Paul Gilding

Paul Gilding Profile imagePaul is an independent writer, advisor and advocate for action on climate change and sustainability.

An activist and social entrepreneur for 35 years, his personal mission and purpose is to lead, inspire and motivate action globally on the transition of society and the economy to sustainability. He pursues this purpose across all sectors, working around the world with individuals, businesses, NGOs, entrepreneurs, academia and government.

He has served as CEO of a range of innovative NGO’s and companies including Greenpeace International, Ecos Corporation and Easy Being Green. He has also helped to establish and served on the board of a number of new community organisations including Inspire Foundation (who run the youth site Reach Out) the Australian Business Community Network and Climate Coolers (the organisation behind of the 1 Million Women campaign). His speaking and work has taken him to over 30 countries including the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, South America, Europe, South Africa, the USA and Mexico.

Paul is widely recognized globally as a thought leader and as an authority on sustainability and business. He has worked with the CEOs and executives of many leading companies including here in Australia with ANZ and IAG and globally with DuPont, Diageo, Anglo American and Ford. His current roles include as strategic advisor to KPMG and the Victorian EPA.

Paul believes we are now in a global ecological and economic crisis that will lead to a period of major global economic transformation. As he advocated in his 2005 letter Scream Crash Boom and his 2008 update The Great Disruption, he sees this crisis driven change as an enormous opportunity to build a new approach to economic and social development for humanity.

He is a member of the Core Faculty at Cambridge University’s Program for Sustainability Leadership and writes broadly. His regular column The Cockatoo Chronicles is available on his own site www.paulgilding.com and he writes a blog on Alan Kohler’s Business Spectator site. He is writing a book on “The Great Disruption” to be published in the USA by Bloomsbury in 2011.

He is a significant contributor to population growth with 5 children aged from 7 to 30, which he defends as breeding environmentalists and lives south of Sydney with his wife Michelle, the three younger kids, Rex the dog and Candy the horse.

Solar powering on
Amongst all the political shenanigans in Australia, it’s good to see the world still powering ahead with solar energy. In the USA, a new plant looks like going ahead, having received a key approval, that will be the world’s largest ever at 1,000 MW – this is the size of a large coal power station. It’s really just a very fancy solar hot water heater, concentrating sun light to then make steam to drive turbines. Here in Australia we are also getting moving, with AGL recently announcing a $1 billion 420 MW wind farm in Victoria. Of course Telstra is doing its bit with over 10,000 sola...
Beyond belief
The climate debate is often framed as a question of belief. The question is asked for example "Do you believe in the climate science?" This is a strange phenomena and one we don’t apply to many other areas of science. We don’t ask "Do you believe aeroplanes can fly"? Do you believe medicines can work? Sure, each of these areas has controversy within them, but we don’t question the underlying science. Why do we do so with climate science? I share my thoughts on this topic on my website which you can read here. What do you think?
Balance of Power
What will the election result mean for the environment? It seems to me likely that, given we now have the balance of power in both houses being held by people who support climate change action, we may finally get some progress. I argue this in my latest blog in Climate Spectator. The rise of the green vote will certainly have given the major parties something to think about. A hung parliament might also lead to a more interesting political process. Maybe we’ll have more debate and less political game playing? Here’s hoping the independents get their way in this regard.
Extreme weather events
These past few weeks have seen some very disturbing extreme weather events around the world. Floods in Pakistan, mudslides in China, droughts and fires in Russia and heat records across Asia have led to tragic deaths and left millions homeless. Of course, no individual event proves anything but the trends here are clear. Reinsurance companies pay for these events so they monitor the trends closely. Munich Re said their natural catastrophe database "shows that the number of extreme weather events like windstorm and floods has tripled since 1980, and the trend is expected to persist." Interes...
China and the race to the climate economy
With Pakistan flooding, Russia burning and temperature records getting smashed around the world in recent months (see here for details) it won’t be long before the world wakes up to climate change and it’s economic impacts. For me, one of the interesting impacts will then be the race between China and the USA to see who owns the new economy. You can see my thoughts on this in more detail on my website here.  What does all this mean for Australia and our economy? Do you think we’ll be ready for what’s coming or will we still be talking? What should our response be?  
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