Blue Olives

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...