As I write this, I am on a five-hour flight from L.A. to New York, e-mailing associates and writing a blog while watching the outcome of the Casey Anthony trial on Direct TV from an altitude of 35,000 feet.  Now, who could have imagined that, even as recently as 15 years ago? Back then, hardly

Over the 4th of July weekend, I made the drive from San Diego to Santa Barbara along a route that offers beautiful views of beaches packed with people seeking relief from the heat wave. Upon arriving, I Googled the ocean news updates, only to find that there were basically none that were current (in fact,

July 4th weekend is an occasion on which I like to do a kind of six-month gut check to reflect on what has gone well and what needs work while barbecuing and spending time with the family. So here are three brief perspectives, one work-related, one global and one personal. More and more, I am

Recently I was privileged to meet with a delegation from three African nations, Ivory Coast, Burkina  Faso and Mali. What is so encouraging is that each of these supposedly “Third World” countries possesses significant raw materials to build an infrastructure from scratch the way it ought to be done, and thus set an example for

For seven years on the Organic Center board of directors, I always tried to sit next to Dr. David Pimental of Cornell. He  has written 42 books and is an expert on energy and agriculture. He would always tell me we will look back at ethanol as the biggest “boondoggle” in American agriculture. This article

As I write this, I have just left the LOHAS conference in Boulder, Colo. early after really struggling with the sessions. I’m not totally sure why, but one thing has become very clear to me, and that is that the idealistic discussions and opinions haven’t changed: big is bad, don’t sell out, why aren’t the

On Father’s Day, my family took me out to dinner at a restaurant that serves grass-fed and finished beef and local wild seafood, only two varieties of which were in season: ling cod and sculpin. This enabled us to discuss matters of sustainability related to food without feeling guilty about what we were eating for

The on-line magazine, GreenBiz.com, carried an article recently by editor Joel Makower alleging that green marketing by companies is, in effect, dead, and two rebuttals from the heads of firms that specialize in motivating consumers to make more beneficial choices.  I won’t bother going into their main arguments here  because the point I’d like to

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkRKeGzXMq8?rel=0] With more than 700 in attendance at last week’s Sustainable Brands Conference in Monterey, Calif., the sessions were as full as I can remember. The energy level seems to be especially high among big brands to be part of this movement. But what, exactly, is the movement? My feeling is that every company

The importance of building bridges in adversarial situations was brought home to me recently by none other than that veteran negotiator, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, with whom I spent some time hanging out during the recent Middle East Economic Future Conference in Doha, Qatar.  Listening to him counsel young Egyptian revolutionaries to sit down and