sustainability
-
Ask Umbra on writer’s block
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I am starting an internship at a sustainability consulting firm and was asked to blog about relevant issues. I am blocked by a few mind obstacles: I can’t help but think that I’m stealing other writers’ ideas, or that my audience is in the same bucket as […]
-
The U.S. military’s battle to wean itself off oil
Don’t ask what kind of mileage it gets.In the summer of 2006, Marine Corps Major General Richard Zilmer sent the Pentagon an unusual “Priority 1” request for emergency battlefield supplies. Stationed at a temporary base in Fallujah, Zilmer was commanding a force of 30,000 troops responsible for protecting Al Anbar, the vast territory in western […]
-
Growth in renewable energy outpaces nuclear, fossil fuels
In some hopeful news for sustainable energy advocates, the latest production numbers from the federal government are out — and they show that the growth rate of renewable sources continues to outpace nuclear and fossil fuels. The data come as Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) are expected to introduce legislation today designed […]
-
‘Nation’ misses golden opportunity to highlight workers’ voices
The food movement is slowly waking up to the fact that it has long treated the workers who plant and pick our food as if they were invisible. So it was with great anticipation that I read The Nation’s food issue, sure that a magazine with such a solid commitment to worker dignity would drive […]
-
Inside Newsweek’s new green corporate rankings
Cross-posted from GreenBiz. On Monday, Newsweek magazine unveiled its first annual Green Rankings, the fruits of a near-Herculean endeavor: rating and ranking the environmental performance, achievements, and reputation of the S&P 500. The list, published today in a 12-page special section in the magazine as well as online, is the culmination of an 18-month journey. […]
-
Is the Dow Jones Sustainability Index worth a damn?
Recently, the web has been abuzz with stories about (and press releases from) companies ranked highly by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index review. The vaunted stock ticker-picker turned its eyes to green a full ten years ago to track the financial performance of “sustainability-driven companies worldwide.” Each year it releases a review of the companies […]
-
Meet the star of ‘No Impact Man’: No Impact Woman
In November 2006, Michelle Conlin began a year-long experiment in extreme sustainability, resolving to burn no fossil fuels, produce no trash, and eat only food grown within 250 miles of her Greenwich Village home. She gave up nearly all shopping and learned to use cloth diapers for her 2-year-old daughter. She took up bicycling and […]
-
Sustainable ag meets the MSM — and wins!
TIME Magazine‘s current cover story wants you to know that our fossil-fueled, chemically intensive industrial food system is destined to fail. Granted, the second part of that sentence isn’t news to Grist readers. But the first part of that sentence is news. Personally, I wouldn’t have expected to read the following positively Philpottian (if not […]
-
Take the environment out of sustainability, argues former Sierra Club chief
Adam WerbachAdam Werbach’s career is something of a lodestar for the trajectory of the 21st century American environmental movement. A student activist tutored at the knee of the Archdruid himself, the legendary David Brower, Werbach was elected the youngest president of the Sierra Club in 1996 at age 23. Then business beckoned and he launched […]