Climate Technology

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 […]

Has the corporate-responsibility movement lost sight of the big picture?

Just as people sailing full-tilt into an iceberg zone can get distracted rearranging deck chairs, those of us advocating corporate responsibility may be guilty of spending too much time fiddling with the nuances of the language that describes our work. We do this even as abrupt climate change, pandemics, and other mega-trends float, quiet but […]

Cool

April 21, 2006--Apple® today announced an expansion of its successful recycling program, offering free computer take-back and recycling with the purchase of a new Macintosh® system beginning in June. US customers who buy a new Mac® through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com) or Apple's retail stores will receive free shipping and environmentally friendly disposal of their old computer as part of the Apple Recycling program. Equipment received by the program in the US is recycled domestically and no hazardous material is shipped overseas.

And now you know.

The spread of Wal-Mart

Yeesh. Here's a short video of Wal-Mart's spread in the U.S. It accompanies a paper called "The Diffusion of Wal-Mart and Economies of Density" (PDF) by the University of Minnesota's Thomas Holmes.

(via Kottke)

Green-Up on Aisle Six

Supermarket chains now offering store-brand organic foods The hippies-and-yuppies stereotype that’s long stuck to organic food may soon fade, as mainstream supermarket chains in the U.S. introduce hundreds of store-brand organic products. Supermarket organics can cost 10 to 15 percent less than national-brand organics, while still adhering to the same federal standards. Consumer demand is […]

How companies are tapping the benefits of saving water

Name this critical and declining natural resource: It is pumped through pipelines and delivered by trucks. It is essential to our daily lives and to every business process and function. Its uneven distribution around the globe leads to vast chasms in countries’ development and economies. Wars have been fought over it. Water saved is a […]