NEWSBYZACHARY SHAHAN

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI -- pronounced Reggie) is something I care a lot about. It was the first cap-and-trade initiative in the United States and has been highly successful. Of course, anything that's successful at encouraging clean energy and energy efficiency, and thus slowing catastrophic climate change, is heftily attacked by the Tea Party and it's number one funder, Koch Industries. And RGGI is no exception.

If you're not familiar with the Koch brothers, they are two of the richest people in the world (tied for 5th-richest in the United States) and have made most of their money off of oil and gas. They are strongly opposed to government regulations on polluters (or anything) and fund the some of the largest Tea Party and far-right-wing groups in the nation. The idea that the Tea Party is a grassroots movement is a joke -- it is a Koch Industries movement geared at making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Greenpeace exposed the Koch brothers and their anti-environmental efforts last year and, since that time, I think nearly every major media outlet has picked up on the story. But the Koch Brothers and their front groups (most notably, Americans for Prosperity) haven't slowed in their efforts to undermine clean energy, energy efficiency, and climate action.

Some people (and companies) are really slow to learn. Facebook had the perfect setup -- over half a million cheerleaders, the help of clean energy experts at Greenpeace, and even the Executive Director of Greenpeace ready to help it go green and ween itself off coal. Supporters of the "Unfriend Coal" campaign creamed the world record for comments on a Facebook post in a 24-hour time frame with over 80,000 comments, showing that Facebook users want the internet giant to cut the coal.

But Facebook dropped the ball. Instead of making big announcements about how it would be cleaning up its own act, it focused on everyone else, with the announcement of a “Billion Acts of Green" Facebook app. Great app! Great project! But no word on switching from coal to clean, renewable energy, and that's what's really needed from Facebook. Facebook also announced its Open Compute Project, which could help other server and data centers to cut their energy use significantly, but with fast-growing energy demands, no amount of energy efficiency is going to make up for the IT industry's or Facebook's addiction to coal.

The Cerrado, a rare and beautiful ecosystem in Brazil, isn't a place that many people have heard about, despite the fact that it contains approximately 5 percent of life on Earth. That may be why its rapid destruction is falling under the radar.

Largely due to the growth of commercial agriculture (and, in particular, soy.. or 'soya' if you're in the UK), the Cerrado is disappearing faster than the Brazilian Amazon. Soy products from soy grown in this region are consumed by people and livestock around the world.

Think you're not contributing because you don't eat tofu? Well, 80% of soy crop is fed to livestock, and to chickens especially.

A representative of WWF UK filled me recently on the organization's efforts to save the Cerrado, and I learned that there is a lot that can be done to protect this ecosystem. You also can learn more about the Cerrado in the beautiful and interesting hand shadow film below or on WWF.

What can you do about all of this?

Back in October, I wrote about why more business schools should include sustainability programs as a key part of their curricula. One of the leading international business school accreditation associations, the EFMD, based in Brussels, has been helping to do just that: encouraging business schools to integrate long-term thinking (sustainability) into their academic programs.  In 2008 it partnered with Kozminski University professor Jonathan T. Scott, an expert in this field, to pave a way ahead.

Working with legendary sustainability pioneer Walter R. Stahel of the Product-Life Institute, Scott put together a series of educational texts that teach the basics of sustainability from a business perspective. He and the EFMD are offering these materials for free in a bid to help spread the message that sustainability goes beyond 'green'.

In the most recent publication, Standards for Long-term Business Survival, Scott presents sustainability as a financial concept that focuses on the causes of resource depletion, environmental degradation, job loss, etc. (waste) rather then the symptoms (pollution, carbon emissions, lack of jobs, etc).

The 30-page text includes: a brief history of what contemporary sustainability and how it creates jobs; examples of the billions of dollars in cost savings, long-term profits, and competitive advantage that sustainability generates; a detailed description of formidable economic realities currently gathering strength across the globe; and a 10-page checklist to help businesses think in the long-term and prepare for the onslaught of growing market-force changes.

But while a number of major international business and environmental organizations -- more than 20 -- are helping in the distribution of this guide, are business academics taking this seriously?

I've written on nuclear power a lot recently here on Change, and I'm going to write again. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has a great petition up on the site urging the Commissioners of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to scrutinize the safety of the U.S.'s 104 nuclear power reactors in order to prevent a catastrophe like the one we've seen in Japan.

UCS has been a reliable source of information on nuclear technology and a nuclear watchdog for more than 40 years. The organization strongly supports efforts to reign-in global climate change and understands the role nuclear can play in that realm. But it is also a pragmatic organization of scientists interested in protecting humanity from the threats of nuclear catastrophe. And the U.S. is currently not as safe from such catastrophe as we may think.

"For years to come, the Japanese people will suffer grave human, environmental, and economic costs as a result of the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. And the truth is, it could happen in the United States as well," UCS writes.

Last week, I wrote about a proposed international ban on endosulfan, and I'm back to report some awesome news.

After many years of worldwide citizen action around a proposed ban, this year, at the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants Conference in Geneva last week, success looked within reach. However, one country strongly opposed to such a ban, India, indicated that it would be hard to convince. India is the leading producer and largest exporter of endosulfan and has conducted its own governmental studies supposedly finding that endosulfan is not so horrible (many other studies have found quite the opposite).

Due to a ton of internal pressure to ban this toxic insecticide and a couple of Indian states actually banning it within their jurisdictions, as well as international pressure and negotiation, the country's leadership has come around and an international ban was agreed to on Friday.

If you're a regular reader, you know that I've been covering a controversial story regarding the Ott Biological Preserve in Calhoun County, Michigan as it's developed over the past several months.  It's not your typical environmental controversy. A small, local organization and local officials wanted to use state money to put a biking and walking trail through the biological preserve.

While in most cases, a biking and walking trail is widely embraced by nature lovers, a few local Ott lovers brought attention to the threat a paved (or even unpaved, but dramatically graded) trail would have posed to the preserve. They started a petition here on Change, which garnered more than 1,000 signatures, and helped to educate people in Calhoun County and around the country about the difference between a preserve and a park, and about the threat this unique biological preserve was facing.

While opponents to the trail explained on numerous occasions in op-ed articles, at public meetings, and on Facebook that other trail options existed that went around the preserve, proponents were quite adamant that they thought a trail was a good idea. Those wanting to protect the preserve, though, even went to the relevant state officials to confirm that the grant money for the trail did not stipulate that the trail needed to go through the preserve.

Endosulfan — ever heard of it? It is a highly toxic off-patent organochlorine insecticide. It has been shown to stay in the environment for a long period of time, and is an endocrine disruptor.

Thought it has been banned in over 70 countries, the toxic chemical is still widely used in India, China, and a handful of others. Why? Because it's cheap, of course. Also, in India, the government-owned Hindustan Insecticides Limited is one major producer and a number of people in government and industry there benefit financially from its production. India actually exports 50% of the endosulfan it produces.

This chemical is highly controversial and it is a hot topic at the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants Conference happening this week, April 25-29 in Geneva. An international ban has been on the table for some time, but those in Indian government and industry have been strongly opposed to such a ban, despite the fact that a couple of regions in India have actually banned it themselves now. India was the lone member country that opposed an international ban at the Sixth Meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee to the Convention when it was brought up last year.

The Prospect Park West family bike ride this last Sunday that I previewed last week ended up getting a huge turnout, despite it being about 50 degrees and overcast. Seven hundred and fifty kids, parents, and supporters participated, which resulted in a continuous line of cyclists covering this mile-long bike lane for approximately 40 minutes. (Check out the tremendous video of the ride below.)

"It was a real celebration of this great, safe bike path," said one of the main organizers of the event, Park Slope dad Mitch Sonies. "When I first started kicking around the idea of a family ride, I never imagined so many people would want to take part.  It's a real testament to the popularity of the lane."

Prospect Park West Family Bike Ride/We Ride the Lanes from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

As I quickly mentioned last week when covering the continued pressure Greenpeace is putting on Facebook to "unfriend coal," Greenpeace recently came up with a plan to go after a Facebook World Record today. Early this morning, it started gathering comments on a post on the "Unfriend Coal" Facebook page with the intention of setting the record for most comments on a Facebook post within 24 hours. Guinness World Records told Greenpeace that it needed to hit at least 50,000 comments to set the record.

I was going to write this post encouraging you all to join in the effort, and it would still be great if you did, but the record has actually already been set!

In just 32 minutes in the early morning, 1,500 comments were already made. And as I'm writing this, there are 55,210 comments on the post. Greenpeace has increased its target in response to the tremendous response and is now aiming to hit 100,000 comments. Help out by adding yours now.