Eric Archambeau - Costing the Earth

Eric Archambeau - Costing the Earth (How to Fix Finance to Save the Planet) 

5⭐

Genre: Non-Fiction, Climate Change, Environmental Studies, Geography, Academia, Education, Politics, STEM, Society

Pages:  224

Format: Paperback 

Publisher: Whitefox Publishing

Date Published: 1st August 2022

Huge thank you to The Book Publicist for sending me a copy of this book to read and review. 

Book Blurb: 

In Costing the Earth, leading impact investor Eric Archambeau argues that rather than making media-friendly pledges and grasping low-hanging fruit (such as aviation taxes), world leaders must radically overhaul finance instead.

Only by aligning investment decisions with the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and ensuring that industrial and services companies measure and incorporate in their P&L statements the full environmental and social costs of their operations - costs that are currently passed on to taxpayers or absorbed by Nature - will we stand a chance of achieving the breakthroughs we need.

Zeroing in on the agri-food sector, one of the largest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and biodiversity loss, Archambeau dissects the many hidden problems caused by our current financial system.

As the stakes continue to rise and the window for action narrows, Costing the Earth makes the case that the only viable and sustainable way to achieve net-zero is to adopt the model pioneered by impact investors, which takes the three Ps - profit, people and the planet - into account when valuing a company or tracking its performance. Only then will business leaders all over the world be incentivized to place sustainability and the regeneration of the planet's resources at the heart of their operations and decision-making.

My Review: 

I was so excited about this book! Mainly because I love reading about the environment, especially climate change and ways to tackle it, and the fact that as a geographer I can’t stay away from books about the environment. This book, however, met all of my expectations and more! 

In each chapter, Archambeau presented cases on what is wrong in our current ways of production, consumption and environmental degradation/protection. Then he explained how we can change that if we looked at the environment, production, economy and consumption in a more holistic way, especially how we can change business and our day-to-day economic processes, such as financial statements, cost calculations, life cycle assessments, etc, to move towards more sustainable future. He also presents tools which companies can use to calculate the true cost of our products, including the real environmental cost that is usually left out from our product cost and the company’s financial statements. Lastly, in each chapter, Archambeau presents companies or start-up initiatives that are working towards changing the status quo of how businesses operate and finance themselves, as well as displays how those companies take strong steps towards tackling issues associated with climate change, such as poverty, hunger, agricultural processes, deforestation, greenhouse gases, to name a few. 

I learned so much from this book, especially about some of the start-up companies in the environmental sector and technology that I haven’t heard about before, that are doing amazing innovative work towards sustainability and tackling climate change. I also learned so much about the financial processes of the past that we as a society are very reluctant to change to protect our environment. 

The author’s arguments are very well researched and backed up, displaying that we need a very radical change in investing, running of companies, financing and economy to be able to work towards saving our Earth. 

I liked how the author talks about the importance of technology and machine learning, especially working together and not against technology to come up with innovative ideas and projects to save our environment and its resources for future generations. 

This is one of the few books that I have read about this topic that takes this holistic view of our environment, anthropogenic processes and economy and explores how they are all interconnected. This book shows that we need to do much more to tackle climate change and that what we are doing now is not enough. It is never going to be enough unless we are changing our old ways of doing things, such as production, investing, and financing. 

Overall: This book is a must-read for everyone interested in protecting our environment, who want to make a change, who cares about sustainability and the future of our environment and of course those who are interested in finding real solutions to tackle climate change and associated issues. This book is such an important read looking at all of the issues that we as a society are facing from a very holistic viewpoint. 

About the Author:

Eric Archambeau is an engineer, former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, venture capitalist and the co-founder of Astanor Ventures, an impact-led venture capital firm focusing on technology-enabled start-up companies in the regenerative agriculture and sustainable food sectors, with investments in companies such as Apeel Sciences, Empirical Spirit, Infarm, Modern Meadow, Monarch Tractors, Plantible, Smallhold and Ynsect.

Before Astanor, Eric was a business angel, venture capital investor, member of the board of directors and mentor to many founders of disruptive technology companies across the US, the UK and the EU, including, among others, eGroups (Yahoo groups), Flutter Entertainment PLC, PriceMinister (now Rakuten), XING, Spotify, Threads Styling, Freenow, Onfido, Peakon and Pirate Studios.

Over the past two decades, he has also worked as an investor and mentor with social entrepreneurs, addressing key social and environmental challenges, including Maven Clinic, a digital health clinic for women, in New York, and DASRA-Social Impact, a social impact accelerator in Mumbai. Eric was an early supporter of the social entrepreneurship network Ashoka in Europe, and a founding member of the Ashoka Support Network. Eric has also lectured at INSEAD, where he founded the social entrepreneurship programme, and served as Global Chairman of the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, providing food education for children across the world.

Richard Beard - Sad Little Men

Richard Beard - Sad Little Men (How Public Schools Failed Britain)

4 ⭐

Genre: Non-Fiction, Politics, Education, Society  

Pages:  278

Format:  Paperback 

Publisher: Vintage 

Date Published: 7th July 2022

Book Blurb: 

In 1975, as a child, Richard Beard was sent away from his home to sleep in a dormitory. So were David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

In those days a private boys' boarding school education was largely the same experience as it had been for generations: training for the challenges of the Empire. He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was to not let that show.

Being separated from the people who love you is traumatic. How did that feel at the time, and what sort of adult does it mould?

This is a story about England, and a portrait of a type of boy, trained to lead, who becomes a certain type of man. As clearly as an X-ray, it reveals the make-up of those who seek power - what makes them tick, and why.

Sad Little Men addresses debates about privilege head-on; clearly and unforgettably, it shows the problem with putting a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including 10 Downing Street. Is this who we want in charge, especially at a time of crisis?

It is a passionate, tender reckoning—with one individual's past, but also with a national bad habit.

My Review: 

It is a very interesting take on British private/ boarding schools and their realities in the 1970s and beyond. As someone interested in education and teaching, this book gives a lot of insight and a different perspective on how the British education system, especially private, changed over the years. It also taught me how private school education in the 1970s shaped not only the level of education that students had but also had a strong effect on student's emotional intelligence and mental capacity.

In this book, Beard talks mostly about his experiences as a kid in preparatory and then boarding school, where he spent most of his childhood and teen years. He discusses the harsh conditions, mental and physical damage that it caused to him over the years, the old-fashioned style of teaching and education, as well as outdated viewpoints that are taught to students and social expectations put on students over the years from their fellow peers. The author also recognises how much damage young adults in boarding schools did in the 1970s, especially being away from family, feeling that they don’t belong anywhere and need to compete to survive the harsh academic and social environment. It gives some understanding of how politicians who once attended those boarding schools in the 1970s and later, take those experiences, overcome them or use them whilst being in political power. Beard also acknowledges that education in the UK changed over the last 40-50 years and boarding schools are not as harsh or rough as he experienced them but states that there is a still big gap between private and public education in England.

I think the one let-down of this book is that the author repeats himself quite a bit and keeps going on to discuss the same subjects but in different ways throughout the book. I think more of his experiences would’ve made this book much better and would be helped avoid quite a lot of the repetition.

Overall: It is a very interesting book that is good to read if you are interested in the education system and educational changes in the UK, mainly in England. Also, if you are interested in how private and boarding schools influenced our politics and our higher society, this book gives a very good insight into that as well. The author draws from his own experience, which made this book less of a dry read. I personally really enjoyed this book because I didn’t know much about private education in the UK, especially how it was in the past, and was is a good short introduction and summary to it, that is also not a dry textbook read.

About the Author:

Richard Beard’s six novels include Lazarus is Dead, Dry Bones and Damascus, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In the UK he has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award and longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. His latest novel Acts of the Assassins was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2015. He is also the author of four books of narrative non-fiction, including his 2017 memoir The Day That Went Missing. Formerly, Director of The National Academy of Writing in London, he is a Visiting Professor (2016/17) at the University of Tokyo and has a Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. In 2017 he is a juror for Canada’s Scotiabank Giller Prize. Beard is also an occasional contributor to the Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Financial Times, Prospect and The Nightwatchman.

He studied at Cambridge, at the Open University, and with Malcolm Bradbury on the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. He has worked as a P.E. teacher, as Secretary to Mathilda, Duchess of Argyll, and as an employee of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. In the Mendip Hills, Richard Beard looked after Brookleaze, a house owned by the Royal Society of Literature, and lived for three years in Japan as a Professor of British Studies at the University of Tokyo.

https://www.richardbeard.info/