Archive for the 'energy' category

Seattle’s Carbon Footprint: Assessing The Assessment

The City of Seattle just released its 2008 greenhouse gas inventory, and in most of the media reports, the results get distilled down to this headline:  Seattle’s emissions are seven percent below 1990 levels. Or perhaps even further distilled to:  Seattle is meeting the Kyoto protocol. Sure sounds good, but the reality is much more […]

The Darth Vader Of Fridays

[ Hanjin container ships unloading at Terminal 46 in Seattle ] Even Adbustsers couldn’t have come up with a better name for today’s national frenzy of consumerism.  Last I checked, the common connotation of the word “black” hasn’t changed since the dawn of human consciousness. The term Black Friday originated with Philadelphia police in reference […]

The Value Of Doomers

Author Paul Hawken has a word for people who can’t shut up about how the whole world is going to hell:  doomers. But during his keynote address to the Sustainable Industries Economic Forum in downtown Seattle on Thursday, he spoke in defense of them.  Because doomers play a key role:  they make designers do a […]

Our Carbon Futures

For those who have recovered from the mayoral primaries, you may have noticed that the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, otherwise known as H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, has moved on to the Senate… and the debate over how best to dilute it is about to start.  The Bill is huge.  It is 1,428 pages of […]