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.
That the American Bar Association urges the United States government to take a leadership role in addressing the issue of climate change through legal, policy, financial, and educational mechanisms.
Starting a process of reconciliation, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised in parliament in the capital, Canberra, for the laws and polices that inflicted “profound grief, suffering and loss”. The Stolen Generations refer to young Aboriginal children who were taken from their parents in a policy of assimilation which lasted from the 19th Century to the late 1960s.
Story from BBC
Today GE upped its 2010 commitment to renewable energy to $6B.
GE had previously planned to invest $4 billion in renewable energy by then, but upped the goal due to the increasing cost of fossil fuels and support of greener energy, among other factors, according to Alex Urquhart, president and CEO of GE Energy Financial Services.
Its “Ecomagination” PR and advertising campaign has been budgeted at $90M.
Story in GreenBiz
Duke University’s Focus the Nation activities will culminate when the Blue Devil men host NC State in a game to be nationally televised on ESPN2.
The Cameron Crazies, the pep band and the Blue Devil mascot will be given green t-shirts emblazoned with the Green Devil and the slogan, “Bleed Blue. Live Green.” Attendees will be encouraged to sign the Duke Sustainability Pledge, recycle any waste they generate and use alternative transportation to come to the stadium. Duke will also be offsetting the carbon footprint of the game.
A cursory review of recently published public opinion polls:
Forbes determines value by computing on what the basketball programs contribute to (1) the university, (2) the athletic department, (3) the conference (4) the local communities (visitor spending).
So Manchester United has had the all storied players (Giggs, Scholes, Ronaldo, Solskjaer, Beckham), the storied ground (Old Trafford), and the storied trophy case (with the famous triple in 1999), and the storied coach (Sir Alex Ferguson).
But now, Manchester City, the oft-maligned cross-town rivals, have a 23 story windmill.
It generates enough electricity to power the equivalent of 1,250 homes and clearly makes City among the greenest franchises in the sports world.
Pete Bradshaw, Social Responsibility Manager for Manchester City Football Club said: “The wind turbine provides an exciting opportunity to help the Club and the city achieve significant carbon emission reductions. The wind turbine is a significant part of a range of energy efficiencies and recycling projects that the Club is involved in though its award-winning community and social responsibility projects.”
What’s more, City is currently in fourth place in the Premier League and have already won the first leg of the Manchester Derby. The lads are playing to win.
Bob Keefe, writing for the CoxNews Service, recaps the business world’s commitment to environmental sustainability. Why are they doing what they are doing? Profits.
Some highlights:
December 2007
Happy Holidays! We want to share with you some of the accomplishments of the Student PIRGs over the last year.CAMPUS CLIMATE CHALLENGE:We’ve just finished organizing the largest youth environmental conference in recent history with our coalition partners in the Energy Action Coalition. PIRG student leaders and staff organized and recruited students to attend Powershift 2007 at the University of Maryland Nov 2-5. Over 5,500 students from all 50 states came to the University of Maryland College Park this weekend for the largest student global warming conference ever. Over 250 of the country’s leading organizers and advocates and policy experts gave speeches, ran skills trainings and issue briefings for the crowd.
To cap off the weekend, CALPIRG Student Board Chair Mike Reagan spoke about global warming and urged our federal decision-makers to adopt meaning global warming solutions at a special Congressional hearing. The hearing kicked off the largest student Lobby Day on Capitol Hill ever - 3000 students stayed to meet with over 300 Congressional offices and ask them, among other things, to pass an energy bill this year that includes tough car economy standards (35 MPG by 2020) and renewable energy standards (15% by 2020).
This came on the heels of a year of very successful global warming campaign work around the country.
During the weekend of March 2-4, the WISPIRG students from UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee helped to host the Midwest Clean Energy Conference. Despite a snowstorm in the Midwest, about 250 students attended. To cap off the weekend, the students held a press conference and marched to the state capitol.
CALPIRG students organized the necessary grassroots support to help convince Governor Schwarzenegger to sign into law the nation’s first source-wide cap on global warming pollution, a measure that will reduce emissions by 25 percent in the next 14 years.
Powered by WordPress