7gen Bloc

I’m just getting back from a busy couple of weeks. One of the biggest things I did during my time away was head down to Arkansas to attend Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Milestone Meeting in mid-November. It was an interesting experience to say the least, and a largely positive one at that. Here’s my diary from the trip…

Sir Nicholas Stern, the U.K. government’s advisor on economics and climate change has delivered a 600-page report that outlines a simple fact: the cost to stop global warming is a fraction of what it will cost if we allow climate change to occur. But even with the efforts underway, we’re not doing nearly enough. Recently, George Monbiot, author of the new book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning laid out a plan to dramatically accelerate our progress in reducing CO2 emissions. It’s creative, daring, and just the kind of out of the box thinking we desperately need. His thoughts

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. Aside from the fact that no gifts are required, at its essence it's a day that encourages us all to stop and give thanks for all of whatever we have. Most of us (at least those that are likely to be reading this) have more than we need, if not more than we know what to do with. I certainly do. Yet how quickly all that we have to be thankful for gets lost in the face of something else we want, something someone else has, or something we didn’t get. It shouldn't be that way.

I’m freshly returned from the holiday break and find a lot of stuff waiting in my in-box. First up: a post from our latest inspiring guest blogger, Dharma Dog, a.k.a. Bruce Weaver. Bruce is a cinematic nomad traveling the world in search of wisdom wherever it’s found and capturing his discoveries on film. Currently in production of an independent feature documentary, Dance with Destiny, he’s a kindred spirit in every sense of every of those words. Here’s what he has to say today…

Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility made us Thanksgiving dinner and here are the v-highlights of the dinner. Good fun for all. WR

Okay, all's quiet on the Inspired front so I'll slip this in since it's Friday and we could all use a little fun at week's end...

It’s with much pleasure that I’d like to introduce an inspired new guest blogger to one and all. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Eban Goodstein, Project Director for the global warming initiative Focus the Nation and Professor of Economics at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Eban has done a lot of important work in the field of eco-nomics and written many vital words in many major publications about this critical subject. You can find out all about him here, but for now let’s let him do the talking …

Hey all... GlobalGiving's John Heckinger dropped the Inspired Protagonist a line this morning to let us know who won his organization's GlobalGiving Olympics. John writes:

Well, bless our breathing lungs… International Paper announced yesterday it is not only canceling the test burn of tire chips in its Ticonderoga, NY plant, it’s abandoning the idea altogether. No test. No tires. No pollution. No lung damage. Not now. Not ever. Turns out they couldn’t burn anywhere near the amount of tire chips they wanted to without exceeding the pollution limits specified in their permit. They were hoping to send 3 tons of tires per hour up in really ugly smoke. But in burning even just a measly ¼ ton they started bumping up against their own safety threshold.

Being on a board of directors is a strange thing to do. What a bad name it has… a bunch of directors sitting around being bored. Well not so at Greenpeace. Here, I spend the day pondering the possibilities of how to leverage this worldwide organization to maximize it’s impact on everything from global warming to preventing the international whaling industry from wiping out some of Earth’s largest and most beautiful creatures.