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Recent Posts by Marc Gunther
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I’m writing this post on my Apple PowerBook G4, which ordinarily does very well what I need it to do—except that right now it is sitting on my lap and giving off enough heat to keep me warm on a cool day. That might be welcome if today were a February day in Denver. But it’s August. I’m in the mile-high city where the sun always seems to shine to moderate a discussion on sustainability for Coca Cola Enterprises, the big bottling company; to attend a bunch of events on the environment and energy; and to soak up the atmosphere as the Democrats and thousands of hangers-on here to nominate Barack Obama. The Coke discussion went well, I thought—participants included the major of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, who talked about the drought and water conservation, Majority Leader Steny
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The other day, John McCain visited an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to call for more offshore drilling. The massive Chevron rig produces 10,000 barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, I just filled up my new Honda Fit with gas for the first time. After driving 282 miles, I bought 9.47 gallons at $3.62 a gallon. So I’m getting 29.6 mpg, mostly in the city. What’s the connection? The actions of millions of Americans like me—as we trade big cars for smaller ones, drive less, or do both—are going to have a whole lot more impact on oil prices, more quickly, than drilling for more oil. In fact, they already are. Gas prices have been falling by more than a penny per day and the price of oil has dropped from about $147 a barrel to about $115 a barrel in the last couple of months for one
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Not only is the world flat, it is amazingly interconnected. Who would have thought that Oreos or Cheez-Its could contribute to deforestation and global warming? Today’s Sustainability column at fortune.com and cnnmoney.com looks at palm oil, the commodity that connects hundreds of products on supermarket shelves to the disappearing tropical forests of Malaysia and Indonesia. Enviros who take a confrontational approach (Rainforest Action Network) as well as those who prefer to consult or collaborate (Conservation International, WWF) are attacking the palm oil problem. So are big agribusiness companies like ADM, Bunge and Cargill, although they’re not moving fast enough or far enough to satisfy the activists at RAN. Interestingly, the palm oil story appears to be following a script
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The Environmental Working Group looked at nearly 1,000 sunscreen products and found that “4 out of 5 contain chemicals that may pose health hazards or don’t adequately protect skin from the sun’s damaging rays. The Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed household air fresheners and found that “most contain chemicals that may affect hormones and reproductive development, particularly in babies. The EPA was so concerned about keeping rodenticides—rat and mouse poisons—out of the hands of children that the agency ruled this spring that four of the most most hazardous types of pesticides will no longer be sold for personal use These days, it seems like you can’t open the newspaper or, worse, search the Internet without hearing about the dangers of ordinary household
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While carbon offsets are controversial and always will be, they have enormous potential to promote an elusive goal: sustainable development. At their best, carbon offsets are a low-cost way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transfer clean technology to poor countries and help people out of poverty. Which brings us to JPMorgan Chase and cook stoves. The global Wall Street investment bank has begun subsidizing the production and distribution of efficient cooking stoves in Africa, an effort that could expand to India and southeast Asia as well. The project is the topic of today’s Sustainability column on fortune.com and cnnmoney.com. Here’s how it begins: By any measure, it is a long way from the Park Avenue headquarters of JPMorgan Chase, the global investment bank that
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Like every smart company, Microsoft is thinking about sustainability. Rob Bernard, the company’s head of sustainability, tells me that MSFT is working to measure and reduce its own footprint, build data centers that use less energy and partner with groups like the Clinton Foundation to design software and services that helps cities measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Recently, Microsoft asked me to write an essay about the role of technology in driving sustainability. Here’s how it begins:
Technology got us into this mess—a planet that’s heating up, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Our cars, our homes, our office buildings, our appliances, our computers, MP3 players and big-screen TVs all require burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That’s the bad news. The good news is that technology can get us out of this mess—although not by itself.
As the environment writer for FORTUNE magazine, I’ve always enjoyed visiting Silicon Valley. It’s brimming with ambition and ideas and optimism and the can-do spirit that, not to be too corny about it, helped to make America what it is today. Places like Silicon Valley, where inventors, entrepreneurs and investors come together, will enable us to made an exciting and dramatic transition to a new clean energy economy.
You can read the rest of the essay here.
Mindy Lubber, the president of CERES, the investor coalition devoted to environmental issues, also contributed an essay to the MSFT Environment site. Here’s my favorite excerpt:
…some of the technologies we once believed would lighten our environmental footprint have proven, in practice, to be problematic in their own right. Consider the way in which vast quantities of information travel today. At first blush, sending an e-mail would certainly seem to be “greener” and cleaner than mailing a letter. The letter requires paper derived from wood taken from forests that are disappearing at an alarming rate. Forestry requires heavy equipment to cut and haul wood, burning fossil fuels in the process. And turning wood into paper is also carbon intensive, not to mention the environmental impacts of the chemicals used to turn wood into pulp and pulp into paper. And the letter itself has to be transported in fuel-burning trucks and airplanes. An e-mail, by contrast, seems to speed through the ether leaving nary a trace. But, it isn’t so. Though more environment friendly than a letter, the e-mails we send require computers that consume energy to manufacture and operate. And because computer technology advances so quickly, the life span of the average computer is just a few years. The result? A massive solid waste and chemical disposal challenge.
Fortunately, the technology industry—which is all about adaptation and changes—is taking environmental issues seriously. IBM, Intel, Dell, HP and especially Google are all pressing forward with aggressive green initiatives.
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