Is a rainbow inclusive?

Is a rainbow inclusive? It does have all the colors, yet they are all separated from each other. They don’t interact.

And what about the wavelengths that we cannot see with our eyes? A rainbow does not include the higher energy rays such as Ultraviolet, X-ray and Gamma. The same applies to the lower energy rays such as infrared, microwave and radio waves.

What can a rainbow teach us?

1. Everyone in one place doesn’t mean together.
2. There may be ways to expand our scope of inclusion.
3. There’s more than meets the eye (literally). Can we do more to focus not only on the markedly visible, but also on the things we cannot directly see?

December 5, 2022

Walk the Walk

I love to walk. When I share that I average 15K steps per day, people often ask:

“How can you be productive when you spend so much time walking?”

To which I always answer:

“I am productive because I spend so much time walking.”

December 5, 2022

Powered by sustainable energy doesn’t equal sustainability

Just because a product is powered by sustainable energy does not make it sustainable. Consumable energy is a scarce commodity, regardless of how it is produced. We have to be very mindful of how we consume it.

Take the World Cup in Qatar making many sustainability claims. Let’s not forget it took an incredible amount of energy and resources to build this (almost) single-use infrastructure.

A company in The Netherlands claims to sell ‘planet saving water’, because they use solar power to desalinate seawater. Clean drinking water is already available from every tap in every Dutch home. Besides, the existing water infrastructure is much more sustainable than water sold in packaging.

Boom Supersonic plans to build the first post-Concorde supersonic passenger plane. Their plane is to serve a happy few that want to gain a few hours. It is supposed to be sustainable because it’s powered by Sustainable Aviation Fuel. It’s not. Subsonic flight consumes only a fraction of energy per passenger compared to supersonic flight. Also, we are far from having enough sustainable aviation fuel.

All three products are powered by sustainable energy. Yet, all three only add to humanity’s footprint that wreaks havoc on Earth’s ecosystems.

It’s a shame to waste precious clean energy. Let’s stop calling these products sustainable. At best, their sustainability measures make them a little less bad.