Planet Relations

The question posed 20 years ago by scientists at NASA was pretty straight forward:  “Is the current human occupancy and activity of planet Earth sustainable?” The answer was complicated given the lack of data. The Earth Observing System or EOS was conceived in 1990 as a way to systematically track changes on earth, from the [...]

Timelapse – Los Angeles Wildfire from Dan Blank on Vimeo. Environment Canada estimates that for every acre of primarily coniferous forest burned, approximately 4.81 metric tons of carbon is released into the atmosphere—between 80 percent and 90 percent in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), with the rest as carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4). [...]

The first deadline for smart grid stimulus funding (Funding Opportunity Number 58) from the Department of Energy has passed and it appears, from public statements made by the utilities themselves, that the program may already be close to oversubscribed. According to greentechgrid, “…the rough tally of publicly announced grant requests now stands at a total [...]

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 southern population [...]

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 diminished snowpack), [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]