Global Warming

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 …

True story. Central Wisconsin, July 2006. The first six months of the year were the hottest on record in the United States, and this was the hottest day of the summer. Three teens were seeking relief in the city pool.

Teen 1: “Do you think this is global warming?”
Teen 2: “Naah. Government says it isn’t happening.”
Teen 3: “Well I don’t care what the government says. I think it is global warming!”

Another story from last summer, now in Oregon. The fuel line on my pick-up has busted, and the tow-truck driver has been sweating all day in the extreme heat. “Damn global warming” he says, climbing into the cab. And then he adds, “You know, the tsunami last year knocked the planet off its orbit—that’s why its heating up.”

Some sort of US mental dam has broken, perhaps swept away with the levees in New Orleans, and suddenly there is growing awareness that we are doing something weird to the weather. It’s getting hot, and people know it.

Yesterday, Treehugger posted a much-needed look at the new Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change, a comprehensive British report on Global Warming that’s been big news elsewhere but has scarcely caused a ripple here in the complacent waters across the pond. The Stern Report assesses the economic impacts of climate change. In a sentence, it says that if humanity ignores the situation and does nothing, we will all be very sorry.

As part of its coverage, the Treehugger post talked about the newspapers in Britian that have placed coverage of the report and the issue center stage. One of the papers mentioned was the Financial Times, a newspaper I have subscribed to for many years because of it’s exceptional coverage of responsible business. (The FT actually ran a small story on Seventh Generation a few days ago, which we’re trying to set up a free non-subscriber link to. Stay tuned…)

In her post, Treehugger’s Bonnie Alter says that the Financial Times “only started mentioning this subject in the last year.” Not so! The Financial Times has covered the issue for a lot longer than that. In fairness to the paper, the record deserves to be corrected. Below are a sampling of stories that go back to 2001:

1. Sept. 8, 2005: The World Must Act on Climate Change Despite Bush
2. Jan. 15, 2004: Investors Demand Action on Climate Change
3. March 12, 2003: Global Investing: Chilling Advice on Climate Change
4. June 26, 2003: Romania looks at Ways to Improve Its Climate
5. November 30, 2001: Survey World Economy: Governments Press Ahead On Climate Change Without The US

I elect that we all move to the tropics for Halloween!

I'm an admitted tv-addict. And so, of course, I watched hours of horror films this weekend. And then I rented The Omen this evening, for a special Halloween veiwing with my friends (pumpkin carving optional).

While I was watching this classic flick I realized, all of a sudden, that as weakling humans we seem to always be preyed upon by Evil in the cold - during autumn or winter settings - more so than in the spring or summer (please exclude the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" series, and any other recent teen "horror films").

I just finished watching Bill Moyers’ amazing special, Is God Green? If you missed it, take some time to watch this documentary and and check out one of the most amazing and hopeful movements I’ve ever seen, one that’s bringing everyone concerned with sustainability and global warming together with the hugely powerful and rapidly growing segment of the population that identifies themselves as evangelical Christians.

Richard Cizik, of the National Association of Evangelicals, is deserving of special praise. He is a brave man willing to challenge the Republican Party and the old guard of the Christian Right. These conservative evangelicals are joining the fight to save our environment, arguing that man's stewardship of the planet is a biblical imperative and calling for action to stop global warming.

So a bunch of folks here took off yesterday for the Natural Products Expo East in Baltimore. It’s a humongous trade show where people who make natural products show said products to the retailers and others who buy them. Think of it as a big giant schmooze-fest in a room roughly size of the Astrodome that’s filled with display booth after display booth of each manufacturer’s goodies.

Except for our booth. This year we decided to forgo the usual hey-look-at-our-stuff-isn’t-it-great route because there’s just too much at stake in the world these days. Instead we're building a forest. And here's our first tree:

Random objects of actionable reflection are careening in large number across my perennially cluttered plane of existence this fine morning. All you have to do is reach out with a net and see what you catch. Here’s a few I just reeled in:

My recent post about roadkill and global warming generated some thought-provoking comments, among them this note from fellow inspired protagonist Kevin:

Jeffrey, if you eat meat despite the evidence that a meat-based diet is non-sustainable, how then can we have hope about the future of ethical consumerism?

To shed light on the answer, Stanford's Center for Social Innovation recently came out with an interesting report.

There may be a fundamental disconnect in the marketing of socially responsible products. It is the difference between what people say they want, and what they actually buy.

http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_other_csr/

If you have the time, I would certainly appreciate hearing your response.

I was going to post my reply here simply as a comment on the original post, but then I thought that maybe it deserved to be a post of its own. So here goes…

It’s no real surprise that scientists announced this week that America’s summer was the hottest since 1936 (can you say “Dust Bowl”?) and the second warmest since official records started being kept in 1895. It’s quite clear that the heat is on and that we humans are responsible.

So what are we gonna do about it? Here are two things I found this week that will go a long way toward pulling our climate back from the brink…

The truth is that even though I was a vegetarian for 13 years, some years ago I lapsed in my commitment and returned to eating meat. Recently as part of my passion to reduce my own CO2 emissions, I read that on average eliminating the consumption of meat will save as much CO2 as switching the car you drive to a Prius. For most of us driving and eating meat account for about half of our total emissions. (The calculation is based on the energy used to grow the feed for a cow including the fertilizer, the methane emitted by the cow, the transportation of the meat, ect.)

As I was sharing this with a coworker we’ll call the Cowboy, he told me that it’s not an issue for him as he kills his own meat, occasionally eats road kill, and has even been known to take advantage of the occasional wayward bird that mistakenly makes its way into his office. (Remember – we’re in Vermont!) When and if he buys meat in a store, he makes sure it’s local and organic!

I’m don't know what I’m going to do, but I'm sure it won't involve hunting or eating road kill.

This Labor Day weekend Bill McKibben with the help of Greenpeace, Middlebury College, and Vermont activists organized a five-day walk from Robert Frost's old writing cabin in Ripton, Vermont to the Burlington waterfront. John Murphy (our senior sales sage) and I joined the event Sunday evening at Shelburne Farms, where we camped for the night before walking the last eight miles into Burlington yesterday.

Now if someone asked me to walk that far for almost any other reason I probably would have said no. But this walk, filled with delightful non-stop converstion with a wonderful community of caring Vermonters, was a delight. The event positively and hopefully addressed the most important issue of our time.

Here I am with Middlebury College Student and ChangeIt participant Meg