Six kilograms of carbon dioxide a day. If that sounds like little more than an obscure scientific measurement, think again. In the years to come it’s a figure we may have to get used to. Why? Because, say climate scientists, that’s the maximum daily amount of carbon dioxide each of us can generate if humanity is to have a chance of keeping the rise in global temperature below 2C.

That figure, endorsed by Lord Stern, then the government’s chief economist, in his 2006 report on the economics of climate change, is one of the best illustrations of the scale of the challenge of powering our world without endangering the planet.

Compare it with the amount we emit now. Britain generates about 10 tonnes per person each year - about 27kg a day. America generates about 60kg of CO2 a day, according to the Atlas of Climate Change, and China about 9kg, a figure rising as the country develops.

How, then, can humankind cut those emissions to 6kg by 2050, as Stern and like-minded climate scientists say we must? It adds up to about two tonnes a year, roughly equal to the amount emitted by a person in Mozambique.

Power generation lies at the heart of the debate. Around the world there are about 5,000 large power stations that burn fossil fuels, mostly coal or gas. They emit the equivalent of about 11 billion tonnes of CO2 a year - a huge chunk of the 49 billion tonnes generated globally by human activities, according to figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The panel says energy supply is responsible for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Transport accounts for about 13% and buildings about 8%. Stern’s latest report, Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change, states: “The importance of technological innovation in delivering this transformation can hardly be overstated.” In other words, technology is the best hope we have of cutting emissions.

According to a report from the consultancy McKinsey & Company, each unit generated will have to be made to produce 10 times more of everything - of CO2 power, food, consumer goods and so on - than today. And we have just 40 years to achieve that if the global temperature rise is to be kept below 2C.

John Pothecary is a divisional managing director at RPS, an international con-sultancy specialising in the development of energy resources and environmental management. He believes that global leadership is one of the biggest issues. “There are all kinds of technologies we can use to cut carbon emissions, but first we need the political and financial systems that will ensure they are adopted,” he says.

Pothecary is partly referring to the negotiations under way to draw up a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which will set emissions reduction targets. The negotiations will culminate in a United Nations conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, which will, hopefully, produce a new protocol.

It will have to set global targets for cutting carbon emissions that are perceived as fair and achievable. For the energy industry, Copenhagen is a giant fork in the road, the outcome of which will influence its actions for decades. A successful protocol could lead to a system of carbon quotas whereby each country would have a ceiling placed on its CO2 emissions. Any excess emissions would have to be covered by buying quotas from other countries, otherwise the country would face a fine.

If it worked, such a system could transform the relative costs of different fuels. Coal, for example, whose abundance makes it the cheapest bulk source of energy, could become the most expensive because it generates the greatest emissions. Nuclear and wind power, which currently cost two to threeCO2 times more than energy from coal, could become far cheaper in a low-car-bon world, and oil and gas may lie somewhere in between.

Such shifts would create a powerful incentive to develop the new technologies Stern refers to. Perhaps the most important is carbon capture and seques-tration, a system of stripping CO2 from power station emissions and storing it underground. In theory this could be adopted by most coal and gas power stations, turning them from polluting monsters into low-carbon paragons.

What happens if Copenhagen fails to create a workable protocol? The stresses on the process are showing. Even Britain, which likes to portray itself as setting a lead on green issues, is already lobbying for aviation to be excluded from the EU’s target of getting 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.

David Eyton, research and technology vice-president at global energy giant BP, says: “It’s cheaper to produce energy from fossil fuels than from renewables, and there are plenty of them, so we will keep producing them and people will keep using them. That is our primary business for now.

“The policymakers at Copenhagen have to bridge that gap in costs and address greenhouse gas emissions. The decisions they make will determine our investment portfolio and the products we offer people for decades to come.”

Goodwill in short supply

Can global treaties on our climate lead to real cuts in carbon emissions? History suggests not. Lawrence Susskind, professor of urban and environmental planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has looked at the achievements of other global treaties on the environment and found them sadly wanting.

“More than 400 multilateral agreements such as the Kyoto protocol on climate change now exist, addressing problems including the loss of endangered species and habitats, ocean dumping, the shipping of hazardous substances, and desertification,” he says. “Yet there is no evidence to suggest that any of these are working with perhaps the one exception of the Montreal protocol on ozone-depleting chemicals.”

What all these treaties have in common is that they are administered by ad hoc secretariats, depend for funding donated by the very countries they are supposed to be regulating and are highly politicised - so the science gets distorted.

Even when they are agreed there is no central agency, no United Nations Environmental Treaty-making and Enforcement body with the means to enforce them. It means any successor to Kyoto is likely to prove just as pointless and ineffective as the rest.

Gas flow improved

Natalie Davies, 26, joined Shell in March last year and now works as a project services engineer based in Assen, northeast Holland. She is part of an extensive project to renovate and update the facilities and equipment used in processing gas from the huge Groningen field to make them more efficient and environmentally friendly.

Davies is Shell’s on-site representative, monitoring contractors that install ultrasonic gas-flow meters, which measure the gas before it is sent to the supplier. This includes filling the plant with nitrogen and helium to make sure connections don’t leak.

The hands-on role complements her theoretical experience, and she will eventually become a cost and planning engineer. Her work also counts towards chartership with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Away from the spanners and slide rule, she is enjoying learning Dutch.

Davies joined Shell after gaining a masters of engineering from Cambridge University. After two years of general engineering courses, she specialised in manufacturing and took an internship one summer with a manufacturing company. Her time there led to a job offer, but she preferred the variety of options on offer at Shell.

“I wanted to join the energy sector because we are going to face huge challenges and I’ve always thought it’s better to be part of it and make a difference,” she says. “Being on the inside, I feel I can do that. It’s great to be on site and see in practice how everything works. It makes a lot more sense to see it yourself.

“It’s also a great learning opportunity and has flexibility and freedom too. If I see something interesting, I can speak with the contractor and find out what they are doing.

“I’m confident that schemes in the company are such that I will be challenged in whatever position I want to do. I’m quite ambitious and see myself moving to technical project management. There is flexibility and if I don’t like something, I can move, as it’s such a huge company.”

Dangers ahead

Greenhouse gases increase the atmosphere’s ability to trap , of which humanity releases heat. The best known is CO2 about 50 billion tonnes a year. Some is used by plants or absorbed in the sea but the rest stays in the atmosphere for decades. Levels have risen from about 280 parts per million before the industrial revolution to the equivalent of 430ppm.

This has helped warm the world by about 0.7C, with another 0.5C expected from gases already in the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that if greenhouse gas emissions rise at present rates, levels will reach 550ppm by 2035 - with temperature rises of 3C-4C.

Brown’s balancing act Follow the money

The International Energy Agency recently published a study on the cost of low-carbon technologies aimed at keeping global temperature rises below 2.4C. It found that the world needed to spend an extra £23 trillion from 2010 to 2050 to decarbonise power generation and promote energy efficiency measures that would stabilise the climate.

“The average year-by-year investments needed to achieve a virtual decarbonisation of the power sector include: 55 fossil-fuelled power plants with carbon capture; 32 nuclear plants; 17,500 large wind turbines and 215 square metres of solar panels,” said the report. “It also requires widespread adoption of near-zero emission buildings and deployment of nearly a billion electric or hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. In the coming decade we need a global revolution in the way we produce and use energy.” Gordon Brown has already pledged the nation to cutting its emissions by 60% by 2050 compared with 1990 levels, and is likely to raise that to the 80% cut expected to be recommended by his new Climate Change Committee in its first report next month. Brown, however, has made it clear he also wants Britain to build more airports, roads and coal-fired power stations, and to expand its economy.

Defra, the environment ministry, has indicated that it expects Britain to meet up to a third of any future carbon emission reduction targets by purchasing carbon credits from developing countries, through an international trading system.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/career_and_jobs/careers_in/careers_in_energy/article4836600.ece

While the East Coast swelters in temperatures that are in the high 90’s, I waited for the usual environmental propaganda to say that this was proof of global warming, but it has not yet been pumped through the usual mainstream media system of lies about the climate.

Instead, the reality is that the Earth continues to cool and one interesting example of that was a news item out of Aspen, Colorado. The Aspen Skiing company announced on Monday, June 9, that it will open Aspen Mountain from June 13 to June 15 for skiers and snowboarders. It seems that record winter snowfall has left an average of more than three feet of snow on the upper slopes.

In late May, despite Green predictions that the Arctic is melting so fast that it will provide a new route, a Northwest Passage, for ships, a group of eco-tourists on a vessel offering polar expeditions found themselves trapped when a former Soviet icebreaker, refitted for visits to the supposedly disappearing ice, was trapped in late May by ice.

According to Quark Expeditions of Norwalk, Connecticut, the ship included a heated indoor swimming pool, exercise rooms and a sauna, and I am sure the passengers, tiring of looking at a sea of ice appreciated them. Eventually, after being in the icy grip of Mother Nature for a week, winds and tide permitted the ship to break free of the ice pack.

In April, approximately on hundred sealing ships were trapped in ice floes off the northeast coast of Newfoundland while they were participating in the annual seal hunt off Canada’s easternmost province. It required the Canadian Coast Guard to rescue a number of the trapped vessels and their crews. However, at one point, an icebreaker sent to free them actually found itself trapped. As reported, “In addition to three icebreakers on hand, the Coast Guard is flying helicopters in to provide food and support to the stranded sailors.”

So much for the blather about the North Pole melting.

In May, meteorologist Anthony Watts issued a report on the way temperatures continue to cool. The new global data revealed a whopping three quarters of a degree Celsisus drop in temperatures since January. That may not seem like much, but climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer, formerly of NASA and now the principle research scientist at the University of Alabama, said that, “If you exclude the anomalous 1992 cooling from the Pinatubo volcano eruption, it’s the coolest May in 20 years.”

Even the U.S. government, courtesy of NASA, has admitted that the Earth is now a decade into a cooling cycle and it is likely to last at least two or three more decades.

Question: Why do both candidates for President keep talking about global warming?

All this is occurring as the Public Broadcasting System is preparing to foist a two-hour pack of lies in a television spectacular called “Heat.” Check your local listings for more of the same brainwashing and propaganda that has nothing to do with the realities of a Sun that has been largely devoid of magnetic storms, sunspots, for a few years now. It is the Sun that determines how warm or cool the Earth will be and this is a known sign of cooling. It has real scientists very worried.

And, of course, this planet is now approaching the end of the latest interglacial period between ice ages, about 11,500 years on the average, so some massive climate shifts will occur at some point, changing everything we humans have grown accustomed to over the past centuries.

What we called “civilization” coincides with this period between ice ages. A new one is going to ruin a lot of plans.

By Alan Caruba

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3457

Whether by lowering your thermostat or unplugging seldom-used appliances, chances are you’ve recently attempted to scale back on energy use.

In fact, you may be one of the consumers who have bought more than 1.5 billion Energy Star-qualifying products since the label was introduced in 1992. Last year, one in three people reported using the label as part of a purchase decision, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. If they’d bought an Energy Star-qualified commercial dishwasher, they might be saving an estimated $200 per year, according to the Department of Energy. Those that took home an Energy Star refrigerator can look forward to a 15% less expensive monthly electricity bill.

Other ways of saving energy include fixing a leaky faucet and checking your insulation levels. But the most comprehensive way might be to figure out exactly how much damage you’re inflicting so you’ll know how much to cut back.

Author Alexandra Shimo-Barry knows how. In her new book, The Environment Equation, Shimo-Barry, a national reporter for Maclean’s in Canada, teaches readers how to quickly calculate their carbon footprints, or the amount of greenhouse gases in units of carbon dioxide, they’re producing by using the following formula:

A.) Multiply your monthly electricity bill by 105

B.) Multiply your monthly gas bill by 105

C.) Multiply your monthly oil bill by 113

(if you don’t use either B or C, enter 0.)

D.) Multiply total yearly mileage by .79

E.) Multiply the number of flights–4 hours or less–by 1,100

F.) Multiply the number of flights–4 hours or more–by 4,400

G.) Do you recycle newspaper? If no, add 184. If yes, add 0.

H.) Do you recycle aluminum and tin? If no, add 166. If yes, add 0.

A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H = your carbon footprint. A number below 6,000 (reflected in pounds per year) is excellent. Over 22,000? Not so great. Good is anywhere from 6,000 to 15,999, while 16,000 to 22,000 is average.

If your number is higher than you would like, there’s good news–there are hundreds of ways you can shrink your carbon footprint, and many of them aren’t as sacrificial as you might expect.

That’s because Shimo-Barry says that lack of will, not austere alternatives, is the No. 1 barrier blocking would-be waste-reducers.

“There’s still inertia when it comes to making small changes,” she says. “But Americans emit 20 tons of carbon dioxide per year. Even if we cut that by a ton–which isn’t difficult–it would make a huge difference.”

Simple Steps
Eating locally grown food is one of the easiest ways to reduce your footprint. Whether you begin visiting the farmer’s market every Saturday to pick up local fruits and vegetables or, if you are able, dining at restaurants serving regional fare, eating locally allows you to eat well without funding the emissions used to import food from other countries and regions.

Jason Karas, founder of Cambridge, Mass.-based Carbonrally.com–a gaming Web site that challenges users to reduce personal emissions through online competitions–says that drinking locally microbrewed beer is another way to shrink your footprint, for much the same reasons as eating regional food.

“It’s also a great way to support local entrepreneurs,” says Karas.

Buying second-hand is another luxurious choice. For many, vintage shopping has become as chic as getting on the list for the newest pair of Christian Louboutins. Buying vintage clothing and accessories is more than looking sharp: These practices will reduce your carbon footprint by eliminating the energy it takes to produce something new. What’s more, you might get that Hermes Birkin for $2,000 instead of $8,000. Those not so used to buying second-hand should read “Shopping Tips for Vintage Clothing Collectors.”

How are you cutting back on energy use? Weigh in. Add your thoughts in the Reader Comments section below.

Sustainable wood furnishings are another smart lifestyle alternative. Before you redecorate your home by raiding the Conran Shop, consider buying pieces from eco-friendly shops like Vivavi and Environment Furniture. Both offer stylish, modern goods–like a mid-century-styled credenza or a curvy bamboo rocking chair–that are Forest Stewardship Council-certified, which means they’ve met 57 earth-friendly criteria established by the organization. These include minimal pesticide use, protection of local wildlife and unionization for loggers.

In the market for a second home? A penthouse on Central Park South might not sound like the most efficient way to cut carbon, but city living is often friendlier to the environment. That’s because many urbanites rely on public transportation. And even a two-floor penthouse in the Trump Tower uses far less energy than a sprawling seven-bedroom mansion. What’s more, when water, sewage and electricity are shared, less copper–which is found in plumbing and electrical systems and is one of the largest contributors to landfills–is needed.

All evidence that living grandly can do the earth well, as long as you know where to cut back.

Lauren Sherman

http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2008/04/15/green-carbon-living-forbeslife-cx_ls_0415carbon.html

I’m happy to see that ‘environmentalism’ has become trendy, and that there is a growing movement in our society to reduce the impacts of our civilized lifestyle. Yet, those of us who have long considered ourselves ‘environmentalists’ fear that it may be too little too late, and that the movement is becoming co-opted by the very forces that we have been struggling to defeat.
http://treesit.blogspot.com

The crisis we face now can be traced back to decisions our culture made over 10,000 years ago, and compounded since then by millions of subsequent decisions. This process, whereby we went from a species in equilibrium with it’s environment to one that is currently destroying all life around it, has been greatly accelerated in the last 100 years or so. While this acceleration roughly corresponds with the rise of fossil fuel use, it is not these particular resources, or use thereof, that bear the entire responsibility for our current crisis.

The use and impacts of these energy resources, being such a prominent and immediate threat to life, have been focused upon by the new environmental (green consumer) movement as not only key targets, but in some cases, the only targets.
Many old-school environmentalists define their ideology and activism not just by a desire to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’, but also by a desire to have an abundance of intact eco-systems and a broad diversity of life on the planet. Hybrid cars and compact fluorescent light bulbs may reduce the amount of carbon we emit into the atmosphere as we go about our busy civilized lives, but unless we begin to take a brutally honest approach to a wide variety of elements of society, the toxic sprawl will continue to drive thousands of critical species (including our own) into extinction.

The problem lies in the centralized, industrial way that we choose to support ourselves as a culture. The most sustainable and ‘eco-friendly’ products of the mass consumer culture still require appalling amounts of water, energy, resources and labour to produce. All of these things need to be transported, and as these industries have been globalized, the distances that these things need to be transported have increased to the absurd and convoluted. The fuel used by the production and transportation is but one impact of the process. An army of heavy equipment, fabricated from steel, copper, zinc, iron and other resources (as well as petroleum products such as lubricants and plastic) are used in the production and transportation of ALL industrialized mass consumer products. In the case of the automobile, the vast majority of the energy and materials used and the waste and pollution created occurs in the production process.

Where do these materials come from? Whose land? Where does the massive waste our consumer society generates go? Whose land? Who builds the earth moving equipment and mining machinery? Who operates them? Who works in the factory that processes the raw materials and assembles the products? Who loads them onto trucks, ships, planes and trains? Who drives these vehicles? What are the working conditions for all these people? What kind of quality of life do they have? A great deal of exploitation is occurring around the world to bring us our ‘sustainable’ products. The cost of retrofitting the world with green technology and fuelling it with energy that costs more to produce than fossil fuel (as all other energy does) certainly doesn’t leave us much with which to pay a living wage to those who toil for our comfort.
These issues, though often referred to as ‘social justice’ issues, factor into the ideology of many environmentalists. Nowhere is an environmental issue not a social justice issue. Every step in the process of bringing mass consumer goods to the homes of the civilized world, impacts the lives of people who work in these industries and whose homes are downriver, downwind or have been destroyed by these industries.

A globalized mass consumer world is not compatible with the ideal of social justice for all. The industrial system requires slavery and exploitation. It requires increasing access to resources, which means displacing people, mainly poor and indigenous people, from their land base.

Mining and blasting processes, which are critical to the production of material for ‘green energy’ infrastructure, are apocalyptic to any ecosystem. The waste generated by these processes poisons rivers, lakes and oceans and in turn poisons the people who rely on these waterways for sustenance and survival.

These and other effects are also to be seen in the production, transportation and retailing of the ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ products and infrastructure that is being created and proposed. (A good local example is the development on Spaet [Bear] Mountain, in which the future of the local indigenous cultures, which are in jeopardy in part from diabetes and other health effects of the western diet, relies on access to traditional wild foods. By reducing the land base of these peoples, you reduce their access to healthy food and sabotage their efforts to survive into the future. This can reasonably be called genocide.)

In short, any movement of ideology that does not advocate eliminating our dependence on a globalized industrial way of life can not with any real conscience call itself ‘environmental’, at least not in the sense that the word is used to mean respect and active protection of biodiversity and ecological equilibrium.

Any eco-philosophy that fails to take into account the impact of actions on all life from the smallest micro-organism up to entire human cultures is but a means to feel good about one’s excessive consumption and material addictions.

Those of us in the privileged world have become addicted to the comfort of abundant material wealth. Yet in the majority of the world, thoroughout the majority of history, people thrive, on far less, produced closer to home with less resources, used more efficiently for longer periods of time before being discarded, and discarded in a way that can even contribute to new products.

The true sustainable energy sources in this world are direct solar (to heat food, water, grow food, etc), methane digesting of food waste to produce electricity, heating and cooking fuel, and other technologies that can be built and maintained on a personal or community level.

Further energy reduction is achieved by localizing resource use and reducing the need for most transportation, as well as eliminating many of the products that those of us in the privileged world take for granted.

It’s true that we live in a world where many communities lack the resources for even basic survival, and must rely on imports from other communities, but from this need has arisen a system that is wasteful, inefficient and in most cases unnecessary. If we cannot return to a localized economy than we should be focusing on a future where these impacts occur only where they truly need to, and resources and energy used in the most efficient ways.

Those of us who live in areas with abundant resources could do a much better job of utilizing these resources. Cities could be growing food on rooftops, or in yards that are now only used for ornamental grass and shrubs. Rainwater can be utilized and grey water collected to reduce impact on watersheds and oceans. Food and other waste can be used to produce methane to eliminate the need for hydro-electricity, natural gas and home heating fuel. (And to save land from landfill and avoid flushing it into the ocean where it harms marine life.)

Other waste materials can be used to make new products, and this reduces the impact of extracting, producing and transporting materials and products.

We need to start perceiving the true impacts of using new products. As necessary as each new product may be in our lives, each time we purchase and consume them it is like throwing a live grenade into the communities affected by the production of these products. As necessary as each product may be, it can never be forgotten that we must TAKE LIFE to create it, and in the case of the land and ecosystems from which the raw materials and energy originate, that life may take thousands of years to return, if it returns at all.

Some purchases are unavoidable, but in the case of our culture, most ARE avoidable, thus we have no excuse for such casual taking of life.

‘Sustainable’ products and energy are that which can be harvested and produced close to where we live, with the least possible impact on the natural environment, with attention to quality (so they last), that fill a needed role in our lives, and can be re-used, recycled or discarded in a way that creates the least impact. All other products are destructive and counter-productive to our struggle to survive on a healthy planet.

The green consumer movement is not ‘environmentally friendly’, and the measures being proposed by the new mainstream environmental movement are nowhere near a solution for the crisis we face. If the power to ‘save the environment’ is in the hands of the people, than we need to use those hands to create the world we want, not to hand power over to the corporations and governments to pervert and waste. A centralized industrial world can only create ecological damage, genocide and exploitation. It’s time we began taking the radical alternatives seriously and begin to examine the impacts of every aspect of our lives.

- in solidarity with all life,
Kalanu
http://treesit.blogspot.com
http://bullsheet.wordpress.com
http://pedaltopetal.blogspot.com

Ray Anderson built his $1 billion Georgia-based carpet business by, as he describes it, plundering the earth: using lots of fossil fuels and water, and creating mountains of carpet scraps in landfills.

Now he’s got Interface Inc.’s 4,000 employees climbing Mount Sustainability and working on Misson Zero, a multi-faceted goal to make the company environmentally neutral by 2020. Time International magazine recently named Anderson one of its “Heroes of the Environment.”

He and former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart also are co-chairing a committee that advises the University of Coloroda-Denver-based Presidential Climate Action Project, an organization of academic, political and business leaders coming up with 300 ways the next president can combat global warming.

Chief among them is a recommendation to shift federal subsidies from fossil-fuel-using industries to small businesses that are developing renewable forms of energy and other environmentally friendly technologies.

Robert Reiss, radio host of the CEO Show, recently called Anderson the global corporate leader in pushing businesses to become more environmentally responsible. Interface last year started a consulting business to market its practices to other companies.

The company says 20 percent of the materials it uses to produce carpets is either from recycled goods or is from renewable resources, and Anderson says he’d like to push that to 100 percent. The company is also trying to reduce pollution and waste in other ways, using solar power at a factory in southern California, for example.

Anderson began taking his company in a new direction, a mid-course correction as he calls it, in 1994, when he was 60 years old.

He was already an innovator. He’d started Interface in 1973 after seeing carpet tiles in England. He brought the concept to this country, where he revolutionized floor coverings for offices, airports and schools.

Interface tiles are about 20 inches by 20 inches. They can be mailed to customers in a box for do-it-yourself installation. If there’s a spill or the tiles are stained for other reasons, it’s an easier fix than replacing an entire carpet. Just pull up the tile and wash it off in the sink. If that doesn’t work, replace the piece.

“I fell in love with the idea. It just made so much sense,” said Anderson, now 73.

For the last five years, Interface has been slicing into the $11 billion U.S. residential carpet market. The hip product is popular among condo dwellers, and receives high marks from environmentalists because it can be recycled. And Flor recently teamed up with the Martha Stewart brand to reach an even wider audience.

The company’s first showroom opened in 2004 in Midtown Atlanta at Spring and 5th Streets near Georgia Tech, Anderson’s alma mater. The West Point, Ga., native arrived at Tech in 1952 with a football scholarship and graduated with a degree in industrial engineering. He got his start in textiles at Callaway Mills in West Georgia.

Anderson recently spoke with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the transformation taking place at the company’s LaGrange factory, where most of the Flor carpet tiles are made for the residential market.

A long wall in the building’s administrative offices tells the story through photos and milestones since Anderson’s “epiphany” in 1994 when he read The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken.

Q: How did the book change you?

A: It was like a spear in the chest — thunk. I had never given a single thought to what we were taking from the Earth. . . I was convicted as a plunderer of the Earth, and I’ve spent the last 13 years as a recovering plunderer.

Q: How motivated are you by concerns over global warming?

A: Climate change is a real problem. … If we do business as usual. . . by the year 2030 we will hit the [amount of greenhouse gas emissions] that scientists say is the threshold of catastrophic climate change. . . which means we have to get going now.

Q: Have any of the presidential candidates responded to your group’s climate action report published earlier this month?

A: They’re all playing it close to the vest. We don’t know who’s going to pick it up yet. … We want [climate change] to be an issue. We want voters to ask who will be the most effective about fixing this thing?

Q: Have you spoken to Georgia’s political leaders about what the state can do?

A: No. You don’t waste your time.

Q: Other carpet makers are also touting themselves as green companies and using recycled materials. What sets Interface apart?

A: We didn’t stop [with recycling materials]. We’re on to restoration. Let’s put back more than we take. Let’s do more good than harm. …. I’m quite sure we’ve moved the entire industry.

Q: Can you make a business case for your environmentalism?

A: Our cost is down, not up. [The company has saved more than $350 million since 1994 largely by reducing carpet scrap waste]. Our products are the best they’ve ever been. … Our people are just galvanized around the shared higher purpose. It’s attractive to the best people. And the good will of the marketplace has enhanced the company’s profile. We couldn’t have bought it with all the advertising dollars in the world.

Q: What does sustainability mean?

A: At Interface, it means operating our petroleum-intensive company in such a way as to take nothing from the earth that’s not naturally and rapidly renewable and do no harm to the biosphere. On the equity side, it means treating people fairly.

http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2007/12/28/anderson_1230.htmlBy STACY SHELTON

The Greening of Wal-Mart America
Appeasing the environmental movement is neither silencing Wal-Mart’s critics nor increasing the value of its shares.

John Carlisle is the Policy Director at the National Legal and Policy Center, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to promoting ethics in public life.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12303

HOSTILE CLIMATE

The Center for Climate Strategies wants to help states cut global warming pollution. A North Carolina think tank funded by energy interests wants to stop them.

By Sue Sturgis

Given Washington’s reluctance to tackle global warming, many states have recently taken the initiative, drawing up their own plans to cut carbon emissions. For help, 25 states have turned to the Center for Climate Strategies, a nonprofit group of scientists, engineers, business strategists and policy experts who guide states in figuring out how to best reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

But in recent months, the Center has become the target of concerted attacks by the John Locke Foundation, a conservative North Carolina-based think tank that opposes strict environmental regulations. A longtime skeptic of prevailing climate science, which it criticizes as “alarmist,” Locke has published a series of scathing attacks directed at the Center in its own publications and other outlets including the American Spectator, Washington Times, Washington Examiner and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Why the hostility? Among Locke’s criticisms is that the Center for Climate Strategies was founded by an “environmental advocacy group.” In fact, it was created by a business-friendly organization, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, whose current directors include representatives from leading energy companies like PPL Corp., Inter-Power, Exelon and Reliant.

Locke also criticizes the Center for taking money from foundations that it accuses of being “on the global warming panic train,” among them the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Turner Foundation and the Heinz Endowments.*

But Locke’s diatribes against the Center fail to disclose the potential bias in its own funding sources. According to an Institute for Southern Studies analysis of the group’s tax returns, the John Locke Foundation received at least $126,500 from outfits with ties to the fossil-fuel industry between fiscal 2002 and 2005.

Looming large behind a number of Locke’s funders is ExxonMobil. Since 1998, the oil giant has funneled more than $16 million to several dozen advocacy organizations in an effort that a recent Union of Concerned Scientists report described as seeking “to deceive the public about the reality of global warming” by “using seemingly independent front organizations to publicly further its desired message.”

Among the fossil-fuel-tainted contributions the Locke Foundation has received:

* $70,000 from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, one of the Koch Family Foundations operated by billionaires David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries, the largest privately owned oil company in the United States.

* $20,000 from the Cato Institute, an anti-regulatory think tank that was co-founded by Charles Koch. Cato has received at least $110,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998, according to ExxonSecrets.org, a Web site sponsored by Greenpeace USA. ExxonSecrets.org also reports that Cato has received funds from such other fossil-fuel interests as the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron and Shell Oil.

* $15,000 from the Reason Foundation, an anti-regulatory think thank that’s received $381,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998, according to ExxonSecrets.org. Reason has also received funds from the American Petroleum Institute, BP Amoco and Koch Industries.

* $10,000 from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, an anti-regulatory think tank that’s received $780,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998, according to ExxonSecrets.org. Charles Koch is also a major funder.

* $6,500 from the Center for Energy and Economic Development, a Texas-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting the viability of coal-based electricity.

* $5,000 from the DCI Group, a Republican lobbying firm that has received $140,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998, according to ExxonSecrets.org.

The John Locke Foundation’s biggest funder is James Arthur “Art” Pope, who founded the organization and has given it more than $8 million since 2002. A former Republican N.C. state representative, Pope has served on the boards of the Exxon-funded Atlas Economic Research Foundation, as well as Citizens for a Sound Economy, another Koch-founded group that’s also taken more than $380,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

Aside from being a prominent politico — his hometown paper has dubbed him “the knight of the right” — Pope is president and CFO of Variety Wholesalers, a company operating more than 500 discount retail stores in 14 states. Though not an energy firm, Variety does have an economic interest in avoiding gas taxes — a proposal embraced by the Center — since its profits depend on importing and distributing foreign-made goods as cheaply as possible.

* * *

The John Locke Foundation stepped up its crusade against the Center for Climate Strategies this September, when it teamed up with the Heartland Institute to host a conference call promising to expose the Center’s “hijacking of climate policy.”

The Heartland Institute was a natural ally: The Chicago-based think tank has long fought any attempts to curtail global warming pollutants. Heartland has also taken at least $791,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998, according to ExxonSecrets.org, and the Union of Concerned Scientists found that nearly 40 percent of the funds the institute got from the oil giant were earmarked for fighting climate change regulations. In addition, Walter Buchholtz, who’s listed as Heartland’s government relations advisor on the group’s 2005 tax return (PDF), has also served as ExxonMobil’s senior environmental advisor.

The featured speaker for the Sept. 12 conference call — which drew state legislators, policy analysts, and a lobbyist for Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company — was Michael Sanera, Locke’s research director. Sanera is also a member of an advisory board for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and a former analyst at the Heritage Foundation — both funded by ExxonMobil.

Sanera led the attendees through a Power Point attack, accusing the Center for Climate Strategies of, among other things, peddling false assumptions such as the idea that “CO2 emission reduction is the solution to global warming.” It offered participants a list of suggestions on how to counteract the Center that included “Discredit CCS’s Sponsoring Organization (State environmental bureaucracy),” “Demand scientific peer review process,” and “Demand cost-benefit analysis by academic economists.”

The assault on the Center continued on Oct. 5, when Locke’s blog announced the launch of Climate Strategies Watch, “a new watchdog Web site that scrutinizes and keeps up with new developments of the Center for Climate Strategies.”

Details were scarce: The post did not say who was behind the site, the site itself had no sponsor details, and the domain was anonymously registered. Weeks later, sponsorship information was added to the site, identifying it as a “joint project of The Heartland Institute and John Locke Foundation.” The site’s front page warns of the Center’s funding by “wealthy liberals” and features the image of a man peering through a magnifying glass at cockroaches emblazoned with the names “Rockefeller,” “Heinz” and “Turner.”

Then on Oct. 17, Locke released what it called a “peer review assessment” by the Boston-based Beacon Hill Institute — who had a representative on the September call — claiming the Center used “seriously flawed” methods in crafting climate proposals because it did not account for the costs of regulating greenhouse emissions. Beacon Hill’s assessment, however, didn’t consider the costs of not regulating greenhouse gases. Nor did it disclose that among Beacon Hill’s clients are the CSE Foundation, DCI Group, Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, Pacific Research Institute and Texas Public Policy Foundation — which together have received at least $1,780,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

A week after Beacon Hill’s report was released, N.C. Sen. Robert Pittenger (R-Charlotte) — a member of the N.C. Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change — co-hosted with Locke a press conference spotlighting the study. Following the suggestion made during the Sept. 12 call to discredit the “environmental bureaucracy,” Pittenger began by complaining that the commission didn’t have enough hard science because it had heard from only two climatologists, Dr. Robert Balling and Dr. Pat Michaels.

As it so happens, though, both are prominent skeptics of prevailing climate science who’ve taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from oil, coal and other fossil-fuel interests (for details, see here and here). Michaels — a scholar with the Exxon-funded George C. Marshall Institute and Cato Institute and an outspoken participant in the Sept. 12 conference call — recently left his job with Virginia’s state climatology office amid criticism that his industry funding and controversial views left the office too politicized. Still not satisfied, Pittenger said he petitioned the commission’s chairs to invite two more prominent climate-science contrarians — Dr. Sallie Baliunas and Dr. Richard Lindzen.

“We’ve got a bunch of liberal greenies who have just enough information to be dangerous,” Pittenger declared at the event. Certainly no “greenie” himself, Pittenger has received $13,300 in political contributions from electric utilities and $5,200 from automotive interests in the last three election cycles, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. A real-estate investor, he’s also taken more than $45,000 in contributions from his colleagues in the real-estate industry, many of whom dislike the smart-growth development policies the Center promotes.

* * *

So what does the John Locke Foundation feel should be done about climate change? Most of their work simply denies there’s a serious problem. But they do offer a glimpse of what they think we should be worrying about instead in a February 2006 American Spectator opinion piece titled “Bible Bending Propaganda” by Paul Chesser, Locke’s associate editor and a leading critic of the Center’s work.

In the piece, Chesser goes after the Evangelical Climate Initiative, a Christian group favoring strong action to reduce global warming pollution. He blasts the Initiative for claiming Christ “for their own alarmist agenda” and its members for suffering from “Biblical illiteracy” and for being “Birkenstocked” “enviro-hippies.”

But instead of calls for hard science, the Locke Foundation editor veers from the skeptics’ usual playbook and quotes not a dissenting climatologist, but the biblical Book of Revelation. Scripture, Chesser notes, promises us that Jesus “does not dwell on the earth but instead will return to the New Jerusalem … after God also establishes a new heaven and a new earth.” Going on to cite a letter from Christ’s apostle Peter describing a coming day of judgment and destruction of the “godless” in which the elements will be dissolved by fire, Chesser concludes:

And don’t forget, God has some serious global warming of His own planned … Christian leaders ought to be warning people about that rather than looking for ways to mitigate the questionable effects of the current heat wave.

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/11/hostile-climate-whos-behind-attack-on_13.asp

BY KATIE MERX

Passion and innovation have been the keys to Steve Kopitz’s success in the retail sporting goods business.

And he’s counting on a dedication to those qualities to overcome the effects of global warming and a sluggish economy on his newest venture, the realization of a lifelong dream: running his own ski shop.

A skiing fanatic since age 6 and successful sporting goods retailer for the past 17 years, Kopitz couldn’t resist when the 54-year-old Don Thomas Sporthaus became available three years ago. But Kopitz, who now owns 11 sporting goods stores and seven Web sites through his Summit Sports enterprise, also realized quickly that his goal of building a premier retail ski business didn’t fit with the layout of the Sporthaus’ 40-year-old location in Bloomfield Hills.

“It was on three levels,” Kopitz said. “The lighting was poor, the layout was poor. We needed to move.”

And as long as he was moving, he wanted to do it right.

Downtown Birmingham was the obvious choice for relocation, he said. That’s where the largest number of the store’s 13,000 registered customers live.

The first challenge was finding a location with adequate parking. But he was patient, and eventually, a location with parking opened up on South Old Woodward across from the landmark 555 building.

The next challenge was building a store that didn’t worsen the global warming that threatens not only the environment, but also the sport of skiing.

“Skiing and global warming don’t go together,” Kopitz said. So when the store opened in its new location at 690 S. Old Woodward on Sept. 1, it showcased both a more modern retail layout and several environmentally conscious appointments.

Kopitz focused on using recyclable, renewable, natural, local, durable and energy-efficient materials when building the store.

Among other things, the Don Thomas Sporthaus buys energy from green sources, such as windmills and solar panels. It uses tiles and carpet produced with recycled materials and processes that emit fewer toxins than traditional systems and LED lighting fixtures, which Kopitz said use 80% less electricity than neon lights.

Some of the green features will pay for themselves, some won’t, Kopitz said, but the upscale retail environment combined with his purchase of www.skis.com should help the store attract the business it needs to be a successful member of his Summit Sports enterprise.

Despite the changing retail market for sporting goods, Kopitz said his business “has grown virtually every year for 17 years.”

And the business’s growth has come “entirely from internal profits,” he added.

Kopitz pegged revenue growth of his enterprises at about 40% year over year. He declined to share recent revenue figures, but he told Crain’s Detroit Business in 2001 that he expected to record $9 million in sales that year.

In addition, he said, he has hired people in each of his stores — Summit Sports employs about 150 people — who are passionate about the sports they serve.

Soon, Kopitz plans to integrate some of the elements from skis.com into the Don Thomas Sporthaus, allowing customers to view side-by-side ski comparisons and on-the-slopes video reviews of equipment on in-store computers with wireless Internet.

“If you’re standing here trying to decide between two or three skis, we can roll the computer kiosk over and pull up the comparisons,” Kopitz said.

By Marco R. della Cava

KENTFIELD, Calif. — To revel in the airy home of Zem Joaquin, House & Garden magazine’s eco-editor, is to experience somewhat contradictory epiphanies.

The first is the realization that creating a haven with an ecological ethos takes a keen understanding of how average household goods can be harmful to the planet. Take a gleaming lamp; the art of chroming actually is among the most toxic metallurgical processes around.

And second, having that somewhat gloomy knowledge doesn’t mean your house has to look like something out of a patchouli-scented, hemp-wrapped commune.

In fact, Joaquin’s tirelessness has yielded a sizzlingly chic temple that any fashionista would bow before.

“My mission is to show people that they can be ecological and look fabulous,” says Joaquin, 37, who, before joining House & Garden, wrangled models in Milan and helped launch ecofabulous.com. “In college, I was the annoying person telling people to recycle. Now it’s nice to see so many people want to go green.”

Joaquin will be looking to win over more converts next week in New York, where she will lead eco-shopping tours during House & Garden’s Inaugural Design Week. This friend of Hollywood’s green set — she’s on various boards with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Darryl Hannah — won’t be hard to miss with her Salma Hayek looks and mile-a-minute patter.

“There’s just so much to tell you about,” she says, scurrying about in bare feet — everyone must check their shoes at the massive double doors of her home in this leafy Marin County suburb of San Francisco. “Everything has a story.”

Joaquin is not exaggerating. From a frilly leather rug in the family room (made from the discards of a purse factory) to the kitchen table’s silver-orb placemats (made by children in Nepal from the plastic garbage left by hikers), most everything in this house has earned its way in after much eco-scrutiny.

Joaquin’s rules of thumb:

•Buy refurbished classics from interesting decades — such as the modernist ’50s — a savvy way of recycling.

•If something must be bought new, make sure it’s made with eco-sustainable materials such as natural rubber and “green” lumber.

•When in doubt, don’t throw it out. Two cases in point are her commercial-grade stove and plasma TV. “I don’t cook much or watch television a lot, but adding them to landfills wouldn’t have helped the Earth,” she says.

The end result is a home that explodes with exotic and disparate pieces, most of which have a distinctively retro touch.

Key to the 4,200-square-foot structure’s appeal is a layout that places the sunken living room, dining room, kitchen and family room in a fluid row. Providing most of the light are not electrical fixtures, but clerestory windows, large panes set into the uppermost reaches of the walls. Lending the house a T-shape are two wings off this central corridor — one leading to the master bedroom and her two children’s rooms, the other to an office and guest room.

Joaquin and her husband, Internet entrepreneur James Joaqin, bought the home a few years ago because it would not require moving the 40-year-old house’s walls around, “which really goes against being green,” she says.

So a makeover was in the cards. She joined forces with her design guru, Aaron Mutscheller, to attack the project.

The living room, with its dramatic 20-foot-plus ceilings, begged for a built-in bench near the floor-to-ceiling windows. Built of certified (ecologically harvested) mahogany with a linen cushion filled with natural tapped rubber, it remains Joaquin’s favorite spot.

“And look at these,” she says, holding one of many yellow- and black-tinged pillows. “They’re made of hemp, but they’re not my mother’s hemp” — a reference to Joaquin’s upbringing on a commune in nearby Palo Alto.

Those frugal early days explain her passion for eBay and other auction sites, source of most the home’s furniture, including the living room’s wooden coffee table and two purple high-backed chairs that flank a wooden backgammon table. (Her passion for vintage ware extends to jewelry, because “mining is pretty gross.”)

The nearby dining room’s focal point is a chandelier composed of hundreds of Lucite flowers, behind which hide a few “admittedly ugly” curly compact light bulbs that save on electricity. It hovers above a vintage dining set from the 1960s, and casts its light on a favored painting that juxtaposes images of nature with society, in this case a bird and snaking telephone wires.

The main living area’s lone wall separates the dining room from the kitchen and adjoining family room. Dominated by a cement countertop that runs the width of the room, the kitchen’s eco-friendly touches include a foot pedal by the sink providing quick bursts of water, as well as steel bar stools covered in vegetable-tanned brown leather.

The honey-colored wood floors are original, whereas in the nearby rooms of her children — Dylan, 6, and Zoe, 4 — the surface is covered in cork made to look like planks of wood. “It’s manufactured from the waste product of the wine industry,” Joaquin says with a smile.

All the bedrooms feature radiant heat, much of it generated from solar panels. All the mattresses, including the large one in the couple’s as-yet unfinished bedroom, are made from natural materials.

Whenever any walls required painting (most changed to white from an array of loud colors), Joaquin specified a Low-VOC (volatile organic compound) variety. Once expensive and tough to find, such paints are now produced by familiar brands such as Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore.

Finally at rest from the whirlwind tour of her house, Joaquin takes a swig from her water bottle. No plastic for her: She refills an elegantly decorated aluminum canister that stays with her all day.

“There’s just so much people can do to make their lives more in harmony with the environment, but not in a boring way,” she says.

Suddenly a gnat buzzes her face.

Thwack!

“Oops,” Joaquin says, flashing the smile of a guilty 5-year-old. “That wasn’t very eco-friendly.”