Now what? What do we do with all these people? How will it affect businesses, the economy, and our health? With some fantastic illustration, this infographic shows us we need research groups like Research Matters – in order to be able to calculate stats like this and help create a better environment for our future. Love the graphic!

Created by: Masters Degree Online

This infographic by Marketing Degree illustrates the advantage that companies have taken by misleading consumers and making them “Greenwashed”. Greenwashing is a term that defines a company’s marketing tactics that mislead consumers about the environment-friendly product or service that a company has to offer and in a sense, ‘brain washing’ consumers to think that they’re being green and sustainable. This infographic highlights 7 common ways that companies mislead consumers and how you — the person who strives for sustainability — as the consumer, can avoid such traps.

Created by: Marketing Degree

Ford Focus BEV at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show - Photo from WikiMedia Commons

We Texans love our vehicles, and the bigger, the better. The streets of Dallas are filled with the hum of F150 engines and the shiny chrome-trimmed grilles of SUVs. But the city is preparing for the arrival of more quiet, environmentally friendly vehicles. Ford Motor Company will soon introduce a suite of electrified vehicles, all aimed at meeting the needs of future consumers and the planet.

These vehicles include the Transit Connect Electric small commercial van (2010), Focus Electric passenger car (2011) and the hybrid and plug-in hybrid (2012). All of the vehicles boast zero or near zero emissions, reasonable charge times for electric and plug-ins and performance comparable to non-electrified vehicles. Importantly, this translates into improved air quality and lower dependence on oil. “We know there is an incredible excitement for electric vehicles in the North Texas area and across the country,” says Nancy Gioia, Global Director of Electrification at Ford Motor Company. Ford’s strategy builds on its vision for bringing affordable fuel-efficient technology to millions of consumers.
Now that the technology is there, our infrastructure must follow suit for the future. That’s where Oncor comes in. “To support the roll out and acceptance of these vehicles, it is crucial to work with local utilities to make the necessary infrastructure is ready,” says Gioia.

To address the charging needs and requirements of consumers to ensure the electrical grid can support the demand, Oncor has already installed more than a million smart meters, providing information to help customers charge vehicles when rates are lowest. In addition, Oncor will build approximately 850 miles of new transmission lines from Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) in West Texas to the rest of the state by 2013, allowing access for electric vehicles to be charged using clean, renewable domestic sources.
With the installation of public car charging stations called ChargePoint, made by Coulomb Technologies, owners of plug-in vehicles can “fuel up” at various locations around DFW and Texas. Currently, there are 1,700 such charge stations in the U.S. By 2012, consumers can expect to have access to 12,000 to 15,000 charge stations. This endeavor also involves partnering with state and local governments on making this technology available to residents of north Texas. Led by the North Central Texas Council of Governments, the Electric Vehicles North Texas Initiative was developed to collaborate with utility companies, regional governments, school districts, transit authorities and local businesses to prepare north Texas for the transition to plug-in electric vehicles.

The idea of electric cars is not a new phenomenon. In the early 1900s, 1/3 of the cars on the road were electric. In 1914, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison experimented with an electric car using batteries. Now that we’ve come full circle, sustainability is just on the horizon.

Mayor Tom Leppert and the Dallas City Council are dedicated to making Dallas the greenest city in America!  This is a big task and will take the efforts of all Dallas residents to make it happen. For that reason, Mayor Leppert will recognize those in the Dallas community who are at the forefront of environmental stewardship; those who are thinking beyond today, beyond the quick-fix.

The Mayor’s Environmental Excellence Award (MEEA) will recognize Dallas residents who are working in the community to get others involved in improving the environment and creating a sustainable legacy for this generation.

Nominations are currently being accepted through March 31^st for individuals, groups and entities deserving recognition for helping build a greener Dallas.

Applications can be found online at www.GreenDallas.net or can be downloaded here: Mayor’s Environmental Excellence Award application (Adobe PDF).

Efforts can include, but are not limited to:

• Recycling
• Energy Conservation
• Water Conservation
• Emission Reductions
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Sustainable Landscaping
• Stormwater Mitigation/Management

·         Green Purchasing

The City of Dallas’ Green Dallas initiative is aimed at environmental responsibility and encourages both public and private sector involvement.  To find out more about how the City of Dallas is an environmental leader and what residents can do to ‘build a greener Dallas,’ visit the City’s green Web site www.GreenDallas.net

DALLAS/FORT WORTH – Whether as a commercial barge canal, environmental resource or potential riverfront tourism destination, plans for the Trinity River have been topics of considerable debate for generations of North Texans. “Pave it,” suggested social commentator Will Rogers when asked what he would recommend. With a renewed interest in the redevelopment of the Trinity River in North Texas, the need to balance public and private interests is once again in the spotlight.

Army Corps of Engineers navigational lock near Wallisville at the mouth of the Trinity River.

This month, KERA’s multimedia project Living with the Trinity explores a fascinating chapter in the river’s political history and looks at current plans to bring North Texans into closer contact with the river. The four-part radio series Banking on the River airs Tuesday, November 17 to Friday November 20 on KERA-FM during Morning Edition (5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.) and All Things Considered (4:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.). A one-hour television documentary, Living with the Trinity, premieres at 9:00 p.m. Monday, November 23 on KERA-TV. The Web site, at TrinityRiverTexas.org, launched last spring. The television program and radio reports will be posted on the Web site after broadcast.

The television documentary Living with the Trinity examines the period from 1965 to 1973 when the Trinity River was nearly transformed into a barge canal running from North Texas to the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. Congressman Jim Wright of Fort Worth, working with the Johnson Administration, was able to win Congressional approval of nearly $1-billion for what would become a highly controversial project. Seventeen counties in the river basin voted on a bond issue to supplement the federal funding. The bond issue failed by just 20,000 votes and the barge canal was never built.

Trinity River Navigation Bond (courtesy Margaret A. Purse)

“The most powerful people in Texas wanted the project to succeed,” says KERA’s Executive Producer and Project Director Rob Tranchin. “Why they wanted the canal and how they were defeated constitutes an amazing chapter in Texas environmental history.”

Living with the Trinity includes interviews with former Fort Worth Congressman, U.S. Speaker of the House and canal proponent, Jim Wright, and Dallas businessman and former U.S. Congressman, Alan Steelman, who unseated four-term Congressman Earle Cabell in the 1972 election and rallied opposition to the project. Fort Worth Star Telegram Columnist Bob Ray Sanders and Lee Cullum, host of KERA’s business program CEO, offer insight from their perspectives as reporters who covered these issues for KERA-TV.

“The radio series explores some of the model waterfront developments that are inspiring the Trinity River Corridor and Trinity River Vision projects,” says KERA News Director, Shelley Kofler. “We’ll also look at the some of the challenges facing these projects.”

On Tuesday, November 17, Shelley Kofler will talk with landscape artist and author Roy Mann about design elements that are important to waterfront developments. On Wednesday, November 18, Kofler will report on Fort Worth’s inspiration for the Trinity River Vision project and the challenges of increasing cost and pollution. Thursday, November 19, Bill Zeeble looks at the success, failure and hope for the future of the canals at Las Colinas. B.J. Austin concludes the series on Friday, November 20 with a report on the challenges facing Dallas’ Trinity River Corridor project and how developers plan to connect the people with the water.

Living with the Trinity is funded by a leadership grant from The Meadows Foundation with additional support provided by The Dixon Water Foundation.

As the Senate environment committee starts to hold hearings on the climate change bill, we think there’s one critical question for the senators: Who are you talking to?

That’s not an obvious question, or an (entirely) sardonic one. Legislation is almost always shaped more by leaders and lobbyists rather than the public at large, and given the complexity of the climate bill that’s even more true here.

But you can’t solve the climate change problem if the public isn’t ready to accept some level of change. In the end, this is an argument about how we get the energy to fuel the life Americans want to live. You can’t change the energy picture without getting the public to reconsider where our energy comes from and what practical alternatives there are for developing a more climate-friendly mix. If too many Americans believe there’s an easy, cost-free answer out there, or conversely, if too many believe that we can’t tackle our climate problems without destroying the American way of life, we’re not going to get very far.

Right now, too many Americans are heading into this fight unarmed. Four in 10 Americans can’t name a fossil fuel, according to Public Agenda’s Energy Learning Curve survey. Even more can’t name a renewable energy source. It’s a fair assumption that most people aren’t going to understand the ins and outs of the climate bill.

What’s worse is that most don’t understand the fundamental challenge here: that the world needs to change the kind of energy we use, even as we need more and more of it. World energy demand is projected to rise 50 percent over the next 20 years, mostly because hundreds of millions of people in China, India and the developing world will be buying cars and living better lives. Production of fossil fuels, particularly oil, is going to have trouble keeping up with that demand anyway. And even if we could meet that demand with fossil fuels, we’d end up with irreversible climate change.

But there is a coalition to be built here, if you talk to the right people in the right way.

When our organization, Public Agenda, conducted its Energy Learning Curve survey of Americans, we found they fell naturally into four broad categories: the Anxious (40 percent), the Greens (24 percent), the Disengaged (19 percent) and the Climate Change Doubters (17 percent).

The Greens, as you can imagine, are probably at a 350.org rally right now, the Doubters are still chanting “drill baby drill,” and the Disengaged are watching the playoffs instead. The most interesting group — and the most significant — are the Anxious. They don’t know much about energy issues, but they know enough to be worried. Almost all of this group worries “a lot” about the cost of energy (91 percent); They report higher levels of worry than the other groups on scarcity and on increased worldwide demand for oil. Global warming is a lesser concern, but even here 69 percent say it’s real and 54 percent say they worry “a lot” about it.

Most importantly, the Anxious are the largest single group, at 40 percent. They’re the “swing voters” of this issue, and you can’t build a majority without them.
A lot of environmentalists seem convinced that the key to success is making everyone else as concerned about climate change as they are. That’s no help in persuading the Anxious; they’re already worried about it and convinced it’s real. Making sure there’s enough energy to go around, and at a price that people can afford, are even more important to this group.

So what’s the takeaway here? There are two key points:

Back to basics: We’ve been doing a lot of work to educate the public on energy (in fact, we’ve just written a book on the subject). And one thing we’ve learned is you can’t assume people know the fundamentals. And we’re not talking about the science of global warming here. We’re talking about the fact that there’s a relatively short list of options that can provide the energy we need in the volume we need. Right now, 80 percent of our energy comes from fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas and only 2 percent from wind and solar combined. Given that, we have some practical choices to make here, and in our experience, people are pretty good at making them, if you lay them out and are honest about the pros and cons. Plus, a little information up front can head off a lot of misinformation later on, as the health care reform advocates found out to their dismay.

Speak to people’s real concerns. People can approach a problem from entirely different perspectives and still end up at the same place. The Anxious are actually strongly supportive of alternative energy, ranging from ethanol to solar, and they strongly favor conservation over exploration. So do the Greens. But the rationales are different — Greens favor alternative energy because it’s clean; the Anxious favor it because they want to stretch the supply.

The groups who will play a major role at the Senate hearings — cabinet officers, environmentalists, businesses — are all critical. But the public matters, too. If we let the concerns of lobbyists and policy experts drive this debate, we’ll never build the coalition needed to move forward.

Then, if the lights go out, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Scott Bittle, co-author of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, is executive editor of PublicAgenda.org, where he has prepared citizen guides on more than twenty major issues including the federal budget deficit, Social Security, and the economy.

Jean Johnson, co-author of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, is co-founder of PublicAgenda.org, and has written articles and op-eds for USA Today, Education Week, School Board News, Educational Leadership, and the Huffington Post Website.

Technology is fascinating; even in a recession the latest, hottest advancement is sure to capture the attention of a significant portion of the population.  As a primary force of the industrial age, we owe a lot of our successes and productivity to our technological savvy.   However, what do we do when the latest gizmo renders our once favorite technology obsolete?

The latest inventions fueled by our desire for the type of growth that is highly rewarded by a traditional bottom line–only money matters–economy has for those who are not extremely careful positioned us (more than once) at odds with nature, the original source of the materials that we use to create our electronic panaceas.

Now as we begin to rethink business and the effects of the products and services they offer, we come to the table with a greater awareness that the end-of-life for electronic products that we love to use to keep us industrious, up-to-date, and in touch with others needs to keep us aligned and in-sync with nature.

To this end, 19 states including California and Texas have at this time passed laws regarding the recycling of e-waste (electronic waste).  Every state’s recycling initiatives are different.   Therefore, the policies are truly reflective of the “think globally, act locally” mantra that is often referred to in environmental circles.

Texas’ e-waste regulation passed in 2007 focuses solely on desktop and notebook computers.  H.B. No. 2714 short titled the “Manufacturer Responsibility and Consumer Convenience Computer Collection and Recovery Act” was unanimously passed by the state’s House and Senate.

Enforcement of the act began on September 1, 2008.  In Texas, consumers can recycle computer waste at the end-of-use free of charge.  In addition, manufacturers (not retailers) are the entities responsible for providing all of the information and the locations related to the recycling process, which applies to all computers including those purchased before September 1, 2008.

Residents of Texas, who are interested in recycling their computer can visit the manufacturer’s website, use www.recycletexas.org, or call 1-800-CLEANUP.   When the latest technological gadget or big ticket item renders an old faithful extinct, in many states people can now follow a collectively agreed upon process that is more eco-friendly than sending unwanted electronics to the local landfill.  In Texas, manufacturers can determine whether or not items can be reused, what parts can be recycled, and how to reduce the creation of new materials through the utilization of recycled technology.

Without the aid of the federal government, which has yet to pass national legislation regarding e-waste, consumers, businesses, and state governments like those of Texas and California have begun to develop new ways of creating and using technology that will allow us to be eco-savvy now and in the future.

As we move beyond the traditional industrial revolution in America, there will be highly successful, productive businesses that will transcend the single-minded monetary approach to commerce and adopt the Triple Bottom Line approach that includes profits, people, and the planet.  By respecting the marvels of nature we can take our ever increasingly green tech savvy world to another level.

Lorraine Lyman’s Savvy Success Unlimited organizational coaching and consulting empowers groups to embody the green movement’s values and practices and take action in ways that increase engagement, build trust, and improve the Triple Bottom Line.

In the midst of a large shift in the way we do business in this country, our hopes for today and tomorrow stand on the shoulders of creative, innovative giants willing to take risks based on sustainable philosophies.  These giants will come from the public and private sectors and will help to employ people for new jobs and new careers.

Clean energy, one of the most talked about aspects of going green, can be a spark for revitalizing America.  Are we actually at a point where we can marry that idea with the manufacturing industry and intend for this long suffering sector to shift gears and uplift our economy?

With states such as Michigan and California enduring heightened attention due to their fiscal woes and dire unemployment standings (15.2% and 12.2%, respectively) many people are wondering: where are the jobs?  Texas, whose unemployment rate is currently 8.0%, lost a staggering 62,000 jobs from July 2009 to August 2009, the worst decline of any state over the last month.

However, these declines do not have to continue.  Green manufacturing related to clean energy can be one of the cornerstones of a long-term turnaround in an industry that has lost 5.3 million jobs since January 2000.  Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s (D) IMPACT Act, which is now a part of the U.S. Senate’s American Clean Energy and Security Act, calls for sustainable support of the manufacturing industry.

Sen. Brown’s legislation would boost the manufacturing sector on national, state, and local levels by 30 billion dollars.  The passage of his act, as it now stands, would create jobs via retooling and expanding current manufacturing facilities to produce clean energy technology products while focusing on small and medium size businesses that employ less than 500 people.

Supported by this bill are clean energy products that could vastly improve the career opportunities for someone looking to go green, monetarily and environmentally.  These commodities include: wind turbines; solar energy; fuel cells; advanced batteries and biofuels; biomass, geothermal, and ocean energy equipment; and carbon capture and storage technology.   Reducing greenhouse gases, conserving energy, and reducing emissions will be the strengths of other headline grabbing technology products included in the IMPACT Act.

For those interested in where the jobs are, stay tuned to the happenings in environmental policy and check out your local universities and community colleges for classes related to sustainable living.  By significantly increasing our capacity to make green products in the U.S., we will give states such as Michigan, Ohio, California, Texas, and many others the opportunity to reverse dismal unemployment trends and revitalize individuals, the environment, and the economy.

Lorraine Lyman, MS, is founder of Savvy Success Unlimited, a business and life coaching company, specializing in an organization’s embodiment of the green movement’s values and practices and taking action accordingly.  You can find her blogging about global sustainability, consciousness, and community at savvysuccess.blogspot.com

Edited by Shawn Williams

Water is one of our most precious resources, yet  many of us in developed countries -regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds- take water for granted.  Environmental activists constantly remind us (even as we sometimes tune them out)  that water is not an infinite resource.  Should we care?

Well…..maybe?  Water is a cornerstone for living a healthy green life, and for the time being in this country it is one of the simplest cost effective ways to live sustainably.  But, there is a limited supply to be shared by a world population that has tripled in the last eighty years to almost 7 billion people, U.S. population that has topped 300 million people, and a state such as Texas that is now filled with 24 million inhabitants.

In our homes, we use water in a variety of ways:  cooking nourishing meals, cleaning with water, and drinking water, these are all part of our everyday home health habits.  How can we live green in ways that complement our current lifestyle?

One method may be through taking advantage of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) WaterSense program that is slated to begin in 2010.  In part, the program will be set-up to identify and promote water efficient products that reduce water use, conserve energy, and preserve water resources for future generations.

The U.S. government is set to appropriate over $85 million to this program for fiscal years 2010 through 2013 for products, buildings, landscapes, and services.  They have also scheduled an early adopter program with financial incentives for consumer purchase and installation of these goods, which currently includes faucets, point-of-use water devices, reuse and recycling technologies, toilets, and showerheads.

The early adopter program will be considered for fiscal years 2010 through 2013 as well and could stimulate the economy to the tune of half a billion dollars.  For this portion of the WaterSense program target populations include general households, low-income households, and first-time homeowners.  If it favors its successful, eco-friendly predecessor Energy Star, consumers might be able to receive federal tax credits of up to 30% of the cost for WaterSense products and services.

In the U.S. we consume more water per person per day than in any other country in the world.  From the budget conscious penny-pincher to the fashionista and no matter where we live in this country, we can all choose to reduce our consumption.

For those who want to be savvy consumers, who contribute to the green movement and reap monetary rewards, be on the lookout for the WaterSense label beginning in 2010.  Being eco-friendly can be as simple as drinking a tall glass of water on a hot summer’s day.

Lorraine Lyman, MS, is founder of Savvy Success Unlimited , a business and life coaching company, specializing in an organization’s embodiment of the green movement’s values and practices and taking action accordingly.  You can find her blogging about global sustainability, consciousness, and community at savvysuccess.blogspot.com .