This year’s World Cup was supposed to be the “greenest ever”, with FIFA taking measures to account for the event’s greenhouse gas emissions, including an estimated 2.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. As the biggest sporting event on the planet, FIFA is under pressure to take its sustainability measures seriously. It provides a unique opportunity […] … learn more→
Tag Archives: Sustainability
The real story behind Brazil’s ‘greenest World Cup’
Learning (and unlearning) from cities
In some ways, municipal efforts toward sustainability are outpacing academic ones. However, it’s easy to misinterpret the value and content of municipal sustainability initiatives. In fact, some of them seem intentionally to invite (encourage?) misinterpretation. Since one of my hobby horses is the need of the sustainability movement to define its terms, the first element […] … learn more→
Unprecedented contribution of wind power in U.S. Midwest
Defying conventional wisdom about the limits of wind power, in 2012 both Iowa and South Dakota generated close to one quarter of their electricity from wind farms. Wind power accounted for at least 10 percent of electricity generation in seven other states. Across the United States, wind power continues to strengthen its case as a […] … learn more→
Best of 2012: World forest area still on the decline
Forests provide many important goods, such as timber and paper. They also supply essential services—for example, they filter water, control water runoff, protect soil, regulate climate, cycle and store nutrients, and provide habitat for countless animal species and space for recreation. Forests cover 31 percent of the world’s land surface, just over 4 billion hectares. […] … learn more→
Reflections on AASHE 2012
I spent last week getting to, attending, and then getting back from this year\’s AASHE conference in Los Angeles. As I headed west, I had planned to post pretty much every day, giving my reactions to things I\’d experienced at the conference. But as reality overcame expectation, I found I didn\’t really have anything to […] … learn more→
What we really care about, and how to lift sustainability’s real appeal
New polls frequently announce that a significant proportion of the population is concerned about an issue or willing to sacrifice for a cause, from environmental sustainability to Third World debt. These polls create the sense that there is a public mandate for action on these issues – one that businesses and governments need to follow. […] … learn more→
A glimpse of Africa’s future? Botswana’s conundrum of spectacular growth with hunger
GABORONE, BOTSWANA. You wouldn’t know there’s a food crisis in Botswana, one of Africa’s wealthiest and most stable countries, because it’s a silent one. This is not the doom and gloom Africa that we often hear sensationalized in the media as a place of coups, famines and corruption. No, Botswana is a model African state […] … learn more→
Why Jim Young Kim was the more radical choice for World Bank President
GABORONE, BOTSWANA. While I am an American, I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment that it is inappropriate for the United States to have a strangle hold on the World Bank Presidency. I also sympathize with the frustrations of many Africans that one of their own, highly qualified Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was not […] … learn more→
Green Corporations… Can you trust them?
Wal-Mart, McDonald\’s, Coca-Cola, Sprint, KFC, Shell, Chase, Ford, Staples, CVS and the long list goes on. These larger than life brands immediately conjure up images and thoughts of our past experiences that have either helped or hurt these companies perception regarding sustainability. Of the ten companies above, 100% are doing something around sustainability issues related […] … learn more→
Pesticide tied to bee colony collapse
The likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colonies since 2006 is imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The authors, led by Alex Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health, write that the […] … learn more→