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Making sense of Wal-Mart’s big green announcement
Wal-Mart made big news today with a major commitment to trim its greenhouse-gas emissions. Here’s the context: Over the past five years the retail giant has taken big, splashy steps to save energy, reduce waste, and sell cleaner products, like compact-fluorescent light bulbs. It’s given less focus to the impact of the factories that churn […]
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British Airways plans to get wasted on future flights
Being a good stewardess of resources Next time the state of the planet has you down in the dumps, remember you’ve got a reason to look up. By 2014 British Airways will be filling up with 10% waste to keep landfilling down. Sure, they have airways to go in green, but it’s plane to see […]
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King Corn airs complaints about USDA
Obama’s ag policy has come under justifiable criticism from the sustainable food movement–see here and here–for its aggressive pro-biotechnology and pro-trade policies. But it has also managed to enrage industrial-ag interests, too, with its “Know your Farmer” program and other gestures toward alternative food. King Corn, it turns out, is a sensitive sovereign. Check this […]
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The economics of the Bloom Box
Bloom Energy at the eBay headquaters. Photo courtesy BloomEnergy via Flickr Cross-posted from WattHead. With all the hype today around the release of the “breakthrough” Bloom Energy fuel cell (which has become known as the “Bloom box” and is referred to by Bloom as an “Energy Server“), it’s good to find a couple of posts […]
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Hummer to hum along no more?
Crash course General Motors has decided to park the ultimate gas guzzler in that big garage in the sky. GM thought its plans to sell Hummer to a Chinese company had the green light, but got run off the road this week by the Chinese government, ironically, over fears of pollution. Enviros who say fuH2 […]
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Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai — is the world next?
Driving around Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, you can easily see the massive construction sites and melting pot of cultures. What is less evident is that a sustainability revolution is going on, from the most humble corner shop to the highest levels of government. Abu Dhabi may best be known in […]
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Gold, silver, bronze, & green
What do the Vancouver Olympics have to do with Sir Richard Branson’s “Carbon War Room” and solar power? We hear from venture capitalist Jack Hidary on this Planet Forward webisode. Hidary and Branson aren’t just enjoying the sporting events at the Vancouver Olympics. They’ve started a “Carbon War Room” which is looking for market-driven solutions […]
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Why Bill Gates is right
Bill Gates speaking at the TED conference.Photo: jurvetson via Flickr“If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years,” declared the world’s wealthiest man during last week’s TED 2010 conference, “I can pick who is president, I can pick a vaccine … or I can pick that [an energy technology] at half the […]
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Cleveland, worker-owned co-ops, and new ideas for a flailing economy
Is the way forward for our ailing economy to be found along the banks of Lake Erie? Despite talk of a recovery, the national economy remains in shambles. In Sunday’s New York Times, reporter Peter Goodman brought devastating news: Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing […]
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What the heck is a Bloom Box and will it solve the world’s energy problems?
The internet loves mysterious product unveilings, especially those promising to revolutionize the world and how we live in it. (Think Apple’s iPhone.) But few (except for maybe the iPhone) actually live up to the hype. (Or so I hear. Anyone wanna get me an iPhone?) CEO K.R. Sridhar is starting to peel back the layers […]
