The Sunday Review
A curation of what I am writing, reading, and watching from last week.
I was recently flying over parts of the west and looking out my plane window I could see just endless expanses of desert. The dry heat is completely different than what I am used to on the east coat with our intense humidity. I can see the appeal of desert living. Here is my weekly curation what I wrote, read, and watched last week that I thought was worth sharing.
What I Wrote Last Week
The Clothing Waste Problem
This is something that has been bothering my for awhile and I recently got to talk to some people in the industry working on the problem. Dan Green is a co-founder of Helpsy, a reverse logistics company, and he helped frame the problem of clothing waste that reminded me of how I like to frame the plastic waste problem. Clothing is not trash.
Circular Economy Of My Dreams or Is It Just Green Washing?
Reading Ben Elgin’s story in Bloomberg this week made me take a different angle on how I wrote this month’s green chemistry and circular economy issue. If you are an investor looking to make investments into green technology companies or if you are just someone interested in the space I try and give you my thoughts on how to interpret what you are reading. Skepticism is healthy. As someone once told me, “In God we trust. All others bring data.”
What I’m Reading
Could Index Funds Be ‘Worse Than Marxism’?
by Annie Lowrey
I liked this story mainly for it’s contrarian aspects. I’m generally a big fan of The Atlantic. I’ve been thinking about doing some public market investing in specific stocks lately, but it seems like a significant time commitment. We all do some amount of index investing via 401k or Roth IRAs.
How Debt and Climate Change Pose ‘Systemic Risk’ to World Economy
I’ve written about externalizing costs of our modern lives before and I keep seeing echoes of my thesis in the news. Somini Sengupta does some great reporting here on the financial aspects of climate change and systemic risks to our world economy. Here is an excerpt:
Belize, said Christopher Coye, the country’s minister of state for finance, needs immediate debt relief to deal with the effects of global warming that it had little role in creating.
“How do we pursue climate action?” he said. “We are fiscally constrained at this point.”
“We should be compensated for suffering the excesses of others and supported in mitigating and adapting to climate change effects — certainly in the form of debt relief and concessionary funding,” Mr. Coye said.
What I’m Watching
I am digging Van Neistat’s YouTube Channel these days. This latest one really resonated in some ways. I took away from his video that as soon as we achieve a dream we need new ones to take root. I am impressed with Van’s ability to make short films that feel like they belong on Vimeo as opposed to YouTube.