Blue Olives

This is a one-hour-plus presentation of what is probably the most important energy document to come our way since the 2007 Stern Review climate study. Never forget that job one as an American is building the future of the world. The more you know, the stronger we are as a nation and the more likely it is we will be coming through this 50-year nightmare of global conflict over oil into a better, stronger world. The Future of Solar Energy Study Launch Event Related articles Paris climate summit: Carbon pledges to fall short of warming goal, Stern warns Divesting in Trustee Wussyness: College Campuses and Climate Change Action What is the Role for Business in Addressing Climate Change? Take the time. Watch the launch event and download the PDF for summer reading.

Divesting in Trustee Wussyness: College Campuses and Climate Change Action — davidbiddle.net This spring Swarthmore College’s students, alumni and faculty stood up to demand that the school’s Board of Managers (their trustees) divest funding in fossil fuel businesses and technologies. I reported on that here in  “The State of the War on Climate Change”  a few weeks ago. The Board of Managers voted down that option just days later. What I also reported on in that essay was that this is just the beginning of campus actions to divest in  institutional money-making from investments in fossil fuel related businesses. You will read a lot of “reasoning” by trustees and boards on why, while they completely agree with the issues climate change brings up, they cannot vote to re-direct institutional investment policy away from fossil fuels. The bottomline, the only real issue here, is financial risk. Fossil fuel investments have ... >> click the link at the top ...

Bill McKibben (Source: 350.org) Talking Writing magazine just posted an interview I did with climate activist and environmental journalist Bill McKibben called  "We Don't Require Leaders."  I urge you to go check it out. McKibben surprised me with some of his answers. The whole climate equation and how it impacts culture and politics is not simple or predictable. I did a lot of research for my interview. You can never get in all your questions. Nor can you make all the points you want to make in your interview introduction. I want to add a bit here, then, if that's okay. It's my contribution this week to what will likely otherwise be a finger snapping coverage of  Earth Day  by mainstream media. First off, while it's been underway for about two years, the climate change Divestment Movement at college and university campuses is really heating up, if you'll pardon the pun. Bill was getting prepared for Harvard Heat Week when we were correspondin...

What kind of world do you want? This blog went dark more than three years ago when I finally understood that: 1) the Obama administration and Congress were absolutely not going to deal with climate change; 2) the American people were absolutely not going to deal with climate change either.  #2 was the straw that broke my 53-year-old back. It was bad enough watching the Kennedy's and their ilk fighting to stop an offshore wind project that would supposedly ruin their sweet view of Nantucket Sound, but watching environmental groups get all tangled up in their knickers over natural gas fracking was just pathetic. I couldn't take it anymore.  In my past life I was an environmental advocate and a technology planner -- working with dozens of governmental agencies and corporations for more than 30 years. I analyzed the economics of energy systems and the cultural

Source: PynkCelebrity.com It's been described as "plastic soup" in a bowl twice the size of Texas and 30 feet deep. Or how about a three-story Walmart streaming from the border of Mexico up along the Rockies and out to California all the way up to Canada? Plastic soup -- the Pacific Plastic Gyre/the Garbage Patch/the Trash Vortex -- proof positive that our love affair with disposable petroleum polymers is out of control. At least it's not being called a stew. Plastics stew implies goo, and that wouldn't be good at all. Go here to the Chic Ecologist and to the Algalita Marine Research Foundation to learn about this awesome manmade miasma. Of course, if

Photo Source: Boston Globe (Creative Commons registered) I love our family Prius. It tells me in real-time what our average miles per gallon are for every tank we buy. There are other cars out there with trip computers measuring fuel efficiency, but not enough. I imagine if every car in America came with an on board metrics system gauging efficiency there would be a lot fewer muscle cars and SUVs on the road. This measurement thing is also a big deal in the recycling world. The best recycling programs around the country tend to be those in so-called "Pay As You Throw" districts where people are charged by volume or weight for trash service. EPA has documented the effectiveness of PAYT. And the most exciting feature of RecycleBank's incentive program to folks like me (I coordinate Philadelphia's recycling efforts) is not so much the discount coupons you get for recycling but the fact that they weigh how much material you put out on

In ten years, if we're still talking about green jobs, we will have failed to transform the world economy to a more sustainable and egalitarian set of markets. For many of us who have been invested in the so-called "green revolution" for the past three decades, the fact that we're talking about jobs with special hues even today is disconcerting. As has been documented here at Blue Olives , efforts to modernize technology and establish a more democratic and benign form of productive capitalism have been in the pipeline since at least the early 1960s.  Indeed, "green jobs" should not be something special; they should simply be "good jobs" that are part

I'm getting ready to re-enter the fray. I recently agreed to take on a job in the City of Philadelphia that I can't provide details on, but it's not soon enough apparently. Leaders in Washington and state governments all over the country are doing their best to turn solving the climate change problem into another example of oafish, mercenary, short-sighted, buffoonery. Check out the rather direct posting at the Center for American Progress today, "Facing Reality." I'm fighting mad. You should be too. Personally, I've been on the sidelines way too long and I'm itching to get back in the game. Yesterday, I listened to the news that President Obama is authorizing $54 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear power

Experts have been saying it's too late to avoid climate change for some time now. Today's news (it's Groundhog Day, for goodness sake!), is kind of obvious then. Janos Pasztor, the UN Secretary-General's point person on climate change, has come out with the not so surprising statement that: "It is likely, according to a number of analysts, that if we add up all those figures that were being discussed around Copenhagen, if they're all implemented, it will still be quite difficult to reach the two degrees." At issue is the so-called two-degree (that's Celsius) target set at Copenhagen. If the earth's average temperature goes above this level (using pre-industrial 18th century temperatures as a baseline), we will be in deep, hot doo-doo. Read the referenced material for the details. Suffice it to say that a botched and pathetic campaign in Massachusetts, the Haitian earthquake crisis, the health insurance reform debacle, and the coming Super Bowl a...

Yesterday, our local paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer , reported on a little skirmish at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen between the U.S. and China over climate change policy. In essence, the U.S. wants China to open its books in order to determine whether the world's most populous nation is adhering to the voluntary greenhouse gas reductions they are committing to (as a so-called developing nation, China is not confronted with the same requirements as the U.S., European Union countries, Japan, Australia, etc.). According to the article, both countries are in stalemate mode with China scoffing at verification demands and the U.S. stressing the need for clear definition and an "international agreement." The face-off is about money and China's concern over international sanctions. While China is deemed a developing nation, the U.S. and other industrialized countries are not offering financial support for climate change assistance. More to the point, China'...

The following commentary piece is a welcome addition to the public discourse on our current economic malaise. All too often environmental activists and green business enthusiasts ignore the intellectual heritage from which they came. Commentary by Neil Seldman, Institute for Local Self-Reliance Recently on Fox News, Annie Leonard, creator of The Story of Stuff , was likened to Karl Marx with a ponytail. I do not know how Annie is wearing her hair these days, but she reminds me far more of the young Frederick Engels than of Karl Marx. Let me explain. Annie's widely circulated animated video makes the connections between overproduction and ecological damage as well as between sustainability and job creation. In all of this, she is following in

Recycling got it's modern start in the late 1960s and early 1970s both as a common sense New Economy idea -- mining urban ore -- and also as a practical solution to the lunacy of the "Throw Away Society." The pioneers of the early recycling movement often don't get enough credit in the annals of environmentalism. While saving spotted owls and whales has been the rage since 1970, recycling has been a center piece of the early urban environmental equation going back to the early parts of the 20th century. Unlike wildlife conservation and wilderness protection, recycling addresses the environmental impact of each and every person in a given city or town -- at home, at work and at play. It might come as a surprise, then, that the National Recycling Coalition (NRC) -- the premiere group that spearheaded major partnerships and initiatives back in the 1980s and early 1990s including The Buy Recycled Business Coalition; The Electronics Recycling Initiative; RecycleMania; the...

Sunday's reporting on Friday's passage of the House climate change bill, at least in the New York Times , seemed a bit odd (check it here ). The first paragraph of the article says: " Democrats...were dogged by a critical question: Has the political climate changed since 1993?" That's kind of dumb thing to write. Regardless, Republicans appear miffed that the bill passed (I assure you there a number of liberal environmentalists who are livid as well) and were in such a tizzy that they harkened back to the BTU tax malaise Bill Clinton struggled with in 1993, which some believe backfired on the Dems, providing conservatives the political fodder they needed to jump start Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America." Republicans are said to have chanted, "BTU, BTU, BTU" as the bill passed in Congress on Friday (ironically, I had a dinner conversation that same night about how annoying it is when inept, losing

As we gear up for a new world in the war on climate change and global warming (meaning that the Obama Administration will soon provide laser-like, focused leadership for both this nation and, eventually, the global community), the idea of Zero Waste needs to have a major seat at the table. While mainstream energy and environmental policy groups talk about high-tech technology solutions not quite here yet like fuel cells, carbon sequestration, plug-in hybrids, smart transmission systems, and, of course, the magic of bio-fuels, Zero Waste solutions are fully loadable today. Zero waste is not so much a single technology, but an approach to manufacturing and resource utilization that seeks to maximize recycling, reuse and reduced material inputs. As Philadelphia Dumpster Diver Neil Benson has said, "Waste is a failure of the imagination." Indeed, while many people recycle most of their paper, cardboard, bottles and cans, another 70% of the nation's waste stream still gets th...

In May of 2007, I published an essay at GetUnderground called New Lords of the Moving World . It's worth a read even a year later now that the business community is so hopped up on Green Koolaid. In "New Lords" I add to my argument that the business and corporate sectors around the world are pulling the rest of the social institutions along in the fight against greenhouse gases. For those interested in finding out about solutions, there's a good number of resources that I offer in my essay. This is an important point as we move toward nominations in August -- and elections this fall. People who worry about which candidate has the best plan to attack global warming may be missing the point: it's not about the best plan, it's about who can work properly with the private sector. Solutions are going to come from invention, investment, and intention -- not regulation or master plans (a cap and trade system and an escalating carbon tax wouldn't hurt, though). Tw...

The following essay is a work in progress. I invite all readers to give me criticism and direction. --------------------------------------------------------------- Recently, the ABC show, Good Morning America , ran a segment interviewing columnist and author Stephen Dubner (co-author of the book Freakonomics ) on whether recycling works. You can watch it by clicking here . While Dubner's basic argument about recycling turns on the idea of market economics (which is sensible), he also says some really weird things that drew me back into the good old early 1990s when bashing recycling was the sport of kings. In particular, Dubner says that plastic water bottle recycling doesn't make sense because it costs more to recycle water bottles (they aren't as valuable as aluminum cans) than it does to make new ones. He also says that old newspapers have such a low value that cities often simply landfill them after they go to the recycling center. He doesn't really provide us with...

A version of "Freezing Our Asses Off at the Feet of Al Gore" has been posted at GetUnderground.com . Watch out for the indie music that plays at will when you go to the site, but listen to it anyway. I've found some great stuff there. Also, if you've got a second, go check out The Formality of Occurrence for my poem on September 11th called "The New World."

The last time we went out on a date was back in 1990--before $3.00 gallons of gasoline; before the Prius; before the iPod; before the World Wide Web; before frickin' Harry Potter. We saw Darkman , and Marion was so disgusted by the opening scene where the bad guy cuts off Darkman's finger with a cigar trimmer she walked out of the packed theater (I got her to come back and there were no more problems; it was a bad movie--very dark, but that's about it). Last Friday night, sixteen years later--one boy off in Maine, one in Florida, and the youngest at his friend Charlie's for an overnight--we decided it was time to rekindle our pre-child relationship. There was only one movie to see: An Inconvenient Truth. We're so happy we went, even if it cost $19.00 to get in, the popcorn line was insanely long (we went without), and we felt lost in the Big Box suburbs of Philadelphia. The movie is fascinating, disarming, and important for everyone in this great country of ours to...

First of all, there's hope for the world. The photo to the left is me with my oldest son Sam at his high school graduation earlier this summer. I believe in the future. I believe in Sam and his generation. I hope you do too. Now, to the business at hand: Gregg Easterbrook has a well argued commentary piece in the September Atlantic Monthly , entitled, "Some Convenient Truths" (you may need to register with The Atlantic to read his piece) which asks why global warming has such a negative aura surrounding it. At one point in the piece he writes: "Yet a paralyzing negativism dominates global-warming politics. Environmentalists depict climate change as nearly unstoppable; skeptics speak of the problem as either imaginary (the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated,” in the words of Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate’s environment committee) or ruinously expensive to address." Easterbrook points out that there is ample evidence that numerous environmental me...

The April 3, 2006 issue of Time Magazine is out just as oil prices begin to rise again . It is a special report on global warming with its cover proclaiming: "Be Worried. Be Very Worried: Climate change isn't some vague future problem--it's already damaging the planet at an alarming pace. Here's how it affects you, your kids and their kids as well." For anyone not really following this issue closely, the articles in this McDonald's of periodicals offer a great, fairly simple foray into some of the main issues surrounding climate change and global warming. For those of us who think we know everything (which, in this field, is impossible), reading each of these admittedly short, sound-bite-like pieces is essential. The problem of global warming is still in the "convince-the-voter-that-it's-real" phase. Reading these Time pieces will give you a good feel for what is currently being digested by lay-people. Going further, the journalists who wrote...