One of the recurring themes I embrace here in my section of Keyboard Culture is that of making environmental reform and tackling the global climate crisis a cultural effort. People must enjoy living greener and embracing change before a meaningful transformation will occur.

This is the lesson of both the Green For All initiative and the Solar Richmond program, two efforts which connect people with their planet to yield profitability, the triple bottom line. In my previous posts, I have shared video content with you to emphasize the point that a sustainability plan for non-profits can be an excellent starting point in the larger effort to effect cultural change. Now, I’d like to share a long-form video with you regarding the Unified Earth Theory.

In early April, the 2008 weather effect known as La Niña faded suddenly and more than expected. This has brought much-needed rainfall to a parched nation. However, the drought in Georgia, USA remains a profound crisis which even prolonged torrential rains only will begin to address. What’s to be done? We can’t just raze millions of structures and replant the forests which used to occupy that territory but we can engage in something almost as good and Delta Airlines is helping to lead the effort.

With its Force For Global Good initiative, Delta Airlines not only has embraced international corporate social responsibility but taken a very forward position, much like General Electric has with its Ecomagination program. Well done, folks!

Tom Szaky, cofounder and CEO of Recycle Inc., is an environmental pioneer and inspiring success story. As a promising student at Ivy League Princeton University a few short years ago, Mr. Szaky saw the great potential of a tried-and-true environmental technology, vermiculture (the science of worms and their role in our biome) and, much like Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates did several years earlier, promptly dropped out of school to pursue his dream.

Fast forward to the present day and his company, TerraCycle, plays a vital role in a program worthy of everyone’s attention, the Retote recycled plastic shopping bag from Target Corporation.

“This is a one-of-a-kind promotion that lets everyone who gets the magazine take part in an environmental program ... Target shoppers will recycle their shopping bags and, in return, get a practical bag that can be used all the time.”

- Newsweek President Greg Osberg

While much of the mainstream press in the United States and around the world does at least a competent job reporting on environmental issues, especially global warming, Newsweek magazine set the bar very high in its special April 14, 2008 issue, Environment & Leadership: Who’s the Greenest of Them All? How? Newsweek magazine collaborated with Target Corporation and TerraCycle Inc. to help promote Target Corporation’s Retote recycled plastic shopping bag in a unique way.

I often am asked about the fastest and easiest steps which people can take to reduce their carbon footprint and help reverse global warming. Among my favorite responses is to drive more sensibly. In fact, I harp on the subject, perhaps because I commuted by bus for nearly a decade from my home in Orlando.

What I didn’t realize until recently, though, was that everything I advocate about driving was part of a smart driving movement, known as hypermiling. It turns out that people from coast to coast and around the world are so distressed by retail fuel prices (and rightly so) that they have taken to adopting new behavior. You can read what to do at a handy website

http://www.HyperMiling.com

I am so impressed with the movement that I call for all drivers to display a hypermiling bumper sticker on their car. If we all drive smarter, we can reduce fuel prices, we can reduce our addiction to fossil fuels and we can reduce our contribution to global warming.

You may ask, though: what does this have to do with getting down? Good question! The simple answer is that being a global warming loser at its core means that you live wastefully. While it is good to park your car and travel by pedal power or shoe leather as often as you can, I don’t expect you to stop driving altogether. However, I do expect you to do more with less, especially less pollution.

Prior to the industrial revolution, most people lived with a relatively benign carbon footprint. Slowly, over the span of more than a century, we in the western world have participated in a fundamental change, one in which the consumption of natural resources is a secondary or tertiary consideration at best against happiness and personal wealth.

That has to change!

I began this top 7 list series with an exhortation to choose a cause and apply it in your life. Since there are so very many humanitarian causes which are aided by the fight against global warming and its impacts, you really can’t go wrong in your selection, whether you believe in the science of global warming or not.

So, if my previous posts have driven you to choose a cause, great! Now, get on with it! Get going! If you haven’t chosen a cause, I will take an even stronger swing at you, citing a very specific example of an initiative which makes tree huggers like me smile and has very real humanitarian benefits.

When I’m done, you’ll see how wonderful it is and feel a bit intimidated, I hope, because with schools working to go green by aiding reforestation projects in conflict zones and with you sitting on the sidelines, the need for swift action should propel you off the couch.

"Plant communities are vital to climate system regulation but, surprisingly, these communities, especially the world’s forests, are the single largest source of uncertainty in climate models because so little is known about their biological processes across individual-to-global scales.”

- Dr. Stephen Emmott

European Science Initiative

As I pass my first anniversary as a founding expert here at Keyboard Culture, I take pride in many things.

• I have a growing audience which consists of more than 7,500 unique visitors per month.

• I narrate each and every thread, giving you, the reader, my most valuable asset, the opportunity to hear my thoughts as I utter them.

• Organizations which I have covered in my thrice-weekly posts have built upon their pattern of success to achieve greater things.

The Nature Conservancy is a splendid example. A global leader in offering solutions to deforestation, the Nature Conservancy has launched an intrepid billion tree campaign aimed at protecting populations in the tropical rain forest of Brazil and global forest dynamics, a woefully under explored field within botany, climatology and silviculture.

Since the beginning of industrialization, the planet has lost about 9 billion trees, many of them in Brazil. Although deforestation of tropical rain forest habitat is rampant in every corner of the world, the devastation in Brazil is arguably the saddest and most grievous. For a sampling of the pain, I recommend that you listen to Inutil Paisagem by Antonio Carlos Jobim.

In the world of high technology, it is an accepted rule of thumb that computing technology undergoes a revolution about every 7 years. If we agree that the Internet was launched 14 years ago and that today we operate on its third iteration, then the math holds.

One of the most influential companies which relies on the Internet for their existence, Microsoft, is undergoing its own revolution, into a kinder, gentler giant. Where once it was a tyrannical exemplar of greed gone wrong, now what is known affectionately as the Evil Empire has an undeniable humanitarian streak and earns even greater profits than when it tried to grind each and every competitor into the ground.

In no area is this more readily apparent than the Microsoft environmental initiatives which were begun a decade ago. While much work remains to be done, data center energy efficiency plans and advocacy, among other Microsoft environmental initiatives, have set the standard by which the rest of the high-tech industry should operate.

Here’s a relevant quote from the top executive...

Last time, I shared with you some of the rhetoric behind Microsoft’s bold moves into container data center design, which they call C-Blox, in the quest for greater energy efficiency. Now, I’d like to share some specific details of what the company has done so far and what these sustainability gains spell for the next wave of expansion of the backbone of the Internet, including data center architecture which facilitates acclimatization to hot desert environments.

Here, once again, is a quote from Steve Ballmer...

“Sustainability is an important issue, really, for all of us. I think, more and more as a social issue around the globe, this has gotten embraced. It’s a big issue at Microsoft also because if you look at non-travel power consumption in the world today, perhaps PCs (and information technology) is one of the most rapidly growing power consumers on the planet and we think that we have a real responsibility as well as some real innovation that can really help focus in on the opportunities to reduce the power consumption by the I.T. industry, to use I.T. to help people reduce their overall power consumption needs and to use I.T. as a tool for some of the core scientific research that will fundamentally change the way energy gets produced and used in the years to come.

We formed an entire group at Microsoft just dedicated to drive our products to be more and more suitable for scientific research, whether that’s in areas of energy and environment, pharmaceutical research or many, many others. There is a very long list which our team has come up with as we’ve partnered with scientists in academia, scientists in corporations, scientists in government … there is a very long list of improvements that we need to make in the modeling tools, the performances tools, etc., and at the end of the day, many of the most important advances won’t just come from all of our conservation efforts but if we really want to be more green, we need the scientific research that powers green energy.”

- Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer

Microsoft Corporation

March 3, 2008

Mr. Ballmer’s words sound good. However, as environmentalists know too well, the high technology industry can be an ally of the Earth and among its worst enemies at the same time. Indeed, as of this writing, Microsoft is the target of environmental protests because of its use of toxic substances in the design and manufacture of the Xbox gaming console.

Since becoming a professional environmentalist a few years ago, I have come to understand the profound ability to effect real change of the simple, 2-syllable question Why not?

Today, Spain is a world leader in encouraging its citizens to go solar because more than a decade ago, a newly-elected city councilman in the Mediterranean haven of Barcelona noted that few if any citizens harnessed the sun to heat their water. His response? Why not?

His question was answered with, “That’s not the way we do things.” yet he persisted. Over time, heating water with sunshine in a city with hundreds of sunny days per year simply made too much sense and it became standard procedure. Soon, it was the standard for the whole Spanish state of Cataluña and eventually, the whole country. Is there power in Why not? You betcha!

There are countless other examples in history. The Green Earth Expo, which just concluded its first event last month in Orlando, Florida, is a poignant one. The way it came into being began with the question Why not? and then morphed into a kernel of an idea when I asked Jim Griffin, Why don’t you have a global warming trade show?

NOTE: Audio for this post is accessible at the end

Justin Sutton is full of bright ideas, no pun intended. He invented the Interstate Traveler – which is on track to break ground in 2009 – but as impressive as that revolutionary system is, it really is just the beginning of the good deeds he has planned for his countrymen and all of humanity.

The sun is at the heart of much of what Justin Sutton does. One might say that it fuels his genius. Well, one of the objections which global warming skeptics hurl at us true believers is that sun spots are to blame for increases in global average temperatures. In effect, they are saying that solar radiation explosions are the culprit, not the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation on a planetary scale and widespread ocean poisoning.

Basic geology explains away any correlation between solar radiation explosions and the pace at which our world is warming but the genius of Justin Sutton is that his inventions work no matter what happens to the sun. So long as it keeps shining at much the same intensity, we are in good shape. Moreover, the Interstate Traveler transports more people, provides more free hydrogen and provides more clean water if solar radiation explosions persist. In other words, he has us covered.

As you will come to understand by listening to the interview which he gave to me on May 31, shortly after returning home from a successful visit to Orlando for the Green Earth Expo, Justin Sutton has found a way to provide for many of our needs while boosting our economy. The running time of the telephone interview is almost 50 minutes and the topics have a wide range but I am confident that you will find it a fascinating listen.

The quest for clean, potable water is an understandable one. All mammals (and many other forms of life on this planet) need water to sustain them. It is elemental. Sadly, clean drinking water and tasty drinking water are not always synonyms. What’s more, since global populations have exploded without a corresponding increase in municipal infrastructure, many locations around the world now have sour water as the standard at the tap.

This avoidable situation is the reason bottled water has become a huge growth industry, leaving environmental devastation in its wake, in my home state of Florida and around the world. We need to move away from the status quo and earlier this month, I shared with you the fact that the I Am Not Plastic SIGG aluminum water bottle from StopGlobalWarming.org represents a workable solution.

I am the first to admit that bottled water can be a comforting luxury. Dasani is my favorite brand but as I have traveled the world, I have encountered several brands of water which go down great by themselves or with a meal. The problem? Huge consumption of natural resources!

There is no such thing as clean coal! Period!

In my first year as a Keyboard Culture Expert, I have mentioned my position on clean coal but never as affirmatively as right now. Why the change? Well, it’s not really a change so much as a tweak in my narrative style. It is precipitated by two events of historical significance.

Firstly, we have the nomination for President of the United States of Senator Barack Obama. No matter whether you follow politics passionately with an inclination toward one political party or away from another, or are lukewarm about all of it, you are or will become aware of the fact that Senator Obama’s nomination by the Democratic Party has caused a marked uptick in budget allocations for television advertising by fossil fuel companies, including mining interests.

In a word, fossilized conglomerates which have been embraced by many national politicians in recent years have become frightened. Whereas earlier in this decade they have spoken occasionally about clean coal technologies, now they can’t seem to refer to them often enough.

Since this is not a political blog, I will leave the matter there with a simple statement of fact. These companies are frightened.

Secondly, though, is the preceding event to Senator Obama’s nomination, the partnership between Environmental Defense, a standard bearer in the quest for a clean environment and a reversal of global warming, and one of the world’s largest investment firms, Kohlbert Kravis Roberts.

Hot Buttered Fun

As a movie buff, the title Battlefield Earth means only one thing: a middling John Travolta science fiction film from the year 2000. Here in the summer of 2008, it has taken on an entirely new meaning on the wonderful new cable television channel, Planet Green. It is a reality show.

I used to follow contemporary music as much as I do modern cinema but have drifted toward movies a bit in recent years. Nevertheless, Heavy Metal and Rap are two types of music which I enjoy thoroughly. Really! Since Aerosmith and Run DMC created the first melding of the two styles in the mid-1980’s, I have enjoyed them in equal quantities.

Sadly, though, neither Heavy Metal nor Rap music is known for promoting environmental messages such as the importance of recycling and sustainability. Now, according to Eileen O’Neill, Planet Green has. Good for them!

Luda the Polluta vs. Toxic Tommy

Always Blowing

Wind power? What happens when the wind stops blowing?

The almighty cry of the renewable energy skeptic reveals an incomplete grasp of how our atmosphere works. It is an ocean. Rather than being comprised of water, though, it is an ocean of air, in constant motion. It is true that wind speeds at the surface often dwindle to a mere zephyr from time to time but a few hundred feet up, it never stops blowing.

Shoot! I still don’t buy it. Give me a coal-fired furnace any day! At least we know where the fuel is located!

Considering his background in oil and gas exploration, it may surprise you to know that I concur with billionaire T. Boone Pickens’ plan for liberating the United States from imported energy. Naturally, I dispute his position on the need for natural gas. In truth, hydrogen can do the job just fine if we embrace it properly.

However, America’s oil addiction is so great that the environmental community dare not allow perfect to be the enemy of good. Mr. Pickens is to be applauded for the bold position he has taken. While it is true that he stands to make billions off his media investment, he just as easily could have sat back and lived off passive income from his already vast fortune.

The nose-bleed prices which motorists around the world saw during the first half of 2008 owe their heights to causes geological, psychological and political. However, no matter where we place the blame, the simple fact is this: with Iraq still producing a mere trickle of oil and the Saudi royal family struggling to perpetuate the myth that it can remain one of the largest oil producers in the world, demand will continue to outstrip supply for many years.

As you well know, dear reader, high fuel prices have broad impacts on the modern world and can drive us, pardon the pun, to desperate acts. One of them is a modern form of alchemy, the migration to water injection for gas engines.

In the United States, Mischief Night comes every October 30, a night when otherwise upstanding citizens do foolish things in the name of foolishness, such as adding sand, sugar or water to the fuel tank of a neighbor’s automobile. Such naughtiness generally causes more inconvenience than damage but the parallels to water injection for gas engines are most apt.

After all, if adding water to a fuel tank can lead to engine failure, water injection can’t be much better, can it? Could the solution to record fuel prices be that simple? If we approach the problem backwards, we may find the answer. After all, automobile tailpipes often drip water. So, there must be water in gasoline, right?

In order to help you understand all of the ramifications of water injection for gas engines, I will engage in a full explanation of the role of gasoline in the modern internal combustion engine in my next post.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Disastrous Versus Merely Inefficient

Henry Ford’s Model T went 25 miles for every gallon of gasoline in its tank. Today, a full century later, the average mass-production automobile performs worse than Mr. Ford’s early benchmark. There are many reasons for this, of course, including such necessities as power steering but the ultimate truth is this: little has changed in the fundamental design of the internal combustion gasoline engine.

Given this neglect of a vital economic and environmental aspect of personal transportation, it is tempting to assume that great gains in fuel efficiency are ripe for the taking. Purchase of a kit for running a car on water is a small mental leap from there. So, what’s the truth? Well, I have a rare treat in store for you, an interview with Adam Nehr of the Kennedy Space Center who knows a great deal about mechanical engineering. Adam will elucidate the inescapable facts about bringing a kit for running a car on water into your garage including the law of physics known as entropy.

Before sharing Adam’s recorded thoughts with you, though, I need to explain the role of water in conventional gasoline engines. After all, as I mentioned last time, automotive tailpipes often drip water.

So, what is gasoline? Also known as benzene and petrol, gasoline is a noxious mixture of 200+ volatile hydrocarbons. In laymen’s terms, it is a string of carbon atoms connected with hydrogen atoms floating in a viscous mixture of other poisons. We use it in our engines because it is relatively resistant to catching fire but also is highly explosive under the right conditions.

When vaporized and then exposed to pressure and a spark inside an engine, the gasoline molecule explodes, resulting in thrust and expelling the constituent elements through the tailpipe. The constituent elements freed by the combustion process include hydrogen. At or near sea level, hydrogen cannot exist by itself. It naturally seeks to join with other elements, including oxygen. Free oxygen molecules, in turn, are only too happy to join with hydrogen to form water.

Boring On Their Own, Intriguing When Taken Together

The water which we see dripping from automobile tailpipes might lead us to believe that gasoline contains water. It’s a liquid, after all. However, the reality is that only the hydrogen is in the fuel and when we burn it, we free some of the hydrogen, which bonds with ambient oxygen to form water. Put another way, water expelled from our cars is much like a serving of rice and beans – very nutritious but if we ate the rice for one meal and the beans later, we wouldn’t derive nearly the benefit of consuming them together.

All kidding aside, we are left with a question, aren’t we? If automobile engines always have run on hydrocarbons such as gasoline and we know that billions of dollars are being spent experimenting with hydrogen in engines, won’t the purchase of a kit for running a car on water be a good idea? In the third and final part of this series, my friend Adam Nehr will explain the ins and outs to you.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Stepping Lightly

Back in December, I told you about the splendid online video, The Story of Stuff. It explains in brilliant terms the reality of pollution created in order to provide the amenities of modern life, including air pollution and the waste stream (especially landfills and electronic waste (ewaste)).

The main message of The Story of Stuff is to consume less. Naturally, I am in full agreement. It is a lifestyle I have adopted. However, since I wrote about the aforementioned exemplary video, the green revolution has made several key strides in the consumer marketplace. We have Clorox selling a line of green cleaners. We have Delta Air Lines embracing a green operating model in a very public way. So, with all this positivity occurring, how can you hop on the bandwagon and not just consume less but take the next step and become as green as possible?

Knowing, monitoring and reducing your carbon footprint are the key steps. So, how does that differ from consuming less? The two points most definitely are interrelated. However, leveraging the knowledge of your carbon footprint helps you achieve another vital aspect, insulating yourself from green washing.

A quick definition: Green washing is the willful process through marketing and/or propaganda of defining a practice, product or service as being sensitive to the environment or greener than that of a competitor when the opposite is true.

While measuring the carbon footprint of a practice, product or service is not the only way of determining the precise hue of its green credentials, it is the most meaningful and effective way of assessing its role in combating or exacerbating global warming.

The good folks at the Earth Day Network have created a brand new online calculator of everyone’s carbon (or eco) footprint. Arguably the most wonderful aspect of this nifty tool is the fact that it includes nationality in the calculation. I exhort you to surf over to www.earthday.net/ecofootprint today and assess yourself. If everyone did likewise, we’d be a whole lot wiser about where we stand on an individual and collective mark and have a serviceable grasp on the length of the journey which lies before us as we fight global warming and reduce atmospheric carbon footprint by 2% per year.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

New Approaches to Old Problems

Nearly a decade has passed since the Environmental Defense Fund, one of my favorite American charities, began its broad effort to reform the courier and freight industry. Contributing significantly to air pollution, smog and global warming, the hundreds of thousands of vehicles in use every day around the world to deliver goods on demand constitute a superb opportunity to engage the problem head on and collaborate with the courier and shipping services to help them improve their bottom lines and embrace sustainability at the same time.

While United Parcel Service, UPS, has engaged in its own laudable innovations with respect to hybrid-electric delivery vans, hydrogen fuel and enhanced route planning to reduce engine idling, Federal Express, FedEx, has been the true leader.

Roughly 5 years ago, FedEx agreed to a revolutionary partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund with a very simple goal: prove that hybrid-electric engines can work in the heavy-duty, stop-and-go daily operations of a typical FedEx delivery van just as well as dirty old diesel systems which FedEx uses every day. To call the initiative a success is an understatement!

Having surpassed the impressive milestone of 2 million miles traveled, the FedEx hybrid-electric operating model has proved itself day after day and the shipping leader is on track to have 170 of the rugged yet low-emission vehicles on the road by the end of this calendar year, operating in more than a dozen North American cities with a parallel program in western Europe ramping up.

I commend the leadership of FedEx for having an open mind about low-emission delivery vehicles at a time when petroleum diesel fuel cost less than $2 per gallon but this success story hardly ends with the impressive achievements of 2008. You see, the personnel structure of FedEx is tightly integrated. It is one of the reasons that the company consistently wins awards as one of the most admired employers in the world.

When delivery drivers who participated in the proving process for the hybrid-electric vans learned that they wouldn’t have to change their daily practices one iota yet would consume roughly half the volume of fuel per day that they had on the standard vehicle, they rejoiced and sent a clear message up through the management chain that they wanted to see FedEx embrace low-emission business practices wherever possible.

People Power Impresses Corporate Power Structure

The clamoring from the labor base of the company for a greater corporate posture toward environmental sustainability has led not only to the expansion of the hybrid-electric delivery van fleet but two other key innovations as well.

That’s right. FedEx is on track not only to have well over 100 diesel-electric delivery vans on the road but the shipping leader also has begun an important initiative to utilize hybrid-electric gasoline vehicles in North America. Long considered standard in Europe, the inclusion of a specially-designed hybrid gas model for the North American marketplace will give FedEx another distinction and competitive edge. For this reason, when I need to ship documents and parcels of high importance, FedEx is the only service I use.

Reducing fuel consumption, while vital, is only one side of the savings which FedEx has embraced. It also is a leader in covering the rooftop of no fewer than two of its freight sorting facilities with photovoltaic arrays. Oh yes, FedEx now has the largest corporate installation of solar generating capacity in the state of California with no plans to stop there.

Naturally, if we really wish to stave off the worst impacts of global warming, everyone must pitch in and do more. FedEx and its rivals have a long way to go. Nevertheless, the year 2008 has shown that it not only is possible but profitable for leading service providers from around the world to go green and as a consumer of such services, you can help commend companies such as FedEx for acting responsibly by voting with your wallet. I do and exhort you to follow my lead.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

During my first few weeks as a founding expert here at Keyboard Culture, I wrote that the quest to go green in the consumer marketplace (and thus score an important victory in the battle against global warming) necessitates  two key steps:

1) Enabling consumers to create their own demand for green products and services; and

2) Making the effort cultural

Simply stated, the environmental community faces something of a chicken-and-egg scenario in going green but market leaders such as Citibank are helping advance the dialog through broad efforts such as paperless initiatives. Operating in a manner which encourages customers and vendors to obtain their account statements exclusively over the Internet and pay their bills in the same manner, we can chip away at entrenched practices.

I am somewhat embarrassed to share that despite my passion for environmental causes, I resisted paperless statements from Citibank and other financial providers for many years. Because I also work in the information technology field, I had just as many technical reasons as I did emotional ones but it wasn’t until I had been an Internet power user for nearly a decade that I went fully paperless with my monthly bills.

The good news is that most financial services providers now offer paperless options, not always for the same reasons but the results are the same. Just look at the results which Citibank achieved with its credit card customers in the first 18 months of its cultural shift toward 100% acceptance of paperless statements:

• 1.8 million trees planted

• 6,800 trees saved thus

• helping make 14 national forests greener

Citibank is far from perfect, persisting in dirty lending practices to resource extraction projects in emerging nations (and we must continue to advocate for an end to such loans). Nevertheless, there can be no denying that customers of the credit card division of Citibank are experiencing a cultural shift, one which helps expand their comfort zone with respect to paperless billing statements and thus making them more open to doing business the same way with their electrical utility or their local tax directorate or other entity with whom they conduct commerce.

I commend Citibank and encourage its peers to emulate the mission statement listed below. It constitutes a very solid beginning for one of the world’s largest financial services institutions.

"We’re on a global mission. Citi is committed to directing $50 billion over the next 10 years to address global climate change through investments, financings and related activities to support the commercialization and growth of alternative energy and clean technology among the clients and markets it serves, as well as within its own businesses and operations."

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Despite important gains in energy efficiency through the Energy Star program, Americans cause more air pollution per capita than their counterparts in most every other nation. As consumption patterns shift, the lead position in this ignominious category may change but what is unlikely to alter anytime soon is the love of the personal automobile on the highways and byways of the United States.

Even after suffering through more than a year of record petroleum prices, much of American popular culture is steeped in the driving experience since Yankees invented the mass production automobile and because of our pioneering spirit. However, since Americans produce 25% of the world’s pollution and 40% of that comes from transportation, we will not tackle global warming in a meaningful way until we learn to harness sustainable locomotion.

Fortunately, government bodies, business groups and blocks of citizens are taking steps to help everyone drive in a manner which is economically and environmentally sound – or at least better than the old ways. A leader in the campaign to help Americans be more green is the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers with its EcoDriving USA campaign.

Comprised of 9 of the world’s largest automakers, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has gained significant traction, pun intended, in helping drivers understand that embracing sensible driving and maintenance practices is easier than they may think.

The EcoDriving USA website has several handy features which make it easy for drivers to go green, or at least clean up their act, including a flyer with more than a dozen tips in the categories of driving practices and maintenance practices.

My favorite part, though, is the endorsement of the campaign by high-profile individuals, including several governors. Greening the American roadway will be no easy task but the EcoDriving USA campaign from The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers represents a commendable first step which I am happy to recommend to you. Even if you do not live in the United States, you can benefit from much of the information contained at

EcoDrivingUSA.com

Point your web browser there today!

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

It goes without saying that without the Internet, you would not be reading these words. Hence, this environmentalist has a vested interest in seeing the backbone of the Internet remain up to the challenge of the huge increases in traffic and content which occur every day. Microsoft is a leader in maintaining a stable Internet but not without a cost to the planet.

With innovative programs such as Microsoft has implemented in order to reduce the impact of the hardware and energy needed to provide for Internet stability, the impact is mitigated but not enough. Hence, it is up to each Internet user to be part of the solution.

Purchasing carbon offsets is a good way of helping but now there is an easy way to do more at absolutely no cost to you. The good folks at FightGlobalWarming.com have made available a search tool for your browser which allows you to submit a portion of the revenue from each of your Web searches.

It’s a simple process which is compatible both with the Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers. Just download it, install it and use it whenever you conduct a search on the Internet. That’s it! Every time your search results generate revenue, FightGlobalWarming.com will receive a portion.

The URL is

http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=29325

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Since the beginning of scientific awareness of global warming, initiatives to reverse the climate crisis have carried with them a political charge, sometimes partisan but always controversial. However, numerous factors have aligned to chip away at the status quo and October has proved to be a watershed month in the move to bring the Sunshine State not only on par with such places as California and New York in investing public monies in green energy projects but trying to leapfrog ahead of them.

During a Columbus Day meeting of the Gainesville City Council, in the heart of the town which hosts the University of Florida, an unprecedented proposal for a feed-in tariff was announced. Designed to allow customers of Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) to install photovoltaic systems for a guaranteed return per kilowatt hour, if enacted, the proposal would be the first of its kind in the United States and exceedingly rare around the world.

This stunning development, while encouraging, was only one of two gigantic announcements from government bodies during the same week. Two days after the GRU announcement, the Governor’s Action Team on Energy & Climate Change published its phase 2 report on how the climate crisis affects Florida as well as an appropriate action plan. It contains 50 separate policy recommendations and a separate suite of other recommendations as guidance to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in its development of a regulatory, market-based cap-and-trade emissions limiting program. Amazing!

You can read the entire document at

FlClimateChange.us

In light of the political climate in Florida, the recommendations of the Governor’s Action Team deserve an extra layer of accolades. I congratulate everyone involved for a job well done and look forward to assisting in the implementation of the policy recommendations. Likewise, the GRU board of directors deserves a round of applause from each of us for its bold proposal to advance solar energy in the United States!

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

In this 20-minute interview with my good friend Jim Griffin, we discuss Project Green America and the United We Stand Expo in depth as well as the role which the Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Superhighway will play in his landmark activities.

Enjoy!

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

In May of this year, I shared with you the very exciting story of the Retote recycled shopping bag from Target and TerraCycle. The vision underlying this innovative product and cultural catalyst inspired me for many reasons. Now, as I’ve been in possession of the bag for some time and had a chance to use it, I’d like to report to you from the perspective of a consumer.

The nifty, red Retote bag is the fifth in my collection of alternative sacks for groceries. I continue my practice of refusing bags altogether during better than 90% of my visits to the supermarket and other retail establishments but find myself in need of a secure carrying environment from time to time. I like the Retote the best and not just because it is made from recycled bags. The Retote is very sturdy and sends a loud message: recycling works!

I had to wait more than 3 months to receive my voucher for the free bag in response to the promotion in Newsweek Magazine but the delay lost its bitterness as soon as I took possession of my Retote. It is sturdy and downright fun to use. Best of all, the red handles fit in my clenched fist very comfortably.

Can I, in all candor, tell you that the Retote is better than every other reusable cloth or plastic sack on the market? No but it makes the loudest statement. In fact, the tag on the inside explains the mission of the Retote very nicely.

It took a combination of ingenuity and technology to create the Retote bag. By collecting your used Target plastic bags, we can fuse them together to produce these innovative, reusable totes. Target and Terracycle are teaming up on ways everyone can renew, reinvent and recycle. That's Design For All!

The promotion for free Retote bags is long since passed but the bags themselves remain for sale at your local Target store. The style bag which I received sells for $6. I highly recommend it. The capacity of the bag is about 15% larger than other bags sold at such places as supermarkets and drug stores but somewhat smaller than the reusable bags at Whole Foods (which also make a nice statement). Still, the Retote is my favorite and I hope that you will join me in creating a new craze.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Reforestation Projects Mean Clean Air And Less Global Warming

We are just one installment shy of my 100th podcast here at Keyboard Culture. As my readership numbers continue to rise and the breadth of the subject matter I cover continues to increase, I strive harder and harder to bring you topics which cover material unlikely to be found elsewhere. The Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Superhighway is a technology which I have mentioned and illustrated more than any other because of the variety of ills it can cure. Initially, its inventor, Justin Sutton, recipient of the Sir Isaac Newton Award from the American Computer Science Association, was content to tell the world about the infrastructure and transportation challenges it solves.

As an environmentalist, I, of course, was elated by the number of green characteristics which the Interstate Traveler brings. Now, in commemoration of my 100th podcast, I have conducted the third installment in my interview series with Justin Sutton because his organization has adopted a much more forward stance on two of the top methods of reversing the climate crisis which humanity has available, energy efficiency and reforestation. Before sharing the interview with you, though, I’d like to provide some background information on why we need to embrace energy efficiency and reforestation.

Before the Industrial Revolution took hold, the majority of the production of oxygen on this planet took place in our forests. Sadly, that important role of our vast arboreal regions makes the wood in the trees very dense and suitable for conversion into structures. The loss of forests has accelerated to such an extent that we now rely mostly on our great prairies and vast oceans for fresh air and they are under increasing strain with each passing day.

The best way to assure clean air for every living thing on the planet and begin to reverse global warming is to restore our once immense forests to their previous grandeur and organizations such as the 10 Billion Acres Project are working to do just that. However, because we have altered the hydrology of our planet through the same destructive practices which leveled the forests, we no longer have the option of planting seedlings on vacant land and simply hoping for the best. We must take a methodical approach.

The Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Superhighway can assist with such an effort, as Justin Sutton explains in the forthcoming interview, but we needn’t wait for the system to be built. The good people at Tree Nation have a very practical approach to replanting forests in harsh areas and they are meeting with great success in Africa. I highly recommend that you surf on over to

http://www.tree-nation.com

to have a look at what they are doing and consider making a contribution. Once you have done that, return here to learn about how the Interstate Traveler can assist the United States and the world with energy efficiency, including the elimination of high-tension power lines.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Superconducting Cable Means Fewer Electrical Towers

This is it, my 100th podcast! Can you feel the excitement? I’d like to pause for a moment to thank the creators of Keyboard Culture and my fellow experts here in the community. Together, we form a powerhouse and make a real difference in sharing wisdom with our readers. After more than a year of posts and 100 podcasts, let’s circle back to the reason for the existence of my corner of Keyboard Culture, the quest to reverse global warming.

The simplest, fastest and arguably easiest way of reversing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions which cause global warming is a swift move toward energy efficiency. This means turning off the lights when we leave a room, setting the thermostat on our climate control systems a degree or two out of our comfort zone and maintaining our cars in proper working order with well inflated tires. However, those steps only will bring us part of the way. For real energy efficiency to happen, we need to overhaul the way we generate and transmit electricity.

If that weren’t enough, we must contend with a crumbling infrastructure which cannot keep pace with current demand – let alone provide reliable service for a growing population. The Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Superhighway can assist us with these challenges because it has at its core a very high capacity electrical transmission core and the Interstate Traveler Company does not want any money from taxpayers or the utility companies to build it.

So, not only will construction of the Interstate Traveler improve the capacity and reliability of America’s electrical grid but it will facilitate decentralized generation and lend itself both to heightened national security standards for energy and greater energy efficiency, thus helping to fight global warming at the same time.

Be sure to return here for the next installment when I provide you with my 22-minute telephone interview with Justin Sutton in which we cover energy efficiency and reforestation, the other exciting initiative which comes with a bonus from building the Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Superhighway.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

NOTE: Audio for this post is accessible at the end

In commemoration of my 100th podcast, I have provided you with introductory threads about the unique attributes of energy efficiency and reforestation as the best means to combat global warming. Last time, I laid out for you the fact that the Interstate Traveler has components of both, including through recent additions to the solar-powered hydrogen rail initiative.

Now, it’s time to hear from Justin Sutton in his own words. As follows is the abridged textual version of my third interview with this genius. At the end of the text, you will find the audio player to hear the telephone exchange in its entirety.

Mister Sustainable: Even under ideal conditions, high-tension wires lose 10% or more of the current flowing through them to heat and other inefficiencies. How efficient will the conduit cluster inside the Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Superhighway be for transmitting high-voltage electrical service?

Justin Sutton: The Hydrogen Super Highway, or HyRail for short, hosts a redundant set of what is known as high-temperature super conductor cables, or HTSCs. They are called “High-Temperature” super conductors because of the unique metallurgy that enables super conducting properties at the temperature of liquid Nitrogen which is about -196 degrees Celsius – pretty is pretty cold stuff – but not nearly as cold as liquid hydrogen which is -252 degrees Celsius. The breakthrough innovation of HTSC was the creation of the unique metal that works at liquid Nitrogen temperatures, which has enabled the development of cables that can be charged with liquid Nitrogen and installed into conduits like our conduit cluster. Until this new metal was developed, the only way a super conduct could be made was in a laboratory using liquid Hydrogen which was next to impossible to make into a cable. These cables have the ability to distribute a massive amount of electrical energy with nearly zero resistance which enables the power companies to save the energy that is lost in traditional high-tension lines. What is more, the use of HTSCs enables the distribution of lower voltage which reduces the coronal discharge, or ambient electromagnetic energy the can light up florescent tubes at a distance.

Mister Sustainable: In his Pickens Plan, noted energy trader T. Boone Pickens advocates the broad adoption of wind power in the United States. Many leading environmental organizations have fallen in behind him but at present, the American electrical grid has several large gaps in areas which are ideal for the construction of wind power. Can construction of the Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Superhighway along all 54,000 miles of Eisenhower expressway alleviate this problem and provide an electrical pipe for the gigawatts of wind energy which will come online in the next decade?

Justin Sutton: Yes! The National HyRail, which refers to the Hydrogen Super Highway built along the Eisenhower Interstate Highway network, can provide more than just the ability to distribute the power from wind farms. The National HyRail can buffer and store the energy produced until it is demanded by the customers our on the national energy grid. Even more beneficial to the Pickens Plan, the Conduit Cluster has the ability to provide a massive pipeline to store and distribute Natural Gas and other viable fuels to feed market demand as we transition away from fossil fuels in the coming decades.

Mister Sustainable: One of the greatest challenges facing the growth of the American economy is the need for new corridors for high-tension power lines through areas which already are populated. Can the Interstate Traveler eliminate the need for new power lines and/or eliminate existing lines?

Justin Sutton: Yes! The HyRail can certainly provide the distribution capacity demand of today’s market on into the future. Even more exiting, the HyRail system of systems creates a financially viable method to replace existing high-tension lines with a safe and resilient elevated rail that can distribute power down the established corridors while enabling the valuable real estate to become safe for public use. This will enable the power distribution companies to not only save money by reducing the energy losses to next-to-nothing, but also reap the benefits of safe and desirable land corridors for housing, shopping and entertainment.

Mister Sustainable: An aspect of the fight against global warming which receives inadequate attention is reforestation, the replanting of trees in order to sequester carbon naturally and help the atmosphere regulate temperature. A leading advocate of reforestation is the United Nations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Under the auspices of the United Nations, the 10 Billion Acres project has begun to gain traction and its overarching vision includes a concept known as the Grand Arbor. You recently launched the Grand Arbor Carbon Sequestration Program within the Interstate Traveler Company. Would you elaborate on this, please?

Justin Sutton: The Grand Arbor Carbon Sequestration program is a very important program, perhaps the most important for the future of our global climate change issues. It has been known to science and historians that human activity has brought about the destruction of billions of acres of forests world wide over the last 500 years. This has created a terrible imbalance in the carbon/oxygen cycles of the natural ecosystems and, sadly, has destroyed the unique habit of countless species that are now extinct. The Grand Arbor Carbon Sequestration program employs the HyRail to create a constantly flowing supply of water to replant millions and millions of acres of trees in places where they have not stood for hundreds of years.

Beyond that, it is known that desertification has rapidly increased with the Sahara and the Gobi marching forward and relentlessly overwhelming once viable agricultural land. The Grand Arbor will not only enable the sequestration of millions of tons of carbon in the form of natural vegetation, but will also reclaim parched landscapes for future generations of people to enjoy an agricultural system that will work relentlessly for hundreds of years into the future.

Mister Sustainable: Another exciting project of yours is the Hydroponic Traveler. In addition to supplying desolate areas with an agricultural corridor, I understand that the Hydroponic Traveler can sequester about 24 tons of carbon per year for each mile of rail. Wow! How will this be achieved?

Justin Sutton: Yes, the Hydroponic Traveler is the key to halting the terrible desertification of lands that had once supported hundreds of thousands of people. As the core technology of the Grand Arbor Carbon Sequestration program, the ability to deliver Hydroponic grade solutions will enable the fortification of soils, and the creation of new compostable soils in areas that are parched and dry.

Listen Free Here

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Sugarplums and Monocultures

Much like always obtaining a plastic bag when making a retail purchase, buying, mounting and decorating a fir or spruce tree during the month of December is a tradition for millions of people. I find Christmas trees to be among the most festive aspects of the holiday season each year. So, don’t worry, I will not advocate that we dispense with them. However, there are important steps we can take to choose sustainable Christmas trees so as to minimize the damage to the environment, especially in light of the importance of maintaining our global tree canopy as I have explained many times.

The first and most significant question is that of a natural tree or a plastic one. As I shared back in January, the plastic Christmas tree in the Kroehler household is decades old and shows its age. Nevertheless, through simple mathematics, we know that literally dozens of natural trees have been left alive because we have an artificial tree. So, this alternative to natural trees is better if you can reuse it for many years.

If you are compelled to use the real thing, aim for an organic tree. Unlike organic food, which focuses mostly on the lack of pesticides, organic/sustainable Christmas trees are grown in diverse forests, rather than the other way which often takes wooded areas with a variety of tree species growing on them and flattens them in favor of growing a single type of tree. While better for the air than chopping down trees and never replacing them, this method of growing Christmas trees in the absence of all other species, known as a monoculture, is hard on the environment.

You see, Christmas trees which are allowed to grow and thrive in the forest perform an important role in the environment, just like other trees. They provide shade. They fertilize the soil. They retain water and deflect wind and rain-born erosion. The list of benefits to the environment goes on. That’s why organic/sustainable Christmas trees are so important and why you should consider investing the effort in finding a vendor who sells them rather than factory-style arbors.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Friendly rivalries can be healthy. We see examples of this fact in athletics, from intramural sports in the public school system right up to the Olympic Games which pit the best of the best from around the world. What we have not seen with any scope or consistency thus far in the new millennium, though, is a friendly rivalry between cities in their quest to become greener.

In the United States, there are dozens of cities which justifiably tout their green credentials and I have enjoyed hearing several of their presentations during my work representing the Sierra Club at various conferences, such as I explained in my previous post. However, I have yet to hear friendly jibes between municipalities over who is greener.

The European Green Capital initiative is changing the game, so to speak. A wonderful competition consisting of literally dozens of cities throughout Europe, the European Green Capital initiative has lit the flame within municipal, regional and national governments on the old continent all striving for the right to claim the title of Greenest of them All.

This competition has grown into a wonderful trend which I commend and next time, I will share with you the exciting details of the American counterpart to European Green Capital, called Green Cities. To learn more about the European Green Capital initiative, please visit

EuropeanGreenCapital.eu

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

For some time now, I’ve been telling you about the United We Stand Expo and how it is a very gratifying successor to the Green Earth Expo. Well, while Jim Griffin and I cannot claim direct responsibility for the germination of an entire national initiative toward green living and green commerce such as the one called Green Cities, we take it as no small coincidence that the very first Green Cities conference will take place at the same venue as and on the anniversary of the Green Earth Expo.

That’s right! The inaugural Green Cities conference will take place at the Orange County Convention Center in May of this year. Wow! I’m sure that you can understand why I am so enthusiastic about this event.

Well, my enthusiasm doesn’t stop there, either. The Green Cities Conference will assemble key sponsors and thought leaders from around the United States along with vital international players and one of the top themes will be the Triple Bottom Line of Sustainability!

As you likely have noted, my tag line as your global warming expert here on Keyboard Culture is Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line. I don’t take credit for the inclusion of this essential theme in the Green Cities conference but sure am glad to see it baked into the themes of the event.

Needless to say, I will be at the inaugural Green Cities conference in May and hope that you can join me. You can read all of the details and grab the early bird registration discount at

GreenCities.com

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

In October of 2007, I wrote about the importance of sustainability in our determination of the best biofuels to replace fossil fuels. The transportation fuels industry has heard me and the rest of the environmental community because they already have moved into second generation biofuels, with a plant called jatropha leading the pack.

Biodiesel for bus and truck fleets continues to make sense for several reasons, with the fact that it includes a significant element of recycling at the top of the list. However, even if we omit buses and trucks from the dozens of engine types in use today, there are a great many which need to be weaned off fossil fuels.

Terrestrial transportation is the easiest of the paradigms to address in this regard because in large geographical areas, the fuels safely can be limited to a temperature range of well under 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The same cannot be said of aviation fuels. Moreover, aviation fuels carry much higher performance standards than gasoline and, of course, geography becomes an enemy when attempting to move the world’s commercial aviation fleet to biofuels all at once.

It is for these reasons that I ardently embrace offsets for air travelers. Moreover, I endorse the offsets from CarbonFund.org because they have the option of radiative forcing. However, offsets are not a solution. They merely are a part of the interim steps which everyone must take in order to begin to reverse the damage of climate change. Ultimately, we need to move fully to hydrogen for all of our energy needs and biofuels can be a vital step in that direction.

Next time, I will tell you how jatropha oil is being used in aviation.

Source: www.jatropha.org Author: Photo by R. K. Henning

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

In addition to abundance and global standardization, the main reason that kerosene is the only aviation fuel which the major airlines use is that it performs well in very harsh conditions. Think about it: during long, high-altitude flights, the temperature in and around the wing of an aircraft can drop nearly to 100 degrees below zero! However, even in such circumstances, the fuel must ignite and combust in much the same way and at the same high temperature as when the plane is on the ground.

That is no easy feat and certainly is out of the question for petroleum diesel fuel.

Needless to say then, as the aviation industry has received greater and greater demands to lower its carbon footprint and escape the monopolistic tyranny of OPEC as its fuel supplier, the pace at which it experiments with biofuels has grown. It now appears that jatropha oil may be the answer.

As applied to biofuels, the triple bottom line of sustainability demands that the source materials not just be organic but that their use not damage the environment or the prosperity of agricultural workers. Corn-based and sugar-based ethanol often fail that test because they are nearly impossible to grow under those restrictions. Moreover, corn-based and sugar-based ethanol assist with weaning us off fossil fuels but really don’t reduce carbon loading over gasoline on a gallon-by-gallon basis.

Jatropha is quite different. Here are the key distinctions:

1) In most places, it is considered a weed, meaning that it can be grown alongside existing crops rather than in place of them.

2) Its seed is inedible. Hence, growers never face that quandary of growing it as a feed stock rather than for fuel.

3) It grows very effectively on land which is unsuitable for feed crops, opening up billions of acres of land to agriculture which currently do not fit the definition of arable.

4) In many places, jatropha can be harvested at any time, leaving peak times free for farmers to continue bringing in their feed crops.

5) The carbon loading of jatropha is roughly half that of corn or sugar, making it a true improvement over gasoline.

6) The oxygen density of processed jatropha oil can be minimized, making the fuel suitable for high-altitude jet engines, which neither ethanol nor petroleum-based gasoline ever will achieve.

7) Hence, it can be used in jet aircraft with no mechanical modifications.

I trust, then, that you grasp why I am so enthusiastic about jatropha oil, especially its potential role in commercial aviation as a replacement for kerosene. In the third installment of this series, I will tell you about Air New Zealand’s impressive and historic first flight with sustainable jatropha which took place last month.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Air New Zealand is an intriguing airline. It spans the wall of niche markets and broad commercialization like few others. Fortunately, this intriguing combination made it possible for the ownership and senior management of the company to take a leadership role in reducing its environmental impact, not just through recycling, fleet optimization and route optimization but now, a commitment to researching and implementing biofuels in its fleet.

Replacing kerosene as the global standard for jet fuel is a difficult nut to crack, it you’ll pardon the pun, because kerosene does the job very well. It is reliable. It performs well. Everyone understands it. All the aircraft and jet engine manufacturers specify it in their operating guidelines. The list goes on. First generation biofuels have none of these merits. Thanks to the work of Air New Zealand and its project partners, Boeing, Rolls-Royce and UOP, jatropha oil does.

Jet engines burn kerosene with no tailpipe. In other words, there’s no easy way to attach an emissions system to the engine in order to reduce the pollution as we do with buses, cars and trucks. So, the only practical way of cutting the contribution to global warming of aviation is to change the fuel. Up until the year 2008, no one thought that it was possible. Visionary aviation leaders such as Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic and Rob Fyfe of Air New Zealand have taken it upon themselves to make jatropha oil a reality.

So, on December 30, one engine of an Air New Zealand 747 jumbo jet underwent a comprehensive test flight fueled by 50% jatropha oil and 50% conventional kerosene. The results were very encouraging. The plane underwent multiple maneuvers during the flight, including climb, cruise, acceleration/deceleration, approach/missed approach, descent and, of course, landing. The history of the flight has less to do with the existence of the flight than of the source of the jatropha fuel. It is sustainable!

Air New Zealand’s commitment to the jatropha project is based on the triple bottom line of sustainability, so that the airline doesn’t merely replace one fuel with another but it converts to one which it knows can be grown and harvested in harmony with nature for decades to come and without impacting the world’s food supply. That, more than any other reason, is why I love jatropha and I commend Air New Zealand for this important leap into a new era of cleaner aviation.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

On January 20th, I had the distinct honor and privilege of attending in person the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Despite arriving on Capitol Hill before dawn, my friends and I had to participate roughly 2 miles away next to the Washington Monument. Nevertheless, the experience is one I will cherish for decades.

The size of the crowd which filled the National Mall was mirrored on the Internet. My rough estimate is that 3 million people crammed into the area west of the Capitol but I know for certain that more than 26 million people watched the event live on the Internet via CNN.com. In addition to being a huge number, this is a record.

As a lover of technology, I am inspired almost as much by the fact that CNN.com had the scalability in place to serve more than 26 million streams of its content that historic day as I am by President Obama’s speech. However, as all of this relates to global warming, we must remember that the backbone which runs the Internet consumes vast amounts of electricity. It is a wonderful invention which has the potential to benefit all of humanity but it is far from green.

It is for this reason that I enjoy sharing with you details about Internet providers who are embracing green information technology practices. Last year, I told you about the Microsoft C-Blox Container Data Center design, an impressive achievement.

Although not announced until a few weeks ago, Sun Microsystems, another leading Internet provider, has been achieving great things in the same arena. Through its well conceived and implemented modular pod architecture for data centers in North America, Sun has cut its energy costs significantly and the overall environmental impact of its large facility in Broomfield, Colorado by two-thirds! This is highly commendable!

When Microsoft unveiled its C-Blox approach, the byline was, If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. At Sun Microsystems, the byline is, What you can measure you can address. Not coincidentally, both of these philosophies apply directly to the fight against global warming, particularly carbon in our atmosphere.

With the equally commendable achievement of LEED Platinum certification for the Sacramento, California data center of another technology leader, Advanced Data Centers, a real trend has begun to emerge and I exhort everyone to consider the early work of these leaders in green information technology when making purchasing decisions.

http://www.sustainablelifemedia.com/content/story/greenIT/suns_new_green_datacenter_to_save_1_million_a_year

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Electronic waste is a huge problem, both in terms of land pollution and the resulting loss of natural areas which absorb greenhouse gases. As a leading consumer and disposer of electronic equipment, the United States should lead the world in the safe and sustainable disposal of electronic waste. The opposite is true. Even worse is the fact that much of the electronic waste which is recycled winds up sold to unscrupulous disposal firms which often incinerate the waste, pumping unspeakable quantities of toxins into the air, or dumped in rivers, either on American soil or overseas.

Regulatory bodies have begun to intervene in the disposal of electronic waste in order to assure proper dismantling and component recycling but much more needs to be done in order to capture electronic waste at its source, the curbside residential collection site and the dumpster. Until we capture more there, we will fail to address electronic waste in a meaningful way.

The average American consumer lacks the time and convenience to research proper disposal sites and transport the waste to the destination. However, if given a convenient option, that same consumer might well take the effort to do the right thing. That’s why the participation of electronics retailers is so vital. The bankruptcy of Circuit City dealt a serious blow to the work of recycling advocates but Best Buy has initiated a broad expansion of its collection program which more than offsets this other large loss.

As of today, Best Buy has expanded its electronic recycling program to encompass all of its locations – a huge improvement! Better still, most consumer electronics will be accepted for free. This move by Best Buy is exactly the type of corporate leadership which must be shown in order to begin the cultural shift needed to achieve the large strides toward greener living and I commend Best Buy for expanding electronics collection to its entire retail network.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

With billions of dollars being hurled at the concept of green jobs in the United States and around the world, it is very easy for unscrupulous manufacturers and their allies to attempt to convince the public that a particular product or service is green, either good for the environment or benign when compared against its rivals.This type of deception is known as green washing. Needless to say, I despise it.

What’s to be done, however? After all, this blog has a monthly readership in excess of 1,000,000 people but even that is not enough to stem the tidal wave of green washing which crashes upon the shore of consumer households every day. The environmental community needs allies. What constitutes a good ally, though?

The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is a logical fit. After all, it has existed for roughly a century and seldom steered people wrong. Skeptics may ask why a conventional magazine is so good a choice. For starters, the magazine has a circulation of 25,000,000 – a huge number. Better still, though, the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based environmental consultancy firm Brown & Wilmanns Environmental has been tapped to develop the underlying green criteria after the Good Housekeeping Research Institute can add the green rider to products which it already has granted the Seal of Approval.

At first glance, this initiative may seem a bit of a stretch but I find it fabulous. While not the ultimate solution, the greening of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is a vital step in the right direction and I am happy to commend this fine publication to all of my readers, including you.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Can a transportation system yield happier, more productive people? If it embraces the 3 pillars of sustainability, the answer is an unequivocal yes. The fundamental, fatal flaw of conventional mass transit is the consumption of fuel. Even in nations with vast carbon resources, the price paid per ton of fuel can fluctuate in a capricious market. Such variations make it difficult if not impossible for strained municipal budgets to plan from year to year.

Consumption of any type of fuel involves an expense, does it not? Yes, indeed. However, humanity possesses the technology to migrate to the least costly fuel which also happens to exist on every continent, solar radiation, in varying forms, direct sunlight being the most common.

If we adopt solar energy for mass transit system, the only ongoing cost lies in the method of harnessing and later tapping the power from the sun. Hydrogen, solar hydrogen to be specific, as advocated by noted scientists such as Dr. Roy McAlister, unlocks the potential to embrace all aspects of sustainability, not just environmental conservation, because the costs of using it are a mere fraction of the total cost and impact of fossil fuels.

How, specifically, does solar hydrogen achieve this important goal? The hydrogen is cracked from water during hours of sunshine or blowing winds and stored in large tanks from which the vehicles are fueled. If the hydrogen is compressed sufficiently, it can provide performance and range comparable to liquid fossil fuels.

People – The first pillar of sustainability is people. No successful policy for environmental sustainability can forget people. They are the ones inventing and adopting the green techniques and technologies of yesterday, today and tomorrow which can help preserve the planet for all living things.

People need reliable transportation. The freedom of movement is a basic human right but too many people suffer from poverty of locomotion. What is to be done?

Many mass transit systems operate with government subsidies, most of which are dedicated to purchasing fossil fuels for energy. With a system powered by solar hydrogen, the subsidies can be dedicated to the short-term project of acquiring the technology to produce, store and dispense the hydrogen as well as converting the vehicles to burn hydrogen. Once those steps are complete, the same fare box and advertising revenue which the system generated while burning fossil fuels should be adequate to buy the water to convert to hydrogen and maintenance of the hydrogen production equipment.

In short, the subsidies can end or they can be used to add new routes and increased service.

Planet – It is the unanimous conviction of properly informed government officials of every level in every nation that anthropogenic global warming is real. What is to be done? People still need to move from place to place and earn a living. Converting mass transit systems to solar hydrogen eliminates nearly all pollution from fuel and can reduce urban smog significantly as the tailpipe emissions consist of water and filtered air.

Profit – The effects of the global economic crisis continue to wreak havoc on municipal, provincial and national governments the world over. As commerce slows, the reliance on social obligations by disadvantaged, and even middle class, citizens rises with inverse proportionality. Further complicating matters is the slowing of revenue into government coffers from constricted commerce, leaving less for subsidies to the same mass transit systems upon which even more people rely.

Conventional for-profit mass transit solutions seldom offer permanent solutions as their stockholders demand a steady, positive trend in annual profits. What is to be done? A properly managed mass transit system which uses solar hydrogen for fuel not only can free its benefactors from the need to contribute ongoing subsidies but turn a profit as economies of scale begin to apply and operation of the system is optimized. By reducing the cost of fuel to bare minimum, a new paradigm of profitable mass transit systems with low fares emerges.

In closing, if you are skeptical as to the viability of embracing solar hydrogen for mass transit systems, I invite you to contact me. I will be delighted to connect you with peers of mine who can point you to proven, cost effective technologies which exist today.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

I have no doubt that the process of laying blame for the 2010 BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will be laborious and lengthy. However, there is a key lesson which we can grasp today, even as the process of restoring the Gulf of Mexico is in its earliest stages.

The concepts of sustainability and corporate social responsibility are manifest in the world of commerce every hour of every day.

The senior leadership of BP obviously ignored or forgot that lesson.

With for-profit organizations, such as Johnson & Johnson, Sony, IBM, Xanterra Parks & Resorts, Polaroid, Nike, Novo Nordisk, HP, Nokia, Coca-Cola, Ford, Nissan and so many others making strong (or stronger) commitments to operating their companies as sustainably as possible, how is it that BP cut so many corners and failed to anticipate the vast consequences of its actions to such an extent that we have the worst oil spill in American history?

The answer is very simple. The same company which rebranded itself as Beyond Petroleum just a few years ago lost sight of sustainability and corporate social responsibility in favor of naked profits.

The good news is that it’s not too late for any organization to change, any. If you are a business leader or are employed by a business which seeks to embrace sustainability and corporate social responsibility, I recommend developing a strong familiarity with the topic as your next step. Two excellent blogs where you can begin are

TriplePundit.org

and

TreeHugger.com

I happily give them my endorsement.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

As I have shared several times, one-way beverage containers, especially plastic water bottles, are very harmful for the environment. Perhaps their worst impact is from discarded bottles which often find their way into the open seas where they gather in one of several swirling garbage patches. In fact, it is difficult to argue that even the most effective recycling campaigns surrounding these poisonous containers can do much good since so much energy is required to convert PET, the most common type of plastic in such bottles, into a reusable alternative.

PET bottles aren’t all bad, though. They are much lighter than glass and can be much more convenient to carry than glass because they generally don’t shatter. Additionally, innovations in recycling have given us materials which are suitable for garments and other textile applications which are significantly softer than their natural counterparts.

For this reason, the Coca-Cola Company, through its partnership with Nike, has succeeded in selling millions of their recycled athletic garments since 2007 with such catchy slogans as Make Your Plastic Fantastic. Although I vehemently support the adoption of 100% organic materials in beverage containers, PET plastic bottles won’t vanish any time soon and it is important to applaud organizations which, finally, after years of prodding, have begun to innovate in their use of recycling.

In the case of the Coca-Cola/Nike garments, the new variation of recycling is called upcycling since the results are applied in more sophisticated or stringent uses than originally. In the case of another fine garment innovator, Patagonia, it is called downcycling because Patagonia also sells textiles made from 100% post consumer materials but PET bottles comprise only a small fraction of the final blend.

As we close the book on the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, just remember that many of the uniforms which took the field were made of 100% recycled fiber, much of it previously used as PET in one-way plastic beverage containers.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

jpg credit: Coca-Cola Company

jpg credit: Getty Images/Nike

If you have followed my blog for any period of time, you have read the high praise I have given to the fine environmental advocacy organization 350.org Their message of capping the average parts per million of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere at 350 is precisely the goal which every major effort to reverse global warming should undertake.

Indeed, in its young life, the 350.org organization has implemented several campaigns with high visibility and symbolism designed to drive government officials and captains of industry in dozens of countries to strive for a cap of 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon. The success of 350.org has been mixed but this sad reality is no denigration on the leadership or alliances of 350.org The tragedy is that the propaganda budgets of fossilized industries which favor the status quo make it difficult for any message, no matter how clever, to resonate with the necessary stamina to effect real change.

Never daunted, though, the leadership of 350.org has introduced its latest salvo in the battle to bring climate change under control and I would argue that it is their best ever. Meet PutSolarOn.it

When Jimmy Carter was President of the United States of America, he took many key steps to begin to break America’s addiction to petroleum, including the creation of a new cabinet secretariat, the Department of Energy, and installation of photovoltaic solar panels on the roof of the White House, the executive mansion of the government of the United States.

When President Carter lost reelection and was succeeded by a man who ardently embraced OPEC, the solar panels were removed. They haven’t been seen since. History is about to change, thanks to the message and partnerships behind PutSolarOn.it

PutSolarOn.it is a campaign website from 350.org and other key players in alternative energy advocacy which asks the head of state of every nation to install solar panels atop one or more prominent government buildings, preferably the executive mansion. President Obama has been asked to follow the lead of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, and install solar panels on the White House. Needless to say, as soon as I learned about this new website, I visited it and signed the petition. You should, too.

No matter where in the world you live, you can sign the petition at PutSolarOn.it The White House is but one of dozens of government buildings in many countries which would provide ample symbolism with solar panels on the roof. I exhort you to sign the petition today. The URL is

http://PutSolarOn.it

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler