planet relations
exploring the confluence of energy, water, and people. More →
In June, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a ruling under the Endangered Species Act that water deliveries in California must be curtailed by an additional 5 to 7 percent (330,000 acre feet) to prevent further loss of protected species. The species in question included the Chinook salmon, the Central Valley steelhead, the [...]
This whole week, National Public Radio is examining the costs, the politics, and other challenges of upgrading the country's electricity grid. From discussing the state of the grid to siting much-needed new transmission lines to how best to accommodate the intermittent nature of renewable power, the series covers the important issues faces our nation's energy [...]
There’s much talk about how climate change will affect weather patterns, causing more intense events such as hurricanes and tornadoes. In California, one consequence of the greenhouse gas buildup is a change in precipitation type; climate change is expected to cause a shift from snow to more rain during winter months (i.e., a [...]
This site has been largely ignored since I took a full-time position back in September 2008 with KEMA, Inc., a global technical and management consulting firm focused on the energy industry. As I wondered how best to archive old content including past articles that I'd written for green building publications, these pages have remained static. [...]
The ongoing challenge for companies implementing corporate social responsibility initiatives is how much to 'toot their own horn' about progress. At what point does calling out tangible company improvements become overly promotional and dismissed as empty marketing speak, or worse greenwashing? Also, what are the most effective communication vehicles?
According to the Natural Marketing Institute's 2007 [...]
In the rush to capitalize on purchasers’ alleged desire for green products and services, companies are ‘shoe-horning’ environmental themes in to all of their communications. Companies are quick to add a “Sustainability” section to their website thinking that changes to a site’s main navigation must demonstrate true commitment to the environment. A newsletter article about [...]
Word clouds are visual depictions of a site's keywords or tags. They give a quick snapshot of a site's content because greater prominence is given to words that appear more frequently. They can be useful on news sites, competitor sites, or individual documents.
Using a free service like Wordle, users can enter an RSS feed or [...]
The July/August 2008 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review examines climate change and asserts that "media coverage of climate change is at a crossroads." Essentially, the article is saying that we're [moving] "beyond the science of global warming into the broader arena of what governments, entrepeneurs, and ordinary citizens are doing about it." Hence…
"Journalists [...]
A recent article by Alex Williams of the NYTimes, discussed how consumers are feeling overwhelmed with the "urgent, sometimes vexing or even contradictory information played at too high a volume for too long" about environmental issues.
For businesses and organizations wondering how best to overcome this consumer fatigue, I suggest that they reexamine and narrow [...]
There's always much debate within certain companies about whether to talk with the press. Why risk getting misquoted or facilitating a story that from the onset is slanted to portray the company unfavorably. Recently, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke to NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, and provided some excellent PR advice.
"The reality is, [...]
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