Climate Technology

Wax on, wax offsets

Gristmill’s sizable contingent of carbon offset hataz will find the latest from Joel Makower music to their hatin’ ears.

Nevada Mined

Newmont Mining Co. will undergo social-responsibility review It wasn’t enough to be acquitted of pollutey wrongdoing in Indonesia; the world’s largest gold-mining firm is begging for more green cred. This week, 91.6 percent of Newmont Mining Co.’s shareholders approved an independent review of the company’s environmental and social impacts worldwide. Along with the high-profile trial […]

The Tyee busts Harper

I think the hue and cry about "greenwashing" is generally overdone, for reasons I’ve discussed at length elsewhere. But the Tyee has a great story today that looks like a bona fide example of selling a big infrastructure project as "green" when its consequences will be just the opposite. It’s about a proposal by Canadian […]

Exxon Mobil hikes spending, big time

Perhaps fearing the coming crunch of climate and energy legislation, oil giant Exxon Mobil more than doubled their reported lobbying expenditures in 2006 to $14.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This blows their previous year’s total of $7.14 million and next-highest-spender Chevron’s $7.5 million out of the water.

How to stop the agribiz giants from impeding the growth of local food.

In today’s Victual Reality I discussed how a few companies dominate U.S. food production, and how their market girth weighs heavily on efforts to rebuild local-oriented, environmentally and socially responsible food networks. Now I’d like to add a few words on what might be done to remedy the situation. First of all, it’s important to […]

At Least the Couch Is Clean

DuPont, 3M criticized for production of “probable” carcinogen Public furor is simmering over a chemical used in Teflon, Scotchgard, and other miracles of non-stick, stain-resistant living. Protesters picketed DuPont’s annual shareholder meeting in Delaware yesterday, upset over the company’s environmental and labor policies — including its production of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), a “probable” carcinogen. “I […]

Working with the fishing industry, Orri Vigfússon protects North Atlantic salmon

Orri Vigfússon. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. “I have a passion for salmon,” says Orri Vigfússon. “It’s the king of fish. It’s just a spectacular creature.” Vigfússon is a veteran business exec — the Icelandic brand Icy Vodka is one of his enterprises — and he’s now using his negotiating savvy to protect the iconic North […]

Mine Your Business

Newmont Mining Co. acquitted of wrongdoing in Indonesia Yesterday, an Indonesian court found Newmont Mining Co. not guilty of polluting Indonesia’s Buyat Bay with toxic runoff from a now-defunct gold mine, ending a trial that had riled up eco-justice advocates for nearly two years. Judge Ridwan Damanik declared that Newmont’s piping of arsenic and mercury […]

Money Makes the World Not Drown

British retailers launch climate campaign, UBS unveils global-warming index Eight companies in Britain have launched a campaign called “We’re in This Together,” offering products and price cuts to help customers lessen their eco-impacts. Leading retailers Tesco and B&Q, for example, halved the costs of light bulbs and insulation, and a cell-phone company will pay a […]

A second dispatch from the sea

Mary Pearl is the president of Wildlife Trust, cofounder of its Consortium for Conservation Medicine, and an adjunct research scientist at Columbia University. This week, she's traveling in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador with a boat full of scientists, conservationists, and business leaders to forge partnerships and develop solutions to the global freshwater crisis. This is the second of her dispatches from the journey. See her first dispatch here.

Our first afternoon hike was spectacular: an extravaganza of lovesick blue-footed boobies and vermillion-throated magnificent frigate birds displaying to potential mates on North Seymour Island. The sea lions were strewn like boulders on the beach, except for the pups, who either raced around in rough-and-tumble play, or inched up to inspect human beings with their big eyes and little, whiskery snouts.

The next morning, Manu Lall spoke to us about water after we re-boarded the Isabella II fresh from swimming and snorkeling at Gardner Bay at Espanola Island. Manu is a professor of engineering and hydrology at Columbia, and his assignment was to present the current state of the world's water. He started off with this startling statement: If water use continues as it is today, we can expect a catastrophe somewhere between 2026 and 2050.

The action agenda for addressing climate change, a synergy of science and political activism, is to find solutions before a climate crisis overwhelms us and leads to irreversible damage, he told us. The time scale is in decades. But here we are with water crises looming even closer, a subject about which there is relatively little research and even less dialogue.