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The chances of recovery for marine life in English seas have been boosted by the creation of new Marine Conservation Zones, says the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) following the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announcement that it is designating a further 23 Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) in English seas.

Among the newly created MCZs are Cromer Shoal Chalk Beds - the longest chalk reef known in Europe; Farnes East - one of the deepest patches of the North Sea, reaching to between 30-100 metres in depth; Greater Haig Fras - the only substantial area of rocky reef in the Celtic Sea and Mounts Bay covering St Michael's Mount and the Marazion area - home to important species such as seagrass, stalked jellyfish and crayfish.

The new sites bring the total number of MCZs in English sites to 50.

While the MCS highlights that that number is still some way off the original number proposed by the Government’s scientific advisors, sea users and conservation groups five years ago, the Society says it is pleased that the Government appears to be sticking to its commitment to develop a full network of sites, in addition to these 50, with a third and final consultation and designation process due during 2017/18.

Melissa Moore, MCS Head of Policy, says the creation of these latest MCZs marks a step forward in stemming an alarming decline in England’s rich marine biodiversity: “Stunning habitats such as the chalk reefs near Cromer and deep water rocks at Farnes East will now be better protected for future generations as will iconic species such as the ocean quahog, pink sea fan and European eel.”

MCS says designation of sites is just the first step. 

“We’re recommending that the final tranche in 2017 includes South Celtic Deep - a site that supports short-beaked common dolphin -Norris to Ryde, which is rich in seagrass meadows, Mud Hole off the north west coast - 35 metres deep and home to rare sea pens - and Compass Rose off the Yorkshire coast, which is an important spawning and nursery ground for herring and lemon sole. Once the full network is finally designated in 2018, we look forward to English seas beginning to recover from decades of damage," aded Moore.

 

Picture caption: © Acceleratorhams | Dreamstime.com
View towards Mullion and Lizard Point Cornwall from St Michaels Mount

 

When one is walking around Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island with palm trees, white sand beaches and cyan-colored water all in abundance, it is easy to forget that you are in a country that has the 8^th largest oil reserves on the planet.

But oil is certainly on the minds of many of the estimated 33,000 people expected to gather in the UAE’s capital for Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. With the price of crude oil dropping to below $30 a barrel on Friday, there was plenty of chatter analogous to the Donald Trump campaign—how long will this go on, will it drag on longer than what the analysts are saying and what’s going to happen if this scenario will long be our reality. Nevertheless, will low oil prices put the breaks on more sustainable development?

Whether oil continues to drop in price even further, or rise anytime soon, low fossil fuel prices are not dissuading the delegations representing the 150-plus nations who were traipsing around a Saadiyat Island conference center for the annual assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Despite rock bottom oil prices, renewable energy had a banner year in 2015, and much of that growth is occurring in developing nations. The reasons vary: oil may be cheap, but it’s used mostly for transportation (though EV sales are up anyway), while solar and wind is used for electricity generation. Clean energy technologies are becoming far cheaper, which makes makes Bloomberg’s estimate of $329 billion in such investments worldwide last year even more impressive. In poor nations, rich nations, rural areas, cities—renewables are growing everywhere.

And according to Abu Dhabi based-IRENA, investments in renewables should continue, in part because of their long term financial benefits. Within the agency’s latest report, IRENA claims that if renewables can reach 36 percent of the world’s energy portfolio by 2030, that increase could add up to $1.3 trillion, or another 1.1 percent, to the global economy. IRENA reached these figures based on a methodology that largely combines investments in new energy technologies, their multiplier effects and finally, macroeconomic benefits from lower-priced electricity (as in, less money spent on utility bills can go towards the purchase of other goods and services). Such an increase would be a doubling of renewable energy generation from 2010 levels.

Japan would see the largest growth in GDP, but IRENA claims Australia, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, South Africa and Korea would also benefit from GDP growth of at least 1 percent. The number of renewable energy jobs would increase to 24 million in 2030, which would almost triple the estimated 9.2 million people currently within the sector. Many countries, including those in the European Union, as well as Japan, India and Korea, would also benefit from reduced imports of fossil fuels. But such an economic shift would not necessarily harm oil producing countries such as Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria: a more diversified economy, argues IRENA, would also be a long term win for these economies.

IRENA suggests that a transition to a more sustainable, low carbon economy is not just about finances, however. Taking factors into account such as less resource depletion, reduced environmental damage and improved health, IRENA’s researches estimate there would be an additional 3.7 percent in “global welfare.”

Whether this scenario will play out in 15 years is a huge question. Even the IRENA report states its limitations, as in those exogenous factors about about we learned in our economics classes. But beyond the numbers and percentages, this IRENA report succeeds in furthering the case for renewable energy from a business perspective. Now that renewables are far more scalable, more efficient and of course, cheaper, more people are embracing the potential for these low-carbon technologies, especially those from the world of finance.

“Mitigating climate change through the deployment of renewable energy and achieving other socio-economic targets is no longer an either-or equation,” said IRENA’s Director-General Adnan Amin at press conference announcing this study. “It’s a win-win scenario.”

Image credit: IRENA

Disclosure: The expenses for Leon Kaye’s trip to Abu Dhabi was paid for by Masdar

 

 

In the spirit of his State of the Union address earlier this week, President Obama announced today that he would be temporarily suspending most coal mining on public lands. The executive order also called for the Department of Interior to initiate an immediate review of coal operations on federal lands with an eye toward determining “how to ensure American taxpayers are earning a fair return for the use of their public resources." Given that the revenue from the leases benefits the coal companies while parks goers and the general public bear the negative externalities of coal mining and burning, one would expect the review to determine that coal mining on public lands is not in the public's best interests.

The moratorium, which is immediate, is expected to affect:

• All new coal mining except for metallurgical coal (used in steel production)


• Most existing leases for future land use

It does not affect current leases where coal mining is currently happening. The moratorium is expected to last three years, which is the projected length of time it will take to for the department to conduct the review. Current coal mining is expected to sustain production levels for the next two decades.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the president's latest move will allow the country to fully review the impact of coal production on climate change.

"Given serious concerns raised about the federal coal program, we’re taking the prudent step to hit pause on approving significant new leases so that decisions about those leases can benefit from the recommendations that come out of the review,” said Jewell. "During this time, companies can continue production activities on the large reserves of recoverable coal they have under lease." The secretary also said steps were in place to accommodate unforeseen circumstances, such as an emergency, "to ensure this pause [would not have any] material impact on the nation’s ability to meet its power generation needs.”

On Wednesday, the president called for the country to revisit the way it was investing in energy production.

"Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future—especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels,” and promised to take further steps to encourage that change. “That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.”

Today's announcement is more bad news for the coal sector, which is already feeling the impacts of declining investment in the fossil fuel industry. The use of coal for electricity production has been declining in recent decades. In 2008, 50 percent of the nation's energy was produced in coal-fired plants. By 2015, that number had dropped to just over 33 percent, heralding increasing calls for a review of the use of public lands for coal production.

“We haven’t undertaken a comprehensive review of the program in more than 30 years" Secretary Jewell noted last Friday, "and we have an obligation to current and future generations to ensure the federal coal program delivers a fair return to American taxpayers and takes into account its impacts on climate change.”

About 40 percent of coal is mined on federal lands. Much of it is in Wyoming, Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and many companies have been finding it increasingly more difficult to stay in business. Arch Coal, based out of St. Louis, MO is the latest company to declare bankruptcy in response to declining revenues.

A 2014 Government Accountability Office study called into question the market value of the contracts on federal lands, and whether those conducted on Bureau of Land Management lands offer adequate transparency for public review.

Image: Max Phillips/Jeremy Buckingham MLC/Image Library

 

 

Take a break from those endless email threads and spend five minutes catching up on the latest trends in sustainability and business with the latest 3p Weekend.

Another day, another public health crisis brought on by a corporate or government screw-up. If it feels like you've been reading more of these stories lately, that's probably because you have.

In each of these events, all of which hit the headlines over the past two years alone, the shirking of government and corporate responsibility went beyond the shameful and into the dangerous and deadly. It's happening with frightening regularity, as infrastructures continue to age and companies and governments employ unproven means to boost revenue following the economic downturn.

As we move into 2016, let's be sure we don't forget the environmental and social lessons learned by these ethical horror stories. Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.

Three months later, gas leak is still sickening LA County residents

Nearly three months ago, a pipe ruptured beneath one of the nation’s largest natural gas storage facilities, located near the Porter Ranch community of Los Angeles County. Since then, schools have closed and thousands of residents have fled their homes with a variety of health problems, including headaches, nosebleeds, vomiting and nausea.

The ongoing leak prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency earlier this month. News accounts indicate about 2,000 people were evacuated before the declaration, but some reports anticipate that the entire Porter Ranch population of 30,000 will eventually be relocated. The company that owns the storage facility, Southern California Gas, says it may not be able to stop the leak until February or March.

The case attracted the attention of Erin Brockovich, who told CNN the problem can be traced to the 50s-era well itself — and the fact that the company never replaced a safety valve that was removed in 1979.

Oklahoma earthquake swarms baffle local lawmakers

A swarm of more than 70 small earthquakes rattled Oklahoma in the second week of 2016. The quakes thankfully resulted in few injuries, but plenty of locals were left scratching their heads. In recent years this once-quiet region has cemented its reputation as the most earthquake-prone in the entire world.

The U.S. Geological Survey pinned some of the blame on the practice of injecting massive quantities of wastewater from oil and gas drilling operations underground.

As 3p correspondent Tina Casey points out, firmly establishing cause and effect has been a difficult task. But evidence is mounting "that links injection wells (and, in rare cases, fracking itself) with earthquakes in populated areas, once again calling into question whether the oil and gas industry — a mature industry with generations of experience and research under its belt — is sufficiently prepared to safely expand its operations," she posited on 3p last week.

DuPont's negligence in West Virginia is back in the news

For decades, chemical giant DuPont knowingly allowed a cancer-causing chemical (Perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA), used in the manufacture of Teflon, to pollute the air and drinking water in West Virginia. The story popped back into our newsfeeds this week after a detailed account in the most recent New York Times Magazine.

Years after the practice was uncovered and made public, the company finally discontinued its use of the toxin. Yet, as 3p legal correspondent Michael Kourabas points out, "the health effects of the replacement chemical are unknown, and DuPont has paid a meager price — in both dollars and publicity — for the harm it has caused and may still be causing."

And, he continued, it's already too little too late: Some studies indicate that we may already have as much as 5,000 times more PFOA in our blood than is considered safe to ingest.

Drinking water woes continue in Flint, Michigan

The city of Flint, Michigan, population 100,000, has been dealing with water problems since April, 2014, when the state decided to switch its water source to the Flint River to save money. Within months of the switch, pediatricians reported elevated levels of lead in their young patients. By December 2015, the anticipated number of cases in some zip codes reached 15 percent.

Earlier this month, the newly-elected mayor of Flint, Karen Weaver, declared a state of emergency in an attempt to deal with the crisis. 3p correspondent Jan Lee explains: "Records now suggest that the Michigan Health Department knew there could be a health risk from the new water source. Some researchers suggest the responsibility for the crisis goes deeper than that."

All signs point to negligent landlords in Chicago

As 3p's Jan Lee points out, Flint isn't alone in its lead-poisoning crisis. Chicago, where the walls in many older apartment buildings and homes are still covered in lead paint, has four times the number of reported lead poisonings than the national average.

Although federal law makes it illegal for a landlord or a seller to rent or sell property that could pose a risk of lead poisoning, the problem still persists, with some lower-income areas showing a higher incidence.

Underground fire near St. Louis nuclear waste dump burns on

A fire has been slowly burning beneath a landfill near St. Louis, Missouri, for five years. The landfill in question is less than a quarter of a mile away from 8,700 tons of radioactive barium sulfate left over from the federal government’s Manhattan Project.

In October, an above-ground fire occurred at the landfill -- highlighting the site's ongoing problems. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is fighting a legal battle to get the landfill site cleaned up. He even filed a lawsuit against the landfill’s owner, Republic Services, 3p's Gina-Marie Cheeseman reports.

Yellowstone River prompts state of emergency

Last January, residents in the town of Glendive, Montana, were told not to drink their water after an oil pipeline broke, dumping an estimated 50,000 gallons of Bakken light crude into the Yellowstone River.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock declared a state of emergency in response to the spill, but he assured residents that the river would be cleaned up by Bridger Pipeline, LLC, the Wyoming-based company that owns the pipeline, 3p's Jan Lee reports.

Chemical spill brings West Virginia's capitol to a standstill

In early 2014, evidence of 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol (MCHM), a foaming agent that is used to clean coal of impurities, was picked up by a water distribution plant in Charleston, West Virginia.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomlin declared a state of emergency, and officials scrambled to alert some 300,0000 residents of the pollution and to close access to drinking water. The spill closed schools, stopped commercial flights and converted the state capitol’s downtown core to a “ghost town,” 3p's Jan Lee reports.

Nearly a year later, the U.S. Attorney General’s office indicted four owners and operators of Freedom Industries, the chemical company linked to the spill.

Coal ash pollutes drinking water in Virginia and North Carolina

As you may remember, Duke Energy found itself in a heap of hot water in early 2014. In February, a coal ash containment pond at the North Carolina-Virginia border failed, spewing sludge that polluted some 70 miles of the Dan River. Then, in March, North Carolina investigations revealed that the company illegally pumped 61 million gallons of coal ash into a tributary of the Cape Fear River, a local source for drinking water.

In February of last year, three U.S. attorney’s offices and the Department of Justice Environmental Crimes section, filed charges against Duke Energy for dumping waste in a string of events that date back to at least 2010.

Train derailments, fires prompt questions about safety

In early 2015, two cargo train accidents sparked a debate about crude oil transport. More than 60 people were evacuated from their homes in the small town of Montgomery, West Virginia, after a CSX train carrying crude to a refinery derailed and caught fire. One house was destroyed, and the town’s drinking water was contaminated by an oil spill. Another oil train traveling through eastern Canada burst into flames when it derailed in a forested area near Timmins, Ontario.

The accidents -- which occurred within 48 hours of each other -- prompted questions about whether crude oil shipments have a place on the rails that pass through America’s small towns.

 

By highlighting the recent rash of human health crises, we hope to remind readers that we still have a long way to go in making every business a responsible business.

Image credit: Earthworks

By Jerome Peribere

Last month, we saw the historic results from the COP21 climate conference in Paris, and in a few days business and government leaders will be assembling in Davos to continue these critical discussions.

At COP21, government leaders convened and agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, place a larger focus on temperature increases, and pledge $100 billion a year to help developing countries meet these goals. In Davos, topics including carbon emissions, water, protecting resources and deforestation are all on the schedule of panels.

These are important starts.

Climate change, along with other global trends such as population growth, urbanization, and food and water scarcity, have created – and will continue to create – significant resource challenges for the whole world.  Meeting these challenges will require all of us to be more resourceful moving forward.

We use the word “resourceful” on purpose. Its double meaning of: 1) protecting our natural resources; and 2) approaching resources with fresh thinking will both be particularly important.

Sealed Air is committed to the principles espoused in the COP21 agreement and -- as CEO of a company that deals with packaging, chemicals and plastics -- I feel we must play a leading role in establishing action to address climate change.

In many senses, we’ve already started, and I am committing our company to do even more in the coming years.

Time is short to make some of these meaningful changes. The global population is expected to reach more than 9 billion by 2050, and more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, with urbanization and rising incomes expected to continue to increase in the future – further straining resources.

The Paris Agreement is made up of goals, not requirements, and it's up to my fellow business leaders and me to press aggressively forward. Many of the things we have launched at Sealed Air are helping us achieve our goals, but it cannot be done alone or in a vacuum.

It’s incumbent on companies of every size around the world to take an honest look at how they are using resources such as energy and water and begin the process of re-imagining their operations, supply chains, and shipping and distribution networks.

Doing so will not only help ease the strain on the world’s resources, but also enhance the efficiencies and bottom line of companies’ operations by reducing water and energy usage and taking out costs.

Our sustainability strategy is centered on greenhouse gas reductions, reducing operating costs and risk, and generating value through solutions that reduce waste, conserve energy and water, and optimize the use of raw materials for our customers.

Access to clean, safe water is a major challenge further complicated by global warming.  Many of our products are already creating positive change in this area.  Without better drinking water, better cleaning procedures and products, and better care of our existing resources, little else will matter.

By partnering with a number of our clients we have started to see some encouraging results:

• A solution for India: Water safety and sanitation is a major consideration for our clients in India. Our Diversey Care team has supplied a number of new cleaning procedures and products to the Sofitel Mumbai hotel to cut the environmental impact of its cleaning. One came from introducing a new laundry detergent that worked equally well at lower temperatures and contained fewer chemicals. In just a year, it has reduced water consumption by 42 percent, effluent by 42 percent and extended linen life up to 30 percent.


• Clean brewing: Brazil Kirin, one of the largest Brazilian breweries, has been a Food Care client for more than 10 years and needed help increasing the availability of its plants – especially during cleaning periods. By using our Divosan Uniforce System, the company is now able to carry out its cleaning in a single step, reaching all objectives. This new process has cut water use by 50 percent, effluent emissions by 32 percent and energy use by 56 percent.

Part of making a global difference comes from better sharing our results internally and spreading the news to multiple locations. Not every project in India will work in Indiana or Istanbul. But some will.

So, where do we go from here?

Sealed Air is not just reducing our clients’ global impact; we are also finding better ways to leverage our own use of resources.

This June, we announced our 2020 Sustainability Goals, detailing commitments for our own operations, our products and the communities we serve. Also, I am making a commitment to publish the sustainability, or carbon impact, of all our products and solutions.

Our product packaging preserves resources by eliminating damage in transit, reducing returns, and ensuring that delivery space are optimized; our food packaging is eliminating waste around the globe; and our Diversey Care business is all about conserving water and energy resources in our customers' operations.

We believe by continuing to innovate and focus on how we use resources, we will be able to reduce our footprint, slash our greenhouse gas emissions and achieve the goals stated at COP21.

By so doing, we will be a better partner in protecting our environment and a better steward of the Earth’s limited resources.

Image credit: Pixabay 

Jerome Peribere is the President and  CEO of Sealed Air

When you turn a corporate social responsibility lens on the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, the influence of the conservative lobbying organization ALEC comes into sharp focus.

ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is a Koch-funded organization. So, it should be no surprise that the occupiers have articulated their mission in the libertarian terms favored by the billionaire Koch brothers, and that their actions mimic the libertarian ideal as expressed by the novelist Ayn Rand in her 1957 work, "Atlas Shrugged"

ALEC is not shy about pushing 10th Amendment "states-rights" legislation, so it's also no surprise that the Republican National Committee has also gotten behind the idea that federal land should be turned over to the private sector. With that in mind, let's see how the occupiers have interpreted the inspirational message of the hero of "Atlas Shrugged," John Galt.

CSR lessons from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

Before we get to Galt, here's a brief recap of the Malheur situation. Early this month, a group of heavily armed men took over a building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. The group is headed by Ammon Bundy, the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. The elder Bundy gained fame in 2014 by deploying men with guns to fend off federal agents who had come to enforce legal action relating to the rancher's longtime refusal to pay grazing fees on public land.

The elder Bundy has explicitly cited the ALEC "states-rights" argument for justifying what amounts to theft of public resources, but none of that seemed to bother those who spoke out in his defense, including Republican legislators.

In contrast, virtually all of those legislators have condemned the younger Bundy's action to one degree or another, and a CSR analysis of the Malheur takeover reveals why: He failed to articulate a clear message and to take into account the complex network of stakeholder interests in and around the Malheur Refuge, alienating virtually every local stakeholder and quite a few outsiders, too, including the very politicians who supported his father.

Going Galt in Harney County

That brings us up to the latest events, and to John Galt. You can find any number of intensive analyses of the character, but for our purposes the Cliffs Notes version will do:

"He functions rationally, holding an undeviating allegiance to reality that his most honest judgment grasps. Galt's life embodies a proactive eagerness to seek out truth and an inviolable willingness to accept it, no matter its content. He recognizes that man can only achieve success and happiness by revering reality."

Did you spot the massive character flaw? Situational reality is not something that you can pick up and examine like a rock. It consists of fluid moments in time, and everyone in the situation has a different perspective of what's going on, even if they agree with each other.

Acting unilaterally, with full force, on your own version of reality is going to have some unforeseen consequences unless you are the fictional creation of a ideologically-driven author, in which case your powerful intellect enables you to overcome all obstacles and propel the situation in your chosen direction, which, naturally, is the right direction.

That may be a good working model for extremely wealthy and powerful people like the Koch Brothers, but it is clearly not working for Ammon Bundy. Again looking through the CSR lens, it appears that Ammon Bundy has no idea what exactly is going to happen when he acts, because he has no situational control.

Here's the damage in the last few days:

Ammon Bundy sent out a call for supplies and did receive many useful things, but a lot of the attention has been going to his requests for items like tampons and tobacco products, and to the many sex toys he received, because one of his group put it all on YouTube.

Ammon Bundy loudly announced that he was going to tear down a fence on federal land at the request of a rancher, apparently to spark a confrontation with law enforcement. The confrontation never materialized, and the rancher has denied that he ever requested anything. As reported at KTVZ.com, the rancher "says he works with federal officials on land management and his employees have repaired the fence."

Ammon Bundy sent out a call for supporters to come to the area, and promptly had to convince some of them to leave because their "long guns" were sending the wrong message. They left but others have come, and the new influx of armed, geared-up outsiders has added to the existing tensions and reports of harassment, prompting another wave of calls from local residents for the occupiers to leave.

One arrival -- the group's new "resident computer expert" -- is either a fan of Hitler and ISIS, or he is comfortable using Hitler and ISIS to express sarcasm; either way, he hasn't exactly burnished Ammon Bundy's leadership credentials.

Relatedly, Ammon Bundy has also called for a "common law grand jury," drawing even more outsiders into the situation and further undermining his own "states rights" platform. The new arrival, a computer shop owner from Colorado, titled himself "United States at Superior Court Judge," a position that appears to exist only in his own mind.

Declare victory and leave

As of this writing, Ammon Bundy finally appears to have at least partially grasped the reality that local stakeholders really, truly want him to go home. He has organized a town meeting on the evening of Friday, Jan. 15, to describe his exit strategy, to be held at the Memorial Building at the Harney County Fairgrounds.

Or, maybe not. Apparently a request went out to book the hall, prompting this Jan. 13 press release from Harney County Judge Steve Grasty, in full:

"Harney County has a longstanding practice of allowing community groups to use county facilities. Unfortunately, we have come to a place where the county must deny use of those facilities to any group associated with, supportive of or on behalf of the armed militants at the Refuge. The county does not take this action lightly. The Harney County message to the armed militia remains steadfast, 'Please go home to your families.'"

From a CSR perspective, it's hard to imagine any more complete and total failure.

To bring the irony full circle, take another look at the vintage photo at the top of this article. Those militarily-organized men are on their way to Malheur, not as armed occupiers but as a "peacetime army." They are part of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which conducted multiple conservation and improvement projects at the refuge in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

Image (screenshot, cropped): via U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

2015 was a big year for shareholder activism against oil and gas companies. Less than a month in, 2016 is looking like it will be even bigger. And methane is the next target.

This is according to news from Bloomberg, which reported that 21 American oil and gas companies have already faced shareholder regulations on environmental and social policies this year.

We all know about consumer action against companies and how effective it can be. Shareholder activism is another tool for persuading companies to be good. So is recognizing that, as shareholders, we actually hold power over a company and can influence its actions directly. Most major oil and gas companies in the U.S. are publicly traded and thus subject to the rules and regulations that govern such companies, and are directly accountable to shareholders.

In fact, this is a recent shift for environmental advocates who, traditionally, confronted corporations from the outside or relied on government enforcement. In 2001, there were only six shareholder resolutions related to climate, according to Ceres. Last year, there were 167.

In one of the biggest last year, a majority of BP shareholders voted for a resolution on climate change at their annual meeting. Other successes include getting commodities giant ADM to commit to a deforestation policy and pressing Starbucks to follow through on its recycling commitments.

There are networks today that directly work with investors to empower them to push for change within companies. One such network is The Shareholder Activist, which, according to its website, gives investors the “tools, tactics and techniques to more fully exercise your rights as an equity stakeholder of a publicly traded corporation.”

This year, activist investors are targeting methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is estimated to be 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and much of it comes from oil and gas drilling operations, including fracking. Reducing methane in the atmosphere would make a big difference in greenhouse warming in the short term, and it is a key part of President Barack Obama's climate plans.

According to an Environmental Defense Fund report released last year, “The 20-year climate impact of methane escaping from oil and gas operations worldwide is equal to the carbon dioxide emissions from 40 percent of total global coal combustion.” This is huge.

Moreover, the impacts will only increase if we follow business as usual. Without action, EDF estimated that methane emissions will increase 23 percent by 2030, more than CO2 emissions as projected by the International Energy Agency.

“Unless methane emissions from oil and natural gas systems are taken into account, the overall greenhouse gas benefits of natural gas will be overestimated,” said Kate Larsen, the report’s lead author, in a press statement.

Expect to hear more news at shareholder meetings across the country as the campaign to reduce methane emissions ramps up. With the Paris Agreement signed, there's no better time than now.

Image credit: Katrina Tuliao via Wikimedia

By Dr. Robin Ganzert

The E. coli, salmonella and norovirus outbreak dramas at Chipotle have caused concern for consumers and delivered a shock to the company’s stock price. The burrito chain known for “Food with Integrity” apologized and promised reforms of how it processes and prepares food. But the multiple foodborne-illness incidents cast doubt on the brand and the wholesome image it has worked so hard to create.

Regaining consumer trust will be difficult. For a company that marketed itself on transparency, Chipotle still hasn’t been able to determine what exactly happened. It is, however, opening up about precisely how it plans to make changes, down to details such as putting onions in boiling water or dicing tomatoes in centralized food-processing facilities. In time, if there are no further illnesses tied to Chipotle, customer trust may come back.

But there’s another issue at Chipotle: Its animal welfare policies. Certainly, the company says its animals are treated well. But some consumers may now be reluctant to give it the benefit of the doubt. Chipotle’s rating on the YouGov BrandIndex, for instance, fell from a net positive to a steep negative following one of the outbreaks.

Given Chipotle’s situation, there’s an easy solution: Turn to third-party verification.

Just as Chipotle hired outside food safety consultants to help improve its food safety, it should turn to outside experts to demonstrate to the public that its animal wellbeing standards are similarly well-founded.

Customers generally don’t trust corporations to evaluate themselves, and for good reason. It’s an obvious conflict of interest due to profit incentives. You wouldn’t trust Ford to certify that its cars were better than Toyota’s — you’d rely on a neutral observer with clear standards.

That’s why the popularity of third-party humane certification has increased dramatically in recent years. Before it went mainstream, Chipotle recognized and marketed on the humane treatment of animals. Many other food providers have since joined in; this year alone has seen major brands like Taco Bell announce that they will only serve cage-free eggs in the future, for example.

But Chipotle has maintained unverifiable standards. The company does disclose what it looks for from producers on its website. But there’s no way for consumers to know whether that’s really the case. While Chipotle may have been given the benefit of the doubt in the past, it’s not getting a free pass any longer.

Consider one incident from the past year. Last January, Chipotle said it was dropping a major pork supplier due to animal welfare concerns, even though this would mean a shortage of carnitas at a third of its restaurants. The positioning seemed to put Chipotle on the moral high ground: It cared so much about the issue that it was willing to forgo pork sales.

But a report surfaced that the real reason was more circumstantial: The pork farmer didn’t want to give outdoor access to his hogs, as Chipotle wanted, because it would have exposed them to extreme wind chill and harsh winter weather. This side of the story would certainly paint Chipotle’s high-mindedness in a different light, and potentially expose its brand to more criticism. So does the fact that Chipotle has since switched to a new pork supplier in the U.K., which is hardly the “local” food that people associate with the chain.

Restaurant companies are not always the best arbiters of what’s best for animals. Restaurants are trying to sell burritos and bolster their brands. That’s why third-party certification was developed. Such programs harness the expertise of farmers and animal welfare experts while avoiding conflicts of interest. For instance, the American Humane Association’s certification program, the oldest and largest in the country, is backed by a scientific advisory committee that counts veterinarians, animal scientists and ethicists as contributors.

Any brand, even those regarded as socially conscious, can find themselves questioned or even under attack. It’s important for any food provider to show that they are in line with society’s values. And since 95 percent of Americans support the humane treatment of farm animals raised for food, this is an important area of concern for forward-looking companies.

Chipotle has been a leader in the past, and when it comes to animal welfare, it has an opportunity to do so again.

Image credit: Flickr/Steven Depolo

Dr. Robin Ganzert is President and CEO of American Humane Association, the country's first national humane organization.

By Lynn Scarlett

As 2016 gets underway, many of us are discussing resolutions – those well-meaning promises we make to ourselves that often end up inducing guilt as we struggle to keep them.  As I reflect on this new year, however, I find myself intrigued by the other type of resolution I noticed over the holiday season: the wide-screen, high-definition televisions or new smartphones with increasingly precise cameras and displays.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, much of the attention was paid to an emerging television technology, called '4K,' representing the latest advancements in high-definition viewing.  These new TVs offer screens with two times the vertical resolution and twice the horizontal resolution of current high-definition TVs.

Getting a new television or smartphone with these new screens can feel like getting your vision corrected. The images you look at are sharper, and the colors are more vibrant. Everything looks more real, in part because the image is at a higher resolution – there are more pixels, and therefore the overall quality of the image you’re looking at is higher, and you can see everything better than you did before. Now, when you watch that football game or that epic science-fiction movie or that documentary showing the largest Arctic glacial calving ever recorded on film, it’s almost like you’re there.

So, when I say that in 2016 we have a new resolution for climate change, what I mean is that we have a new clarity: a much sharper view of what a low-carbon future might be like and how to get there. As President Barack Obama noted in his State of the Union address this week, wind power in many areas is cheaper than conventional power, and solar now employs more people in this country than coal -- and in higher-paying jobs to boot. New technologies are leading to new actions and commitments from governments and companies.

Every day, we are adding to the “climate of innovation” – the new wave of techniques and technologies being developed to reduce emissions and address impacts. For example, scientists are using new GPS technology to understand the daily changes in deforestation in the Amazon, and using new ocean-mapping technology to see the effects of coastal resilience on the U.S. East Coast.  New approaches are being suggested, like adapting the service-oriented business models of Uber and Spotify to increase uptake of energy efficiency. These ideas are being shared between governments and in the private sector.

As a consequence, the options for clean energy here in the U.S. are reaching levels never before seen.  The ability to choose your own energy generation source and have clean, affordable, reliable energy allows everyone to see his or her life through a new lens. The cost reductions, electricity market deregulation and financial creativity of the last 15 years have combined to produce more accessible renewable products for consumers.

With all this change, it’s no wonder that the public’s attitudes are changing, too, more clearly recognizing the bright future ahead.  A recent study by the New Climate Economy, an international project led by former Mexican President Felipe Calderón and British economist Nicholas Stern, reviewed more than 430,000 English-language social media posts between 2013 and the end of COP21 on Dec. 12, 2015.  Their analysis showed huge uptick — on the order of 700 percent — in the discussion of economic co-benefits of addressing global warming while boosting economic growth.

The boldest step in 2015 was the Paris Agreement on climate change, reached by more than 180 nations, which have now committed themselves to lower emissions and limiting climate impact.  This bottom-up approach enables nations to pursue their own commitments, based on the respective needs and abilities of their infrastructure, while still contributing to a common cause that will hopefully see the world stay on a path toward a 1.5 Celsius degree temperature increase or less. The specificity of the commitments from the participating nations brings an increased clarity, an ability to understand precisely what we can achieve with current commitments and what remains to be done.

The idea behind a resolution is empowerment, using the new energy of a new year to tackle a problem that until now we’ve had trouble mastering, whether that’s getting fit or eating healthy or turning off the television. As we look to 2016, I encourage everyone to take a few moments to reflect on that other type of resolution.  We’ve gained a clearer vision of how to address the challenges of climate change, by empowering individuals, policymakers, and the private sector. Together, we have a great opportunity to step up and help shift the world towards a low-carbon future.

Lynn Scarlett, Global Managing Director for Public Policy at The Nature Conservancy. In this role, she directs policy in the United States and the 35 countries in which the Conservancy operates with a focus on climate and nature- based solutions. Most recently, she was the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Lynn also served at Interior as the Acting Secretary of the Interior in 2006. 

By Kyle G. Crider

“'Come on up with me,' he said. 'It’s raining already.' In fact it was, the endless warm drizzle of spring — the ice of Antarctica, falling softly on the heads of the children of those responsible for melting it.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

For those who think that Al Gore invented global warming (as well as the Internet), it no doubt will come as quite a surprise — should such folk actually manage to break out of their filter bubbles and read this article — that humans have known about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) for almost 200 years.

A National Geographic piece, Why Is the Man Who Predicted Climate Change Forgotten?, names Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) as a founding father of global warming science. The Guardian names George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) as the author of “the 1847 lecture that predicted human-induced climate change.” NASA likewise reminds us, “The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.”

As for the other AGW-related things we have learned — and when we learned them — physicist and historian Spencer Weart has published a handy timeline and other supplemental material to augment his book, “The Discovery of Global Warming.”

Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick relates in his HuffPo piece, Climate Science in 1956 and 2015: “Despite the apparent inability of many of our current policy makers to accept the scientific reality of climate change, the science is not new. Fifty-nine years ago, on Oct. 28, 1956, the New York Times ran a story in their Science in Review section entitled ‘Warmer climate on the earth may be due to more carbon dioxide in the air.'”

In 1958, famed director Frank Capra shot "The Unchained Goddess," one of The Bell Laboratory Science Series shown on American TV and later in U.S. classrooms. As related by Open Culture, one of the narrators declares:

"Even now, man may be unwittingly changing the world’s climate through the waste products of its civilization. Due to our releases in factories and automobiles every year of more than six billion tons of carbon dioxide, which helps the air absorb heat from the sun, our atmosphere may be getting warmer."

When asked if this is bad, the narrator explains:

"Well, it’s been calculated a few degrees rise in the Earth’s temperature would melt the polar ice caps. And if this happens, an inland sea would fill a good portion of the Mississippi valley. Tourists in glass bottom boats would be viewing the drowned towers of Miami through 150 feet of tropical water. For in weather, we’re not only dealing with forces of a far greater variety than even the atomic physicist encounters, but with life itself."

Then, as the Guardian reminds us, in November 1965 climate scientists summarized the risks associated with rising carbon pollution in a report for Lyndon Baines Johnson – and debunked a number of myths that climate deniers still parrot to this day:

"Only about one two-thousandth of the atmosphere and one ten-thousandth of the ocean are carbon dioxide. Yet to living creatures, these small fractions are of vital importance … Within a few short centuries, we are returning to the air a significant part of the carbon that was slowly extracted by plants and buried in the sediments during half a billion years."

While our current bout of AGW is definitely not being driven by the sun, one of its solutions definitely is. Obtaining clean, renewable energy from the sun means never having to say we’re sorry for wrecking our planetary life-support systems with greenhouse gas overload. Solar-powered electricity is a product of the photovoltaic (PV) effect, discovered by French physicist A. E. Becquerel in 1839. Over a hundred years later, PV solar panels were used to power a spacecraft — the Vanguard 1 satellite, launched by the U.S. in 1958.

But our use of the sun, from passive architecture to active power, goes much further back than that. John Perlin’s excellent post, Let It Shine: The 6000 Year Story of Solar Energy, is a tour-de-force that begins in China around 6,000 BC. Here are Perlin’s first ten chapters of sun-inspired history:

• Section I. Early Use of the Sun


• Chapter 1: Solar Architecture in Ancient China (6000 BC -)


• Chapter 2: Solar Architecture in Ancient Greece (500 BC-100 BC)


• Chapter 3: Roman Solar Architecture (100 BC-500 AD)


• Chapter 4: Burning Mirrors (1000 BC-1800)


• Chapter 5: Heat for Horticulture (1500s-1800s)


• Chapter 6: Solar Hot Boxes (1767-1800s)


• Section II. Power From The Sun


• Chapter 7: The First Solar Motors (1860-1880)


• Chapter 8: Two American Pioneers (1872-1904)


• Chapter 9: Low-Temperature Solar Motors (1885 - 1915)


• Chapter 10: The First Practical Solar Engine (1906-1914)

But wait, there’s more … In fact, Perlin is not even half-way through his account of solar history.

Like the protagonist of Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven, the future can be shaped by us, for good or ill. So go solar, save the planet. You’ll find yourself in good company — with lots of history.

Image credits: 1) Flickr/Christopher Michel 2) and 3) Wikimedia Commons

Kyle G. Crider is the Energy Project Manager for the Alabama Environmental Council and the Alabama Solar Knowledge project. Kyle holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies and a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree with a double-emphasis in Urban Planning & Policy Analysis. He is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional, Neighborhood Development (LEED AP ND).