Juggling Dynamite

What we choose to eat has profound impacts on the planet.  Conscious consumers needed.

The Barùkas Nut (also referred to as baru nuts in Brazil) has been described as a mix of almond, cashew and peanut – only better – and with less calories. Barùkas nuts are extremely nutrient rich. They have 6g of protein per serving, more fiber than any other nut, loads of magnesium and other health-boosting minerals, more antioxidant power than any other nut.  In addition, they represent an amazing opportunity to reforest our planet, and sustain indigenous communities on their land.

Yesterday saw an important first step in the much-needed and multi-faceted transformation toward a sustainable economy and a more stable society.

181 American CEO’s known as the Business Roundtable have signed onto a new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, committing to lead their companies for the benefit of not just near-sighted shareholders (high stock prices and dividends), but for all stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders.  See  Business Roundtable Redefines the purpose of a corporation to promote ‘an economy that serves all Americans:

Since 1978, this Roundtable has issued Principles of Corporate Governance updates. Starting in 1997, they started down an increasingly destructive road where each statement endorsed narrower and narrower principles of shareholder primacy – that corporations exist principally to serve shareholders. This played a large role in our present problems.

The new Statement outlines a modern standard for corporate responsibility and a potential sea change for American capitalism.  Pushing back on unreasonably self-absorbed, ‘activist’, business-destructive shareholders, will not be accomplished easily.  See more in this video report.  Also see Corporate critics cautiously optimistic about new CEO mission statement:

Pearlstein, who has been criticizing the shareholder-first approach for two decades, wrote Monday that the Roundtable’s leadership “deserve lots of credit for initiating this rethink of corporate purpose.”

In a conversation with me on Monday, Pearlstein indicated he’s giving the CEOs the benefit of the doubt. “They all live in dire fear of activist investors. It causes them a great deal of heartburn, and they hate those guys,” he said. “So they need help in saying ‘No.’ Rather than thinking of them of as bad people with bad motives, it’s probably more correct to think of them as reasonably good people in a bad system. They have the power to change the system, but only if they act together.”

Perhaps Volkswagen was hoping they could get away with cheating long enough to dump more antiquated ICE (internal combustion engine) inventory onto a naive/complacent public.  But the gig is up.  A district court in Düsseldorf, Germany this week found that Volkswagen’s software fix for vehicles affected by its 2015 Dieselgate emissions cheating scandal actually contained another cheating device.  See Volkswagen’s Diselgate software fix has another cheat device:  German court:

With this development, the carmaker could face a new wave of claims from hundreds of thousands of car buyers whose vehicles were supposedly addressed by the Dieselgate software fix. This could also result in an equally large number of Volkswagen diesel owners receiving compensation over the company’s newly-discovered emissions manipulation efforts.

Emissions fraud has been a Modus Operandi of most of the major ICE automakers in the past decade, and environmental and air quality harm with related illness and deaths have been the cost.  Fortunately, electric vehicle (EV) technology is now sufficiently evolved to provide another alternative and sales are growing exponentially while conventional vehicle sales slump worldwide.  In Norway, as an example, sales of some diesel car models are down more than 95% over the last six years.  See:  Diesel Car sales plunge in the world’s hottest EV market:

For instance, Volvo’s top diesel models – the V40, V70 and XC60 – dropped from close to 9,000 units sold in 2013 to around 400 in the first half of 2019.

On average, the market share of diesel and gasoline vehicles stood at 60% and 29%, respectively, in 2013, but fell to just 32% and 17% in the first half of 2019.

Major automakers are finally getting the memo.  As shown below the number of EV and plug-in hybrid models on offer in Europe is set to triple over the next 16 months alone.