SusHI

here comes waterprinting: on footprinting state of practice

Written by Ken
09/20/2008
Maisie Greenawalt went to a conference on Carbon Footprinting & the Supply Chain. Whoopdeedoo! Wot’s the big deal? She took notes! As VP of Bonappetit (same folks who footprinted their cafeteria food), Greenawalt doesn’t necessarily like conferences, but this one was special. It came with 2 days in NYC, and attracted an intriguing mix of industry reps…from [...] Read more...

BAU down to indicators: known knowns by the numbers

Written by Ken
09/17/2008
Business-as-usual (BAU) is the enemy. Step away from the vehicle! This message comes clear is all our conversations about sustainability, yet how do we know when we’ve turned the corner? Town by town around the planet, we’re starting to compile measures of progress toward sustainability goals, and the community indicator movement is blossoming into a major force [...] Read more...

livin’ large was kewl: small is more kewl

Written by Ken
09/17/2008
Sure, I’m biased, ’cause I already switched to small. The Kapa`a treehouse where my wife and I live and work has 500 sf…if you include the deck…which we do…daily. More than enough room, we find, as long as you’re not into stuff piling up. And certainly it’s vastly more green (saved 1 T CO2e). In case ya [...] Read more...

new food footprint tool gives ‘low carb’ diet new meaning

Written by Ken
09/14/2008
Astrid Scholz gets some play with a new calculator that focuses on the carbon footprint of our food (via newscientist). Scholz is an ecological economist at Ecotrust who developed this tool so Bon Appétit Management Company could create a “Low Carbon Diet” for its 400 plus cafeterias in the US. The calculations can become “fiendishly complicated”, says [...] Read more...

Hawaii planners’ conference focuses on sustainability

Written by Ken
09/12/2008
Wot a concept! All of Hawaii’s hundreds of planners converge on a fabulous Maui resort to kickback and open their minds to some new ideas about sustainability. HCPO offered a daunting schedule of brain food, so that I found myself presenting in the ‘relocalization’ session, yet would have preferred catching the ahupua`a session underway in the [...] Read more...

slashing auto dependence with rapid response green fleets

Written by Ken
09/10/2008
Tomorrow I’m off to Maui for the planners conference, where I’ll talk about sustainable transport, energy and food…including a ‘what-if’ called “Kauaian LandLines” which looks a lot like the new TaxiBus coming to London. Sarah Rich writes that a fleet of 20,000 TaxiBuses can handle 8 million daily passenger journeys, versus London’s current taxi fleet (20,000 [...] Read more...

it’s the system, stupid: on fixing how we think

Written by Ken
09/09/2008
So many times, our solutions create more problems, as Amory Lovins reminds us. These “fixes that fail” are just one of the archetypes from systems thinking. If we were more schooled in systems thinking, we would be less likely to fall into these traps. Wanna learn more…to help your own thinking? Try this marvelous resource on “theWay of [...] Read more...

EROI and the energy cliff: guidance for green power

Written by Ken
09/09/2008
We know that all renewable energy sources are at least 10 times better than fossil fuels in their climate impacts. We also know that all renewable energy technologies are already cheaper than oil-based electricity on Kauai. These are important metrics, yet the most important is EROI, the energy return on investment. Nate Hagens writes a wonderful synopsis [...] Read more...

get hooked on my heroine: the Dana Meadows video

Written by Ken
09/08/2008
Wow! Wudja believe this woman had an enormous influence on my life and work, yet I never got to meet her or catch one of her presentations. Now we all can, thanks to the gang at Gund Institute, who have posted video of Donella Meadows’ 1994 classic on envisioning sustainability. From all those years of reading Meadows’ [...] Read more...

the community sphere on Kauai: biz notes equity issues

Written by Ken
09/08/2008
The anti-business news-peg is how editors give Kauai front-page coverage, yet our story is more about how business is done. Here and elsewhere, “early-stage dialogue with communities about development is critical today,” writes Scott Radway (via HIbiz). When good buddy Randal Francisco from Kauai’s Chamber of Commerce touts triple-bottom-line, you know we’re moving into a new era [...] Read more...

you knew Mikulina wasn’t done: bring on Blue Planet

Written by Ken
09/06/2008
When Jeff Mikulina announced his resignation from Hawaii’s Sierra Club, some folks wondered what greater challenge might engage his enormous talent and passion. Now we know: Mikulina is taking the helm at Blue Planet, following their marvelous summit on how to change our world’s energy culture (via PBN). Can’t imagine a better choice, and not just because [...] Read more...

from low-hanging fruit to slim pickings at UPS

Written by Ken
09/06/2008
Squeezing inefficiency from your operations is a quick win to chalk up on your eco scorecard…and then what do you do to keep the great green news coming? Tougher than it seems, as UPS is learning. Sure, this year they got headlines for a huge drop in CO2 emissions, yet look closer and you’ll see some [...] Read more...

resilient towns get a ‘hockey stick’: on tech acceleration

Written by Ken
09/06/2008
Stuff like oil, population and CO2 is going frighteningly exponential, yet there’s a similar trend in “super-empowerment” from the quickening pace of technological change, says John Robb (via globalguerrillas). Robb argues that this change creates a kind of ‘tipping point’ for small groups, “allowing them to accomplish activities normally reserved for large corporations or governments.” Sure, there’s [...] Read more...

honey, I shrunk the kids’ options: on a crash course

Written by Ken
09/02/2008
Green economists have been arguing for several decades that we don’t absolutely have to keep growing in order to develop. I’m a “steady-state” sort myself, and only wish the religion of markets hadn’t gotten us so caught up in growth for growth’s sake. Now, the collapse of our economy is virtually guaranteed because we kept on growing. [...] Read more...

resilience and brittle systems: lessons from the oil shock

Written by Ken
09/02/2008
Whoop-de-do! We’re cutting back on gas purchases and vehicle miles traveled! Ain’t we smart! Not so fast, says Jeff Vail! We’re actually making the economy more brittle in the process (via oildrum). Howzat? By reducing the easy, discretionary demand first, we’re actually becoming more vulnerable, because less discretion means less capacity to absorb shocks, says Vail. The [...] Read more...

to change ways, change minds: on sustainability thinking

Written by Ken
08/29/2008
Humans act like we think. Nothing new about this. Yet, if we’re talking about changing human behavior, we gotta start with how we think. Since sustainability necessitates a whole different way of living on this planet, it follows that we need a whole new way of thinking…Which is why I like to talk about sustainability as [...] Read more...

economists help regulators focus on costs: silly us

Written by Ken
08/27/2008
First came the headsup about weaknesses in the computer models economists use to forecast the impacts of global warming…they’re not worth the bits they’re stored in. For whatever reason (poor science, bad luck, who knows), these computable general equilibrium models simply don’t perform well in predicting what actually happens in our economy. So, when you hear that [...] Read more...

when arctic soils thaw: can you say vicious cycle?

Written by Ken
08/27/2008
Maybe you had to have grown up in Alaska (as I did) to fully appreciate the permafrost phenomenon, yet little did we know how lucky we were that soil stayed frozen. Howzat? As it thaws, we’re seeing vast new quantities of carbon dioxide (not just methane) percolate up into the atmosphere. Just how vast is the focus [...] Read more...

water, water everywhere…in everything we consume

Written by Ken
08/26/2008
You tho’t we were in trouble because we built an industrial ecology on cheap energy? How about ‘free’ water? Turns out, the footprint of our water use is worse than our energy footprint. Dutch researchers found that the ‘virtual water’ required to produce and distribute our stuff is embarrassingly enormous (via worldchanging). Research on the UK’s water [...] Read more...

Kauai launches Green Drinks social networking event

Written by Ken
08/26/2008
Every month all around the world, people who are working toward a greener planet meet up for drinks and informal sessions known as Green Drinks. Now, Gabe Zingaro will host Kauai’s first “Green Drinks” this Friday at Blossoming Lotus restaurant in Kapaa, for a mix of green passion and great networking. That’s not a stretch, since [...] Read more...

waste reduction and import substitution: same same

Written by Ken
08/25/2008
Speaking of food system features we don’t want to reproduce as we shift to more local production…half our food is wasted. Try following food from field to fork and funny things happen. New findings from the International Water Management Institute show as much as 30% of food in the US is thrown away (via celsias). This [...] Read more...

ski resort housing bubble coming with global warming

Written by Ken
08/24/2008
Wudja believe housing prices in ski resorts could drop as much as 24% with global warming of 2°C? That’s just one of the findings reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of SF in a review of research on Regional Variation in the Potential Economic Effects of Climate Change (via econview). The authors looked at research from snow [...] Read more...

fuggedabout red vs. blue states: try purple populism

Written by Ken
08/24/2008
Ever wonder how the political parties manage to split America into two parts, when the vast majority agree on some of the most important issues of the day? Me too! Now, new polling results make clear how unified Americans really are (via YES!mag). And YES! goes beyond the polls to layout “10 Policies for a Better America” [...] Read more...

substituting Hawaii imports while reducing our footprint

Written by Ken
08/23/2008
…More on resurging interest in development strategies for “import substitution”…prompted by comments on my previous post. Note that the same Hawaii imports that rank right up there as ‘substitution’ candidates–energy, transport and food– also loom largest in our ecological footprint. And yup, Hawaii could ‘resurrect’ these substitutes, since it once actually did feed itself (fish, poi, rice), [...] Read more...

sustainability means a positive future: ya think?

Written by Ken
08/23/2008
To change our future, we’re gonna have to change our minds, says Bob Doppelt (via celsias). First, we gotta get over reluctance, rebellion, resignation and rationalization, which Doppelt calls the 4Rs of disinterest. Why? “The future will be powered by sustainable thinking in business, organizations, governments and everyday life” says Doppelt. As Hawaii 2050 says in its initial [...] Read more...

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