Green For All released this week a nice video about the pain of the old economy, and the promise of the new: it presents the Noise of the old economy and the New Sound for a brighter future. Green For All is a national organization working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Green For All wants to  "illustrates why the Senate must pass bold climate legislation this fall, and why we need a vibrant movement based in low-income communities and communities of color." As a matter of fact, it isn't well known how poverty and green future are connected. This is why, by the way, United Nation decided in 2002 to [...]

Architecture 2030 says scientists give us 10 years to accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reductions in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.[via WorldChanging]

“ Buildings are the major source of demand for energy and materials that produce by-product greenhouse gases (GHG). Slowing the growth rate of GHG emissions and then reversing it over the next ten years is the key to keeping global warming under 1°C above today's level. It will require immediate action and a concerted global effort. ”

The way buildings and developments are planned, designed and constructed, now, doesn’t take into account GHG reduction. New buildings has to [...]

 There are any number of actions a company can take to make them greener than they were but at what point should a company be considered green (or green enough)? This can be hard to decide, especially for small companies that don’t necessarily have enough resources to invest in long term solutions. People have wide ranging views on this point, some saying that any little bit ought to be encouraged, while the other side saying that unless they go all the way it isn’t good enough.  [...]

Where is the best place to start enforcing carbon neutrality? International conferences, as a matter of fact. At the last Sommet de la Francophonie, a global meet-up for French speaking countries in Quebec city last October, they did carbon offset all there activities. The cost? $42,753 Canadian (roughly $37K US or 26,5K Euro). This seems to be a first for an international conference.

Strange enough a local newspaper in Montreal had to overcome a lot of frustration to access this information. Le Devoir (French) asked a lot in advance (July last year) about how Canadian government planned to offset the GHG. It took one year to gain the info, [...]

China has drafted a set of mandatory environmental measures that would apply to Chinese outbound investors, The Wall Street Journal reports today (China Plans Environmental Rules for Companies Investing Overseas):

"According to the report, the new rules would require Chinese companies to conduct environmental impact reviews on overseas projects, take measures to protect the environment on all projects (such as including facilities for sewage and waste treatment), abide by China’s international environmental treaties and pay for any environmental damage that results from their projects." It’s an open question as to how  China really can supervise [...]

It’s great pleasure to announce the launch of our video section Challenge Your World 20/20 20 video artists put forward 20 crazy ideas that solve environmental issues, transform the world or push ourselves to think differently — five of them are already there! Check them out! Challenge Your World 20/20 is a partnership between Challenge Your World and Motionographer, the incredible source of inspiration for filmmakers, animators and designers. If we’re going to transform the world we have to push ourselves to think differently — so these videos reject the status quo, explore crazy ideas, and blast beyond boundaries. Want to be part of the video [...]

 "Companies are not yet structured to deliver moral or ethical results - they are encouraged to grow and deliver “shareholder value” (read money) which is a numb and narrow measure of value." That's what Joshua-Michéle Ross said yesterday in the second part of his series “The Question Concerning Social Technology”, on O'Reilly Radar web site, a leading emerging technologies blog. He is questioning the amorality of corporations, that is, them being neither moral nor immoral, being outside any particular code of morals. He starts being concerning about personal data in an era of Web 2.0. He thinks government and companies collect information that [...]

Finding a generic set of criteria to assess any the sustainability of any business isn't easy. There's many different frameworks and each of them works best in different contexts (services, products, resource management, etc.). Just watching Cameron juggle them all in his head is kind of impressive. I appreciated this post from Daniel Goleman on Leading Green - Sustainability and the Logic of the Perpetual Upgrade

"But the state-of-the-art comes when a company realizes that no single move or set of changes makes a company "sustainable," but rather that sustainability is a philosophy of continually finding ways to improve the company's ecological

[...]

The Maldives, a small island nation in the Pacific, composed of over nineteen hundred tiny islands, has announced that it's going climate neutral. It plans to switch away from fossil fuels over the next tens years, moving instead towards energy independence through a combination of wind, solar and biomass energy generation. They plan to offset the cost of such a transition through eliminating the expense of importing oil and diesel fuel. They feel that, as a nation that will clearly suffer early on if climate change results in rapidly rising sea levels, they should lead the world in this transition, for their own well being, as well as that of [...]

The past few days as we work on our June launch event, I've been trying to squeeze in time to work on our company sustainability policy, which I've just done a (final?) draft of and which we will discuss some time in the next few days to get consensus. The next part is operationalizing the policy - putting those principals into practice. A while back we came up with a pretty healthy list of possible actions, and now it's my job to turn those ideas into plans with budgets and responsibilities attached. It's pretty exciting, to get down and dirty into the practices and habits that will actually make a difference, and I'm looking forward to getting [...]