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.
Each January for the past several years, Bill has surveyed the top Corporate Social Responsibility news stories of the past year for CSRwire.com, where he is a contributing writer. Here’s this year’s edition:
A “green” recovery from economic and environmental meltdowns; the advent of Shareholder Activism 2.0 with binding resolutions at TARP banks; CSR adopts Web 2.0 strategies for sustainability reporting; is Wal-Mart really green?; and much more…
The economic meltdown of 2008 mirrors the simultaneous environmental meltdown fueled by the climate calamity – both share common roots, and many in the Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility (CSR) community believe they share a common salvation.Read the show transcript
Today we talk with Hunter Lovins, founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions, about the Presidential Climate Action Project. The Sea Change ViewPoint comes from Charlie Cray of the Center for Corporate Policy.
For many people, the election of Barack Obama as the US President stoked hope for big change. The transition to the Obama Administration brings promise of shifts to government regulations and policies to promote sustainability. Long before the election, though, a group of influential sustainability leaders gathered to brainstorm recommendations to the incoming President on tackling climate change. The Presidential Climate Action Project was born,Read the show transcript
At the G-20 Summit addressing the global financial crisis this weekend, the government leaders of the world’s largest economies essentially twiddled their thumbs, punting on setting ambitious goals until April 2009 — when the Barack Obama Administration, which is dedicated to addressing the financial crisis and the climate crisis, is in office. Before the Summit, Worldwatch Institute Senior Researchers Michael Renner and Gary Gardner proposed that the G-20 enact a Global Green Deal, evocative of FDR’s new deal but more audacious in scope and vision. CWR co-hosts Francesca Rheannon and Bill Baue speak with Renner about the proposal’s 5 strategies, including transitioning to a renewable energy economy, launching an efficiency revolution, and investing in green infrastructure.
And speaking of green infrastructure, Deutsche Asset Management issued a report calling for the establishment of a “green” National Infrastructure Bank. Bill Baue speaks with Deutsche Climate Change Investment Research Director Bruce Kahn about the report, a followup on the Investing in Climate Change 2009: Necessity and Opportunity in Turbulent Times report CWR covered recently.
The Top BENNY Award for 2008, given to activist campaigns holding corporations accountable by the Business Ethics Network (BEN), went to the Clean Up Ecuador campaign for bringing Chevron to justice for decades of pollution in the Amazon. The campaign is led by the Amazon Defense Coalition and Amazon Watch. Mitch Anderson of Amazon Watch has our commentary today, produced in partnership with BEN.
The meltdown on Wall Street has many people asking, how come the government can find hundreds of billions to bailout the guys who brought us this mess–but always claims there’s no money to save homeowners from foreclosure, provide health insurance to those who can’t afford it, or clean up the environment?
Today’s guest David Cay Johnston says it’s all part of an endemic pattern of “corporate welfare”, where government policy is rigged to benefit the richest Americans at the expense of the rest of us. Johnston was an investigative journalist for the New York Times before becoming an independent reporter. He won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code.
The Democratic party has shied away from linking clean energy, the economy, and the environment since Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Energy Policy. But the political winds are changing. At Tuesday evening’s Democratic National Convention, almost all of the speakers hit on the theme of green collar jobs. Nancy Floyd of Nth Power noted that there are 2.4 million green collar jobs worldwide — but less than 10 percent are in US. Presumptive Democrat candidate Barack Obama’s platform calls for more than doubling that number to 5 million green collar jobs in the US alone. And he’s framing it as a win-win-win to get us off foreign oil, stop global warming, and create tons of green jobs in the US. This week, we feature the second part of our conversation with Bracken Hendricks, co-author with Congressman Jay Inslee of Apollo’s Fire, and co-founder of the Apollo Alliance. The discussion focuses on the political will required to build a green economy.
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
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Each January for the past several years, Bill has surveyed the top Corporate Social Responsibility news stories of the past year for 
