Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

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Rainforest Action Network Targets Fashion Houses

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Would you want a beautiful shopping bag if it meant clearcutting a section of rainforest in Indonesia?

  • Rainforest Action Network, an activist group (and TILE Cause) that focuses on corporate responsibility when it comes to rainforests, seems to have made a major victory in the fashion industry by targeting a supplier of high-end shopping bags.
  • In a letter to 100 fashion firms, RAN explained that paper goods supplier Pak 2000 had very close ties with Asia Pulp and Paper, a company notorious for damaging the environment in order to harvest wood pulp. (Pak 2000 has since indicated that it may soon cut ties with the company.)
  • Several large clients have since ended their relationships with Pak 2000, many citing normal business relations. But some companies, like H&M, credited the supplier shift to RAN’s letter specifically, and RAN says it is talking to 20 additional companies about switching to sustainable bag suppliers.

Facts & Figures

  • Some current and former clients of Pak 2000 include: Barney’s, Billabong, Cartier, Chanel, Coach, Estee Lauder, Gucci, J.Crew, Marc Jacobs, Montblanc, Movado, and Ralph Lauren.
  • Deforestation is responsible for a fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions.
  • The United States and China are the largest producers of greenhouse gases, followed by Indonesia, where Asia Pulp and Paper does much of its wood harvesting.

Best Quote

“Because Pak 2000 is selling to very high-profile companies, it’s a good place to start our work, to introduce this issue to a new sector, the fashion industry.” – Lafcadio Cortesi, RAN’s Forest Campaign Director

Mayors Take Climate Change Into Their Own Hands

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

What do you do when your state’s ski resorts are firing their employees due to lack of snow, and the federal government doesn’t seem to care?

  • On Friday, Greg Nickels, President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, announced that 1,000 mayors around the country had signed on to an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their cities in keeping with the Kyoto protocols, an international agreement designed to combat global warming.
  • With most of the nation’s population and economy concentrated in cities, mayors felt it was their duty to step in to reduce emissions where the federal government fell short. The U.S. government has not yet signed on to the Kyoto protocols.
  • In addition to reducing emissions in their own cities, the group of mayors also lobbies Congress for grants and funding for greenhouse-gas-reducing projects, and advocates for a nationwide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 7% of the 1990 level by 2012.

Facts & Figures

  • The city of Cleveland has converted to 25% renewable energy.
  • Boston has increased its use of solar power by 300%
  • Los Angeles met the 7% Kyoto target for emissions reduction four years early in 2008; Seattle reduced its 1990-level emissions by 8% three years earlier than that, in 2005.

Best Quote

“I am signing up because this is too important an issue for us to stand on the sideline. This is not a group without diversity, it’s not a group that agrees on everything, but it is a group that is completely united and committed to this one issue.” – Scott Smith, Mayor of Mesa, AZ

Aren’t health and a clean environment human rights?

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Deciding which causes you want to support – with time or money – can be confusing. If you give to just one cause, you might feel like you’re neglecting something else you care about, and it seems like some of the categories overlap anyway. Aren’t health and a clean environment human rights? It depends on who you ask. Even defining exactly what it means to be or have a human right isn’t simple.

The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human rights and other major documents have listed health and a clean environment as “human rights,” but what might be more relevant for you as a budding philanthropist to realize is that giving to an organization with a specific mission can have a broad impact. Many microfinance and poverty causes aim to help their constituents develop sustainable livelihoods – which has environmental and health implications as well financial ones. Helping to preserve and restore local environments can have major health and economic benefits as well. All of these things make people better able to live happy, meaningful lives, which is the true spirit of human rights.

The point is to find a cause that excites you and in which you will enjoy becoming involved, whether by giving money or time. The impact you make might be far wider-reaching than you think.

An Environment Cause is…

Friday, August 7th, 2009

An Environment Cause is an organization that works to protect and improve the environment by addressing issues like pollution, deforestation, and climate change. 

Climate Change is…

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Climate change is the drastic change in temperature and weather patterns around the world resulting from human industrial activities for the past 200 years. Predictions about climate change range from the bad to the unthinkable; increases in sea levels, more frequent natural disasters, and abnormal weather patterns as well as a disruption of trade, agriculture, and industry have all been predicted by scientists, economists, and politicians. While these disasters may affect us all, the people who will feel the effects of climate change the most are those who are the least able to combat it – people living in developing countries and island-nations.

Destroy The Rainforest To Save The Environment?

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

This write-up demonstrates an important economic and life lesson: actions with even the best intentions can have unintended consequences, so we need to really think about all the consequences and the people whom we might affect.

  • Concerns about climate change have fueled a massive, global increase in demand for alternative fuels like biodiesel, which can be refined from the oil palm tree.
  • Although the use of biofuels itself releases way less carbon than fossil fuels, the destruction of rainforest necessary to produce the palm oil results in much more carbon dioxide being released than the use of petroleum-based fuels.
  • Even though there are laws in place to protect endangered forests, those laws are not being enforced and the majority of the forest is in danger of being irreparably destroyed and replaced by oil palm plantations.

Facts & Figures

  • U.S. subsidies for biofuels are set to total $92 billion between 2006 and 2012.
  • When the destruction of the rainforest is factored in, oil palms produce 10 times more carbon than petroleum.
  • 98% of Indonesia’s rainforest will be degraded or destroyed by 2022 if the current rate of destruction is kept up.

Best Quote

“For the permit certification, a guy just comes to your office and you just pay him off. This is how it works.” – Ong Kee Chau, former executive at Wilmar International Ltd.


Your Grandparents Had War Bonds. You’ll Have Climate Bonds.

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Not your Grandma’s socially responsible investment, climate bonds address one of the most pressing issues of our generation: climate change.

  • James Cameron of Climate Change Capital has proposed environment bonds (also called climate bonds) as a way for governments to raise money to develop clean technology.
  • Bonds offer secure returns, which should appeal to investors in the current economic climate, as well as contribute to the sense of renewed idealism among investors who seek to use their finances for good causes.
  • Environment bonds would be directed to the new technologies and infrastructure needed to lower and trap carbon emissions.

Facts & Figures

  • Bonds were created in the 20th century to fund World War II fighting efforts.
  • From 2000-2030, carbon dioxide emissions are predicted to increase by 40-110%.
  • It takes carbon dioxide 100 years to filter out of the atmosphere.

Best Quote

“I sense that there is now will for people to put their money to productive use. There is something powerful in the idea that, ‘My money built that and it works and I use it.’ Building things for a purpose that binds investor, worker, user – and society – is a noble cause.”  – James Cameron, Executive Director of Climate Change Capital

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