Preparing to leave Beijing last week after a splendid fortnight’s rail tour of the two neighbouring (and confusingly named) provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi, I was startled to find evidence of a very different China to the one that is often portrayed in mainstream English-language media – “never mind the quality, feel the growth!” What’s […]
Gary Kendall
Gary is Deputy Director at the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership. He has been working with the Cape Town office since January 2011, having previously led SustainAbility's London-based think-tank function. He has advised several leading companies on how to approach and tackle sustainability challenges, including Coca-Cola, Ford, Nestlé, Novo Nordisk, Rio Tinto, AP Møller-Maersk and Shell.
Previously, Gary spent two years working in WWF's Global Climate and Energy programme, where his main interests were the causes of -- and solutions to -- the challenges associated with society's addiction to hydrocarbon fuels. This followed nine years in the oil industry with Mobil and ExxonMobil, spanning diverse roles from research and product development to sales, marketing and business development. Working across Europe, the US and Asia offered Gary first-hand insight to the strategic and day-to-day sustainability challenges posed by one of the world's most problematic sectors.
Gary is the author of the WWF publication Plugged In: The End of the Oil Age. He holds a PhD in Physical Chemistry and a season ticket at Liverpool FC.
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
South Africa on the brink
Two weeks into the truckers’ strike and South Africa stands on the precipice of serious societal breakdown. The Marikana massacre was undoubtedly a tragic event in its own right, although it may prove to have merely been the spark that lit the fuse. The powder keg waiting to explode is the imminent shortage in liquid […]
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
Dear Fossil Fuel, I want a divorce!
Dear Fossil Fuel, There is no easy way to do this, so I’ll just say it: I want a divorce! Writing this letter is very painful for me, but the contents will not come as a great surprise to you. Our relationship has been wondrous at times, with ups and downs like every marriage. But […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Realising the potential of electricity
As the latest climate change conference in Bonn draws to a close today, the full implications of commitments made at COP17 are beginning to sink in. The nations of the world find themselves united by a challenge that is both eye-watering and conceptually simple: hold the global average temperature increase below 2°C versus the long-term […]
Posted inLifestyle
Unstoppable forces and immovable objects
“That’s my new house,” my Chinese tour guide gestured toward a row of featureless apartment blocks beneath our vantage point overlooking the river, “and that’s where I used to live.” She showed me a photograph of a modest two-storey structure within the walls of the ancient city of Fengjie. It presumably remains intact, albeit more than […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
China’s alternative to an American addiction
Last week saw the launch of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, a rich seam of energy industry stats that journalists, analysts and academics will spend many hours mining for nuggets of data that support their chosen narratives. The Financial Times led with “China becomes leading user of energy” – hardly a revelation to even […]