Getting to Green

Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bill Gates (or, at least, Microsoft). Cisco and Philips, SAS and IKEA, Rajendra Pachauri and Gro Harlem Brundtland. What they have in common is called Sustainia. And what that attempts to be isn't common at all right now, but aspires to be so in the future. The near future.

This morning, I happened to hear a story on NPR about peer-to-peer car-sharing. Folks (those mentioned in the story were university students) become members of an organization. Some join to be able to rent privately-owned cars on an hourly basis, others to make their personal vehicles available in return for up to 60% of rental fees. The central organization (company) takes care of member screening (for credit-worthiness, a clean driving record, etc.) and all the administrative overhead.

Dave Newport (UC-Boulder) posted to his blog at ridiculous-o'clock this morning, reiterating his perception that a key reason environmentalism hasn't had much effect is that it's given its social justice component short shrift. Dave's point is valid, but I see it as merely one example of something Naomi Klein comments on in a recent interview in the journal Solutions.

That's not the amount of CO2 you emit each and every, but it might just be the amount you're responsible for.

"Greenwashing", of course, is the practice of ascribing supposed sustainable qualities to a product or service for purposes of boosting market share. It's increasingly prevalent, and I generally just ignore it. But today, two examples totally gob-smacked me.

Dave Newport has a really good (if really long) blog post here. His underlying question, to over-simplify, is how we can make the campus sustainability more about people and less about the environment.

Sometimes I'm so stupid I could kick myself. Of course, before that kicking urge comes on, I have to realize my own stupidity -- have to, at least somewhat, realize my previous error. What triggered this personal epiphany (if that's the right word -- it wasn't a real "AHA!" moment, more like "ahhhh . . . . ummm . . . hunh?") was an advertising sign on the top of a taxi cab. The sign advertised a pizza place called "Paisano's", and my son asked me what the term "paisano" meant.

Over at the Chronicle, Scott Carlson had a really good article a couple of days back. Based on the observations of a number of faculty members on different campuses, he suggests that our education system tends to segregate us from how the physical objects we deal with really work, get made, could be improved.