost go bankrupt unlike almost every other bank in the country) over the long-term. Not that many people think long-term nowadays, but we do recommend it. Plenty of my meetings in London and in Paris was with investors and related organizations (e.g. researchers) who are interested in investing in responsible companies in China; which we are helping some investors do. Its a fairly interesting concept and I am quite getting into it.

Hence I was reading about wonderful RBS who is involved in extracting oil from the tar sands in Canada, which use up a lot more energy than any other process for getting oil and generate a lot of greenhouse gases too (Canada is the developed country whose emissions have increased the most in the last ten years because of this industry). Since no-one is valuing these greenhouse gases in Canada at the moment (though they do in Europe, though too cheaply right now) it is profitable to support this industry and not worry about the costs of climate change. This in itself is an issue, but it has become a bigger issue recently since the UK government owns most of RBS and has made many promises to itself, to its citizens and to others, that it would do everything it can to reduce UK's greenhouse gas emissions, and global emissions. Hmm, so, the question is should the government direct RBS not to get involved with this project even though it will be profitable, which means more money for the UK government, and thus the taxpayers get their money back quicker?

Well its a good question, and i won't answer it. Kevin Watkins at the Guardian has his own opinion (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/rbs-tar-sands-publi-investment) and so did around 60 other people who commented on his article. I rarely bother to read comments on any article, but i read a few of these for a laugh. And a rollicking good laugh I had too. I've read a couple of other articles' comments before (also getting a good old laugh out of them) and they also attracted some crazy people with very firm, and sometimes very bizarre, ideas. I suppose only those that care strongly can be bothered to comment anyway, so they are hardly representative of the readership. Or at least I hope they are not, or else I really must wonder if the snow has gotten to people....