Hand Dryer COVID | China net zero | Personal Money
75 days to Christmas. Wowsers. On a personal level, COVID has reduced my consumption this year significantly. But still I’ve made two significant purchases last month, a bicycle and a new fridge-freezer. The last fridge was over 10 years old and had stopped working. It gave me a taste of the significant difficulties people face without cold storage. That seems to be 900,000 people without a fridge in the UK who still use wet towels, and about 3m without a freezer. China went from 24% in 1994 to 88% in 2014 and presumably way over 90% today, although I can't find the data.
Via Gaminder/Dollar Street is a fascinating insight into what people's fridges look like round the world.
Following my own Bigly advice the new fridge is A+++ rated on insulation/energy, the highest possible and I paid for proper fridge disposal (although I haven't audited it).
My bicycle is a fold up bicycle bought second hand from eBay. (Second-hand shopping while taking slightly longer is a significant saving in money and materials for large impact items). I’m still advocating handmade gifts and experiences this year as I have done previously.
Thinking Bigly has changed with the year. Thanks to everyone who joined in for the performance at Central School of Drama. The conversation around flying has changed. My points about hand dryers have come to life.
Hand dryers are moderately better than paper towels in terms of life cycle energy and waste use, but are significantly worse in maintaining strong hygiene. Partly as people don’t use them properly and partly as the air blows droplets around. Some of them are also too noisy for children’s ears. But paper towels have more waste and have a higher life cycle carbon footprint.
Another change is China. The Chinese have now committed to net zero in 2060. This is a significant new message announced in the last few weeks.
On money, I read a new book by Morgan Housel on thinking about managing money and I discussed it at my recent Salon / Mingle.
Here is a summary blog....
Figure out what “enough” is and stick to it.
Appreciate outliers/tail risks may well drive most of your returns
Be or aspire to be time rich
Spend less than you accumulate/earn to be wealth
Humility, kindness and empathy (over being flash)
Power of stories (both positive and misleading)
Know the game you are playing
Do not risk what you have, for what you do not need
5 minutes on thinking about managing personal money.
And here is us in the salon via Interintellect on thinking about what investing means.
Virtual zoom is great for connecting globally and convenient, but I'm now at the stage where I'd love to have an in-person salon / Mingle again. It looks like it might still be a while for London.
On a company level, my ESG ally Ryo Yanagi has produced some intriguing analysis looking at returns form human capital at Eisai.
Yanagi argues: "... Judging from correlation coefficient with t-value above 2 & p-value below 5%, it can be inferred, for example, as follows;
At Eisai, if we invest 10% more in human capital, it will lead to $3B worth corporate value in 5 years belatedly whereas 10% hike in female promotions to managerial level will create $500M wealth in 7 years with delayed penetration effects.
Empirical research on ESG & Corporate Value is featured from 51p to 58p in Integrated Report 2020. It's specialist and not peer reviewed or academically robust but still intriguing for hypothesis generating.
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My microgrants programme is still running but has slowed a little, I will probably look to boost it up again soon. I was interested in Mackenzie Scott (previous Besos) piece announcing how she had given away one billion over dollars (1.7bn) with very few strings attached. It's a little how I am thinking of my microgrants but a much larger scale and to small organisations (whereas I focus on the individuals). Blog here and an article on it here.
Quick hits:
Matt Clancy on diminshed value of cities for spillover innovation. (Via Works in Progress)
Atlantic / Clive Thompson on Trees in cities
"...Audrey Tang began reading classical works like the Shūjīng and Tao Te Ching at the age of 5 and learned the programming language Perl at the age of 12. Now, the autodidact and self-described “conservative anarchist” is a software engineer and the first non-binary digital minister of Taiwan. Their work focuses on how social and digital technologies can foster empathy, democracy, and human progress..."
...in conversation with Tyler Cowen here.
Latest Soil erosion paper - it's very Bigly - yes there are challenges, but not as bad as the worse case and we have many tools to make it better.
"....These findings highlight the pervasiveness, magnitude, and in some cases, the immediacy of the threat posed by soil erosion to near-term soil sustainability. Yet, this work also demonstrates that we have a toolbox of conservation methods that have potential to ameliorate this issue, and their implementation can help ensure that the world's soils continue to provide for us for generations to come...."
Enviromental research paper here. H/T World In Data.
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Archive and repeat words below. Stay well, Stay safe, Ben
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Micro-grants. £10K for positive impact people.