Climate Technology

How companies are driving down the impacts of shipping

We all know that planes, trains, and automobiles use gobs of fuel and spew mega-gobs of greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere — and that makes freight transport a particularly dirty business. Your new iPod is in there somewhere. Photo: iStockphoto. The environmental impacts of shipping goods hither and yon are significant but […]

A Random Act of Mindfulness

Random House to bump up use of recycled paper For you fogies who still read books made of … what do they call it? … “paper,” here’s some good news: Leading U.S. publishing company Random House announced this week that it plans to increase the recycled-paper content of its books to 30 percent by 2010. […]

Taking Care of Business

New York Times runs series on green biz The New York Times is running a ginormous series today on green business, creatively titled “The Business of Green.” (Hey, NYT, if you need headline help for the next series, just let us know.) Read about green collaborations among businesses and enviro organizations; Chicago’s success in combining […]

Carbon Upset

European Union’s fledgling carbon-trading market hits turbulence A hullabaloo has erupted in the European Union over its one-year-old carbon-trading market, established to help the E.U. meet its targets under the Kyoto Protocol. It turns out that 21 of the 25 countries involved have come in under their greenhouse-gas emissions targets, leaving a 70.5 million ton […]

Can you work as an environmental consultant without losing your soul?

As director of program development at The Environmental Careers Organization, Kevin Doyle knows a thing or two about job searching. In this recurring column for Grist, he explores the green job market and offers advice to eco-job-seekers looking to jumpstart their careers.

I have been working in the environmental consulting field for several years now. I must admit, I'm quite disillusioned due to clients who simply don't care about the environment. I turn away projects when I realize the goal is to use me to produce an assessment that removes their responsibility. When I explain that the data cannot be altered, many attempt to offer more money, but end up choosing to find another consultant. I want to return to why I entered this field in the beginning. I'm 40 years old now, and I need to make a change. Where does this idealist go from here?    -- Jacqueline M.

Is there something in the water, Gristers? Recent calls and emails are bringing plaintive cries from 40-something environmental professionals all over the country.

It's not only people like Jacqueline in the so-called "environmental industry." I'm hearing from federal, state, and local government employees, environmental officers at corporations, academics, and even a few activist types. Just this week at a pollution-prevention conference in Atlanta, I listened to a state government environmental leader declare flatly that the permitting work her team spent "thousands of hours on" was producing little or no additional benefit for people or the natural world. No one seemed shocked and appalled. No one suggested she was being too negative. Most everyone nodded and shrugged as if to say "tell me something I don't already know."

The message I'm getting is that many of the people who have been toiling in the greener part of the vineyard for years have begun to suspect that they may be part of a game -- one that's better at keeping expensive professionals gainfully employed than it is at creating a sustainable world.

Consulting With the Devil

Can you work as an environmental consultant without losing your soul? Jacqueline is a 40-year-old environmental consultant who’s disillusioned by all the pollutocrats asking her to fudge data. She wants to make a career change — just one among many who are frustrated by their seemingly ineffectual eco-related jobs, says green-careers guru Kevin Doyle. In […]

Wal-mart’s organic bomb

Melanie Warner at the NYT reports today that Wal-Mart is about to dramatically increase its organic food offerings.

In very understated fashion, she says, "Wal-Mart's interest is expected to change organic food production in substantial ways."

Um, yeah, it sure will.

Wal-Mart's plan is to sell organics ~10% over the price of non-organics -- a much closer premium than you can get elsewhere. It's also getting brands like Pepsi, Rice Krispies, and Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese in the game.

There's good back and forth in the article about the pros and cons of further industrializing organics -- availability and expansion of the market in the pros, weakening standards and increased overseas production in the cons.

The high cost of cheap gas.

The New York Times is running an interesting article called "The High Cost of Cheap Gas and Vice Versa." The author calculates the current average cost of driving at 15 cents a mile, up from 6.6 cents in 1998, and down from 20.1 cents in 1980 (in 2006 dollars). He also puts up a cost-per-mile calculator, in case your math skills have deteriorated since you last took the SAT.

My colleague JP Ross tells me that a Toyota Prius in electric-only mode uses .26 kWh to go a mile. If you are filling up with peak electricity rates, say 12 cents kWh, that's 3 cents a mile. Many utilities have nighttime off-peak rates way lower -- at 5 cents kWh, that's around a penny a mile.

In places where the wind blows at night, you could be filling up as you sleep.

And if you have solar covering your parking garage, like the City of Tucson, you could be charging while you work.

You can tell the smart utilities -- they are the ones putting their lobbying power behind plug-in hybrids. It just makes cents.

A speculation about why ADM’s HFCS business is booming.

In the first quarter of 2006, as I reported yesterday, Archer Daniels Midland somehow managed to boost the price of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) despite mounting concern over the sweetener's health effects.

The company booked a cool $113 million profit from HFCS over the quarter, more than three times more than it netted in the same period a year before ($33 million). This, despite a slowing domestic market for sweet soft drinks, as consumers increasingly switch to juice and bottled water. The company's official explanation -- "increased sweetener and starch selling prices" -- doesn't explain how it managed to make price hikes stick.

I think I've figured it out. And the explanation has everything to do with Brazil, sugarcane, and ethanol.

Umbra on global warming and you

Dear Umbra, I love the scientific ins and outs, really I do, but what oh what can we do about global warming? And I mean us ordinary folks with a house and mortgage and some percentage point of kids and a few compact fluorescents and maybe even a hybrid in the driveway. We’re right there […]