Every month all over the globe, people interested in the environment and sustainability get together for “Green Drinks” to schmooze and network. Today on CWR, hosts Bill Baue and Francesca Rheannon go to their local Green Drinks gathering at the Northampton Brewery in Northampton, Massachusetts. There, they talk with John Meyercak of the Center for Ecological Technology, based in Northampton, about CET projects like ReStore, which sells second-hand building materials.
Chris LandryThen Chris Landry of the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont talks about balancing the need to support small farmers in developing nations with fair trade while also fostering living local economies in developed nations. We also hear about the Sustainability Institute’s “Climate Bathtub”.
Also, Francesca Rheannon talks with award-winning business journalist for the New York Times, Louis Uchitelle about his book The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences. It was published in 2006, but with the US facing what could be a long recession, followed by what some experts think might be a “jobless recovery”, The Disposable American is as relevant today as it was when it was published. We talk about how layoffs devastate workers and communities — and also how they hurt businesses.
Peter Senge and Joe Laur of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) discuss how corporations need to transform, the central theme of the Summit on the Future of the Corporation on November 13 and 14 in Boston that SoL is co-sponsoring along with Corporation 20/20. Corporate Watchdog Radio co-hosts Bill Baue and Francesca Rheannon ask Senge and Laur about specific projects advancing corporate change such as the SoL Sustainability Consortium run by Laur that helped Nike achieve 80 percent carbon dioxide equivalent emissions reductions by changing the gas used in Nike Air sneakers. Senge describes the Sustainable Food Lab, a collaboration between SoL and the Sustainability Institute that he participates in.
Peaceful protesters gathered at the Mount Tom Power Plant in Holyoke, Massachusetts, on March 1, a chilly Sunday. They were demonstrating against coal, the fossil fuel that spews global warming carbon dioxide and toxins such as mercury into the air. They were piggy-backing on the Capitol Climate Action coal protests happening the next day in Washington, DC. Sea Change Radio spoke last week with that event’s organizer Bill McKibben. Read the show transcript
