It’s a thrill to launch a book, and standing room only at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco is not a bad way to do it. That’s the honor that a lively audience gave me Tuesday. With my dear friend Joel Makower, editor of GreenBiz, presiding, Climate Capitalism made its formal debut to sustainability thought leaders like Gil Friend, public servants like Jay Eickenhorst, former Presidio students (and enduring friends), my Madrone colleagues and the bright membership of the Club. Joel introduced me to describe the book’s thesis: Believe in climate change or don’t – it really doesn’t matter if...

/]he first ever copy of Climate Capitalism arrived today. Margo Boteilho, our accountant, came in with the mail. I was giving an interview on my new book Climate Capitalism with Robert Colangelo of Greensense. It was my second interview of the day: this morning my co-author, Dr Boyd Cohen, and I did an hour long webinar for Net Impact on the book, and I was focused on remembering what I’d said two hours before and what this new audience hadn’t yet heard – one of the tricky bits of doing multiple interviews in the same day. Margo slipped into my...

It snowed in Berkeley last night. Thought I saw some on a car going past. Then there it was, lining the verges of Interstate 80. OK, it’s still winter for a few more days… My tired mind didn’t register at first. The evening I’d been going to spend snuggled into the cozy little home in the Marin Headlands where I’m camped this week had disappeared into work. Walking to the kitchen down the hall from our new Madrone Project office in the David Brower Center in Berkeley, I spotted John Knox, Executive Director of Earth Island Institute down in the...

It’s a long way from Des Moines to Colorado. We rose early – time-zone scrambled circadian rhythms being useful for something – and headed west. The morning started grimly though, as logging on to check the status of the crippled nuke in Japan brought the breaking news of the explosion. Dammit, why have humans persisted in such stupidity? Nuclear is an exceedingly expensive way to boil water, and as this week’s nasty news has shown, remains vulnerable to the caprice of nature. My tweet querying this brought a reply of “Greed.” My friend April wrote, “Some expect the radiation to...

Today’s frontline is Iowa. Natural Capitalism has been working with various communities here to enhance the profitability of their small businesses through a for-profit venture that some folk in California has asked us to help create a year or so ago. It’s done OK, that little business, running half a dozen “sustainability learning circles,” with small business leaders in California, Colorado and Iowa. On paper, it stands to make a great deal of money. But last fall I began to question whether this was the best model. Nothing wrong with the circles but I became concerned that the model wouldn’t...