Green Leaf Report

It’s become quite a popular movement to reduce your personal carbon footprint and minimize your impact on the earth.  But that isn’t the lack of impact I refer in my title- I’m concerned about our government’s apparent desire to do nothing of any importance to help the environment.  Please read Bucking Court, EPA won’t […]

  Dr. James Hansen originally spoke in front of a Congressional committee on global warming in 1988.  He’s updated his warning with an eye-opening report on the current risks facing our planet.  The part that keeps running through my mind is where he suggests the heads of fossil fuel companies should be tried for their […]

Today for the first time, US gas prices reached an average of $4/gallon.
Over the past 15 years, many companies have been moving more of their content onto web platforms and secure electronic processes.  The companies that have embraced these developments are well positioned now to reduce operational costs and employee out-of-pocket expenses […]

We’re surrounded by big and small wind companies at the WindPower 2008 show, but many of the exhibitors at the show are also from the non-profit, educational and government realms.  This huge cross-section of the industry really inspires hope that a lot of very intelligent people together will help break some of the dependencies […]

Today, on the first full day of the WindPower 2008 conference, we attended press conferences and worked the exhibition floor some more.  The expiring federal production tax credit (PTC) is getting a lot of attention and a lot of press.  If this tax credit does not get extended this year, the wind energy industry […]

Recently President Bush mentioned a rise in the Indian middle class as a cause of the increasing food prices in the US.  The responses from India were pretty funny, and true  - how did our culture get to the point where so many people use surgery to remove the signs of overeating?
For instance, Pradeep […]

A coworker recently emailed me with a burning request - I’ve never heard an environmental word from her in all the years we’ve known each other, but it seems that she’s just snapped.  It was a very long email that she sent, but the gist of it was she and her husband are inundated […]

So President  Bush has been out stumping in Saudi Arabia asking them to pump out more of their non-renewable oil resources so that America can have temporarily lowered prices.  I guess if the Saudis complied, that plan would work for lowering prices at least until the Saudis ran out of oil and/or Bush was no […]

My Earth Day resolution this year was to continue to chip away at the personal and professional challenges to living right.   In honor of Earth Day, this past week I’ve:

Planted another tree in my yard. It’s an apricot tree- so hopefully it will have a dual role of absorbing CO2 and providing local fruit.
Updated […]

*The title is meant to be sung to the Barney tune of “If Raindrops were Gumdrops.”
Every night my son and I share a bowl of ice cream, and I’ve noticed a parallel between my household’s ice cream interaction and the global economic demand and supply of oil. In this story:

I will represent the American economy. […]

My entire week has been brightened by this announcement from Morgan Stanley, Citi and JPMorgan- Leading Wall Street Banks Establish The Carbon Principles:
“Three of the world’s leading financial institutions today announced the formation of The Carbon Principles, climate change guidelines for advisors and lenders to power companies in the United States. These Principles are the […]

 I’m trying to figure out how Bush’s recent meeting with Saudi’s leadership asking OPEC to increase oil production makes any sense to OPEC.  The underlying argument appears to be that if the oil prices get too high, it will hurt the US economy and we’ll buy less oil.  So why should OPEC care?  If they […]

The recent front page issue for local and national newspapers has been the possibility of another recession.  Everyone is worried, it’s the talk of the office, the worry of managers.  What does it really mean?  Certainly, since 2007 we’ve seen the  continued increasing of oil/gas and heating costs, as well as the meltdown of the […]

The average useful life span of a plastic grocery bag is estimated at about 20 minutes.  Even with recycling, more energy and chemical are required to process the bags for reuse, and there will always be waste of some sort from the reprocessing. China has recognized this problem and acted, leaving the US in the polluted dust:
Starting […]

Atlanta I feel your pain, though North Texas didn’t get the 100 day warning last year after our two year drought.  But seriously– praying for rain?  I’m all for the power of prayer; let’s all pray that people can change their practices, respect the planet and all of creation.  But praying for a stop-gap solution […]

An old classmate of mine sent me an email the other day, following his return from a business trip this past week to Beijing; I should note that this man is an engineering manager, and does not agree with man-made climate change or any of that tree-hugging stuff (the email was a bit of a surprise):
“Coming […]

 I learned about a new plant today: the inedible jatropha plant that grows in scrubland and generates 30 - 40% of its seed-weight in oil.  BP is partnering up with a biofuel company, D1 Oils, to produce this plant in Africa, thus helping struggling economies while lessening the global reliance on non-renewable fuel sources.  BP […]

Companies around the world are evaluating various types of plants as a possible source for fuel.  Algae has always been one of my favorites; the plant grows anywhere we don’t want it, thus is both plentiful and easy to acquire.  But as I read more about companies working on the production of algae, I […]

Lately I’ve seen so many headlines about heat wave related deaths that my eyes just skim right past them.  I read one such article the other morning that contained some slightly unrelated, but very interesting information, though; there was a section in the article about needing to shut down a nuclear power unit due to the […]

Today I read an interesting article about the tradeoff between solar panels and reflective white paint in the amount of carbon dioxide prevented. By mimicking the reflective effects of an iceberg, white paint can both cool homes (thus preventing some energy use) and bounce solar radiation back from the surface of the planet.  It’s an important point- fancy […]