The big news at this year's CERES Conference, "Scaling Sustainability", was that General Motors had joined the growing number of corporations signing the CERES Climate Declaration which declares that bold action to tackle climate is "one of America's greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century." Most of the...

"As we live a life of ease, Every one of us (every one of us) has all we need... "-- "Yellow Submarine", the Beatles, 1968

Forty-five years ago Americans were about a few years away from crashing for the first time on the reef of the oil industry...

It's time to re-imagine the global climate conversation.

At the Clean Energy Ministerial in New Delhi last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced India would "double the renewable energy capacity in our country from 25000 MW in 2012 to 55000 MW by the year 2017." That's a...

You could not find a more striking physical contrast that that between AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Nohra Padilla. Trumka's a big, strongly built son of the coal fields; Padilla a slight, waif-like women from Bogota, Colombia.

But both carry in their fiber...

Several of the Skoll Award Social Entrepreneurship Award winners at this year's "Disruption" themed World Forum meet the classic definition crafted by HBS's Clayton Christenson of disruption - serving customers who are ignored by the existing business models. Bihar, India's World Health Partners ...

My last posting mused about the inability of North Carolina conservatives to demonstrate their alleged commitment to get ready for -- since they won't try to stave off -- climate disruption. But conversations with front-line disaster response officials at the Inaugural Climate Adaptation Summit ...

There has been a fair amount of snickering at the fact that the North Carolina legislature, prompted by an outcry from developers in coastal counties, passed legislation that would prohibit the state from basing coastal planning on the three-foot sea level rise anticipated by North Carolina's...

President Obama delivered a speech at the lab calling for the creation of an Energy Security Trust Fund, which he touted in his State of the Union, to invest $2 billion in revenues from federal oil and gas leases in new technologies which would reduce U.S. dependence on...

The Keystone XL Export Pipeline is the next move in a complicated chess game by the oil and gas industry to assure sky-high future prices for its products -- and unaffordable fuel for the rest of us. (In their minds the devastating environmental legacy is collateral damage --...

It looks overwhelmingly likely that in a few days, a huge chunk -- $85 billion -- of current federal spending will stop. Those cuts are likely to be partly restored as a result of the fall-out and public reaction as they begin to be felt, so...

The president's reaffirmation of his commitment to action on climate change, action through his Executive Power if Congress won't act, was unequivocal. That's exciting. But it's also clear that no road map has been developed for the kind of progress that is needed -- not by the White House, not...

Like most global schmooze fests, the Delhi Sustainable Development Forum organizes itself around problems -- which can make it tricky to tease out what the diverse commentators really think about solutions.

But there is a tantalizing thread here -- that we have been looking for climate progress in the wrong...

India stands at a vital fork in the road -- to embrace what Jigar Shah calls "Utility 2.0", the distributed energy vision of the future, or to risk falling off the cliff into a major energy supply emergency by clinging to the centralized, fossil fuel approaches of the...

You know an economic crisis is severe when, in a conservative Muslim society, you encounter not only squeegee men, but hijab-covered squeegee women at traffic lights, as you do here in Pakistan.

In Karachi, the lights stay on. In Islamabad there are black-outs and load shedding, but cars and...

This is a confoundingly contradictory place. It boasts an unusual national narrative rooted in sustainability, handed down by Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, founder of the United Arab Emirates and probably the first environmentally conscious head of state in history. It is the fifth largest hydrocarbon power on the...

Now that Congress, as part of its fiscal cliff compromise, has given the wind industry a one year extension on its present tax rules, it's time to take a sober look at the real economics behind the struggle between future energy -- wind, solar, efficiency, geothermal -- and fossil fuels....

The last half dozen potholed miles on the back road to the Monteverde Cloud Forest are the rainbow factory of the world. Rainbows ahead of me, rainbows behind me, right and left, rainbows spanning the horizon. Finally a spectacular double rainbow soars up from a valley, its peak below the...

Can a tree tell the story of some forms of capitalism better than an economics lecture? Perhaps.

The most striking image of my first rain-forest excursion here is of a majestic, competitive, powerful survivor -- a 100-foot high ficus aureus, or golden fig like the one shown here:

If you had any serious doubt that (whatever Arizona Governor Jan Brewer may pretend) all of the serious players in the climate wars actually understand and believe that climate change is real, man-made, and enormously serious, here's another data point to settle a restless mind.

The company...

According to Google, use of the phrase "Think Globally, Act Locally" peaked in 1996, and has declined ever since. That may reflect how hard it is to practice this idea. During my years as Executive Director of the Sierra Club, the conflict between the club's intellectual commitment --...