Past and present

I went back to piano study three years ago. In some contexts I don’t mind being called the longest continuing participant rather than the oldest - but the second is clearly the honest description here as the oldest student. After yesterday’s practice, I was moved to reflect on what I saw in front of me from the piano bench - pictured above. Today I grabbed my phone, took a picture after pulling down the blinds to block the sun - not totally succeeding - sent the photo to my laptop and here it is.

Above, there are pages from a mediaeval psalter. These came as a wedding present in 1960 from family friends who found the pages in an English antique shop and had them framed. Many such books were hand lettered and illustrated in the middle ages by monks - and it’s possible to find the English texts of the Latin inscription. It seems amazing that such books were simply cut up and its pages treated as a commodity. But here they are - treasured artifacts.

Moving down it is obvious that this instrument is not a concert grand. Instead, it is a Roland electronic of reasonable quality. The headphones make it possible to practise at any hour without disturbing neighbors in my apartment complex. On the sides are standards for practice of any pianist at any level - Bach easy preludes and Hanon exercises.

What is perhaps most interesting are the printouts in the centre. This is a work by Joseph-Hector Fiocco, a composer I had never heard of until I looked him up. A Belgian composer who lived from 1703-1741, he was a composer and harpichordist of the late Baroque period who also knew enough Latin and Greek to be a school teacher as well as becoming choirmaster at Antwerp Cathedral. Obviously a versatile and talented guy -as the little gem of a piano suite proves.

What would he think of the way I received this score? I printed it out on an inkjet. In the middle of a lesson, my teacher had asked if I knew the work - and on receiving a negative reply, on the spot she sent the score from her Iphone. The composer’s free scores are available from the International Music Score Library Project.

There are so many awful uses of technology, with people spewing vitriol into the universe and illustrating the worst of human character. It will take incredible effort to curtail the power of transmittal of ugliness and lack of caring. I’m as liable to the quick flippant comment as anyone. But it is good to remember the capability of transmitting beauty and quality with ease. That is where we have to go.

Business travel and climate change

The Pandemic has brought changes that we could never have anticipated. Many are devastating - but some are good for the planet. Fast Company has some interesting things to say about business travel this morning:

• In 2019, employees of the company, Salesforce traveled so much for work that they generated a combined 146,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions. In comparison, 17,500 homes emittted that much over the course of an entire year;

• it would take more than 178,000 acres of forest 12 months to sequester that amount of carbon dioxide - and of course, we are also depleting forests at an alarming rate.

• In its most recent fiscal year, business travel was down 86% - that’s a highly significant reduction

• Salesforce was already prepared to pay for offsets - but recognized that these are not enough.

• Business travel causes huge amounts of air pollution. and business’s carbon footprint is huge. Here is another comparison: one round trip ticket from London to NYC generates more emissions than the average person in 56 countries generates in a full year. Short haul trips are also worse proportionally than longer ones.

• Business travel plays a large role in climate change. But any kind of air travel demands that we consider the impact on the planet.

• Returning to business as usual will immediately create an increase, whether it is for business or holiday travel. It was growing before the pandemic - a 32% increase from 2013 to 2018 - much faster than UN projections.

• 1% of the world’s population accounts for 50% of global aviation emissions, according to a recent study.

• The good news is that companies are waking up to the impact of business travel as they see the difference. It will come back more slowly

Companies have to remember this reality. We live on a planet. We are subjects to its systems. If we destroy the air, we don’t breathe.

That slow pace isn’t because of sustainability concerns, Terry says. Companies may reconsider sending someone abroad for a half day meeting in London because they can save money by doing it virtually. But Evan Konwiser, executive vice president of product and strategy for American Express Global Business Travel (GBT), which oversees corporate travel booking for companies of all sizes, doesn’t see conferences, internal meetings, and even customer meetings staying completely virtual. There have always been costs associated with business travel, not just financial but also in terms of productivity (hello, jet lag). If your company was willing to greenlight travel for conferences, meetings, and so on in 2019, the “vast majority” of those actions, he says, will still be worth a business trip in 2022. In this scenario, companies looking to lower their carbon footprints won’t simply reduce or stop business travel. They’ll focus on lowering travel-related emissions—a distinction that deserves the same scrutiny as broad ‘net zero’ goals.

To Rutherford, the quickest and easiest thing a corporation can do to cut its business-travel emissions (besides keeping employees at home) is to opt for economy over business class. There’s been a lot of resistance to that idea over the years, he acknowledges. People who travel for work like the status that accompanies the front of the plane, and being asked to squeeze into coach for a transatlantic flight just to attend one meeting is unlikely to make someone look fondly on their employer. 

There are other ways to bring down emissions. Rather than purchasing the most economical flight, companies may be more willing to pay a “green premium,” buying a ticket for a more efficient, direct flight over a cheaper, indirect one, or intentionally choosing operators that fly newer, more fuel-efficient aircraft. In June 2020, American Express GBT debuted a feature in its travel management software that lets users filter potential trips by their total emissions. There’s not yet much data on how many companies will opt for the most sustainable trip over the most affordable one, but Nora Lovell Marchant, American Express GBT’s VP of sustainability, thinks it will happen. After all, companies have already shown that they’re willing to pay for carbon offsets, another kind of green premium.   

Changing the mode of travel could also curb emissions. Switching from air to rail could mean a 90% reduction in emissions for that trip, Lovell Marchant says—though she acknowledges that’s easier to do in the European Union than the U.S. (France is one of multiple European countries to recently ban short flights that can be replaced by a train trip, though Rutherford points out there’s a caveat for connecting flights associated with long-haul trips.) 

And finally, there’s Sustainable Aviation Fuels, or SAFs, new fuel innovations that also come with a huge premium. Right now, SAFs aren’t a solution to curbing emissions because usage is so low; less than 0.5% of jet fuels used today are SAFs, Rutherford says, and they can cost as much as four times a typical fuel. But corporations and airlines are beginning to work together to bring down the cost and ramp up use. In October 2020, Microsoft and Alaska Airlines partnered on a SAF deal that involved the tech giant buying SAF credits from a third-party company, which would then supply sustainable fuels to Alaska. Just last month, Microsoft joined with Boeing, Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, and Salesforce to launch the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance to spur SAF production and technology innovations so these fuels can scale.

THE PANDEMIC PULLED BACK THE CURTAIN ON HOW MUCH OF BUSINESS TRAVEL IS REALLY NECESSARY.

With SAFs comes one big concern: Companies and airlines could “double count” emissions savings. “When you see United or American make an announcement saying ‘we’re going to have a partnership with this corporation and use it to introduce SAFs,’ that’s great,” Rutherford says. “But according to the laws of accounting emissions, that actually means the airline’s greenhouse gas emissions are unchanged. They’ve sold the reduction to a third-party.” The trouble comes if both parties try to claim the reduction. Konwiser recognizes that’s a concern and says American Express GBT is working on solutions.

SAFs could represent a breakthrough solution for future emissions. But the fact remains: We need to make drastic changes right now. “You’re never going to resolve the emissions issue without changes in the system. Technology is not going to cut it,” says Gössling, the sustainable tourism researcher. “We have to really cut down on individual travel and we have to start at the top,” with that 1% of fliers who cause half of all aviation emissions. “It has to start with the very frequent flyers, it has to start with the premium classes, and only then will we stand a chance to manage this through technology.”

To Gössling, the pandemic pulled back the curtain on how much of business travel is really necessary. In the before-times, “People would tell their bosses, ‘Oh I’ve got to fly again because otherwise I’m not really sure we’ll get the deal.’ At the end of the day, maybe that was not really true,” he says.

The world is opening up again and the appeal of business travel is coming back—but the rational arguments against it still exist. It’s just not our own health that’s at risk with every work trip, but our planet’s. 

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Arguments

Thanks to Jonathan Haigt for this one:

“Once people accept the case for why you need to be exposed to people who disagree with you, and who challenge your ideas, then the question is, how do you do it? And here I have two recommendations. One, the one that worked for me, that really helped me, because I was an arrogant argumentative teenager and young adult, is reading Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And it's so easy once you read it. It's a great book, it's a really fun book. And what he teaches you is, don't come out saying, “You're wrong and here's why.” Come out saying, “Oh, that's very interesting. I think you're right about that one thing there.” Or, “We have this in common.” Or, “I can understand why you're saying that,” or, “Here's something in my experience that confirms what you said.” And once you start by agreeing on something, then you can pivot to, “But now on the other hand, it seems to me that...” and then you can raise your point. And then you're much more likely to persuade the person ... If you're a Homo sapien, you evolved for group combat, you evolved for confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. We're not really evolved to be academics or scientists searching for truth in an unbiased way. We evolved to basically CYA, and win in social competitions. But if you learn some skills, you can actually be very effective as a teacher, as someone who persuades, as someone who changes people."

Trades transitioning

Here’s an encouraging story published by Fast Company.

“Danish renewable energy giant Ørsted reached an agreement with North America’s Building Trades Unions: The company would hire union members for a series of upcoming U.S. projects. NABTU represents 3 million workers in 14 unions, including electrical, bricklaying, cement, masonry, and more—a group historically skeptical of renewable energy because of its potential to disrupt members’ jobs. “

It deals with three matters that are frequently stumbling blocks. The workers are more than capable of bullding things. They just have to learn how to build something different and have the training provided to do so with proper earnings as they make the transition. The wages that they earn in the new jobs will be comparable to the ones they earned in previous occupations. And to sweeten the deal they will also have added benefits. These transitions are apparently common in Europe. It is time for North American companies to imitate these elements which seem obvious.

Gadgets

I’ve been reading Jason Lanier’s You are not a Gadget - and it has reminded me of a gadget that I dislike - the Chat function in Zoom. In a conversation with one of my sons, he defended the function as useful between two colleagues when watching a webinar - and on that I have no particular disagreement. What I object to is the interruption of chats to everybody. The sender assumes that the information he/she is going to provide is more important than that of the presenter at the moment. It is intended to he helpful but it smacks of self-importance.

What this does is to put a small bulletin on my gallery page view that annoyingly obscures the face of the speaker. Sometimes it is a link to a website in a font that is unreadable. If I am trying to follow what the speaker is saying, I don’t want to leap to another place and look at it now. When many are attending, “Hello” from wherever may be momentarily inspiring that the world is wide and extensive but it doesn’t survive as something important.

Lanier decries the ability of the trivial to become important and swamp attention from the main event. It is part of social media’s attempt to make everyone more important - without realizing that the herds we are creating are there for a reason - not to have more friends we hardly know or care about, but to send us more advertisements. It also shows how behaviour on one set of platforms is now influencing our behaviour on others. I won’t read your chats - and I’ll hardly ever send one.