Welcome
David Burns is an environmental chemist with expertise in laboratory data audits, green chemistry, and industrial ecology. David is available to help business & professionals integrate sustainable supply chains and energy efficiency into service offerings. The following blog topics are intended to invoke awareness and/ or action in Going-Green. You are also invited to create a Free Whoisgreen business profile using the link above. David Burns is a NSC member of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
ABOUT DAVID BURNS
David Burns is a qualified analytical chemist, and previously a co-founding Director and General Manager of a successful contract laboratory, specialising in chemical testing of contaminated sites and pharmaceutical products. He is regarded as an industry leader in the field of quality management & data scrutiny. David has a fantastic ability in connecting service and customer relationships by analysing the needs of the supplier and those of the customer.
Recently, David Burns collaborated with a leading architect to design and build his own family home, demonstrating many of the sustainable features advocated here at Sustain450.com.au. David's home was a 2008 design finalist with the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) awards - sustainability category. David's sustainable home shares 'How To' information with the geneal community by participating in the national Sustainable House Day program run each September and endorsed by the Australian Government. David Burns holds equity interest in other sustainable businesses.
David Burns, as a Sustainability advisor and analyst, has won credibility because he "Walks the Talk". He lives in a sustainable home, drives an energy efficient car and searches the world for the latest sustainable solutions.
My Favourate Quote is, "Let's get the world living within its solar budget - that is, we harness enough energy that reaches the Earth every day to make the world work, without having to dig up billion year-old fossil fuels and set them on fire". Michael Potts, President & CEO, Rocky Mountain Instituter, 2010.
My Favourate Argument Buster for maintaining the status quo is, "Defenders of the status quo sometimes cite the Book of Genesis, in which God grants domination over the planet and over all creatures to mandkind. We can take what we want because it has been given by God who likewise endowed us with special gifts and genuis. So when we 'take' entire species, extincting them, business ideologues may ask, 'So What'. They argue that a high percentage of all the species that have ever lived are extinct. the process of which activity is part is the natural order, and thus, they argue, extinctions caused by human activity are part of that evolution. This syllogism sounds logical enough, but the logic is wrongand disingenuous, because a key point is conveniently omitted: excluding the five previous mass extinctions such as those that occurred in the Final Permian and Cretaceous periods, past extinctions opened new opportunities for greater speciation. These mass extinctions were caused by extraordinary, catastrophic events, such as a meteorite strike. Today, we are experiencing the first mass extinction in the 3.8 billion year history of life forms caused by another organism - homo sapiens.The general rate of species extinction today (1993) is 1,000 to 10,000 times greater than the 'background' level of extinction that has existed for the past 65 million years of the Cenozoic Age". Paul Hawkens, author of 'The Ecology of Commerce', Harper Colins 1993.