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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 […]

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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.

Bill Bryson’s books offer environmental ethics with a light touch

A Walk in the Woods, the venerable travel writer's best-selling 1998 account of hiking a portion of the Appalachian Trail, conjured memories of adventures I'd had as a kid in the forests where I grew up. Bryson seems to capture my dueling feelings about the woods: beautiful and inspiring from a distance -- "an America that millions of people scarcely know exists" -- yet disorienting and at times menacing from within. "[The] trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides," Bryson writes. "Woods choke off views and leave you muddled and without bearings. They make you feel small and confused and vulnerable, like a small child lost in a crowd of strange legs."

Oily to rise

Hot off the presses, crude oil futures are trading above $53 a barrel today. An Associated Press article is rife with worrisome notes. Here are some:

"Those people who think we've entered a new paradigm where high oil prices don't affect economic growth are wrong," said Lawrence Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York.

"I believe oil prices and the economy are on a collision course and that it's only a matter of time," [Peter] Beutel added, [president of Cameron Hanover Inc. of New Canaan, Conn., a provider of petroleum market analysis].

On the other hand, optimists point out that the US economy is drastically more energy efficient than it once was. And in inflation-adjusted terms, oil would have to reach $90 a barrel to match prices in 1980. They're (partly) right.

Looking for Some Good Cowboys

Blair bypasses Bush, appeals to Texas for global-warming aid British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s quixotic mission to convert the Bush administration from staunch believers in “more research” on global warming to actual movers on the issue has thus far proved unsuccessful. So Blair is diversifying his strategy. One tactic is to bypass the decision maker […]

Hazy Delays of Winter

Clear Skies bill still bottled up in Senate committee Help — Clear Skies has fallen, and it can’t get up! President Bush’s “Clear Skies” legislation is stuck in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has delayed a vote on the bill three times, most recently yesterday, each time realizing […]

Bush Sticks Johnson in the EPA

President Bush announces nominee to head EPA Today President Bush announced his new pick to lead the U.S. EPA: Steve Johnson, who’s been the agency’s temporary head since Mike Leavitt left six weeks ago to head the Department of Health and Human Services. If confirmed by the Senate, Johnson, a 24-year EPA veteran, will be […]