by csztova
George Clooney tastes sustainability in Nespresso coffee
[Via | Lucy Siegle | Environment | theguardian.com]
George Clooney is the face of Nespresso, the Nestle capsule coffee company, and makes no bones about it. “I’m very comfortable with commercials. I’ve done them most of my life,” he said on Tuesday in Paris, as he provided star power to the newly unveiled Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board (NSAB). “But I would find myself at a press conference, or perhaps at a film festival and suddenly there’d be some people challenging me about Nespresso’s sustainability. I thought if I was going to be involved on a long-term basis with this company, and I like them very much, I should find out what they’re doing and what they should and could be held responsible for.” Three years ago Clooney headed out with Nespresso to Costa Rica to see the company’s coffee farmers for himself.
[More]
The article kind of buries the lede. Green farming is all well and good but this section almost made me do a spit take:
“Most of the money I make on the [Nespresso] commercials I spend keeping a satellite over the border of North and South Sudan to keep an eye on Omar al-Bashir [the Sudanese dictator charged with war crimes at The Hague]. Then he puts out a statement saying that I’m spying on him and how would I like it if a camera was following me everywhere I went and I go ‘well welcome to my life Mr War Criminal’. I want the war criminal to have the same amount of attention that I get. I think that’s fair.”
This earlier article discussed this – Clooney buys time on a satellite to gather intelligence information regarding army movements and such.
Not for the secret use of a government but for the public use to control a government. The Satellite Sentinel Project is aimed at showing the world what the government of Sudan is doing, particularly with respect to human rights abuses.
A recent report details how Satellite Imagery Shows Sudan Maintains Infantry in Border Zone in violation of agreements.
What happens when an individual can spy on the infrastructure of other governments? It becomes very much like the world described in The Transparent Society.
The way you control the watchers is to be able to watch them. Openness and transparency drive more rapid innovation. They also prevent abuses of power.
Enlightenment Age cultures thrive on easy movement of information. It makes them more nimble and resilient. To many secrets and human beings just naturally start to misbehave. When we know we can be watched, we often change our behavior, for the better.
So it is kind of cool that a private citizen is paying for spying on a government.
A Man With A Ph.D. 