Technology & Innovation — September 14, 2011

CEOs Get Green Bottom Line

Two decades after the concept of ‘sustainability’ shifted from a financial to an environmental association, corporations are seeing the business case for focusing on the environment.

bigthinkeditor

What’s the Latest Development?

‘Sustainability’ went from financial to environmental in 1987 when Norwegian P.M. Gro Harlem Brundtland coined the definition, “Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs.” Now companies see the financial payoff of going green.

What’s the Big Idea?

Bayer Corporation CEO Greg Babe: “What I’m most proud of is the fact that we realize that there is a very solid business case for sustainability.” Oncor CEO & Chairman of the GridWise Alliance Bob Shapard: “What you find in big industrial concerns is they’re fairly sophisticated in how they consume energy. What you don’t find is with individual consumers in their own personal lives…they don’t consume energy smart at all.”

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

Up Next

Surprising Science

Big Balloon to Cool Earth

British scientists hope to use a huge balloon and hosepipe to shoot particles into the atmosphere–like an erupting volcano–and cool down Earth. A prototype is ready to try.