Billy Parish

Both my parents were lawyers. When I was growing up, the only career advice they ever gave me was to be anything I wanted to be, except a lawyer. They were not entirely prepared for the career path I would follow.

At the end of 2002, mid-way through my junior...

David Brosch had a problem many Americans can relate to. He wanted solar power, but wasn't able to put it on his house. His roof had the wrong orientation, a tree partially blocked the sun, and it was more than he could afford. Many of his neighbors were in the...

Foundations have been really good to both of us, so a recent report from the Foundation Center on trends in philanthropic giving caught our eye:

The recent economic crisis caused the nation's more than 75,000 grant making foundations to cut their 2009 giving by an estimated 8.4 percent -- by...

A few weeks ago, The World Bank Institute launched a social network-based game called Evoke. It's a first for the Bank and an attempt to reach a generation of mobile-enabled young people in developing countries with lessons in collaboration, sustainability, creativity, local insight and entrepreneurship. In...

"It took me like ten years to graduate. I was working on my consulting business at the same time, and University only began to prepare me after I got all this work experience," Munira Ravji, the founder of a socially conscious event-planning company called Bene-Fete, told us. Like...

Arnold Goldman is a legend in the solar industry. Born in Israel, he came to the U.S. in the late seventies without any money or patents. He was an entrepreneur and spent days reading Department of Energy reports that listed all of the technology the government had invested in, developed...

While mainstream environmental groups cheered the President's State of the Union, many climate activists and bloggers are pissed -- the speech included no specifics about what he wants in a climate bill, and the laundry list of "clean energy jobs" had nuclear, oil, coal and biofuels, but strangely didn't mention...

At the international climate talks going on right now in Copenhagen, Denmark, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to launch a major assault on global warming. Besides deciding emission targets and the legal structure of an agreement, commitments for long-term financing for developing countries to help green their...

Today is "Young and Future Generations Day" here at the International Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen, and I'm here with my wife Wahleah and our two-year-old daughter Tohaana. Along with thousands of other young people, we're doing everything in our power to convince world leaders to commit to a fair, ambitious,...

We fight, even against insurmountable odds, because sometimes we win.

As I get ready to head to Copenhagen this Saturday for the international climate negotiations, I'm thrilled to see the success of The Leadership Campaign and their efforts to have Massachusetts use 100% clean electricity by 2020.

On Monday,...

Last week, the Labor Department reported that youth unemployment stands at 18.2%, nearly twice the national average of 9.8%. The percentage of young people without a job is a staggering 53.4 percent, the highest figure since World War II. Looking deeper, the statistics for youth of color are terrible...

The New York State Senate and Assembly, too often a model of corruption and dysfunctionality, rose above petty politics last week to pass forward-thinking legislation on climate and energy, setting a precedent for bipartisanship and a sensible cap and trade system. The State Senate passed the groundbreaking Green Job/Green...

Eight years ago today, two planes flew into the World Trade Center, another crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth landed in a field in Pennsylvania. The raw power of that day came to be symbolized by a date composed of two numbers. Two numbers that evoked the shock of...

In case you missed it, dirty energy is back to dirty tricks. This time with the help of DC lobbyists, Bonner & Associates, who forged letters to Congressman Tom Perriello of Virgina's 5th District. The letters, written on "official" letterhead from the local NAACP chapter and a Hispanic group,...

It can if that number is 350. That's the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: 350 parts per million (ppm). It's also the rallying cry of a creative campaign to raise awareness of the climate crisis and build grassroots support for the 2009 Climate Conference in Copenhagen....

...in Ireland.

This is great news for the people of Ireland. But we need to create those jobs in the US too. In Ireland, a country of four million, 10,000 "green" jobs were created in the last three months in organic farming, energy efficient construction, electric cars, and...

Building a new foundation requires a lot of heavy machinery. Bulldozers to clear the land, extractors to dig the foundation, concrete-mixers to pour the cement, and trucks to haul the raw materials. So perhaps it's appropriate that Jim Owens, the CEO of Caterpillar will be at the White...

In last week's New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fascinating article, "How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break The Rules." In his patented style Gladwell weaves together story after story of underdogs who defied convention to defeat much stronger opponents. From the Biblical story of David defeating Goliath, to...

100 days ago, President Barack Obama took the oath of office with an overwhelming mandate from America's youth. Two out of every three citizens under the age of 30 voted for Obama in the 2008 election. We demanded change and Obama promised it. We demanded green jobs, strong climate policy,...