Papers and Op-Eds
ABBOTT STRATEGIES founder, Rob Abbott, writes frequently on issues pertaining to sustainability and competitive advantage. Selected papers and other writing are featured on this page. If you would like a full list of Rob’s papers, or would like to order a paper, please contact us and let us know.
- Confronting Inconvenient Truths in the Alberta Oil Patch
- Confronting Global Inequities in Health Care
- Stampeding into the Future
- Tackling the Root Cause of Disease
- Property Taxes and the Common Good
- Time for a New Generation of Leaders to Carry the Torch
- It’s the Clean Economy, Stupid
- The common good lives in all of us
- Picard’s "second opinion" on drug costs frames the problem too narrowly
- IMAGINE CALGARY: A Strategic Lens to View the Future
- Green really is the Color of Money – Made-in-B.C. Green Ideas and Technologies Good for Bottom Line
- Disconnect in Globe’s Reporting on Oil, Hybrids
- Treading Lightly toward Calgary’s Future
- Canada Needs Ingenuity to Solve Complex Health Care Problems
- Prescription for Survival: Redefining Big Pharma as Health Care Providers, Not Drug Pushers
- Already it is Dusk: Thoughts on the Need for Nature in the 21st Century
- Business in Vancouver – Op Ed Short-term Corporate Thinking Shortchanges Society
- Pique News Magazine – Letter Sustainability is Dynamic
- Embedding Sustainability in the Business of City Government: An Opportunity for Seattle
- Strategy and Design
- Ecological Integrity and the Green Business Hypothesis: A Tiger by the Tale
- The Gordian Knot Revisited: Thoughts on Sustainability and the Search for an Epistemological Sword
- Commentary on Saint-Exupery’s Geography Lesson: Art and Science in the Creation and Cultivation of Landscape Values
Sustainable Mining Now
It is often said that “If it’s not grown, it’s mined”, a telling reference to the fact that human society is more dependent than many might like to think on mining. Indeed, virtually every electronic and mechanical device in a home or office; school or hospital; plane, train or automobile would be difficult or impossible to create without the products of mining. And so it is that my friend and colleague, Gord McKenna of BGC Engineering, and I have a very particular interest in contributing to a dialogue about the evolution of the mining industry – an industry that is increasing resource extraction geometrically – such that we better reconcile the need for the products of mining with the need for natural capital assets and the flow of life-sustaining ecosystem services provided by nature. Very shortly we will be publishing our new book, Sustainable Mining Now, that we hope will spark real dialogue within the industry globally about how to think about, and achieve the seemingly impossible: sustainable mining – mining that creates financial and social wealth and wellbeing in a way that does not undermine or otherwise damage the aesthetic and productive capacity of natural capital for present and future generations.
