Blue Olives

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'...