1.    Green energy. The town of Saint Gouéno, France, just gave Mother Earth a new Enercon 850kW wind turbine, the first of seven and the result of a clever investment co-op of local residents with institutional investors. Along with six other nearby towns, this region is planning to be energy self-sufficient by 2025, including biomass facilities, solar panels, and an energy efficiency campaign that is creating a lot of local jobs. OK, so a wind turbine capable of powering more than 100 homes might be out of your gift-giving budget this year, but the USEPA will show you how to buy green energy for your mom in her neighborhood, which is a pretty nice gift of clean air and, in many regions, saving money. http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/pubs/gplocator.htm
2.    Healthy food. Locally grown fresh food uses fewer resources to produce and is likely to be a lot healthier for mom (and you too, for that matter). In addition to promoting fresh local produce in many of its stores globally, Walmart’s “Fighting Hunger Together” program also hands out millions of dollars in grants to food banks for those in need. Join them at http://apps.facebook.com/fightinghunger/
3.    Light. The city of Rio de Janeiro is partnering with the non-profit R20 (www.Regions20.org) to replace its streetlights with energy-saving LEDs that will cut energy consumption by half and save over $60 million/year. You can support that work or just help mom to do the same thing at home – - Home Depot has a simple video that shows you how http://howto.homedepot.com/videos/watch/390484563001/How-to-Save-Money-with-Energy-Efficient-LED-Light-Bulbs-The-Home-Depot.html
4.    Water. Clean water is hard to find for most of Mother Earth’s kids. But a nifty new bottle helps you to drink clean water while giving that same life-giving gift to others. A couple of college students started Hydros to put a high-tech water filter/bottle in your pocket and share profits with clean water projects globally (www.hydrosbottle.com).
5.    Peace. Nothing is more loving and sustainable for the planet than peace. Think about the places on earth today that are torn by conflict – - they’re all environmental and economic disasters. An amazing group of young musicians is on tour in the U.S. this week and shows that peace is possible between Arabs and Jews. Polyphony’s breathtakingly talented kids – - as young as 10 years old – - are the gift of hope and a demonstration of commitment by ordinary people without prodding by governments. They’re also a lot of fun to hear and see them playing Mozart, Hayden, and more (www.polyphonyfoundation.org). Take your mom to one of their concerts or send the group a check in her honor.

Long after the traditional holiday cards have faded and flowers have wilted, mom will appreciate these five examples of people taking action to make the world more sustainable and to give Mother Earth gifts she’ll always remember.

Since those early days, we have improved sewage treatment plants and banned DDT, but new threats to human and environmental health are mounting – pollution from hydraulic fracking, leaking oil pipelines, nuclear disasters, and other localized impacts on communities. At the global scale, climate change is real and accelerating, as evidenced by unprecedented droughts, hurricanes, floods, and crop losses. As the World Bank warns, a possible 4 degree C increase in global temperatures by the 2060s will lead to a “transition of the Earth’s ecosystems into a state unknown in human experience.” These new and very visible threats are igniting a fresh grassroots call for more action that is commensurate with such challenges in ways the existing laws seem unprepared to address.

Enter the “Rights of Nature” movement. Any pensioner knows you can spend the interest on your nest egg, but should avoid diminishing the principal if you want a sustainable economic future. But our current economic system assumes we can consume Nature’s capital without consequence. Given that we live on a planet with finite resources, the Rights of Nature movement seeks a new, sustainable model.

Several countries, including Bolivia and Ecuador, and over three-dozen U.S. municipalities have recently incorporated such Rights of Nature into their policies and laws. Last week, my hometown of Santa Monica became the first city in California to pass such a law. This new ordinance states that “natural communities and ecosystems possess fundamental and inalienable rights to exist and flourish.” It recognizes Santa Monicans’ rights to “clean water from sustainable sources; marine waters safe for active and passive recreation; clean indoor and outdoor air; a sustainable food system that provides healthy, locally grown food; a sustainable climate that supports thriving human life and a flourishing bio-diverse environment . . . and a sustainable energy future based on renewable energy sources.”

Relevant to the business community, which depends on resources and public good will to make and distribute products, the ordinance makes clear that “[c]orporate entities…do not enjoy special privileges or powers under the law that subordinate the community’s rights to their private interests.” At some point, these rights and values will clash if smart businesses don’t take these rights into account and demonstrate that their products are truly sustainable, especially because the Santa Monica ordinance includes citizen enforcement authority to protect those rights, just as the federal Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and other fundamental statutes include – - and which have been used by individuals and environmental groups to force compliance.

The good news is that solutions to this potential culture clash already exist. Cradle-to-cradle product design, LEED standards for the built environment, and zero waste plans by companies like Walmart all show the path to products and services that maximize the use of scarce resources and find measurable ways to spend the interest of Nature and not the principal. If more companies pay attention to the Rights of Nature movement and the obvious limits of our planet, we can enjoy sustainable, healthy communities and profits, making every day Earth Day in the process.

Suntech defaulted on over half a billion dollars in government loans, a figure similar to the Solyndra losses for American taxpayers. There are numerous reasons for both of these failures, but chief among them was the fact that risk-free money resulted in both firms over-building their capacity ahead of market demand, driving down margins and ending any chance to make profits and repay loans.

By contrast, the other story on the front page of the China Daily was about car makers such as Geely, BYD and Great Wall, all attributing their success to practical market-driven product development and one other key ingredient – - government fleets were buying the domestic products, especially those with the highest fuel economy.

The lesson here is that instead of well-meaning but ill-conceived subsidies, companies do better when government sets standards (demand for renewable energy, for example, or higher fuel economy) and uses its considerable buying power to help make the market for these more sustainable products.

As I looked out over the rooftops of Wuxi in Jiangsu province, I saw few solar panels, despite the fact that a significant percentage of the world’s production comes from this province and companies like Suntech provide a lot of jobs to China’s workforce. I couldn’t help wondering how Suntech might be doing today if the local and national governments had taken a page out of the playbooks from California or Germany, using market forces to increase demand for solar energy, beginning with rooftops owned by the taxpayers. This question is brought into sharper focus by two other observations.

First, China’s new premier, Li Keqiang, pledged that his government would “show even greater resolve” in tackling China’s environmental problems, especially it’s breathtaking (quite literally) air pollution. One of the primary causes of rising asthma rates in China is the burning of coal to produce electricity. If the excess capacity of Suntech and other solar panel makers was harnessed to generate clean energy, might China tame its air pollution problems faster and maintain it’s ambitious 8% annual economic growth goal at the same time?

The second observation is that Wuxi rooftops offer ample evidence that this approach can work. The vast majority of homes, businesses, schools, and government buildings boast solar water heating systems, like those I was shown atop the new Wuxi Environmental Research Institute and the Wuxi General Hospital. These systems provide 100% of the building’s hot water needs and repay themselves from energy savings in about three years. Westech Solar, a local company, reaps the benefits of this common-sense approach, much like the local car-makers have done by selling to the official fleets, not by looking for subsidies.

These lessons are worth noting in the U.S. too. Suntech closed a manufacturing plant in Goodyear, Arizona. Might those workers still have jobs if the state or federal government had become customers and put solar panels on rooftops, increasing energy security and improving air quality at the same time? And before someone complains that this amounts to a taxpayer handout, consider the recent report by the International Monetary Fund that reports $1.9 trillion in annual subsidies worldwide to the fossil fuel industry. Ending those handouts would make solar energy an even better bargain by comparison.

But even without the massive subsidies enjoyed by oil and coal, solar energy systems are becoming cheaper by every year. “There’s never been a better time to be a solar customer,” said E.L McDaniel, managing director of Suntech America. For the sake of American taxpayers, I hope our government procurement officers are listening.

Asia Pulp & Paper Company, one of the world’s largest, announced last month that it will no longer use wood from natural forests for any of its $4b per year worth of products. Why? Because APP’s customers realized we are running out of natural forests from which to harvest lumber and have demanded suppliers to develop sustainable sources. The Walt Disney Company, Mattel, and Harper Collins are among many corporations setting sustainability standards for things like paper and packaging, so you could say that Mickey Mouse, Barbie, and J.R.R. Tolkien persuaded the paper giant to make such a bold move.

Water is another resource that may not be as mobile as wood or oil, but which has certainly reached its peak in many places. Last year, a report from the U.S. Office of National Intelligence predicted increasing global conflicts by 2030 as demand for water surpasses sustainable supplies by 40%. Nearly a billion people lack safe, sustainable water supplies already and, according to the UN and the OECD, almost half of the world’s population will live in areas of serious “water stress” by 2030.

Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton confirmed these findings on “peak water” saying, “These threats are real and they do raise serious national security concerns.”  And just where might Peak Water create such threats first? A 2011 report from the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations may have an answer in its title: “Avoiding Water Wars: Water Scarcity and Central Asia’s Growing Importance for Stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Considering the price in human lives and taxpayer dollars for “peace” in that region already, we might want to help Afghans make water more plentiful even as our military tries to make things like guns and ammunition more scarce.

Another essential commodity that may soon hit its peak is food. Last year, more than half of the world’s seafood was farmed instead of wild caught, because we have long passed “Peak Fish” in the ocean. This was the last global food product where humans were mostly hunter-gatherers and we have now industrialized its production, however our fish farming methods are crude compared to the ways we grow row crops, grains, and other forms of protein, meaning that shortages and higher prices for many seafood items are already resulting from certain species peaking. In another example, the conversion of corn to ethanol has been well documented for several years as a contributor to shortages and price spikes for that staple in many parts of the globe.

These peak trends have motivated retailers like Walmart, Tesco, and Target to set standards for suppliers around sustainable sourcing, because executives I have spoken with are concerned their shelves will one day be empty or prices will exceed their customers’ budgets, which in turn impacts corporate bottom lines. Make no mistake, peak anything is a warning signal that smart consumers will increasingly use to make more sustainable choices and to plan for a resource-constrained future. And that should peak the interest of any business person or politician.

President Obama appears to be relying on facts, as he said in his speech. “The 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods — all are now more frequent and intense.” These facts are supported by the costs in human life, higher food prices, and insurance payouts for the catastrophes he itemized. Moreover, the National Academy of Sciences reported in 2010 that 97 percent of 1,372 climate researchers agree that these fundamental changes in our climate are human-caused.

By contrast, Senator Rubio’s skepticism may be based on a very different set of numbers, such as 146 million. That’s the number of dollars spent in recent years by the Virginia-based Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund to cast doubt on the causes of climate change. This money is more than double the contributions made to similar denial groups by the more widely publicized Koch brothers and seven times the funding provided by ExxonMobil during a similar period. In total, these funds can buy a lot of doubt about the overwhelming scientific consensus and the weather patterns that are changing before our eyes.

This battle of scientific fact versus special interest propaganda is not news, but that it continues to hamstring our leaders is more than a little disappointing. Senators Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer announced plans last week to try once more to draft laws that would benefit the environment and the economy, which should theoretically please both sides in this “debate.”

“The legislation that Senator Boxer and I are introducing today…can actually address the crisis and… create millions of jobs as we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and such sustainable energies as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass,” said Sanders.

Sanders and Boxer tried a similar bill in 2007, but this time split the measure into two. The Sustainable Energy Act would cut subsidies for the fossil fuel industry (in tough budget times, does anyone still think the taxpayer should subsidize oil and coal?) and give very modest support, compared to that enjoyed by fossil fuels for a century, to renewable energy from solar, wind and geothermal.

The Climate Protection Act would put a price on carbon pollution from nearly 3,000 of the largest polluters covering about 85 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Sixty percent of the funds generated would follow the Alaskan oil dividend model – - providing a monthly rebate to every U.S. resident. $300 billion would pay down the national debt and the remainder would help to weatherize a million residences a year, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs that can’t be outsourced to China or India, while saving households substantial energy costs. A billion dollars annually would be spent to retrain workers to participate in these clean-energy jobs.

The famous Simon and Garfunkel lyric says, “A man hears what he wants to hear and he disregards the rest.” These two measures won’t be passed easily as long as many in Congress keep looking for junk science and excuses to justify business as usual. But as Albert Einstein said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If we want to avoid more of the human and economic costs of climate change in the future, it’s time to stop the insanity and demand meaningful climate CHANGE.

Japanese media and environmental authorities have accused China of being the source of increasing levels of soot in the air (particulates 2.5 microns or smaller, which can lodge deep in the lungs and bloodstream, called PM 2.5). PM 2.5 in the air comes largely from diesel exhaust, causing asthma and other respiratory diseases. It is also linked to heart disease and, therefore, more than 6 million premature deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization. China shot back that the cause is Japan’s switch from nuclear power to new dependence on burning coal and trash for energy.

So will air pollution, which doesn’t respect lines on a map, ultimately cause more diplomatic skirmishes or worse? In fact, the resolution of such conflicts is a series of technologies and investments that can enrich nations and companies, while dramatically improving public health.

For starters, more than a decade ago, California mandated the use of ultra-low sulfur diesel, which burns many times cleaner than traditional fuel. Smog levels have plummeted, especially around ports and other major sources of vehicle exhaust, cutting health problems and health care costs while creating new sources of revenue for fuel blenders and engine manufacturers. Growth around the ports had been severely curtailed because of air pollution limits, but now projects are back on track to boost imports and exports, not to mention more local jobs. Last week, China took a page out of the California playbook and mandated the use of these cleaner fuels by 2017. Their industries and drivers will likely see similar benefits to the economy and the environment as a result.

Japan has long focused on the vehicles themselves as both a means to curtail smog and a source of economic growth. Last month, Nissan announced a partnership with Ford and Daimler to jointly develop hydrogen-powered electric cars, a technology that is more practical for average consumers than battery-powered cars and trucks. Nissan is thinking of the global market of course, especially places like California where hydrogen fueling stations are already in place, but it will join Honda and Toyota as car makers that have impressive hydrogen-electric drive trains and vehicles in use in Japan already.

And both nations are focused on expanding energy efficiency and renewable energy generation, two strategies that will dramatically lower air pollution over time. Japan has announced investment targets of up to half a trillion dollars over the next two decades for solar and wind, along with twice that amount committed to energy-efficiency measures. China’s last five year plan aimed at making the country 20% more energy efficient, a goal that was largely achieved by 2012, and the current five year plan aims for another 20% improvement. 2012 also marked the year that China led the world in deployment of wind power, surpassing the U.S. for the first time. Make no mistake – - both countries are becoming more competitive and wealthy as a result of these moves.

The world might learn some valuable lessons about the need to address shared challenges like air pollution by watching how Japan and China resolve their current differences. But we can all profit by paying even more attention to how they invest in a cleaner, healthier future.

Data shows that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the US, starting last March with a heat wave in parts of the nation that kick started a severe drought in our most productive farmlands. Of course one hot year does not make a trend, but in the past fifteen years, we have experienced the ten warmest years on record, which must count as a trend to even the most skeptical among us.

This trend has amply illustrated that ignoring climate change is more costly than dealing with it. The drought covered more than 60% of the country as a third of us experienced at least ten days of temps over 100 degrees, sending electricity bills through the roof for many. And, as corn and soybean crops failed, prices for those commodities also jumped, causing many other food prices to rise dramatically as a direct result.

The second major wake-up call was the National Climate Assessment, written by over two hundred scientists under a law that mandates an update of these trends every four years. That report found, among other costly consequences if we fail to act, that thirteen US airports have runways that are likely to be inundated by sea level rise and more intense storms – - like Hurricane Sandy, which is estimated to cost some $60 billion to insurers and taxpayers.

The last of these three warnings comes from China, where recent measurements of air quality are, well…breathtaking. The USEPA index of air quality runs from zero to 500 indicating air that is somewhere between clean and hazardous. Recent levels in Beijing topped 700. In addition to lung cancer and asthma, the cost of which is increasing annually around the globe, scientists are learning more about the warming effects of “black carbon” – - the soot that blankets cities like Beijing, Los Angeles, and Houston – - in addition to the more well-known climate pollutants like CO2 and methane.

“But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it,” the President went on to say. “We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks.”

Yes, a clean environment, improved public health, lower costs from cleaning up after droughts and more intense storms, and a growing economy are all possible by focusing on the solutions to this one issue. Solutions that are largely simple and save money.

For example, I met recently with officials of the Portland city schools who told me that they replaced many of their oil-fired boilers and will now save some $2million a year on energy costs. And in Seattle, the world’s greenest commercial building is under construction. According to Climatec, which will manage and monitor the energy use of the 50,000 square foot Bullitt Center, this building will be self-sufficient for energy and water, putting no new demand on grids or water supplies. In addition to saving money and reducing carbon pollution, both of these projects are creating jobs that can’t be outsourced to China or India.

These examples suggest a profound transformation is already underway, regardless of where we find the motivation. “We must lead it.” Four simple words that, if heeded, can be more powerful than partisan politics or climate change itself.

Over two decades ago, scientists warned that growing carbon pollution in the atmosphere would result in sea level rise, which in turn would result in more flooding and damage, as storms became more frequent, intense and long lasting. England listened and profited from their actions. The US mostly ignored the warnings and paid the price in the aftermath of Katrina, Irene, and Sandy, not to mention the impacts of the recent drought in our mid-west, which was likely exacerbated by the same causes.

Alarmed by insurance companies raising rates or withdrawing entirely from the London market, the UK government embarked on an infrastructure program costing four billion pounds more than two decades ago. They raised electrical transformers, strengthened barriers on the Thames River, added barriers and pumps for the Underground and tunnels, installed reliable back-up communications systems, and made other improvements that insurance companies predicted would avert an estimated eighty billion pounds of damage.

Not a bad ROI on that initial investment and one wonders how much damage New York might have averted with similar foresighted investments. Nor was the ROI limited to protection against the elements. Insurance companies came back into the London market and competed for business, lowering costs for everyone who lives and does business there.

Closer to home, Sims Metals Management looked at the science and decided it was worth an additional $550,000 investment in the construction of their new $100 million recycling facility at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal to raise the floor four feet above the level required by the building code. The project is not even finished, but Sims (and its insurance company, no doubt) are very pleased with that decision. As Sandy’s twelve-foot floodwaters swamped neighboring facilities, Sims’ new facility was spared. In another nod to the profits of thinking sustainably, the raised bed was built from recycled glass and concrete.

There are other ways to make money from addressing climate change head-on. California recently kicked off its cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, generating some $300 million in revenues for the state. Much of that will be paid back to energy ratepayers or invested in energy efficiency projects for residents and businesses, saving more money while cutting greenhouse gas pollution at the same time.

The real news here is that there were three times as many bidders as entities that needed carbon credits, suggesting some traders may hope to profit from buying credits early and selling them later at higher prices. Knowing for years that this day was coming, numerous companies avoided the need to buy credits at all by becoming more efficient and reducing emissions in the first place. A report by Environment California highlights eight such success stories, from Anheuser Busch to large farms, that installed renewable energy to power their facilities and invested in energy efficiency upgrades, reducing a collective 270 million pounds of carbon pollution per year while saving over $3 million a year.

Sandy delivered a wake-up call on many levels. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is looking for ways to pay for the damage to his state, while preserving his pledge to cut taxes. One way to achieve that is to bring New Jersey back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (a cap-and-trade market similar to California’s new system) from which he withdrew after several years of the program generating hundreds of millions of dollars for his state treasury.

The bottom line is that governments and businesses can profit from climate change solutions, but only if they look for opportunity instead of telling their representatives at COP18 to keep stalling.

Alarmed by the partisanship and its resulting gridlock, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger led an effort to reform the system and convinced voters to put re-districting in the hands of a non-partisan commission of retired judges and ordinary citizens. After the 2010 census, new districts were drawn and many became politically balanced and competitive, opening opportunities for new voices.

This seems like a good thing, but the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court gave companies and wealthy donors the chance to buy outcomes in these newly competitive elections. For example, California state Senator Fran Pavley served for a decade in a safe seat, facing little serious opposition in each election. But this year she has a serious challenger in a newly drawn district that includes more balance of Ds, Rs, and independent voters. She may welcome the chance to debate issues with a challenger that has other views on important public policy goals, but special interests are flooding the race with ads that claim she doesn’t pay taxes (false) and otherwise attack her character.

The ads are primarily funded by companies like Chevron and Philip Morris and the Koch brothers recently poured more money into the campaign. Pavley is being targeted by these very powerful special interest groups for defeat, not because she has failed, but because she has an astonishing record of success. In her ten years as a member of the Legislature, she was the primary architect of the first comprehensive environmental education law in the nation; a law that cuts greenhouse gases from vehicle emissions, effectively improving their fuel economy at the same time; and the state’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32), which became a model for seven other states and numerous governments around the world. By the way, she got her laws passed with bi-partisan support, signed over the years by both a Democratic and a Republican governor.

Of course there are many approaches to sustainability challenges, so a robust debate about how to reduce pollution and make the country more energy self-sufficient is indispensible, but there can’t be a fair hearing of these choices when one side is allowed to shout while the other can only whisper. The loser is not any one politician, but anyone who has something to say that isn’t aligned with the holder of the megaphone.

Two years ago, the Koch brothers spent millions on a ballot measure that would have effectively overturned AB32. Campaign ads were ubiquitous and misleading, but the American Lung Association testified the real result of the measure would be dirty air and higher asthma rates. The measure failed, so apparently the new strategy is to shoot the messenger, or in this case, the author of the legislation, with ammunition supplied by the Supreme Court.

Governor Schwarzenegger, Common Cause, and others that worked on making the redistricting process in California more fair, certainly did not intend for those reforms to weaken the system of transparent, honest political discourse and policymaking, but unless we figure out how to offset the corrosive influence of disproportionate campaign spending, the result will be harmful to us all.

Well, Walmart may not be a country, but its annual revenues would put it in the top twenty nations in terms of GDP. Its two million associates and 150 million shoppers would put it in the top ten among countries by population. Moreover, Walmart has a culture of doing more with less, so does this “nation” have an energy policy worth emulating?

Earlier this month, Walmart unveiled a 20-storey wind turbine in Red Bluff, California, to provide energy to its distribution center there. It has nearly two hundred other renewable energy projects already in operation, including a 90-megawatt wind farm in West Texas that powers portions of over 300 Walmart stores and Sam’s Clubs; two dozen fuel cells and 100 solar installations supplying energy to stores in California; 348 stores in Mexico partially supplied by wind power and 14 more in Northern Ireland supplied entirely by wind power.

But two things in particular make Walmart’s efforts something to emulate. First, the company has a stated goal of becoming 100% renewable energy powered, putting their efforts in an important context for stimulating innovation and measuring progress. Of equal importance is the fact that all of this clean energy work is done because it costs the company the same or less than business-as-usual, especially when combined with Walmart’s aggressive energy efficiency measures.

Nor is Walmart alone with this approach. Ikea, Denmark, Scotland, and Austin, Texas, are among the eclectic mix of companies, countries, and cities that have also pledged to go 100% renewable in the foreseeable future – - doing so because it makes both environmental and economic sense. Energy gurus like India’s Nobel laureate Dr. RK Pachauri have warned for years that the kind of blackout experienced recently in his country could be avoided with more distributed energy from clean sources – - exactly as Walmart is demonstrating.

As millions more consumers enter the middle class each year around the world, demand for the products that Walmart sells will escalate, especially energy guzzlers like large TVs and air conditioners. Its energy policies will not only ensure the company’s continued profitability, but will help lower the costs of clean energy technology to make sure that citizens in the land of Walmart have enough energy to power their lives and bottom lines too.

As the noise of the political season grows louder this fall, let’s ask the candidates to explain not just whether they prefer energy from above or below the ground, but how they see a planet of seven billion people being able to sustain the demand for those sources. Or, in this age of sound bites and reducing complicated policies to competing slogans, perhaps it would be easier and more effective for the country to simply ask them to adopt the Walmart energy policy. If they do, the candidates will soon discover there is no “D” or “R” next to policies that save money and a planet at the same time.