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Structural Problems In The Economy, and How Britain Can Go Renewable

May 8, 2009 in analysis, business benefits, economy by nils | Add your comment

Roundup Time! (image by williac, CC 2.0 licensed)

Some more roundup links. These pages have been hanging around in my browser for weeks, waiting for me to blog about them. As with the links I posted earlier this week, I consider these "go to" articles and sites - continuously interesting and relevant.

Honestly, the most interesting article I've read on the economic crisis, because it suggests the problem is structural and provides a prescription for addressing it. (From the New York Times a few weeks ago.)

Soddy criticized the prevailing belief of the economy as a perpetual motion machine, capable of generating infinite wealth — a criticism echoed by his intellectual heirs in the now emergent field of ecological economics.

Middle Class Task Force Meeting in Philly Focuses on Green Jobs

March 4, 2009 in economy, green building, jobs, policy by nils | 5 comments

One of the Middle Class Task Force panels at the Philly meeting

If you're not reading the new whitehouse.gov blog, you're missing out.

This liveblog about the "Middle Class Task Force" meeting in Philly last week from whitehouse.gov was great. Speakers included John Podesta, former Clinton staffer and now with the Center for American Progress; Van Jones from Green for All (based in the Bay Area), Fred Krupp from the Environmental Defense Fund, a bunch of cabinet and administration appointees, and representatives from labor like Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers of America.

Some highlights:

Avoiding The Cliff Ahead

January 29, 2009 in accelerating change, analysis, consumption, economy, energy efficiency, energy generation, energy storage, green building, opinion, policy, profits by nils | 1 comment

A cliff in Bali (image by seanmcgrath, CC 2.0 licensed)

My green building and blogging colleague Barry Katz just had a post about James Howard Kunstler on his The Future Is Green Blog. Kunstler is one of the "dystopians" featured in a New Yorker article last week. Kunstler is not sanguine about what the future is going to look like for us and our descendants. He thinks that not only is global warming likely to cause a disaster, but so is the current, or an upcoming, financial meltdown. Barry writes:

Want Obama To Take Action On Energy? Vote At Change.Org

January 12, 2009 in economy, policy by nils | Add your comment

Idea! (photo by brunkfordbraun, CC 2.0 license)

Keeping The Lights On (this blog) just endorsed, and I voted for, an "Idea For Change In America" at change.org, Obama's community website. The idea is "Develop & Implement a National Strategy for Sustainability."

Ideas for Change in America is a nationwide competition to identify the best ideas for change in America. The top 10 ideas will be presented to the Obama administration just before inauguration day and form the basis of a nationwide advocacy campaign to turn each idea into actual policy.

Ten Energy Predictions For The Next Decade

January 5, 2009 in accelerating change, carbon mitigation, economy, energy efficiency, energy generation, energy storage, green building, integrative design, opinion, solar electricity, transportation by nils | Add your comment

Snow on the San Gabriel Mountains (photo by Jerry Thompson1, CC 2.0 license)

On December 30 of last year (six days ago), my wife and I were in Pasadena, CA visiting the Greene and Greene exhibit at the Huntington Library. It was one of those glorious and rare smog-free days in the LA basin. The air sparkled, you could see for miles in every direction, and mountain range after mountain range was visible - all the way out to the snow-covered San Gabriels. Nowadays, the air is only ever this clear around the Christmas holiday, when the freeway traffic is substantially reduced and a lot of factories shut down for the week. It got me thinking about how the future - say ten to twenty years hence - may be unrecognizable in both dramatic and mundane ways. For example, smog-free days may no longer be rare in LA, once the economy has shifted off fossil fuels. (I suspect the traffic will remain, unfortunately!)

Encourage Obama To Name a Secretary Of Food

December 11, 2008 in agriculture, carbon mitigation, economy by nils | Add your comment

Beatiful kale,not from a factory farm (photo by terren in Virginia, CC 2.0 licensed)

Nicholas Kristof in his NY Times op-ed today urges Obama to appoint a Secretary of Food:

A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, fewer than 2 percent are farmers. In contrast, 100 percent of Americans eat.

The interests of big agriculture - the "factory farmers" - are really opposed to the interests of people. The "food" they raise wastes energy, causes huge environment damage, makes us unhealthy, and even leads to antibiotic resistant diseases.

Friedman to Detroit: Batteries R U

December 9, 2008 in accelerating change, economy by nils | Add your comment

Soyuz rocket (Photo by James Duncan, CC 2.0 license)

Following up on my post yesterday about the Detroit bailout, today I wanted to mention Tom Friedman's op-ed in Sunday's New York Times "The Real Generation X." It is primarily about how Obama's stimulus package should focus on preparing us, especially our young people, for the future, not saving old dinosaur industries like Detroit:

We not only need to bail out industries of the past but to build up industries of the future — to offer the kind of big thinking and risk-taking that transforms enormous challenges into world-changing opportunities.

Old Failures And New Rules For The Auto Industry

December 8, 2008 in analysis, economy, opinion, transportation by nils | Add your comment

The best pieces I've read on the auto industry bailout/failure/bankruptcy are Bob Sutton's giant flame, "Thoughts About Why GM Executives Are Clueless And Their Destructive 'No We Can't' Mindset" and Umair Haque's "Detroit's 6 Mistakes and How Not to Make Them."

While neither of these articles are about green energy or hybrid cars or sustainability per se, they both get at some of the big issues that industry and finance worldwide have to overcome for the the world to change as it must.

A Bright Spot In The Housing Crisis – Solar Houses Still Selling

December 1, 2008 in economy, solar electricity by nils | 4 comments

In an October article Will Demand for Solar Homes Pick Up? Business Week reporter Adam Aston discovers that houses with built in solar energy collectors are bucking the general downward trend in the market.

Consumers recognize that green homes "save money month in, month out," says Rick Andreen, president of Shea Homes Active Lifestyles Communities in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Michael Pollan Advises Obama on Food and Agriculture

November 10, 2008 in biofuels, consumption, economy, policy by nils | 3 comments

Otis wasn't sure if it was really a crashed spaceship or not!

Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food) gave some advice to the next president (Obama, as it turns out) in the NY Times October 12 Sunday Magazine. If he didn't know already, Pollan warned him that food policy is going to be a big issue, and provides some advice on what to do about it.

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food.

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