Author: jehren

The results of the Massachusetts Senatorial election are just in. The Republican, Scott Brown, trounced his Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley by about 53% to 47%. This counts as a trouncing given the demographics of Massachusetts and the recent history of this seat. (Disclosure: I am a life-long Democratic voter.) I am disappointed by the results, but that is not what I want to write about. This election demonstrates the complex nature of our political system, and the effects of rigidity on the dynamics of the system. The theory of democracy is that the majority rules unless the process would disenfranchise… Read More

Continue Reading

On last Friday and Saturday, I taught a couple of classes at the Marlboro College MBA for Managing Sustainability in Brattelboro, VT. I’m teaching a course called, “Exploring Sustainability,” to both the entering class and the second-year group, but in separate sessions. I am using my book for the reader. It’s a chance to observe how the book works as a text. This weekend is the first of three “intensives” that will take place during this trimester. Except for these more traditional classes, the course is taught via the internet, using a pedagogical web program called Moodle. > Moodle is… Read More

Continue Reading

I’m back from Pittsburgh and a talk to the first workshop on green chemistry in a series organized by the Rachel Carson Homestead. I haven’t been to Pittsburgh for some decades and still have badly out-of-date memories of the city with its steel mills and other heavy industry. Instead I found a very clean, imposing modern city and enthusiastic attitude about the future. But some things never change. The chief topic of conversation at dinner the night before the talk was a massive project to capture natural gas trapped in the coal deposits in the region by fracturing the strata… Read More

Continue Reading

I’m off today for a short trip to Pittsburgh to speak at a workshop on green chemistry and other topics related to green design. The event is organized and co-sponsored by the Rachel Carson Homestead Association. It’s that connection that made this an attractive invitation. Created in 1975, The mission of the Rachel Carson Homestead Association is to preserve, restore, and interpret Rachel Carson’s birthplace and childhood home; and to design and implement education programs and resources in keeping with her environmental ethic: Live in harmony with nature Preserve and learn from natural places Minimize the effect of man-made chemicals… Read More

Continue Reading

Watch this. It is a remarkable rendering of the choice we have ahead of us.

Continue Reading

Jacob Weisberg has an [interesting piece](http://www.slate.com/id/2240858/) on Slate (Also in Newsweek) pointing to the several “causes” of the economic collapse. > There are no strong candidates for what logicians call a sufficient condition—a single factor that would have caused the crisis in the absence of any others. There are, however, a number of plausible necessary conditions—factors without which the crisis would not have occurred. Most analysts find former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan at fault, though for a variety of reasons. > I am not so much interested in the arguments per se, but in Weisberg’s conclusions about them. Collecting the… Read More

Continue Reading

Orion Magazine, one of my favorites, has a long [interview](http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5227) with Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine. I subscribed to Wired from the start, but dropped it after about a year. Not because of the content. I found the format so off-putting that I had trouble reading it. My friends assured me that disorder was the wave of the future. Reading Kelly’s comments in the interview, I probably would have dropped it at some time because of its contents as well as format. Even granting that Kelly likes to shock people, I found his beliefs about technology not only outsized,… Read More

Continue Reading

The real news out of Copenhagen is that there was very little news. If one looked for news anywhere but the media outlets following climate, sustainability, greening, and other related topics, news of what was going on in Copenhagen was under the radar screen. And much of was found in the general, not just the main stream media, covered the protests and other social aspects. This situation holds for all news about these subjects, not just the proceedings at Copenhagen. The world just isn’t watching. This failure to appreciate the full implications of unsustainability, far beyond the climate change piece,… Read More

Continue Reading

Welcome 2010. I hope you bring better times to the world. As I begin another year of blogging, I am feeling pulled by many conflicting themes and moods. If I am optimistic, do I really believe it? Or if I am pessimistic, am I missing hopeful, but barely visible signs, of improvement and change? What about the cynicism that comes through in spite of attempts to hold it back. In particular, am I being too hard on the greening endeavors of business as a cultural sector? Can I stop my mood swings at merely being skeptical? Even as I start… Read More

Continue Reading

It’s hard to believe, but I have been blogging for over a year. I’m still learning the rhythm and the pace. This has been both an easy and difficult year. It’s been easy to find targets for criticism, irony, or satire. It’s been much harder to find positive trends and events. My Internet feed readers were overwhelmed everyday with incessant ballyhoo about the potential profits to made in “sustainability” In earlier days, “plastics” was the road to riches. At least it propelled Dustin Hoffman to stardom in *The Graduate*. The [year-end summary of the 20 most read](http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/12/29/20-most-popular-stories-2009?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Greenbuzz+%28GreenBiz+Feed%29) (green business) stories… Read More

Continue Reading