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Greenwash Of The Week: Sony And The WWF.

david — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:46:03 +0000

As he always does, my friend Keith over at The Unsuitablog has found an interesting greenwashing case – and he called them on it. Seems he received a press release about Sony and the World Wildlife Fund partnering up on a eco-crowdsourcing project called Open Planet Ideas that aims to discover “how current Sony technologies could be repurposed to tackle environmental problems.” Find it strange and impossible that an electronics company could tackle any environmental problems with all the stuff they market? So did Keith:

To: Clea Gray
Subject: Re: Sony Europe and WWF launch “Open Planet Ideas”

So, Clea, what Sony and WWF are proposing is that all Sony products sold will now have a positive effect on the environment. Yes?

I’m slightly surprised that any high complexity technology that relies on an industrial infrastructure could ever be environmentally friendly, but I’m willing to listen if you could explain the theory.

Thanks

Keith

Keith: “The implication being that something like a Playstation – the function of which, at the lowest level, is to make Sony money; but at a more superficial level, to entertain people, or rather distract them from the real world – can have a net environmental benefit. I would be keen to see Sony’s calculations, as to this net benefit.”

And to be honest, I do wonder how much money and power the WWF gets out of this partnership, considering the fact that their CEO makes $465,427 per year – an insane amount of money for a charitable organization to pay out for leadership. With that kind of pay scale, they must not be hurting for donations, heh? Guess you have to take the all the money you can from questionable partnerships when you can get it, since you have to pay such huge salaries. They are known as one of the most conservative enviro organizations out there and have taken on an “increasingly dubious role in greenwashing the operations of global agribusiness“. With time, they are starting to sound more and more like an organization interested in protecting their financial accounts and not the environment.

I highly recommend you go read Keith’s entire post about Sony and the WWF, and be sure not to miss his recorded phone call with the PR rep. He’s still waiting to hear back from them… hope he’s not holding his breath.

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Doing Biofriendly Good Deeds – 9/11 Day of Service

Tara — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:12:52 +0000

Sometimes life can get a little overwhelming. You can get so sucked into your work or personal issues that you don’t always see past them in order to lend a hand or help someone else in need. It’s probably happened to everyone at some point in their life, so don’t feel bad if you haven’t [...]

What a Waste of an Oil Disaster

TreeHugger — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:12:12 +0000

Image credit: Oliver Bernstein, Sierra Club.

With media coverage of the country’s worst oil spill fading away, recent decisions on how to handle tens of thousands of tons of boom and oily waste are going to affect people along the Gulf for years to come.

That’s because BP is relying on public complacency to get away with dumping its clean-up waste in local landfills, where hazardous oily residues and chemicals, like benzene, will either slowly slither their way into nearby water streams or evaporate and affect air quality. While this pl… Read the full story on TreeHugger

Change Your Perspective On Your Problems.

david — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:00:39 +0000

Having a bad day? Stuck in traffic? Bank account running a little low? A little warm inside your 2,000 square foot home today? Life can be rough some days for those of us in the First World (I hate that expression, but it’s the only one that works), and more often than not we turn petty little issues into something much bigger. Sure, we have real problems – some of us are sick, some of us are hungry, and some of us are homeless – and I do not want to minimize the true issues we have here. But sometimes a reminder of how billions of other humans currently live around the world can serve as a helpful change of perspective we need. I show these images not to upset you or to make you feel guilty; rather, as a kind of “call to action” to both recognize how you live your life and to help out those less fortunate (here and abroad) if you are able. We’re all in this together and we are all cut from the same cloth…

Afghan Children

Shanty Village

American E-Waste Overseas

Coastal Pollution

Family Home

Poor Child Looking For Food

The people in these images are not some strange aliens living in a different solar system; rather, they are people just like you and I who happened to be born into different circumstances than we did. That’s it – the luck of the draw. Over 30,000 people (85% children) die each and every day from starvation because they cannot get enough to eat on a planet where some have way more than they need.

That’s a real problem.

Our problems seem very real when we are faced with them on a day to day basis, without a doubt. However, the majority of them are simply meaningless when we look at what other humans just like us are faced with their entire lives. All I ask is that you keep that in mind.

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On This Labor Day, Demand Safe Green Jobs, And Honor Those Who Work With Their Hands

TreeHugger — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:46:00 +0000

There is a price to pay for cheap energy and gas for our cars that goes beyond dollars, as we saw this year with the 29 dead miners in West Virginia and the 11 on the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf. American labor used to make things and fix things, and used to be proud to do it, for a decent wage.

… Read the full story on TreeHugger

Is There A Worldwide Plant Extinction Crisis?

david — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:30:47 +0000

Dear EarthTalk: When we talk about “endangered species” we usually think of animal species, but someone recently told me that there was a worldwide crisis pertaining to the extinction of plants. Can you enlighten?

We may not realize it, but the health of the plant kingdom is crucial to the health of the planet and the animal life (which includes humans) it supports. “Through photosynthesis, plants provide the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat and are thus the foundation of most life on Earth,” reports the Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based nonprofit dedicated to securing the future for endangered plants and animals throughout the world.

“Unlike animals, plants can’t readily move as their habitat is destroyed, making them particularly vulnerable to extinction,” says the Center. Habitat destruction—just one of the threats plants face—can lead to an “extinction debt” whereby even some plants that are plentiful now could disappear over time by being unable to disperse to new habitat patches. And global warming is already starting to exacerbate such problems. “With plants making up the backbone of ecosystems and the base of the food chain,” says the group, “that’s very bad news for all species, which depend on plants for food, shelter and survival.”

A 2009 report by the UK-based nonprofit, Plantlife, found that 15,000 of the 50,000 or so species of wild plants known for their medicinal qualities in traditional remedies are being overexploited and are potentially headed for extinction. The group says the fact that most people around the world—including some 80 percent of all Africans—rely on herbal medicines obtained primarily from wild plants underscores just how serious a problem a mass extinction of wild plants could be for humanity, let alone for the environment. Commercial over-harvesting does the most harm, though pollution, competition from invasive species and habitat destruction all contribute. “Commercial collectors generally harvest medicinal plants with little care for sustainability,” Plantlife reports, adding that shortages already exist in China, India, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania and Uganda.

Another group, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles and maintains the famous “Red List” of endangered species around the world, found that a whopping 70 percent of the 12,000-plus plant species it has evaluated to date are threatened with extinction—despite the fact that each year about 2,000 new plants make themselves known to science. Of course, the organization only evaluates plants that are rare or have suffered major declines.

Meanwhile, researchers in the UK estimate that up to 33 percent of all flowering plants worldwide are threatened with extinction. “That percentage reflects the global impact of factors such as habitat loss,” says Lucas Joppa, the study’s lead author, who adds that climate change could increase the toll.

This worldwide threat to plants is just part of a larger biodiversity crisis, and the United Nations has declared 2010 “The International Year of Biodiversity” to raise awareness and encourage action to help stem the tide. The project’s website features listings of celebrations taking place around the world as well as resources for those who want to help spread the word and be part of the solution.

CONTACTS: Center for Biological Diversity, www.biologicaldiversity.org; Plantlife, www.plantlife.org.uk; IUCN, www.iucn.org; International Year of Biodiversity, www.cbd.int/2010.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Please don’t miss the Change.org petitions over on the right hand side of the site. Topics like offshore oil drilling and the Climate Bill are awaiting your support!

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Weekly Greens – Sept 3rd

Tara — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:31:06 +0000

Image by Joel Bedford It’s been an interesting week…from the oil rig explosion in the Gulf to the mid-week events at the Discovery Channel (thankfully in both cases the workers were okay) and more. Now while I won’t be able to cover or recap everything that happened during the past week, I hope you enjoy [...]

Quick Green Reads For The Weekend Volume 181

david — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:30:07 +0000

If you live in San Francisco and are into green design, you may want to check out West Coast Green between September 30 – October 2 at Fort Mason Center. My friend Michelle Kaufmann is on the The Future of Prefab panel, which you should definitely make a point of being at. Wish I could be there! On to the Reads…

If some sort of natural disaster or terrorist attack were to shut down New York City’s food supply chain, our supermarket shelves would reportedly be picked clean within three days. Other U.S. cities aren’t any better prepared for such emergencies, thanks to our fuelish dependence on a globalized food system.

One of the most beneficial and fun ways to save on gasoline, even skip gasoline if you so choose, is by pedal power! If you haven’t noticed, bike riding has made a big comeback in the last few years. Business men and women are riding bikes to work, families are spending quality time going for bike rides, people are riding their bikes for exercise, kids are riding their bikes to/from school and more.

The Greenpeace ship Esperanza is in the Arctic to protest Cairn Energy’s drilling here. At dawn Greenpeace activists left the Esperanza aboard inflatables, successfully evaded the Danish Navy, and scaled the Stena Don drilling rig. Four climbers are currently occupying the rig, halting the drilling operation.

I tried to stay quiet and hoped that if I closed my eyes long enough, this whole “Ground-Zero Mosque” controversy would blow over. It hasn’t. In fact, all the fuss and controversy over this “mosque” has risen to such ridiculous and offensive levels that I can no longer endure this breed of Islamaphobia gone wild. (Thank you! It’s not even AT the WTC site, it’s 4 blocks away.)

Thich Nhat Hahn in Guardian UK: The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Please don’t miss the Change.org petitions over on the right hand side of the site. Topics like offshore oil drilling and the Climate Bill are awaiting your support!

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Book Review: Twelve By Twelve by William Powers

david — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:30:34 +0000

If how many dog-eared pages a book has after you have finished it is any indication of how good it is, Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream is amazing. I have never (and I do mean never) folded down that many corners of pages I wanted to revisit later in a single book. And in all honesty, I don’t even want to really say too much about the book because I believe you have to experience it for yourself – I don’t want to inject my interpretation of it too much and possibly spoil it for you. When I started the book, I expected nothing more than a story about a guy who lives in a 12×12 off grid cabin, which is a story I have read 100 times. But this book is not that, not at all – it is so much more and so very different than what I was expecting. It’s about growth, indecision, struggle, and joy while being full of honesty and authenticity. It is, hands down, the best non-fiction book I have read this year, without a doubt. Basically, the book is about the author going to stay a while in an off grid cabin on 30 acres in NC which is owned by a physician who willingly lowered her salary to $11,000 so she wouldn’t have to pay income tax and thus not fund any wars. The author, who has been a busy international activist for many years, is struggling with being a “man without a country” (I feel like this quite often) and finds the time in this cabin to evaluate his life, his lifestyle, his needs and his wants – oftentimes without expected results.

This book is so much bigger than I expected it to be, and again without giving away too much, I wanted to share a few short pieces from some of my dog-eared pages…

Solitude’s richest gift is allowing one’s own thoughts to flow, and not through mental aqueducts built by others.

Today it’s not the British Empire colonizing us, but a pervasive corporate globalism.

Walking the aisles of the organic Adams Market, I looked around and saw what I might become: a holier-than-thou progressive, carving an identity niche out of being so darn responsible.

I have helped create rainforest-protecting municipal reserves, indigenous areas, and community forests that have successfully resisted logging, mining, and industrial farming. But these efforts have been trounced by the global trend. Have I been merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

When I fly over the rainforest into these places, I feel the irony. Planes spew dangerous global warming gasses into the stratosphere that hasten the desertification that fuels rainforest decline.

Ironically, the more I treated my life energy as sacred and lived frugally, the more I was able to indulge myself; I could gush generously where it counted.

I could go on and on with more of my favorite passages, but you really need to read the entire book for yourself. I cannot recommend this book enough; books don’t usually affect me this much, and this one has definitely changed my viewpoint on, and my perception of, life. I plan on rereading it many times over, and will continue to fold down pages and highlight important passages for a long time to come. Thank you, Mr. Powers.

If you are looking for a book to inspire you and change you, then borrow, beg for, or buy this book – you won’t be sorry.