As the world warms, the market for air-conditioners is increasing exponentially.
What we need is a reset in the way the problem is approached.
At a point when electricity had not been invented, architects knew that high ceilings and thick walls kept the temperature at a pleasant level.
In our high-rises, most ceilings do not go beyond 10-12 feet. Windows are smaller than they used to be.
Pollution and mosquitoes are forcing people to keep their windows closed most of the time.
We're creating an artificial environment where we transition from freezing rooms to the hot and humid environment in India.
And that's for the people who can afford air-conditioning.
Two students, Anna and Esmee, from the Berlin School of the Arts have approached the problem from a unique angle.
They have coated curtain fabric with a phase shifting material they developed.
It keeps room temperatures inside at around 25 degrees C.
The material warms up the room when it gets cold. And when it's hot outside, it cools the room.
Obviously, it doesn't work as precisely as an air-conditioner does.
But if you can keep homes comfortable simply by using curtains, it opens up amazing possibilities.
And savings on electricity.
Are you a plastics fan? Or foe?
Plastic waste is bad. We all know it.
The question is, how do we solve the problem.
There's the activist route that informs and tries to influence policy. It's absolutely essential because it ensures that it won't be business as usual.
Good luck trying to change customers because only a small percentage of people will make the necessary sacrifices of convenience.
People at stores seem to happily pay the price for the new eco-friendly plastic bags while those who conserve come armed with reusable bags.
It's the large companies who make the most use of plastic. For everything from packaging to logistics.
There are several problems to solve. Collection. Recycling. Making the collected waste reusable. And so on.
The Ocean Cleanup is making headway - started by a young Dutch entrepreneur in 2013 when he was just 18 years old.
They are hoping to haul in 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the next 5 years
Another company called Biocellection takes waste from plastics consumed day to day and creates reusable plastic for footwear, apparel and consumer electronics industries.
They are leading the way to bring about change long term.
Activism and innovation need to play off each other.
The stock trading Grand Prix
Only in the Grand Prix do the microseconds count (1/1000th of a second)
Where you go to the 3rd place after the decimal to determine who finished faster.
There's another place to make money if you're milliseconds faster (1/1000 of a microsecond) - The stock exchanges in the US.
Ever since high speed trading (HST) became the norm, it wasn't enough to be competitive in terms of microseconds. You had milliseconds to execute.
Brad Katsuyama co-founder of the IEX exchange noticed this during his stint as a trader.
They would initiate a 'buy' order for 10,000 Microsoft shares, for example . Only a portion of the order would go through and the share price would have moved up in the interim, making the next purchase costlier.
This happened time and again only for high value purchases, where millions of dollars were in play.
It took them some time to figure out what was happening.
Competing companies had a millisecond advantage in figuring out that a 'buy' order had been issued.
They were automatically primed to sweep up the shares from the other exchanges, so the purchase was executed fractions of a millisecond faster.
The shoe had shifted from bidding to tech execution.
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Air-conditioning without electricity