This week, green business guru Joel Makower encourages us to envision success in creating a clean, sustainable economy that averts climate catastrophe and improves our environment, communities, and lives. And shareholder activist John Harrington urges banks bailed out with Troubled Asset Relief Program funding to make sure they stabilize US economic security.
At the Clean Energy Connections Conference in November 2008, Sea Change Radio Co-Host Francesca Rheannon spoke with Massachusetts Commissioner of Energy Resources Phil Guidice about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and state-level clean energy initiatives. She also interviewed Kevin Doyle, co-chair of the workforce development group of the New England Clean Energy Council, about the importance for low income people to have a voice at the table in developing the clean energy economy. For the News Analysis, Rheannon and Co-Host Bill Baue speak with Elizabeth Kolbert about her New Yorker profile of Green for All Founding President Van Jones entitled “Greening the Ghetto.” And Francesca brings us a modest proposal for funding energy efficiency in this week’s ViewPoint.Read the show transcript
“Greening the Ghetto” is the title of Elizabeth Kolbert’s profile of Van Jones in a recent New Yorker. The piece traces Van Jones’ development from a civil rights activist to a green collar jobs guru. Kolbert quotes Jones saying “Sometimes a breakdown can lead to a breakthrough.” She tells the story of how this resonates on a personal level for him. And, he’s also referring to this moment in history when an economic breakdown could lead to an environmental and economic breakthrough.
Clint WilderIn the second part of this two-part interview, Corporate Watchdog Radio co-hosts Francesca Rheannon and Bill Baue speak with Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder, co-authors of the new book, The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity. Pernick and Wilder, who helped define the clean tech industry in their work with the research and publishing firm Clean Edge, explain three of the six major forces they identified that are driving the clean tech revolution, all starting with the letter “C”: China, consumers, and climate (they discussed the other three, costs, capital, and competition in part one.)
They also describe plug-in hybrids capable of getting 500 miles per gallon, define the “corn conundrum” pitting fuel against food, and survey green building strategies. In the end, they point out that profitability and environmentalism are not necessarily contradictory, but rather can complement one another–especially in supportive regulatory regimes (which they predict will come in the next US presidential administration.)
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