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Obama admin teams with grassroots groups to ‘Green the Block’
Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus, discusses the Green the Block partnership. In the background (L-R) are Dept. of Energy Undersecretary Kristina Johnson, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. Kate Sheppard / GristEnsuring that low-income communities and minority youth benefit from green jobs […]
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ForestEthics mails Fortune 500 companies to kick off tar-sands campaign
A tar-sands facility: oil doesn’t get any dirtier than this.At ForestEthics, persuading the world’s largest corporations to treat the Earth ethically is our bread and butter. And it often starts with a letter. Last week, we mailed letters to more than 100 Fortune 500 companies, warning that their continued consumption of fuels from Canada’s tar […]
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Kimberly-Clark, Greenpeace hug it out
Greenpeace USA Engaging in a bit of a lovefest, Greenpeace and Kimberly-Clark announced today that the paper-products giant has finally agreed to clean up its act. It will source the fiber for its tissue products, under brand names that include Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle, from “environmentally responsible sources,” including those that are FSC-certified and recycled. […]
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‘Tapped’ documentary pulls plug on bottled water craze
Only about a fifth of the plastic water bottles purchased in the United States are recycled.Courtesy producers of TAPPED.Tapped, a new documentary about the bottled water industry from director Stephanie Soechtig and the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car?, is a pretty damning look at how consumers have been tricked into spending too much […]
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EEStor CEO says game-changing energy storage device coming by 2010
If the Texas company EEStor is running a scam, it’s a frakking brilliant one. For years the otherwise tight-lipped outfit has been promising a capacitor that can quickly charge, quickly discharge, and hold enormous amounts of energy — on all accounts, performance far beyond any battery on the market, or even contemplated. If it performs […]
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Tesla speeds past financial troubles, opens retail stores across country
Five months ago, Tesla Motors appeared to be following in the footsteps of other American automakers. Lay-offs, a dearth of financing, and a spring recall of 70 percent of delivered Roadsters prompted speculation that Tesla might soon be the next casualty of the economic downturn. But Tesla proved just too cool to fail. In May, […]
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Mass. startup uses biotech smarts to take the corn out of ethanol
On Monday, the latest entrant in the biofuels sweepstakes takes the wraps off a solar-powered technology designed to transform C02 and sunlight into ethanol. “We capture the energy of the sun into a solar converter,” says Bill Sims, CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Joule Biotechnologies. “Inside exists a solution of brackish or gray water, nutrients and […]
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The eternal durability of greenwash
Not too long ago I was on a panel with GM’s VP of Environment, and I was reminded of how very old school most big corporations are when it comes to discussing their environmental programs. In GM’s case, listening to this VP, it was as if GM was God’s great gift to the environment, and […]
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Better ways to spend $1 million on plastics
The American Chemistry Council will spend more than $1 million to fight a 20-cent fee on plastic shopping bags in Seattle, hoping voters reject the proposal in August. Or send the Bag Monster and all his friends to Copenhagen this December!Photo by Bag Monster via FlickrIf it seems absurd to spend a cool mill defending […]
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Oh, those sexy building codes: More powerful than 100 nuclear plants
Building energy codes are the key.Are 100 new nuclear plants the solution to our climate troubles? I asked that question in a post last week. The answer lies buried deep within the 1,428-page Waxman-Markey climate bill (H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act), passed by the House and now under consideration in the […]
