November Green Business Roundtable to Feature Marty Spitzer of WWF

Now starting our 7th year, Green Business Roundtable invites all interested in the intersection of business and sustainability to join us for networking, discussion and insight.  
I look forward to seeing you there.

Date: Thurs., November 13
Time: 11:30 - 1:00

Location: 505 9th Street, N.W., Suite 800
(Offices of the Solar Energy Industries Association)
Washington, DC  20004
(near Gallery Place & Metro Center)
Includes Lunch

Register Today! 

November 13 Green Business Roundtable

Walk-in $25.00 USD

Speaker: Marty Spitzer, Director - US Climate and Renewable Energy Policy at World Wildlife Fund

For over 15 years, Marty has worked at the interface of climate science, sustainability and business action, building bipartisan partnerships with industry, governments and nonprofit groups to create practical solutions to the climate crisis. He brings a broad perspective to the issues having previously served at USEPA, the White House, Congress and several think tanks and environmental organizations.

Topic: Scaling Business Climate Action
Major breakthroughs in corporate climate action are unfolding as climate science and corporate profit come together in ‘The 3% Solution’ and major US brand companies use their buying power to drive renewable energy into the mainstream.  

November 13 Green Business Roundtable

Walk-in $25.00 USD

Thank you to SEIA for hosting this month's Roundtable.

June Green Business Roundtable to Feature Green Power Expert

Date: Tuesday, June 24
Time: 11:30 - 1:00 (includes lunch)

Location: Elizabeth's on L
(near McPherson Square metro)

(Thanks to the "Do it for DC" Challenge for partnering on these events. "Every dollar you save, DC gets a little greener")
SOLD OUT

June 24 Green Business Roundtable

Regular $20.00 USD Walk-in $25.00 USD

Blaine Collison - Managing Director - Network Services at Altenex.  Formerly Director of EPA's Green Power Partnership.

Blaine Collison is the Managing Director for Network Services at Altenex.  Altenex helps commercial and institutional energy users source voluntary renewable energy.  Blaine's role includes managing new customer origination and identifying new services for Altenex. 

Blaine was previously the director for the EPA's Green Power Partnership, a nationally recognized network of over 1500 non-utility energy buyers committed to renewable energy. 

TOPIC: Increasing the U. S. renewable energy portfolio: Lessons learned and trends to watch.

Blaine brings more than a decade of insider knowledge of the U. S. renewable energy industry: trends, financing, players and more.  Join us for what is sure to be a dynamic and interesting discussion.

George Will wrong again on climate change issue

Today's Washington Post included George Will's regular op-ed column.  Although the column's topic was not climate change, he couldn't help himself but to try to bring the issue up.  He has been wrong so much on climate change, it is surprising (and disheartening) that the Post keeps publishing his errors.  (For more on this topic, Joe Romm at Climate Progress has written quite a bit).

From today's column:

Often the goals government pursues by surreptitious indirection are goals that could not win legislative majorities — e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of greenhouse gases following Congress’s refusal to approve such policies.

This statement is wrong in almost every way.  He has completely missed with all three branches of government.

Note to Carol Browner: Even if the idea is right, you gotta make sure it's backed by the truth

Carol Browner was quoted in the Washington Post on Sunday.  The quote was from an energy conference held in Washington a week earlier.  Here's the quote in its entirety:

People like to pooh-pooh regulations and suggest that, somehow or another, regulations are not good for business. But, in fact, regulations can create business certainty and business opportunity. When the government puts in place a requirement and standard, that means there’s the certainty of a return on capital investments.

And we have a long history in this country of doing just that. If you go back to 1990 when the Congress decided to ban chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, a market opportunity was created. And we found a solution or a replacement for CFCs, which were dangerous to the upper ozone, and we did it more cheaply and more quickly than anyone anticipated.

Some in this industry and the natural gas exploration extraction industry have not been as forthcoming as others. . . . I would just encourage the industry to be as transparent as possible in an effort to ensure that this is a thoughtful discussion about how we move forward.

BP Says They'll Pay. Why Not Get a Down Payment?

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may end up being the biggest environmental catastrophe the United States has ever experienced (not withstanding the future impacts of climate change, of course). BP has said they will pay for all legitimate clean-up expenses.

I have a friend who works in the finance department at EPA's Energency Response Center. He told me that figuring out how to pay for the response so far has been a challenge.

I think President Obama should ask BP for a $500 million good faith check in advance, which could then be allocated more easily than trying to find funds within existing budgets. If BP is really intent on paying these costs, then why would they not agree to make a significant down payment now to show their good intentions? That would help the whole system work better.

Climate Decade in Review - Post 35: Bush Administration Links Emissions With Atmospheric Buildup (Later Recants)

On May 28, 2002, the State Department issued its Third US Climate Action Report (mostly written by EPA), as required by the UNFCCC. The report clearly linked the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere with human emissions, documented potential impacts and--all in all--gave a relatively balanced assessment of the current understanding of climate change. This despite the fact that Phillip Cooney, who had recently joined Bush's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), did his best to water down the language. His effort failed, and the New York Times published a story about the report.

Cooney turned to the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute for help to undo the damage he had done. The head of CEI, Myron Ebell, replied, "I want to help you cool things down, but after consulting with the team, I think that what we can do is limited until there is an official statement from the administration repudiating the report."

Voila! On June 4, President Bush made his famous remark that the report was "put out by the bureaucracy."

(For lots more on this and other aspects of the Bush effort to delay action on global warming, click here.)

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This is one in the series of "Decade in Review" posts on this blog that began in January 2010. These posts present climate-change-related events that occurred during the 00's, the warmest decade in recorded history.

Climate Decade in Review - Post 14: Christie Whitman Resigns from EPA

June 27, 2003 - Christie Whitman, Administrator of EPA, resigns her post in the Bush Administration.

Christine Todd Whitman, who had been Governor of New Jersey from 1994-2001, was sworn in as Administrator of EPA on January 31, 2001. Ms. Whitman had established a good environmental record, particularly for a Republican, during her governorship, and employees at EPA were relatively pleased with her selection (I know this, because I worked there at the time. I, in fact, met Ms. Whitman on a couple of occasions).

The Bush Administration originally stated that it intended to take action on reducing greenhouse gases, but only six weeks later, officially reversed this stand. It was widely believed that Ms. Whitman did not support this change in policy, and she was often caught between the anti-environmental tendencies of the administration and the environmentalists who had expected more of her based on her record in New Jersey.

Ms. Whitman was succeeded by the feckless Michael Leavitt and then later by the obsequious Stephen Johnson, neither of whom had the slightest interest in pushing back on the White House and just went along with the delay, deny, study strategy of the Bush Administration.

Ms. Whitman now heads an environmental consulting firm, the Whitman Strategy Group, that advises companies on environmental issues, including comprehensive strategic consulting on climate change.

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This is one in the series of "Climate Decade in Review" posts on this blog that began in January 2010. These posts present climate-change-related events that occurred during the 00's, the warmest decade in recorded history.

Reduce Mercury: Install CFLs

Here's the counterintuitive fact of the day:
Installing CFLs reduces the amount of mercury entering our environment.
It's true that CFLs contain mercury--about 4 milligrams per bulb.
However, the largest source of mercury pollution is the burning of coal in power plants. Mercury pollution from power plants is also worse, because the emissions are completely uncontrolled. Once it gets in the air, we have no control over where it ends up.

This chart (from an EPA fact sheet), shows the emissions of mercury that come from generating the electricity for an incandescent is greater than the total mercury from the CFL. If everyone switched out their lights for CFLs, the total mercury emitted to our environment would be reduced by thousands of pounds.

Mercury is a significant neurotoxin and overall bad pollutant, so be sure to take care when disposing of it (BTW - a watch battery has 5 times the mercury of a CFL, and an old style mercury thermostat--which you may still have on your wall--has 400 times that in a CFL. Dispose of these items properly, too).

So it's a win-win-win-win: a no-brainer, really. Change out as many lights as possible with more efficient lighting, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce mercury and other air pollutants and save money.