Few would disagree with the idea of clean energy: it can help reduce global warming, air pollution, energy shortages, the national debt, and our reliance on foreign oil. But America isn't exactly putting its money where its mouth is. How to get average people to know that "clean energy is here, and it works," is the task of Brian F. Keane. The head of
SmartPower, the country's leading non-profit devoted to marketing clean energy, Keane is using Madison Avenue thinking and grassroots efforts -- like giving away thousands of dollars to the
greenest college campus or to
the best homemade ad -- in order to hawk clean energy "like it's Coke or McDonalds." ...
Michael Franti is the thunderous voice and poetic brain behind
Spearhead, a band that melts hip hop, R&B, reggae, and funk with a message of love and rebellion. Franti has long been outspoken on issues of political reform, peace, and ecological sanity. His documentary film,
“I Know I’m Not Alone,” follows his barefoot journey across the Middle East, guitar in hand.
Michael speaks with TreeHugger about his hopes for the new president, his efforts to live greener—both at home and on the road—and the making of Spearhead’s new record, All Rebel Rockers.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download, or read the text version of this interview after the jump....
As the Consumer Marketing Manager of Sub-Zero and Wolf, Christopher Parr knows what people want in their kitchens, and knows what it takes for a fridge to be green. We had a chance to chat with him about
Sub-Zero's idea of green, the
green kitchen inspiration video series -- we recently
interviewed architect Michael McDonough about the same -- and how to get the greenest performance out of your appliances.
TreeHugger: We talk a lot about taking meaningful green action to reduce our collective and individual footprints. Where should kitchen appliances fit in to that model?...
Hopes are high for an Obama-led climate strategy, but when it comes to true details there are still more questions than answers. Andrew C. Revkin has stationed himself at the intersection of science, technology, and policy for two decades, watching closely and writing like a madman. Revkin’s reporting can be found in the
New York Times, where he is a senior environment writer, as well as at
Dot Earth. He also pops up regularly on TreeHugger around issues like
geoengineering,
climate taxes, and
population growth. We asked Andy to shed some light on the Obama climate picture as it unfolds.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump....
Eco-Libris is no stranger to TreeHugger. The company now more than a year old, has been featured here in a number of shapes and forms. Planting trees for the books you buy, puts Eco-Libris in our good book. Here's our latest interview with Raz Godelnik, the CEO of the green company with strong Israeli roots. The latest news? Eco-Libris has partnered with Simon & Schuster.
1.
Tell us a little bit about Eco-Libris, and the milestones you've passed since founding?
Eco-Libris is a green business that helps facilitate the greening of the book industry. We work with book readers, publishers, authors, bookstores and others in the book industry to balance out the paper used for books by planting trees. More than 30 million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone.
Eco-Libris aims to
raise awareness to the environmental impacts of using paper for the production of books and provide people and businesses with an affordable and easy way to do something about it: plant one tree for every book they read, write, sell or publish.
...
Kitchen appliance manufacturers Sub Zero and Wolf recently teamed up with a handful of designers and architects to create
Kitchen Inspiration, a web documentary series about kitchens and sustainable design, among other things. TreeHugger caught up with architect Michael McDonough, who participated in the documentary series, and whom we've
featured before, to chat about green building, kitchen design, and more.
TreeHugger: You mention the notion that we have 10 years to turn things around, and that it's important to you to leave real solutions for the next generation. How do you integrate that ethic into your work?
Michael McDonough: Well, people come to me, as an architect, increasingly for leadership in green building technology. Specifically, they’re interested in my work in net zero energy and zero carbon footprint technologies. Those can be somewhat differentiated from what the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is doing with its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program -- and any number of other green building programs.
My perspective, in a nutshell, is as follows: energy is 90 percent of the problem. ...
Despite his own confessions, Pearce isn’t here to preach. He’d rather people make up their own minds about what to buy and what to snub. In the second part of our interview, the author of
Confessions of an Eco-Sinner tells more tales from his explorations into the sources of his stuff. We also get a slice of his
greenwash-busting that is featured regularly in the Guardian, and his reasons for believe that Obama might just save the world.
Click here for part one.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump....
Folk Music Troubadour,
Eliza Gilkyson, is currently touring in support of her new release, "
Beautiful World", an album which tackles environmental issues, and not timidly. Eliza Glkyson, who has toured with folk greats such as Patty Griffin and Richard Thompson and most recently had 2 songs covered by Joan Baez, offsets all of her touring with carbon credits and also uses a
portable solar powered system to power her local shows in Austin, TX. But Eliza doesn't think that is doing enough. Read further for an exclusive interview with Eliza Gilkyson and her perspective on the the possibilities of green touring and a "great correction":...
Ever get curious? “Where was my computer put together, who picked my coffee beans, what about the gold in my wedding ring?” We recall when Fred Pearce
set out to find the answers, a journey that took him around the world seven times.
Confessions of An Eco-Sinner is his tale; and what he found was often shocking and counterintuitive (get ready to rethink fair trade).
Fred Pearce’s detective work has enticed us many times as he sleuths
the greening of China,
seed saving,
the population bomb, and “
virtual water.” He’s especially deft at sniffing out greenwashing, for which he has
a column in The Guardian. Fred was kind enough to let us inside his reconnaissance and share how this changed his thinking.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Thanks to Calabash Music for the soundtrack....
In part two of our interview with the author of
Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, we continue our tour of the coolest, most promising, and most necessary green technologies alive today. Get ready for electric cars, carbon capture, and (I know it's your favorite)
biochar.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Check out the
first installment here.
Special thanks to Calabash Music for the soundtrack....
Ed Begley, Jr. is a busy guy. Between his show
Living with Ed on Planet Green, his other acting gigs -- you've seen him in movies like "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind", in guest spots on "Arrested Development," and he's now on CBS' "
Gary Unmarried on Wednesdays -- and generating most of his own electricity, growing some of his own food, and bicycling about Los Angeles spreading the green message, it seems like he'd have enough on his plate.
But he's always looking for ways to help fellow greenies save energy and save money, and that's why he's hopping on his bike, starting this morning, and pedaling around Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Ed is supporting a campaign called
LOOK UP, which encourages howeowners and consumers to do just that -- take a peek at the ceiling -- and realize how much energy and money you can save by
using a programmable thermostat and a ceiling fan in tandem; turns out it's up to $500 every year. We caught up with Ed on the eve of the tour, in Chicago, to chat about saving energy, saving money, and why everyone needs to look up.
TreeHugger: Tomorrow morning, you'll start to ride your bicycle around cities like Chicago, Philly, Washington D.C. and New York, in some pretty wintry weather, over Thanksgiving holiday and weekend. What inspired you to do this for Look Up?...
Photo: Paula Alvarado.
Rome based designer Marco Capellini has become a well-known name in the Latin ecodesign movement.
Creator of the organization
Remade, which promotes design with recycled materials in seven countries; and
Matrec, an online resource for recycled materials, Capellini was in Buenos Aires for a conference organized by the city’s Metropolitan Design Center.
After his presentation, he spoke with TreeHugger about the evolution of green design. In response to those who still refer to the green movement as a trend, Capellini says, “the consideration of the environment in the design process is not a fashion, it has become an industrial problem and will not go away.” Learn more in the extended....
Mr. Goodall phrases it more elegantly than we have, to be sure, but the premise is the same: if we want to avoid big trouble in paradise, we need to get very busy with radically new technologies. Goodall is an author (his previous book was
How to Live a Low-Carbon Life),
blogger, and a regular contributor to the
Guardian Environment Network. His new book, Ten Technologies to Save the Planet (see
our recent review), is a pragmatic yet nerdily scintillating survey of green tech. Not one to tag along with the herd (this is the man who said
driving is greener than walking), Goodall calls it like he sees it, dubbing some techs rubbish (micro wind power), and provoking us to strip the stigma from others (carbon capture and storage). In part one of our conversation, Goodall leads us into the frontlines of the energy revolution.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Special thanks to Calabash Music for the soundtrack....
REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc) have been the subject of many posts here at TreeHugger. This membership-based co-op has been selling affordable product for adventure sports since 1938. Yet in those seventy years it’s really only been in the past few that REI have consciously focused of the sustainability aspects of their operations. You’ll find a list of past posts, including reference to their 2007 Stewardship Report at the end of the interview. But for now we’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to Kevin Hagen, REI’s Corporate Social Responsibility Program Manager. Some months ago now Kevin shared with us just how this ‘greening’ is playing out, for an co-operative enterprise of more than 3 million ‘members’, over 80 stores and 8,000+ employees, with sales in excess of $1.3 billion USD.
(Apologies to Kevin that this took so long to post, and please advise errors in transcription.)...
Do you love your hybrid, fear for the plight of the polar bears, dying to put solar panels on your roof? Then you might be a member of the eco-elite. Not that there’s anything wrong with you, says
Van Jones, but for a green economy to be truly effective, it needs to be more inclusive.
This is the thrust of
The Green Collar Economy, Van Jones’ new book. The
very quotable Jones is up there
among the world’s brightest, seeking a green economy “that is strong enough to pull millions of people out of poverty.”
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Also check:
Our recent interview with Van Jones
Worldwatch Institute on green jobs
The EJCC on race and climate change
VanJones.net
And Van on The Colbert Report, after the jump...
...
Arran Stephens is the CEO and co-founder, with his wife Ratana, of Nature's Path. The company is one of the leading privately owned and family operated organic food companies in North America. They sell their certified organic cereals, breads, cookies, and snack bars in 42 countries around the world.
Stephens opened Canada's first large organic supermarket in 1971 in Vancouver. The name of the store, Lifestream, was used for a successful line of natural products that was sold in 1981 and eventually bought by Kraft/Philip Morris. After launching Nature's Path in 1985 the company caught the first consumer wave of organic consciousness in experienced huge growth while maintaining it's core organic philosophy. In 1995, in a move that typifies how Stephens approaches business, he bought back Lifestream from Kraft so he could control the quality of the brand.
Click through for our Q+A with this organic food pioneer.
...
Photo: Richard Hume, courtesy of Experience Life magazineEco-advocate, civil rights activist and social entrepreneur rolled into one, Van Jones was recently on tour promoting his latest book,
The Green Collar Economy. As the founder of
Green For All – the national initiative which aims to combat poverty, racial inequality and the environmental crisis through the building of a robust and all-inclusive green economy – we’ve covered Van Jones here on TreeHugger plenty of times before. But this time we have it straight from the source as he describes his perspective on how the “green economy” concept has gained significant cultural cachet recently, along with building a broader coalition at the intersection of race, class and environmentalism, and what his next steps are....
David R. Brower was a powerhouse of the American environmental movement—in fact, it’s pretty safe to say that without David Brower, the green movement wouldn’t be what it is today. Certainly not a man who slept late, Brower founded the Sierra Club Foundation, the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies, Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, and Earth Island Institute, among others. When David Brower died in 2000, Earth Island created the
Brower Youth Awards, honoring six young environmental go-getters each year, whose precociousness is on par with that of the young Mr. Brower. In addition to being swept off to San Francisco for a big award ceremony, the winners get $3000 and an arsenal of resources with which to carry on their work. This week we hear from two of this year’s winners.
TreeHugger Radio
Listen to the podcast of this interview via
iTunes, or just click
here to listen, right-click to download.
Also check out our coverage of Brower Youth Award winners from
2007,
2006, and their collaboration with
the Lorax....
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 06.29.09
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