energy soapbox

It’s been sometime since I’ve had the opportunity to post here. In my absence, a number of things have happened; the most notable being my move from Clovis, California to Fort Collins, Colorado. Since the move, I’ve continued to support renewable energy and have recently written a letter on the subject to various newspapers across [...]

Someone once told me — perhaps in a far more eloquent way — that we should pursue that which makes us happy; that if something fails to make us happy, and should be abandoned.  As I think about this statement, I wonder whether or not this idea is directly applicable to the idea of sustainability.  [...]

The New York Times wrote recently on conflict between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Minerals Management Service.  In brief, these two agencies plan to implement two different policies that will impact the polar bear population.  The Fish and Wildlife service intends to list the polar bear population as endangered, while the Minerals Management [...]

As of late, I’ve had a job search agent working for me on careerbuilder.com, sending me all jobs that match the phrase "sustainability".  I originally intended it to try to isolate jobs that involve environmentally sustainable planning, advocacy, management, and thinking, but that’s not quite what’s turned up.  Here’s a sample of job titles from [...]

The thing that’s perhaps most interesting about the sustainability movement isn’t so much that it exists, though that in and of itself is certainly an accomplishment.  The recognition that we need to live in harmony with our surroundings is nothing new - Native American culture, to some extent, mirrors these exact values (though Alan Weisman [...]

I got the following response from Toyota fairly quickly:

We want to thank you for taking the time to write us here at Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc.
We are sorry you heard of the inaccurate assertion that we are actively lobbying against increased fuel economy standards, and we want you to be aware of our company’s [...]

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today set off a stink bomb when he claimed that Toyota has been backing American automakers in resisting higher fuel economy standards. The Union of Concerned Scientists responded with a campaign almost immediately - below is the text of my submission for that campaign. The first [...]

Living in Seattle at the moment is both weird and a bit scary. Scary because the Washington State Department of Transportation is currently ramping up to a major shutdown of a portion of Interstate 5 just south of downtown Seattle for major repair work between the 10th and 29th of this month. This [...]

It seems like people miss the point entirely when they worry that companies selling bottled water don’t make it clear where that water comes from. The problem isn’t really the source - the problem is that they’re selling bottled water in the first place. There’s a huge difference between water bottles that are [...]

You can likely expect some sort of coherent write-up on some of the following articles of recent interest to me:

Make This Earth Day Your Last! (originally posted in April)
eco-ratings for cars: all things (finally) considered (originally posted in May)
From the March 3, 2007 edition of the Seattle Times: First, we educate all the lawyers

I see [...]