Latest Articles

Consumers await you, green biz

I would follow Elizabeth in recommending this Idaho Statesman story, from which we learn that while 75% of Americans consider themselves green consumers, only 10% actually, you know, buy green stuff consistently. While it might be tempting to raise yet another hue and cry about American hypocrisy (zzz...), I would also endorse Elizabeth's conclusion that this is good news. The percentage of people willing to sacrifice, pay more, research, go out of their way, etc. is always going to be small. However, if businesses make eco-friendly products easy to identify, easy to find, and easy to buy, there's an enormous market waiting for them.  75% of all American consumers! That's huge.

Dissonance

Well Nike Considered certainly has made a splash -- in the blogosphere at least. I was dismayed to find from this ID Fuel post that "the most innovative idea is their incorporation of a woven hemp-polyester upper."

This basket-like tongue, based on one of their earlier Presto technologies, the Air Woven, allows material to be used as it is needed, rather than creating scrap leather by cutting out complicated patterns. As an added bonus, the shoes have a very forgiving fit, so people with high arches, or non-so-average bones won't be uncomfortable. And even better, when varying color lacing is used, the shoes can take on a one of a kind patchwork look that is unique to each pair.

But it's so... ugly. I'm having some real moral/aesthetic dissonance here.

Umbra on Green Tags

Dear Umbra, My power company (Florida Power and Light) sent me a letter asking me to choose its Sunshine Energy program, which, for an additional $9.75 a month, helps support the building of a 150-kilowatt solar facility in Florida. Do you think I should do it? LindaCoral Springs, Fla. Dearest Linda, Yes. And I am […]

Hook, line, and stinker?

Not long ago, PETA launched a "Fish Empathy" project. Which I'll do my very best to treat seriously here ... just for the halibut.

Citing research that shows fish communicate, feel pain, store memories, and even tend gardens, PETA is trying to convince anglers to quit. In January, after former President Carter chatted on the Tonight Show about hooking himself in the face, PETA wrote him a note: now you know how a fish feels. More recently, the organization asked Maine's Bates College to disband its fishing club; bewildered club president Chester Clem, an environmental policy major, replied, "The club is just a bunch of guys who enjoy fishing." It also petitioned my new favorite governor Dave Heineman of Nebraska to make the channel catfish, a state icon, off-limits to anglers. He declined.

The website for this campaign does include some sobering reminders about mercury contamination and the like, but it's so mixed in with the screeching and the pandering to the Christian right that it gets lost.

I'm sorry the fish are in pain. Really, I am! But somehow it's hard to get worked up about this when there are, well, bigger fish to fry.

Faster growth, kill kill kill!

I missed this last week, but apparently Virginia has followed Oregon in nixing some strong limitations on development. Times are tough for the Slow (read: sane) Growth crowd.

(via Pat Burns)

Update [2005-3-7 11:16:15 by Dave Roberts]: And more from Jon Christensen, who also points to a Joel Kotkin article in Architecture Magazine arguing that urban planners need to get over their aversion to suburbs and start helping them become more livable, because like it or not, suburbs are the future. Ugh.

Update [2005-3-7 11:32:30 by Dave Roberts]: I suppose I should add, for those of you too lazy to click on the link (surely not!), that the VA thing was a court decision, not a referendum like OR's, and the VA thing was a county issue, not a state thing like OR's. The two are united only by the fact that they will result in the rampant loss of green space. Oh, and by sucking. FYI.

Steve Lippman, green investment expert, answers questions

Steve Lippman. What work do you do? I’m the senior analyst on the Social Research and Advocacy team at Trillium Asset Management, a Boston-based investment management company dedicated solely to socially responsible investing. The biggest part of my job is actively engaging with companies we hold to encourage them to improve their social and environmental […]

WC

As always: the week in sustainable business and the week in sustainable transportation.

Ahem

I'm finding Mikhail Capone's weekly updates quite useful. As an obsessive blogger I've usually seen most of it, but it's a nice way of seeing a week's developments in one place.

I must take umbrage, however, at today's identification of "Queer Eye for the Green Guy" as a "very good column at Alternet." It is, in fact, a very good column at Grist.

Have you hugged a corporation today?

How can we get corporations to operate more sustainably?

Lefties often characterize corporations as ruthless automata like the Terminator, grinding toward a goal -- short-term profits -- with no consideration of social or environmental consequences. I don't think that is quite accurate, at least not in all cases. Though there is structural bias toward short-term thinking in the very nature of incorporation (exacerbated by the requirement in the U.S. to report profits every quarter), corporations are in fact composed of people. People, though often misguided, are rarely sociopaths. People within corporations who struggle to make them more humane and green can and do have an effect.

Perhaps instead of thinking of corporations as terminators, we should think of them as overgrown toddlers, stumbling erratically in search of instant gratification but susceptible to behavior modification.

As the parent of a toddler, the best piece of advice I ever heard is this:

Hawks speak out for U.S.-grown clean energy

"It's not a hardship to drive it. It's fun."
-- George Shultz, former Secretary of State, referring to his Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that uses much less gasoline than a conventional vehicle, at the second annual summit of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, February 11.

I found this nugget in my inbox, tucked into the recent issue of @stanford, "a monthly newsletter of campus news and research," in the "Heard on Campus" segment (I am an alum of the law school). How great to hear another respected Republican foreign policy leader touting the benefits of cleaner and more efficient automobiles. Over the past several years, it seems the chorus is getting louder and louder, with testimony, articles, and op-eds about and from Republican and Democratic foreign policy and military leaders.