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Not eco-related

But everything about this story is just awesome.

SRI pioneer Joan Bavaria looks ahead

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, the GreenMoney Journal asked leaders in the realms of green business and socially responsible investing to forecast 15 years into the future. How green will our economy be in 2022? GreenMoney's anniversary issue features responses from Amy Domini of Domini Social Investments, Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm, futurist Hazel Henderson, and others.

Here, reprinted with permission, is a view from Joan Bavaria, president of Trillium Asset Management Company. (Also read a perspective from Mindy Lubber of Ceres.)

What will socially responsible investing (SRI) look like in 15 years? I believe we are in a period of rapid growth with an uncertain outcome. Those of us who are involved in and support socially responsible investing, mission-related investing, corporate social responsibility, and all that involves introducing social and environmental considerations in a market economy must concentrate on what needs to happen to continue making progress, clearly visioning our desired outcomes.

Airing on the Side of Caution

Chemical dangers to air-breathing animals overlooked, researchers say A new study in Science says regulators have overlooked the effects that thousands of chemicals could have on air-breathing organisms. Such as, for instance, people. In general, regulators study how chemicals accumulate in aquatic-based food chains; they look at how toxics dissolve in water and fat, but […]

Fare Isn’t Fair

L.A.’s bias toward rail and against buses is racist, argues Eric Mann When are public-transit rail projects a bad thing? When they come at the expense of a strong bus system that low-income working people of color depend on, argues Eric Mann. He’s knee-deep in the fight over Los Angeles’s public transit, working with other […]

As Long As the Sox Are OK

Study says climate threatens Northeast icons like lobsters and foliage Imagine the Northeast without lobsters, snow, cranberries, and colorful foliage. Without that, you’d have — what, white churches and crusty old lumberjacks? But all those natural icons are at risk from climate change, says a report the Union of Concerned Scientists put together with scientists […]

A perspective from Eric Mann

A Latina woman addresses the board of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). She is part of a crowd of 1,500 people opposing the agency's proposed bus-fare increases. She holds her 3-year-old child up to the board and says, "What would you like me to do? Take the clothes off his back or the food out of his mouth?"

L.A., with 10 million people and 7 million cars on the road, is the freeway capital of the U.S. For more than 14 years, the MTA on one side and the Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union (BRU) on the other have been fighting over the future of L.A.'s public transportation -- a fight with important implications for the future of the environmental movement. The heavyweight bout has grown more high-profile this year. Despite massive opposition, on May 24, 2007, the MTA board of directors voted to raise the daily bus fare from $3 to $5 a day and the cost of a monthly bus pass from $52 to $62 a month. This is just the first step in a draconian trajectory that will, if not stopped, push the monthly bus pass to $75 and then $90, force many low-income people off the buses, and compel people to use or buy old cars instead of taking public transit. These policies will increase toxic air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions, and make the bus riders poorer while making rail contractors richer.

The fight over the fare hikes has become a cause célèbre. The Bus Riders Union and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) are in state court trying to reverse the fare hikes on environmental grounds. The BRU is also in front of the federal courts asking for a five-year extension of a federal civil-rights consent decree controlling MTA actions. Dozens of BRU organizers are on the buses, talking to thousands of bus riders, holding community meetings to plan our next countermove. The fight to reverse those fare increases, buy more buses, and stop future money-sucking rail projects is far from over. This dramatic expansion in the breadth and impact of the environmental movement in L.A. could be a model for urban coalitions throughout the U.S.

A guest essay from ED’s Scott Faber

The following is a guest post from Scott Faber, Farm Bill campaign director for Environmental Defense. (Scott also has a blog.) — Congress is in serious negotiations over the next version of the Farm Bill. The debate is fertile ground for food policy myths and misconceptions. Perhaps the best (or worst) example is that old […]

Quick, do nothing!

In April, Grist profiled Tracey Smith in our InterActivist column. She answered questions from Grist editors and from readers during National Downshifting Week in Britain. She just sent me a note to let me know that this very week is National Downshifting Week USA. Quick! Do nothing!

Consumers are stingy about buying new energy-efficient appliances

We've been meaning to replace our furnace -- an old oil heater that was converted to gas back in the '70s -- for years. It's big, it's ugly, and worst of all, it's inefficient. So we pay much more for heat than we'd like, even in Seattle's relatively mild winters.

But new furnaces don't come cheap. In fact, some back-of-the envelope calculations a few years back convinced me that it could take nearly a decade before the savings on our gas bills paid for the up-front costs of a new furnace.

In theory, of course, that's still a pretty good investment. After 10 years, we'd stop paying for the furnace, and it would start paying us.

But in practice, we never seemed to be able to save up the cash. Maybe it's my upbringing (my dad was hilariously stingy), but I hated the thought of going into debt, and paying interest and financing costs, just to buy an appliance.

On reflection, though, the fact that we waited to buy a high-efficiency furnace proves one thing: I'm a dolt. You see, if I had financed the furnace -- i.e., bought it on credit, or taken out a homeowners loan to pay for it -- the amount that we saved on utility bills each year would have just about equaled our annual payments. Which means that I could have had a nifty, high-efficiency furnace years ago, without paying a bit more for heat (utilities + financing costs) than I did with our old clunker. Less climate-warming emissions, no extra costs.

A new Pardoner’s Tale?

David objects to calling offsets indulgences.

In contrast, the actual offset purchasers I've met -- via the internet or in the "real world" -- tend to be environmentally concerned and engaged. They view offsets as something they can do in addition to other things they do to lighten their footprint.

This is disingenuous on two levels.

First the indulgence metaphor is primarily aimed at CDM and JT under the Kyoto treaty, where offsets are legally permissions to emit. An offset that is less than 100 percent perfect in that context is very like indulgences at their worst; net emissions are higher than they would be without the offset.

Offsets under Kyoto are imperfect indeed. About 20 percent of CDM credits under Kyoto consist of F5 gas reductions -- which would be fine, except that a lot of poor nation factories increased their production of those gases in order to then reduce their production and sell the credits. And F5 gases are not the only problematic CDMs that have been sold. Incidentally, as Kyoto ceilings are lowered, CDM is being increased. A great deal of lobbying is taking place to lower CDM standards. Certainly I don't see any signs they will be made stricter.