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  • EQ: Planet Home 2019

    EQ is a consortium of different thinkers and makers dedicated to creating impactful innovations that help society live abundantly without negative environmental consequences.

    Our goal is to influence human behavior to produce a more prosperous and sustainable future.

    We gather people of diverse backgrounds to connect, create, and celebrate world-changing ideas that address our climate, water, space, energy, waste, and biodiversity.

    The networks we build, the investments we make, and the products we promote are designed to accelerate and amplify socially responsible actions that are business responsible practices.

    The world’s most challenging environmental problems are the world’s largest economic opportunities.

    Now, more than ever, to be a force for good is to be a force for growth.

    Working together with leaders in business, education, technology, finance, government, and the community, we develop, accelerate and support business solutions to planetary problems.

    We believe business for good is good business.

    Planet or Plastic

    When it comes to single use plastic it’s time to end one and done. National Geographic’s initiative to keep plastic out of the oceans is designed to raise awareness of this challenge and reduce the amount of single-use plastic that enters in the world’s oceans.

    Arctic Drill is Bad for Business

    The people with money have spoken, and we know money talks. Investors behind more than $2.52 trillion in assets don’t want oil and gas companies wasting any time, energy, or money drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.

    These investors—which include the New York State Common Retirement Fund and many Switzerland-based firms—wrote an open letter Monday in support of protecting the largest wildlife refuge in America.

    Why? Plain and simple: Drilling in ANWR is bad business.

    “There is no longer any doubt that climate change poses an acute risk not only to our collective way of life but also to investments made in outdated and highly precarious forms of energy,” said Thibaud Clisson at BNP Paribas Asset Management, a signatory, in a press release.

    President Donald Trump has been encouraging opening ANWR’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain up for business, and the GOP finally made it possible in its tax plan overhaul last year. Proponents don’t seem to care that this refuge is incredibly pristine, or that it’s the sacred calving site of the Porcupine caribou herd, which the Gwich’in First Nation relies on for food and their identity. These balled-out investors, on the other hand, do recognize that.

    In this letter, they write:

    We are gravely concerned about the climate, financial and reputational risks associated with pursuing a speculative fossil fuel source that will likely become uneconomical as the world rapidly shifts towards clean energy sources. Destroying this wilderness area would also have devastating human and ecological impacts.

    Basically, the investors are saying this type of drilling doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s time to start thinking of more long-term ways to make money (like, uh, renewables). On top of that, the American public is not down with tearing up ANWR. Investors gotta protect their reps.

    Most important of all, however, is the way this drilling sacrifices human rights in the name of profit. The letter acknowledges the Gwich’in’s cultural ties to these lands, and how any drilling that causes the Porcupine caribou herd to suffer would in term harm this indigenous group.

    The Gwich’in, for their part, have been actively fighting potential drilling in ANWR since at least the 1980s, when the idea first started gaining steam. They put out their own letter Monday alongside the investors’.

    The Bureau of Land Management is taking public comments until June 19 on issues to consider in an oil and gas leasing Environmental Impact Statement. With federal and state support behind drilling in ANWR, who knows if yet another letter will do much. The letter doesn’t threaten to pull any money from the oil and gas industry if investors’ calls are ignored, but we’ve seen divestment take a foothold in the environmental movement.

    On the international level, Christiana Figueres, who used to lead the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat and helped write the Paris Climate Accord, told Reuters that all Arctic oil exploration should stop.

    Maybe, just maybe, these money-hungry corporations will listen.

    You Never Miss Your Water Until…

    Faced with a severe drought, Cape Town, South Africa’s popular tourist destination has cut water consumption by 60% in just three years.

    Human Activity Changes the Landscape of Water

    A new study by NASA scientists reveal humans have altered the global landscape of water, and as a result dry areas are getting dryer and wet places are getting wetter.