New Saudi King Salman attends a ceremony with world leaders offering their condolences following the death of the late Saudi King, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, at the Diwan royal palace in Riyadh January 24, 2015.POOL/Reuters
We do the best with what we have
Re: Corporate Knights a metrics misfire (Jan. 24): While we wish there were perfect data sets for a company's resource footprint against its claim to a geographic region's ability to sustain it, down here in the corporate trenches, we have to work with the data that is actually available.
The good news is that the majority of the biggest companies do now report basic metrics, which makes it possible for us to rank who is most efficient with carbon, energy, water and waste. And as there are now historical data series, we also evaluate how quickly companies are improving their resource efficiency – or not – over time. It is this latter metric that gives us valuable insight as to whether Global 100 companies are part of the solution for our civilization to live within our planetary carbon budget.
Rather than letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, we will continue to make the best use of available data to stimulate competition among companies for who can be the "most sustainable," which we recognize is not always tantamount to actually sustainable.
Toby Heaps, CEO, Corporate Knights, Toronto
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Canada can't win a fight against a king
Re: Saudi Arabia's new king unlikely to change direction on oil production (Jan. 23): Comparing Canada to Saudi Arabia is rather foolish. Canadian politicians have to answer to the voters for their actions and corporation have their stockholders to address. The Saudi monarchy has none of these restraints. They are dictators and have a subjugated populace who expect nothing from their supreme leaders. The King of Saudi Arabia has Allah alone to answer to and I doubt that Allah has much say on oil prices.
A five-year fight to increase market share means nothing when you are a despot and calling Canada a formidable foe is a tad specious. This is a fight that neither Canada nor the U.S. can win and the sooner we accept that fact, the better.
Malcolm Lowe, Unionville, Ont.
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Seven-year slump isn't that perplexing
Re: The seven-year slump: Why the global economy can't seem to get started (Jan. 23): Your article on the seven-year slump says that it remains "perplexing." Why? In 1936, Keynes set out the economic problems associated with insufficient aggregate demand and noted the likelihood of a "liquidity trap," in which monetary policy would be ineffective.
Just because an economic theory was formulated more than 70 years ago doesn't mean it should be forgotten.
Alan J. MacFadyen, Canmore, Alta.
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China has a need for nuclear energy
Re: Cheaper oil and China's clean-energy drive (Jan. 10): There is more to China's electricity policy than you are reporting. It is best summarized as extensive dependence upon nuclear and fossil fuels and not wind and solar. The latter are conveniently hidden in the renewable category, which includes hydro that dwarfs them combined by a factor greater than six. The past decade shows a substantial, sustained increase in nuclear, which continues to rise. Calculations at the margin for recent annual increases in wind and solar in China's very large electricity system have to be viewed carefully and are not likely harbingers of significant change.
Kent Hawkins, Ajax, Ont.
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