April 6th, 2013 
Justin Manger 
Opower, which we profiled earlier, recent appeared in a New York Times article about the influence of peers and peer pressure on behavior. The article starts off by talking about a “social norming” experiment at Northern Illinois University to tackle the heavy drinking problem found on campus. Basically, by changing students’ perceptions about how much [...]
March 18th, 2013 Eric Wilson 
Upon finishing the Overture, the preface essentially, to Alan Weisman’s Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, I was a bit depressed. Here was a book about a town in the desolate reaches of eastern Colombia. A town that strived to be an example of sustainable living amongst the harsh conditions of the llanos, savannas [...]
March 15th, 2013 Megan Stilley 
I feel like we keep talking about sustainability and how to solve the sustainability issue as a society but we aren’t really getting it. For example, I was listening to my local NPR station as I often do and they had a story about climate change and how we as humans are going to see [...]
Posted in 2nd Green, Education, Sustainability, Transportation 
Tags: Climate Change, Megan Stilley, NPR 
No Comments » March 13th, 2013 Noelle Phares 
In Alan Weisman’s poetic work that describes the recovery of a planet in the sudden absence of people, images of a wild no longer held at bay by the beating of human hands are vivid. The World Without Us is a prophetic account of nature’s power…it gleams with the inspiring force with which Earth takes [...]
Posted in 2nd Green, Behavior, Education, Op-Ed, Sustainability Tags: Intelligence, Noelle Phares No Comments » March 11th, 2013 Sean Connell 
Seattle is abuzz with the pending opening on Earth Day (April 22) of the Bullitt Center, which is considered to be the world’s greenest commercial building. This groundbreaking structure incorporates a diverse range of green energy technologies, sustainable and energy-efficient materials, and creative engineering and designs all intended to make the building’s footprint environmentally neutral. When fully operational, [...]
Posted in Behavior, Business, Clean Technology, Conservation, Education, Energy Efficiency, Green Building, Local Energy/Food, Real Estate, Renewable Energy, Sustainability, Sustainable Development Tags: Energy Conservation, Green Technology, LEED, Pacific Northwest, Sean Connell, Seattle No Comments » February 21st, 2013 Sean Connell Following up on two previous posts about the the Adopt-a-Stream Foundation and its role in promoting environmental education and best practices in watershed management, what sets the organization apart from others active in the Pacific Northwest (and beyond) in environmental education and watershed stewardship? How might its experiences offer models to organizations and stakeholders, not only those involved in [...]
February 19th, 2013 Sean Connell Continuing yesterday’s post on the Adopt-a-Stream Foundation and its role in promoting environmental education and best practices in watershed management, I recently had the opportunity to speak with founder and executive director Tom Murdoch and foundation staff members about the organization’s history and activities. (Best practices will be further examined in a third and concluding [...]
February 1st, 2013 Eric Wilson 
2013 began with the fiscal cliff averted and reinstatement of the Production Tax Credit for renewable energy. Now comes the shortest month of the year, but a busy one nonetheless. There are a few solar energy events in South Africa, a trio of environmentally related ones in our nation’s capital, Washington D.C, a couple of [...]
Posted in Clean Technology, Conferences, Education, Eric Wilson, Policy, Renewable Energy Tags: Africa, Calendar, California, Minnesota, Washington DC No Comments » January 18th, 2013 Megan Stilley 
Forks Over Knives(2011) has been on my list to watch for a while since it was another movie about our food system and I finally got around to watching it recently. I had not read about it much, so I honestly didn’t know what the movie was going to discuss. This movie was focusing on [...]
January 5th, 2013 Justin Manger 
After finally getting to a point where I feel settled into my new apartment, I spent an hour this afternoon surfing the 10 or so digital TV channels I and everyone else who lives in Japan gets for free. On NHK there was a program titled クジラ対対シャチ Killer Whales vs. Whales, showing incredible video of a [...]
