Clik here to view.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Back in January, I wrote a blog post headlined A modest proposal for big green NGOs that suggested, in what was intended to be a helpful way, that the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Wildlife...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How “evil” Monsanto aims to protect the planet
Iowa cornfield shows signs of erosion and fertilizer runoff. Climate Corporation aims to help farmers use fertilizer more efficiently. Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP Monsanto has been called one of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
One hundred low-cost tools for global women
A microfinance circle outside Hyderabad, India In a gorgeous new large-format book called 100 under $100: One Hundred Tools for Empowering Global Women , author and activist Betsy Teutsch spotlights,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ceres and the “inside” game
It’s been 45 years since the first Earth Day, and, as I was reminded when reading this brief history, some 20 million Americans — one in 10 of us — participated on April 22, 1970. That took organizing....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gap’s Kindley Walsh Lawlor has a daunting job
Nearly 20 years after retailers like Gap, Nike and Levi Strauss agreed to take a modicum of responsibility for the health and well-being of the workers who make their apparel and shoes around the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Catching up, “creating” jobs and coffee pods
I’m just back from a wonderful vacation in Italy, and spending this week at the Sustainable Brands conference in San Diego. To my surprise, I see that I haven’t posted here in more than a month....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ramez Naam, ecomodernist
Ramez Naam I was introduced to a set of ideas known as “ecomodernism” back in 2009, when I read Stewart Brand’s book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. Stewart, the founder of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Edelman’s climate problem
Last summer, the big PR company Edelman faced a problem that no amount of spin could resolve. Kert Davies, the former head of research for Greenpeace who now leads the Climate Investigations Center,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hershey’s, and the limits of certified chocolate
Silly me. I thought the world’s cocoa farmers, most of whom are poor, would surely benefit when global chocolate companies, including Hershey’s, Mars and Nestle, made major commitments to buy certified...
View ArticleClik here to view.
We’re losing the climate battle. So we may need to harvest CO2 from the sky.
Carbon Engineering’s new plant in Squamish, BC The Guardian this week published my latest story about direct air capture of CO2, a topic that has fascinated me since the late 2000s. My 2012 Amazon...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The fossil fuel divestment movement is failing. Except it’s not.
Harvard divestment activists sit in Despite all of the sound and fury set off by the campaign to divest fossil fuels — and there has been plenty — Bill McKibben, 350.org and their allies have persuaded...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I’m sorry to inform you that your pet is bad for the planet
Aside from, perhaps, GMOs, few topics in the sustainable business arena are as emotional as pets. When my friend Erik Assadourian wrote a well-researched story for the Guardian last year asking whether...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Amazon, Best Buy and the free rider problem
Gap, Nike and Walmart can police their global supply chains to outlaw child labor but what about discount retailers and no-name brands? McDonald’s can become a leader around animal health and welfare...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Goldman Sachs, and the evolution of sustainable investing
Will socially-responsible investing (SRI) ever grow up? With roots in religious communities and the anti-war movement of the 1960s, SRI funds have long shunned investments in tobacco, alcohol, guns and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Turning CO2 from waste into an asset
It’d be nice if the world could be powered with zero-carbon energy but wishing it so doesn’t make it so. We’re going to be burning fossil fuels, for better or worse–actually, for better and worse–for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
OS Fund: A venture fund that embraces big risks
A company that makes drones for humanitarian purposes, another that makes plant-based egg substitutes and still another that wants to mine asteroids for precious minerals would not seem to have much...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to divest fossil fuels, for the 99 percent
I’m all for the fossil-fuel divestment movement, at least as a way to start a conversation about climate change and build a movement. I’m undecided about whether it makes sense as an investment...
View ArticleClik here to view.
COP out
I wish I could be optimistic about COP21, the climate negotiations coming to an end in Paris. I can’t. Even if the world’s countries keep their promises — known, in the mind-numbing argot of the UN as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Monsanto, and its critics
Have you heard? Monsanto is going on trial in The Hague for “crimes against nature and humanity, and ecocide.” The Organic Consumers Association had the story: The Organic Consumers Association (OCA),...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The egg industry, scrambling
Hens are being freed from these cages If you, like me, have puzzled over the many labels on egg cartons — natural, organic, cage-free, pastured, free range — you might want to read my story about the...
View Article