Blu Skye: sustainability, environment, and leadership: Recent Episodes
Zach Winter
- Tigerswan, the private security company notorious for its work surveilling pipeline opponents at Standing Rock is back in the news. The state of Louisiana determined that TigerSwan was unfit to obtain a license to work on the site of another controversial pipeline in the state based on a lawsuit it is facing for unlicensed security operations in North Dakota. So naturally, Tigerswan tried to create a new company to subvert the licensing debacle but the state noticed, and denied the application. (The Intercept)
- Soups and chutneys made from wonky vegetables, beer from stale bread, cider from blemished apples and soaps from discarded orange peels are selling fast in the Wageningen branch of Jumbo, one of the biggest Dutch supermarket chains. The "Waste is Delicious" initiative launched last week, supported by a local university as part of a new national program, United Against Food Waste. (news.trust.org)
- I heard a story on Science Friday today called Beyond the Hive, which provided advice to citizens worried about pollinator populations. The surprising advice was to just mow your lawn less frequently, which allows various miniature flowers to bloom, and is a lazy way to attract native bees to your yard. (Science Friday)
- An update to a story I’ve brought up before on the 10 in 2 about the protesters who were arrested for taking actions to stop a pipeline in West Roxbury massachusetts. This week the final 13 protesters facing charges over the demonstrations were found not responsible by a Massachusetts judge, who ruled that the potential environmental and public health impacts of the pipeline — including the risk of climate change — had made civil disobedience legally necessary. (ThinkProgress)
- Scientists from UNESCO say that within five to ten years, Mexico’s monstrous glaciers will be reduced to piles of ice. The disappearance of the natural structures can have global consequences as the icy surfaces which once reflected the ultraviolet rays melt away, sun rays are absorbed by the earth and the world’s temperature will rise. I have to admit that I didn't even know that Mexico had glaciers, but I do know that I already miss ‘em. (Telesur)
- Google created an incredible interactive website exploring how a tribe in the Brazilian state of Pará is exploring ways to use old mobile phones and machine learning to fight deforestation. The website is hard to describe, but it uses sounds, videos and photos in a unique way. Check it out right now by following the link on our website to get an idea of how it is possible to save a rainforest by listening to it. (google.co.in)
- a new report from Royal Dutch Shell called the “Sky scenario” envisions a world that achieves net-zero carbon emissions by 2070, thus (in the company’s accounting) holding global average temperatures beneath the international target of 2 degrees Celsius. It has garnered a lot of criticism, but at the very least, it is an ambitious idea. (Vox)
- On Thursday, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, called climate change “the most systemic threat to humankind” and like many of us he worried aloud “I am beginning to wonder how many more alarm bells must go off." (NYT)
- Climate change seems to be in the courts a lot these days, and this story is no different. Exxon wanted Judge Valerie Caproni in the District Court for the Southern District of New York to stop the attorneys general from issuing subpoenas and dispositions related to what Exxon executives knew about climate change and when. But in a big loss for Exxon, Caproni said the company’s allegations were “implausible,” and dismissed its case. (The Hill)
- A leaked memo reveals that the EPA sent employees a list of talking points on Tuesday instructing them to cast doubt on the scientific consensus about climate change. The talking points instruct employees to highlight scientific uncertainty and lack of evidence linking human activity to climate change which is in direct conflict with the 2017 federal climate assessment. Sorry to leave you on that note, but…(Shareblue)
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This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
I’m very excited to introduce our next guest, Kris Tompkins. I first met Kris almost 25 years ago when she moved to a remote valley in a southern Chilean rainforest to live with her new husband, Doug Tompkins, where together they would work tirelessly to become the most important Wildlands Philanthropists in recent history. As of January 29, 2018 when the current Chilean President signed decrees legally creating over 10 million acres of new parklands in southern Chile, they and their teams of dedicated Chileans and Argentineans have been directly involved in the creation of 17 new national parks and over 13.4 million acres of new National Parklands in Chile and Argentina.
This historic conservation victory in Chile creating 5 new parks – including two five-star parks created and donated by Tompkins, Pumalin and Patagonia - and the expansion of 3 other existing parks, is bittersweet, because the vision for this ‘network of parks’ spanning almost 2000 km was was brainchild of Kris’ husband Doug, who had presented it to the Chilean president just before he passed away on a kayak expedition in a remote area of Lago General Carerra in December 2015.
Kris’ story is storybook-like. She was born and raised on a ranch in southern California, except for a three-year stint in Venezuela. At age 15, she met and befriended rock climbing legend and equipment manufacturer Yvon Chouinard, who gave her a summer job working for Chouinard Equipment, his climbing gear company. After finishing college in Idaho, where she ski-raced competitively, she started to work full time for what then became Patagonia, Inc. During her 20 years as CEO, Kris helped Yvon build Patagonia into a renowned “anti-corporation” and a leader in the outdoor apparel industry. Recognizing that manufacturing inherently causes pollution, Patagonia became a model of corporate responsibility, mitigating its ecological impacts and educating its customers about threats to the Earth. In 1993, Kris retired from Patagonia, married Doug, and moved to the wilds of southern Chile where she has been creating national parks, restoring wildlife, inspiring activism, and fostering local economic progress as a consequence of conservation. I got the chance to sit with her for a few minutes in Chile earlier this month in the new Patagonia National Park and recorded our conversation to my iPhone with her dog Wacho looking on.
Also, full disclosure, I’m a proud member of the Board of Directors of Tompkins Conservation, the umbrella organization that houses all Kris’ philanthropic activities.
- Jib
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
A conversation between Jib Ellison & Fletcher Harper.
Fletcher Harper, an Episcopal priest, is Executive Director of GreenFaith, an international interfaith environmental organization. He has developed a range of innovative programs to make GreenFaith a global leader in the religious-environmental movement.
In the past four years, he coordinated the 2015 OurVoices campaign, which mobilized religious support globally for COP 21, led organizing of faith communities for the People’s Climate Marches in NYC and Washington DC, helped lead the faith-based fossil fuel divestment movement, supported the launch of the global Interfaith Rainforest Initiative, and co-founded Shine, a faith-philanthropy-NGO campaign to end energy poverty with renewable energy by 2030. He helps lead GreenFaith’s new local organizing initiative, creating multi-faith GreenFaith Circles in local communities globally.
Fletcher accepted GreenFaith’s Many Faith’s, one Earth Award from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2009 and was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2011. He is the author of GreenFaith: Mobilizing God’s People to Protect the Earth (Abingdon Press, March 2015).
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
"I find it disingenuous that after unethically using taxpayers’ resources to call us liars, you would ask me to testify in front of a committee for a matter already decided by the administration and applauded by the Utah delegation just a week ago. A macabre celebration of the largest reduction in public lands in a century. It is clear the House Committee on Natural Resources, like many committees in this failed Orwellian government, is shackled to special interests of oil, gas, and mining and will seek to sell off our public lands at every turn and continue to weaken and denigrate Theodore Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act, which has preserved our treasured public lands for over 100 years.
The American people made it clear in public comments that they want to keep the monuments intact, but they were ignored by Secretary Zinke, your committee, and the administration. We have little hope that you are working in good faith with this invitation. Our positions are clear and public, and we encourage you to read them." - Yvon Chouinard
A conversation between Jib Ellison and William McDonough.
William McDonough is a designer, a global leader in sustainable development, and Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Meta-Council on the Circular Economy. For more than 40 years, McDonough—through McDonough Innovation; William McDonough + Partners, Architects; and MBDC—has defined the principles sustainability. In 2002, McDonough and Michael Braungart co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, a seminal text of the sustainability movement; this was followed by The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability—Designing for Abundance (2013). McDonough has received the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development (1996), the first U.S. EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2003), and the National Design Award (2004). In 2007, McDonough and Brad Pitt co-founded the Make It Right Foundation. In 2009, he and Braungart co-founded the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute. In 2012, McDonough became the subject of Stanford University Libraries’ first Living Archive.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
Grab a snorkel, and enjoy this conversation between Jib Ellison and Duncan Berry. Duncan has spent the last thirty years leading values-based businesses and non-profit organizations. He has founded five successful companies and two non-profits located on three continents. He is the current CEO and co-founder of Fishpeople (https://fishpeopleseafood.com)
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.
This is your 10 in 2 for the week. Links to the full stories found on our website. bluskye.com. Produced and edited by Zach Winter.