Climate Technology

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.

ADM gets its filthy paws on an immaculate confection

Earlier today, Trina Stout brought to our attention a food crime in progress: the FDA is quietly preparing to let manufacturers adulterate chocolate by replacing cocoa butter with cheap vegetable oil. This will allow them to cut costs on candy bars and use cocoa butter for more valuable purposes — thus undermining the quality of […]

An expedition to see critters and talk freshwater

Mary Pearl is the president of Wildlife Trust, cofounder of its Consortium for Conservation Medicine, and an adjunct research scientist at Columbia University. Over the next week, she'll be 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 first of her dispatches from the journey.

Claudio Padua and I hatched a crazy idea last year, and at this moment we are living with the consequences. Claudio directs research at Brazil's Institute for Ecological Research (IPE), and I run the organization Wildlife Trust, which is based in New York. Together, we coordinate an entity known as the Wildlife Trust Alliance. The alliance is an egalitarian network of leading research-based conservation organizations around the world. The 14 independent groups each set their own strategies and annual conservation research and action agendas, and come together annually to identify problems we can address as a team, exchange experiences, and make plans for all kinds of collaborations.

After last year's meeting, Claudio and I decided to bring together members of the Wildlife Trust Alliance and a group of international business leaders to build partnerships between researchers and conservationists and those who can provide advice and support to help them succeed.