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Word comes this week that carbon emissions from U.S. power plants increased by 3 percent in 2007. This was not unexpected. Hydro generation was down. Coal use was up. But the main reason for the increase, according to the Edison Electric Institute, is an increased demand for electricity. This despite energy efficiency programs in virtually every U.S. State and Territory.

In the final standings for 2007 — The Climate Change Performance Index of 2008 — the U.S. came in 55th out of the 56 nations ranked. Here’ s the final box score for team USA:

• 21.44 percent share of global emissions
• 20.47 percent share of global primary energy supplies
• 20.13 percent share of global GD
• 4.61 share of global population
• virtually non-existent national climate policy

We’re wondering when business as usual will end.

When the brackets are first established by geographic proximity, so teams cut down on their travel (as they do in other tournaments and in other NCAA divisions).

When each team will know its carbon footprint associated with tournament play and compensate for it.

When the NCAA and its sponsors will use their bully pulpit to help Americans realize the challenges and possibilities for winning the climate game.

Claudia Deutsch, in today’s New York Times , reports on the Steelcase decision to name a 10-megawatt wind farm after Peter Wege, son of Steelcase’s founder and “a prominent Michigan environmentalist”. With various mar/com folks weighing in, the article is really a consideration of why Steelcase didn’t go the distance.

“So many people care about the environment now that you really can get a lot more juice from naming a wind farm than from naming a stadium.” — Hank Stewart, vice president for strategic messaging, Green Team

“This is a new business model, and it could attract any brand that wants to be linked with sustainability. Imagine the G.M. wind farm, the Apple wind farm — it’s not unthinkable at all.” — dealmaker Ted Rose, president of business development, Renewable Choice Energy

Nice. Kroenke Sports VP of venue operations Dave Jolette has led a very nice retrofit of the circa 1999 Pepsi Center, home of the Nuggets (NBA), Avalanche NHL), Mammoth (Lacrosse) and Crush (Arena football). The areana also hosts 200 sporting events and concerts a year and will be the site of the 2008 Democractic Convention.

“Easily 80 percent of the things we’re doing saves money,” Jolette said, “and that 20 percent . . . well, it helps us sleep at night.”

Things they’re doing:

• reducing 13.6 million kilowatts used (year one) to 10.9 million kilowatts used (2007)
• recycling over 100 tons of cardboard
• offsetting 100 percent of its electricity demands through purchases of wind power
• using giant downdraft fans that re-circulate air trapped near the roof, reducing the amount of energy needed to heat the arena bowl
• providing preferred spaces to hybrid vehicle drivers
• Using 52 solar panels on the arena’s Blue Sky Grill restaurant to provide electricity to the venue and save 13,641 KWh annually, or 9.42 metric tons of CO2

“The best news is that this is just the start,” Jolette continued. “This is a sustained effort and the program doesn’t really have an endpoint. As long as there’s a need to protect the environment and a new way to do it, we’ll find a way to implement the change.”

Michele Weingarden — formerly Senator Boxer’s (D CA) environmental adviser and Campaign Manager for Save the Bay (San Francisco) — is director of Greenprint Denver, the city’s overarching environmental initiative,

Denver Post, CSRWire

The University of Arkansas intercollegiate athletics and facilities management departments have instituted a recycling program for all home football and basketball games. While final numbers aren’t yet available, the program has so far produced more the 45 tons of recycled materials, diverting more than a third of the waste stream from Fayetteville area landfills. Five hundred recycling boxes have been provided by Waste Management, Inc. The program will continue through the spring’s Razorback home baseball games.

“In our first year one of the main goals is fan awareness. We want our fans to know that they have a chance to recycle their trash, not just throw it away. This year most of the recycled material has been picked up by our clean-up crews after the fans leave, but with time we expect fans will start noticing and using the green recycling boxes around the stadium and the arena.” — Justin Maland, assistant athletic director for facilities.

Story

“Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of a good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.” — Pierre de Coubertin

From the very moment the International Olympic Committee awarded Games of the 29th Olympiad to the City of Beijing, there has been a concerted effort by the International Olympic Committee, the organizers, some athletes and most advertisers to selectively airbrush the history of Olympic Movement by reframing the Games as only that … games.

“I view the Olympics as a sporting event.” U.S. President George H.W. Bush. 2/26/2008

If only it were that simple. But if only fun and games, why would red-blooded Americans be thrilled by the footage of Jesse Owens in Berlin or the 1980 Winter Games’ “Miracle on Ice”? It has very little to do with the finer points of sprinter’s form or kick saves and everything to do with a black American beating the Master Race and American college amateurs beating the Rusky soldier-pros.

If the Olympics were only a sporting event, why would the U.S. boycott the 1980 Summer Games and the Soviet Union return the favor in 1984?

So now, with Ides of March upon us, there are two political realities Chinese Olympic organizers cannot escape. Tibet and Darfur.

Tibet

An already tense situation has been exacerbated by China’s sensitivity about its human rights image ahead of the staging of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August. Some observers argue that what appeared to be carefully planned and executed protests — the first on such a scale in nearly two decades — were likely deliberately timed to take advantage of the media attention focused on the upcoming Games. — Time, 03/14/08

China ordered tourists out of Tibet’s capital Saturday while troops on foot and in armored vehicles patrolled the streets and confined government workers to their offices, a day after riots that a Tibetan exile group said left at least 30 protesters dead.
“There are military blockades blocking off whole portions of the city, and the entire city is basically closed down,” said a 23-year-old Western student who arrived in Lhasa on Saturday. “All the restaurants are closed, all the hotels are closed.” Associated Press, 03/15/08

Criminals who do not surrender themselves by the deadline will be sternly punished according to the law,” stated the notice on the Tibetan government Web site (www.tibet.gov.cn). It added that those who “harbor or hide” them also face harsh treatment.

The government offered rewards and protection for informers.03/15/08

Darfur

In a statement sent to the Chinese ambassador and the Beijing Olympic committee on Tuesday, Mr. Spielberg said that his “conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual.”

“Sudan’s government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these ongoing crimes but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more to end the continuing human suffering there,” the statement said. “China’s economic, military and diplomatic ties to the government of Sudan continue to provide it with the opportunity and obligation to press for change.” NY Times, 02/13/08

“I was shocked and surprised that Steven stepped back from his work with the Beijing Olympics. It’s clear that the Olympics is all about sport and nothing to do with politics,” said (Vision Beijing contributing director)Lau Wai-keung at the news conference. 02/25/08

“To link the Darfur issue to the Olympics is a move to politicise (sic) the Olympics, and this is inconsistent with the Olympics spirit and will bear no fruit.” — China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman 02/13/08

In response to Spielberg’s decision, current I.O.C. president Jacques Rogge told broadcaster France 24 that the I.O.C. is “a sporting, not a political association.” (02/16/08) Yet at www.olympic.org, “the official website of the Olympic Movement“, one finds:

His (Pierre de Coubertin — founder of the International Olympic Committee) definition of Olympism had four principles that were far from a simple sports competition:

1. To be a religion i.e. to “adhere to an ideal of a higher life, to strive for perfection”;
2. to represent an elite “whose origins are completely egalitarian” and at the same time “chivalry” with its moral qualities;
3. to create a truce “a four-yearly festival of the springtime of mankind”;
4. and to glorify beauty by the “involvement of the philosophic arts in the Games”.

It is clear that the concept of the Olympic Games is far from a simple sports competition.

A handy summation of humankind’s “rampant human ecological dysfunction” from William Rees, the originator of the “ecological footprint” concept.

… in the 20th century alone the human population quadrupled to over six billion, energy use (mostly fossil fuel) increased by a factor of 16, fish catches (but not fish) increased 35-fold, industrial production expanded 40-fold, agricultural output exploded, etc., and all corresponding waste streams ballooned by equivalent multiples. Result? Soils erode 10 to hundreds of times faster than they develop, the oceans are emptying and acidifying, biodiversity is imploding, natural gas and petroleum are being depleted, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are a third higher than in pre-industrial times and the climate is going into convulsions.We also know at least the crude dimensions of the solution: for example, our best science tells us that to avoid a potentially catastrophic 2 (degree) C increase in mean global temperature, the world community needs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 80 to 90 per cent by mid-century.

Source.Paul Raskin, initiator of the Great Transition essay series offers this:

On the one hand, we inherit the harbingers of a future that is rife with conflict, crisis, and misery—a dangerously damaged biosphere, extreme social and economic inequality within and among nations, deep geopolitical and cultural fissures, and a culture of consumerism that erodes meaning and well-being. On the other hand, we are bequeathed immense aggregate wealth; the power of science and technology; an ethos of equality and freedom; democracy, constitutional frameworks, and law-governed institutions; and the liberation of the human imagination. These assets are the preconditions for a global future based on human solidarity, human fulfillment, and ecological sustainability—a vision we refer to as a Great Transition.

“UK Bans U.S. Cotton Ads Over Green Claims”

The Guardian reports that the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a Cotton USA campaign that ends with the tag line “soft, sensual, and sustainable“.

Skeptical consumers — three complainants, apparently— argued that cotton is a “pesticide- and energy-intensive crop” that “depletes groundwater supplies”.

Responding to the decision, Cotton Council International — the export promotion arm of the National Cotton Council of America — contends that (1.) there is no universally accepted definition of the term sustainability and (2.) that modern U.S. cotton production meets the basic principles of sustainability defined by the U.N.:

Those principles are: economic viability, protection for the environment and social responsibility that together lead to improved quality of life for ourselves and also for future generations. (15 kb .pdf)

Developed with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Major League Baseball has announced a “Team Greening Program” to support and coordinate the many environmentally sensitive practices now pursued by virtually every Major League club“.

“Baseball is a social institution with social responsibilities, and caring for the environment is inextricably linked to all aspects of our game. Sound environmental practices make sense in every way and protect our natural resources for future generations of baseball fans.” — Commissioner Bud Selig

Shareholder resolutions requiring climate policies by leadership of publicly held companies have nearly doubled in the past two years. Story

“Many U.S. companies are confronting the risks and opportunities from climate change, but others are not responding adequately – and they may be compromising their long-term competitiveness as a result. Investors want all companies to understand the business impacts of climate change - and plan for it accordingly.” — ” Mindy S. Lubber, president of Ceres.