April 2009

Creative destruction & me

April 30, 2009

During one of my morning runs this week, I was listening to the Slate Culture Gabfest on my iPod shuffle, where Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens and Julia Turner were having a lively conversation about Twitter, when it struck me: This is a digital media moment to remember.

I’m a big fan of podcasts. I enjoy Slate’s Political Gabfest as well as the Culture Gabfest, This American Life, the occasional Fresh Air and Frank Deford’s sports commentaries. One of my favorites is Sea Change Radio, which covers environmental and social issues from a liberal perspective. Bill Baue and Francesca Rheannon do a great job, and I’d say that even if I were not interviewed on the latest edition of the show, about green jobs. I’ve also learned a lot from EconTalk, a weekly in-depth podcast about economics, usually reflecting free market ideas, hosted by Russ Roberts. (Russ is also the author of The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance, a surprisingly entertaining novel about a libertarian teacher of high school economics who is smitten with a liberal English instructor.)

Why am I telling you all this? Because, although I’m as unhappy as anyone about the terrible things happening to the newspaper and magazine businesses these days, what’s often overlooked in all the laments for the decline of print journalism is the other side of the story: the explosion of ideas and (less so) information in the digital media. Just this week, Portfolio magazine closed and the Baltimore Sun laid off nearly a third of its staff. But barely a day goes by when I don’t discover a new and worthwhile blog. Twitter and Facebook point me to news stories and commentary that I would otherwise have missed. A growing number of college courses by great teachers are being put online. And of course thanks to Google, we all have access to more information at our fingertips than we have ever had before. I can barely remember life before Google.

For me, this is personal, of course. I spent more than 30 years as a writer of print journalism—newspaper and magazine stories and books. Now more of my time is spent producing digital media–not just stories and columns but podcasts and Tweets as well.  Much as I love magazine journalism (and I’m about to get to work on a story for FORTUNE), I must say that I have come to enjoy the immediacy of blogging, the feedback that I get from writing for Greenbiz.com and The Energy Collective, the chance to contribute to a fine publication like Slate. Like most people, I’m also spending more time consuming digital content and less time with print.

The economist Josephy Shumpeter called this “creative destruction,” and it is both creative and destructive–as well as fascinating and a little scary to watch as it unfolds. For the second time in a week or so, I’m going end with by quoting Joni Mitchell: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

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Lipstick, Aveda and wind power

April 29, 2009

There’s encouraging news from Aveda, the hair care and beauty company that has just achieved what’s known as a cradle-to-cradle endorsement, but before I explain what that means, let me tell you why it matters.

I’m no expert on cosmetics (to say the least) but I’ve been following with interest the controversy over so-called toxic chemicals in beauty products. Without having reported on the merits of the allegations, I can tell you that there’s a storm brewing for this industry. See the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics website, a book called Not Just A Pretty Face and any number of mommy blogs. New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, this week introduced the Safe Baby Products Act, which directs the FDA to “investigate and regulate hazardous contaminants in personal care products marketed to or used by children.”

Aveda need not worry about such allegations, and that’s got to be good for its business. Founded in 1978, Aveda can be pretentious in the way it talks about itself and its ideals. (The company name is a Sanskrit word for “all knowledge” and its trademarked motto is “The Art and Science of Pure Flower and Plant Essences.” I could go on, but I won’t.) But Aveda’s track record is  long and impressive, and achieving the cradle-to-cradle endorsement, as well as gold-level cradle-to-cradle certification for seven of its products, means that Aveda has met high standards set by two gurus of the sustainability movement—architect Bill McDonough and chemist and lifecyle expert Michael Braungart. You can read this greenbiz.com story for more details on the C2C products.

Cradle to cradle design is a cool idea: It aims to create products which generate no waste and are produced with renewable energy. “Cradle to cradle is a change in the paradigm of design,” says Dominique Conseil, the company president. Aveda is the first beauty products company in the world to win the endorsement, and only the second company of any kind in the U.S. (Method was the first.)

Conseil, a native of Sweden, says he feels right at home at Aveda headquarters in Blaine, Minnesota. “It was more of a culture shock to my wife, who is Japanese,” he told me, when we talked by phone. He’s been company president since 2000, a period of rapid growth for the firm. Today, Aveda has about 29,000 worldwide employees and 125 stores in the U.S. It’s one of the five biggest brands of Estee Lauder, the $8 billion a year cosmetics giant, which bought Aveda for about $350 million back in 1997.

Much of Aveda’s growth has been driven by the company’s reputation for using natural ingredients and operating in a sustainable way. It is transparent about what goes into its products and how they are made. Aveda ran a great ad campaign not long ago touting the fact that its factory was powered by wind energy—not the typical ad you’d see from a beauty company.

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Conseil says: “Our customers want performance. They want results. And they will increasingly require that it come from a company that is responsible vis a vis the community and the environment.”

I could go on at length about all the steps that Aveda has taken towards sustainability, as well as its support for indigenous people in poor countries. Instead, I’ll just link to this list of unusual milestones in Aveda’s history (1993–”Aveda forms its first indigenous partnership with the Yawanawa tribe in the Brazilian Rainforest to source uruku, a red dye used in Aveda makeup”) and tell you a story about lipstick.

I’d paid no attention to lipstick packaging until Conseil told me that lipstick cases have traditionally been a way to convey a brand’s image.

“Ladies often consider the lipstick as a status symbol, and it has to reflect that emotional investment,” he said. Who knew? “There was the perception that the lipstick case needs to be a beautiful object…That it needs to be massive. It needs to be heavy.”

This is, of course, wasteful, particularly because, until Aveda came along, all lipstick cases were throwaways. In 2003—with some trepidation—Aveda introduced a refillable lip color case. According to the company, its base is made of up to 65% post-consumer recycled aluminum; its cap is 30% natural flax fibers. Aveda also sells makeup clamshell packaging made from 100% PCR newsprint. Not very romantic, but so it goes.

Now refillable lipstick cases are not for everybody—Aveda still sells the throwaway kind—but it they work, and some people really like them. The company expected its customers to refill the case three times; it turns out many of them refill it six times before throwing it away. That’s progress, albeit on a small scale. It’s also good business for Aveda because the company can sell more lipstick and spend less money on packaging. It would be great if more companies sought creative ways to cut back on packaging waste.

And here’s another thing I learned about lipstick. It’s made with dead beetles. (Even my 21-year-old daughter didn’t know that.) It turns out that many lipsticks get their red, glossy look from carmine pigments, a red color taken from the dried and crushed shells, wings, and eggs of the female cochineal beetle.

Now this has been true since the days of Cleopatra so there’s no cause for alarm. But Aveda has eliminated carmine from its lipsticks, instead using a combination of raspberry wax, capuacu butter (it’s a Brazilian fruit), jojoba oil and bilberry oils in its lipstick, at least according to this investigative report from New York magazine, which, somehow, I overlooked when it ran last year.

This is why I love my work. Coal plants, one day. Lipstick, the next.

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Mother Earth, Father Sky, King Coal

April 28, 2009

The Obama administration handed environmentalists another victory this week. The U.S. EPA has halted development, at least for now, of one of the most controversial coal plants on the drawing boards, a 1,500-megawatt plant proposed in New Mexico.

The decision is the latest evidence that it’s becoming all but impossible to build conventional coal plants in the U.S., largely because of concerns over global warming.

It’s also a major setback for the curious coalition behind the plant, known as the Desert Rock Energy Facility.

The struggling Navajo Nation, which is the U.S.’s largest Indian reservation, badly wants the plant, saying it will create jobs and income for its 200,000 residents, many of whom are poor.

Just as poor countries like China and India have argued that they should not be subject to mandatory controls on their carbon emissions, the Navajos say they are entitled to exploit their energy resources to raise their standard of living.

In his State of the Navajo Nation speech just last week, Joe Shirley Jr., the president of the nation, said:

The Desert Rock Energy Project was envisioned as a way to make use of our abundant resources of coal, and to bring economic prosperity to our people. Simply stated, it is the most important economic, environmental, and energy project the Navajo Nation has ever undertaken.

It’s also a disappointment for Sithe Global Power, the power company developing the facility, which is owned by the Blackstone Group, the big private equity firm led by multi-billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman. He is a multi-billionaire. Sithe said the plant could be built for about $3 billion, an estimates critics said was way low.

In 2007, I wrote a column called Blackstone’s Coal Problem about the Desert Rock controversy. Of course, Blackstone has more than a coal problem these days: Its stock, which went public in 2007 at $31-a-share, now trades for less than $9.

After the EPA decision was announced, I called my friend and former FORTUNE colleague Theo Spencer, who now works on coal and climate issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC was one one of a number of environmental groups including Earthjustice and the Environmental Defense Fund that fought hard against the plant.

Theo called the EPA decision “a massive setback for Sithe and Blackstone,” and said the EPA decision raise a host of legal issues that will make it hard for other conventional power plants to be built.

Not only do those plants face fierce environmental opposition—it’s becoming harder to raise money for coal plants because of uncertainty surrounding federal regulation of global warming pollutants, and the difficulty in knowing the cost of untested technology to capture and store CO2 emissions.

Jeff Holmstead, former assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation under the Bush Administration and now head of the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell & Giuliani, which represents Sithe, said EPA’s motion came as a complete surprise. According to the Gallup Independent, Holmstead said:

I’ve worked on environmental issues for over 20 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think anyone ever imagined that the new team at EPA would seem to have such little regard for due process or basic notions of fairness. Everyone understands that a new administration has discretion to change rules and policies prospectively.

But I’ve never seen any administration try to change policies and rules retroactively.

A dissident group of Navajos argued all along the developing solar and wind power would do more for the economy of Navajo Nation, also known as Dine. The dissidents commissioned a 160-page report which argued that Desert Rock violated ancient Dine law.

“Mother Earth and Father Sky is part of us as the Dine, and the Dine is part of Mother Earth and Father Sky,” the report said.

It looks as if the EPA handed a victory for Mother Earth and Father Sky and a defeat to King Coal.

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Why farmers need (something like) Facebook

April 27, 2009

Some solutions to environmental problems are dizzyingly complex. Others are surprisingly simple.

Last week at FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green conference, the Environmental Defense Fund released its 2009 Innovations Review—a collection of new ideas, products and services that are good for business and good for the environment. EDF asked me to help write the review, and what struck me is how many of the innovations were relatively easy to put into place.

You can read the report here, and I’ll be blogging about several innovations in the days ahead. I want to begin by telling you about an agricultural innovation called “adaptive nutrient management” which I prefer to describe as social networking for farmers.

You know about social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The Iowa Soybean Association has learned that when you get farmers networking—in their case, face to face, usually after the growing season is over—they learn to use fertilizer a lot more efficiently.

This matters because excess nitrogen fertilizer runs off fields into water supplies. And while the impact of nitrogen runoff on distant bodies of water is hard to measure precisely, it’s a serious environmental problem.

According to Tom Morris, associate professor of soil fertility at the University of Connecticut:

Agriculture is estimated to contribute 40% of the nitrogen pollution to the Chesapeake Bay, which is estimated to be 60,000 tons of nitrogen (annually) from agriculture. The amount of nitrogen contributed by agriculture to the Gulf of Mexico is estimated to be about 50% of the total, or about 825,000 tons from agriculture.

So-called dead zones where aquatic life cannot flourish are caused by this excess nitrogen, scientists say.

Of course, no farmer deliberately wastes fertilizer, especially since the costs of have been climbing—the price is now about 60 cents a pound–and corn and soybean farmers apply as much as 140 pounds per acre. The trouble is, farmers don’t know exactly how much fertilizer to use.

What’s more, while using a little extra fertilizer adds to their expenses, not using enough can depress yields and dramatically depress farm incomes.

Tracy Blackmer, director of research for the Iowa Soybean Association, told me: “The penalty, traditionally, has been larger if you were short than if you over-fertilized.”

In theory, the market should solve a problem like this, because no one wants to waste money on fertilizer. But markets don’t operate in theory.

What solves the problem is networking. Groups of farmers, typically neighbors farming similar soils in similar weather conditions, share information from their own on-farm studies. Together, they develop strategies for how and when to apply the least amount of nitrogen for the best economic and environmental results. Then they compare results, and further refine the process.

“The most important component of adaptive nutrient management is the winter meetings the farmers and their advisors attend to discuss their individual data and the data from their group,” says Morris, who is working on a similar effort with Pennsylvania farmers whose land is part of the watershed that flows into the Chesapeake Bay.

Instead of top-down lectures from experts, collaboration is key. “We have often, in agriculture, provided information to farmers,” Morris says. But when farmers themselves organize the conversation, “you get rapid learning and rapid adoption of ideas.”

“It is an iterative process,” agrees Blackmer. “It guides where the next round of testing goes.”

On average, Iowa corn and soy growers who joined in the program have reduced nitrogen use by about 30%, or about 30 pounds of nitrogen per acre, without reducing their profit per acre.

Information is power. Simple.
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It’s time to rethink nukes

April 26, 2009

If climate change is the greatest threat facing mankind, what are the odds of the big environmental groups rethinking their longstanding opposition to nuclear power?

They appear to be slim. Here’s what Environmental Defense says on its website:

Serious questions of safety, security, waste and proliferation surround the issue of nuclear power. Until these questions are resolved satisfactorily, Environmental Defense cannot support an expansion of nuclear generating capacity.

And this comes from the Natural Resources Defense Council website:

New nuclear power plants are unlikely to provide a significant fraction of future U.S. needs for low-carbon energy. NRDC favors more practical, economical and environmentally sustainable approaches to reducing both U.S. and global carbon emissions, focusing on the widest possible implementation of end-use energy-efficiency improvements, and on policies to accelerate commercialization of clean, flexible, renewable energy technologies.

Supporters of nuclear energy—including those who strongly support climate regulation to curb emissions of global warming pollutans—say that doesn’t make sense.

“They (environmentalists) love to hate the biggest thing that can move the needle with respect to climate change,” says David Crane, the chief executive of NRG Energy. NRG is a member, with NRDC and EDF, of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of big companies and environmental groups that back a cap-and-trade program to regulate greenhouse gases.

Crane spoke last week during a lively discussion of nukes led by my colleague David Whitford at FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green conference about business and the environment. I wish we’d invited an EDF or NRDC representative onto the panel, but the focus was money, not safety, security or waste. David began the conversation by inviting everyone to “consider the evidence and think anew about something about which many of us had made up our minds.”

Good idea. Many years ago, I covered protests again the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire for a left-wing publication. My sympathies were with the protestors. Now I’m firmly undecided, and determined to learn more. Given the threat of climate change and the safety record of nuclear plants in the U.S. since Three Mile Island—especially compared the alternative of mining and burning coal—it seems like the right time to rethink nukes.

Here’s what the directors of the national energy laboratories said last year in a report called A Sustainable Energy Future: The Essential Role of Nuclear Energy:

Today, nuclear energy provides 16 percent of the world’s electricity and offers unique benefits. It is the only existing technology with capability for major expansion that can simultaneously provide stability for base-load electricity, security through reliable fuel supply, and environmental stewardship by avoiding emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Furthermore, it has proven reliability (greater than 90 percent capacity factor), exemplary safety, and operational economy through improved performance.

One of the signatories to the report was Steven Chu, now the energy secretary.

Here are some things I heard during the panel:

As thing stand now, we are unlikely to see the so-called nuclear renaissance that was talked about just a couple of years ago. The global economic slump is the reason why. Lenders are more risk-averse than ever, and few businesses need more capital and pose more risk than new nukes. Demand for electricity is slowing because of the recession. And natural gas prices are down, making it easier to meet new demand for electricity by building natural gas plants.

The U.S. government has set aside about $18 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear plants. That will underwrite perhaps three plants, our experts said. “I’m convinced that there will be three nuclear power plants built in the U.S. in the next 10 says,” said Kevin Book, a partner at ClearView Energy Partners, a research and consulting firm.

Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess. The utility industry wants to build more—there are 24 applications for new nukes pending at the NRC, all of two to be located near to existing sites, where local support for nuclear energy is strong. No new plant has been approved since the 1980s. By contrast, there are 45 plants now under construction outside of the U.S., most in China, India and Korea, according to Book.

Like beauty, “clean” energy is in the eye of the beholder. Notice how the NRDC statement above says the group would prefer clean and renewable energy to nuclear. Well, Alan Hanson, an executive with Areva, the big French nuclear power company, says that the nuclear waste issue is closer to being solved than, say, the solar waste issue.

France, where more than 80% of the electricity comes from nuclear power, uses a safe and sophisticated system to recycle spent nuclear fuel, Hanson says. (You wouldn’t expect him to say anything else, but still…) Nuclear waste can be stored on the sites of plants “for the next 500 years in we want,” he said—plenty to time to ease the transition to a renewable, low-carbon energy economy.

By contrast, he says, burning coal creates not on CO2 but mercury and other pollutants. And many solar photovoltaic panels are made of cadmium, among other things, for which there’s no recycling plant. “I don’t know of any part of the electricity generating world that treats its waste as well as the nuclear industry does,” Hanson said.

The politics of nuclear are complicated. Chu, who’s probably the smartest guy in the Obama cabinet, supports nuclear energy but Carol Browner, who’s an experienced Washington power player (no pun intended) is said to be a strong opponent. Liberal Democrats on Capital Hill—Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid—also oppose nuclear power. Given a choice between nuclear and coal as a source of baseload power, they’re likely to favor coal.

Crane said: “Right now the dominant wing of the Democratic Party knows they need to accommodate the coal wing of the Democratic Party in order to get energy and environmental policy passed.” That leaves nuclear out of the deal-making.

resident Obama hasn’t said much about nuclear. It may well be that technology breakthroughs in solar, geothermal, wind or battery storage will mean that we don’t need nuclear energy as a source of low-carbon power. But until those breakthroughs come along, shouldn’t we keep the nuclear option open?

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“I’m a slut for change”

April 23, 2009

That’s how author and sustainability guru Paul Hawken responded when I asked him during FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green why a small-is-beautiful guy agreed to work for huge companies like Wal-Mart and Ford. And I like to think that’s why nearly 300 business executives, NGO leaders, activists and government types came to our conference on business and the environment earlier this week. They were a diverse and occasionally disputatious group, which is exactly what we want: We had speakers from Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network, as well as Big Oil , the nuclear industry and American Electric Power, the nation’s No. 1 emitter of global warming pollution. But while there was disagreement over what path to take, there was broad consensus that business needs to find ways to become more sustainable.

Here are some of my takeaways from the event. One caveat—the quotes below were taken down on the run and may not be word-for-word perfect but they are close.

Bill Clinton doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. Where do you find the former president these days? Occasionally, mucking around in the waste of cities like Lima, Mexico City and Lagos. “Whenever I think of an urban landfill, I see it not just as an eyesore and a contributor to global warming but a source of great wealth,” Clinton said, during the closing plenary. His Clinton Global Initiative on climate change, he explained, is training scavengers in Lima to be recycling workers, given them a salary and health care and encouraging them to become part of a “new industry in glass and metals.”

Clinton’s speech was a state-of-the-union style laundry list, long on details/solutions. He got all charged up about energy efficiency (hard to do) as he talked about retrofitting the Empire State Building, described extensive efforts to get cities to curb their carbon emissions and explained how he is helping to  make college campuses more efficient. “The most important thing you can do if you are not a member of the U.S. Congress,” he told the crowd, “is to show that the change we are all seeking is good economics.” He had a couple of odd ideas, suggesting that the states of Nevada and Arizona or maybe a Caribbean nation become “energy independent” to show the world that it’s possible. Clinton looked good, by the way—he wore a pair of Texas cowboy boots and hustled out of the hotel after his speech and a photo session to squeeze in a round of golf.

Some big problems, corporate America can’t solve. Fisk Johnson of SC Johnson, Jeff Hollender of Seventh Generation, Bill Valentine of HOK (big architecture firm) and Carl Bass of Autodesk (design company) joined me for a panel called Re-Imagining Consumption. The question put before them was simple but important: How can companies grow their revenues and profits while shrinking their environmental footprint? I thought we’d get into a conversation about cradle-to-cradle products that companies sell, or new business models like ZipCar. But we veered into a discussion of overconsumption after someone mentioned he oft-cited fact that Americans make up roughly 5% of the world’s population and consume 25% of its resources. That’s obviously a problem, and since companies are invented to solve problems, I ask them if there is a business opportunity there. They couldn’t see one although Bill Valentine said HOK often asks its clients whether they really need a new building, Carl Bass said  Autodesk is incorporating sustainability questions into its software, and Fisk and Jeff both talking about “greening” their products and packaging.  The truth us, it’s hard to imagine even progressive companies (except for recycling firms) coming up with products, services or new business models around buying less stuff. This tough job is probably best left to parents or religious leaders.

Environmentalists should reconsider nuclear power. I’m told there was a long and animated dinner conversation one night during which two leading thinkers of the sustainability movement—Janine Benyus of biomimicry fame and Ray Anderson of Interface–peppered Alan Hanson, an executive from Areva, the big French nuclear power company, with probing questions about nuclear power. I was pleased to hear that because I’ve thought for some time that environmentalists need to rethink their almost-religious opposition to nuclear power. (I’m going to write about this in more detail next week.)

If the problem of climate change threatens the very existence of human life on this planet (and it does), shouldn’t we reconsider nukes? Of course we should. We’re going to need baseload power and while a combination of efficiency, renewables and battery storage might get us where we need to go under a best-case scenario, I don’t want to bet the planet’s future on a best-case scenario. It’s likely we’ll face a choice between nuclear and so-called cleaner coal. I’m not sure where I come down on that.

During a panel on nuclear power (read David Whitford’s account here) that focused on its costs, I learned that Steven Chu, the energy secretary, is an advocate for nuclear while Carol Browner, the climate czar, is an opponent. President Obama has punted on the issue—he hasn’t said much of anything, at least according to our panelists. While Browner’s the more powerful figure in D.C., Chu is a brilliant and impressive guy, not to mention the only cabinet member with a Nobel Prize. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when they and Obama get together to talk about nukes.

I’m still not convinced about green jobs. Van Jones, the White House green jobs czar, spoke at Brainstorm Green and he managed to be both inspiring and utterly charming. But he couldn’t come up with a clear-cut definition of a green job. That’s not surprising. Consider the farmer who grows corn for popcorn. He’s a mere farmer. His buddy up the road who grows corn for ethanol? Green job, I presume.

Clinton, too, has hopped on the green jobs bandwagon: “I’ve always believed that work is the best social program,” he said. “Saving the planet from the threat of climate change will create more jobs, more ideas, more interdependence than anything else we can do.”

Hmm. Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund said the best economic studies about the impact of a cap-and-trade program to regulate greenhouse gases project that the long-term impact on GDP will be very, very slight. But if GHG regulation has even a slight negative effect on GDP, how can it create more jobs?

It’s time to stop feeling guilty about business travel. Brainstorm Green was held at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California—a spectacular place overlooking the Pacific. We had some fabulous meals—prepared by organic chefs—and I got up early to run (a little) each day. At night, I opened the door to my hotel room and fell asleep to the sounds of the waves and an ocean breeze.

As it happens, we were at ground zero for the crisis in business travel. Next door was a St. Regisl where AIG held a meeting last fall that made national news and led to the cancellations of hundreds of business meetings. Luxury hotels and their working-class employees are suffering. What’s good about that?

More important, there was value in getting 300 people together in a relaxing place for a couple of days to talk about things that matter. We learned. We met new people. We built relationships. We showcased leading thinkers and doers, perhaps inspiring others. Maybe a startup that needed money raised some. We may live in an always-connected, everything-linked world, but you can’t do those things very well on email or over the phone or in a video conference.
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Why Twitter is bad for journalism

April 22, 2009

I was enchanted by Twitter on the opening day of Brainstorm Green. By creating what’s called a hashtag for the event – in this case, #FortuneGreen – those of us who organized the Fortune conference about business and the environment encouraged people at the event to tweet about it. And we made it easy for anyone to follow or search for a stream of tweets from the event.

So I opened my laptop and, in real time, read dispatches from the event: What was being said, what others thought about about what was being said, big ideas, trivial observations, critiques of our speaker, links to photos from the scene–all in 140 characters or less, the limit on the size of messages that can flow through Twitter. (For an explanation of Twitter, see this.) While the size of each i message is limited, there’s no limit on the number of 140-character dispatches you can send. So people, including me, were sending out dozens of tweets per hour.

By searching Twitter (at http://search.twitter.com/) for Tweets containing #FortuneGreen—are you still with me here?—anyone can see everything that was said about the event. Kind of fun. Some examples from today’s session, and I won’t try to translate all the shorthand now:

oppgreen: http://twitpic.com/3sv27 – Cowboy Clinton at #fortunegreen today…check out his cowboy boots…yeehaw!

patrickdo: @mlamonica thanks for the link, great story on Bill Clinton at #fortunegreen

mlamonica: Green business is key to tackling climate change, says Bill Clinton. link to full story this time http://t.cnet.com/4g #fortunegreen

DavidSwardlick: Pres. Clinton – the only morally accepable way to controll population in the world is to help get all the girls into schools #FortuneGreen

Milieunet: RT @greenwombat: Clinton: Arizona & Nevada: “Those are two of the places it would be easiest to make energy independent.” #FortuneGreen

You get the idea.

Anyway, I was tweeting merrily along after moderating a panel on climate change politics in Washington when I sent out the following:

MarcGunther: EDF’s Fred Krupp, NRG’s David Crane, Duke’s Jim Rogers say, give away 100% of permits under cap and trade at first #FortuneGreen

During my panel, I had understood Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund, CEO David Crane of NRG Energy and Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, who all belong to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, to say that all of the allowances under a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions should initially be given away. The question of whether to give away or auction those allowances—essentially, permits to pollute—is a contentious one, for reasons not worth going into here. To my surprise, my tweet set off a bit of a storm in the world of energy and environmental bloggers, including some not at the event.

My tweet turned out to be the result of a miscommunication or misunderstanding on my part. Of course, since I was reporting live during the event, I didn’t bother to check my facts. I don’t blame Twitter for that. That was my fault.

But I learned two lessons that would have been obvious had I done a little more thinking and a little less tweeting. Lesson No. 1 is this: Trying to cover an event live on Twitter—especially if you are a participant, as I was—doesn’t allow time to check facts or seek out an alternative point of view or think for more than a few seconds about what to say. There’s not enough time to do anything but tweet. In fact, it’s hard just to tweet and pay attention. You’re multitasking. It’s closer to court stenography or simultaneous translation than to real journalism, which requires sifting and thinking. Or at least it should.

Lesson No. 2: There’s not much you can do when you make a mistake on Twitter, particularly if you are dealing with a complex subject. After trading emails with bloggers, NRDC and EDF, I got the following from Dave Hawkins, NRDC’s leading climate expert, who was with us at Brainstorm Green:

What USCAP recommends is that nearly all allocations go, not to emitters, but for consumer rebates/dividends, low-carbon technology, efficiency, low–income protection, adaptation, and international engagement. That includes initial allocations to local distribution companies, with a requirement that the value be passed through to customers and/or invested in efficiency….

You asked about NRDC’s position on allowance distribution. It is set forth in the attached Cap 2.0 proposal and we believe it is consistent with the USCAP Blueprint. It is on the web at http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/cap2.0/files/synthesis.pdf
As you can see from figures 2 and 3 of the document, allowance value is focused on clean and advanced energy deployment, efficiency, and consumer dividends from the start and after 15 years all value would go back to consumers as dividends. Of the estimated $100 billion annual value at the start of the program about $8.9 billion is proposed for distribution to energy-intensive industry to prevent off-shoring of production and emissions from these industries. This gets phased down over the initial 15 years of the program.
In 2012 more than $51 billion per year would go directly for efficiency and low-carbon energy RD&D and deployment, with more of the remainder going to consumer rebates and dividends, adaptation, forestry and agriculture incentives, and international engagement.

Try saying that in 140 characters. Even if I could, it would now be impossible to reaggregate the audience that read the original mistaken tweet. All I can do now is send out a tweet about this blogpost—my best effort to correct the mistake.

The real mistake, though, is trying to cover a story in little live bursts. You can’t concentrate, you can’t think, you can’t convey a complex idea, you can’t persuade or explain. That’s why Twitter is bad for journalism–or, more specifically, it is not the right vehicle within which to do journalism.

Twitter will good for journalism in other ways. It’s an effective way to point other people to content on the web. By following others’ tweets, I’ve discovered blogs or stories I would otherwise have missed. I’ve quickly collected several hundred “followers” in just a few weeks, so I can tell about what I’m writing or reading.

Twitter’s valuable in other ways, too. It’s a real-time window into what people are doing and thinking and talking about. It has enormous potential, already demonstrated, as an organizing tool. Anyone in the communications business probably ought to play around with Twitter and other social media like Facebook.

But I had a brief chat with Peter Darbee, the CEO of PG&E Corp., during Brainstorm Green that has stuck in my mind longer than any tweet. He told me that he’s going to cut back on some of his day-to-day work so that he can carve out a couple of hours every day for thinking. Imagine that. Just thinking–no phone, email, meetings or,presumably, tweets. I can’t remember the last time I spent 15 minutes thinking, unless you count time I spend running. Something’s lost because of all the attention we devote to Gmail and blogs and Facebook and Twitter. As Joni Mitchell put it, “don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”

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Climate Change Schizophrenia

April 22, 2009

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I’ve been a fan of Slate since the Microsoft/Michael Kinsley days and more recently I’ve been enjoying The Big Money, Slate’s business and economics site, featuring the amazingly prolific Dan Gross. So I’m pleased today to make my first contribution to Slate and The Big Money. It’s a story about climate change politics.

The story asks: Why do corporations support regulating greenhouse gases also fund the most important lobby that opposes it?

You may be surprised to hear that dozens of big companies (GE, Ford, Nike, Alcoa, PepsiCo, DuPont, Xerox, Nike, many others) that advocate for climate change legislation in Congress also help finance the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a tough and important opponent. Why? Well, the companies support the chamber because it acts on behalf of business on many other issues. But the chamber’s position on climate change is a bit of a mystery. Read the story to learn more. And check out the cool cartoon below

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They said it at Brainstorm Green

April 22, 2009

So much conversation has packed into so little time at FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green conference about business and the environment that it’s difficulty  to absorb it all. Some great panels today on “clean coal,” Green Super Powers (GE, Wal-Mart, IBM) and green jobs. There’s video from the event here. Meanwhile, here are few quotes that caught my attention:

Michael Kowalski, the CEO  of Tiffany & Co., on why he had never before come to a “green” conference: “Fear of being accused of greenwashing. There is still so much work to be done”

Van Jones, the White House’s green jobs czar, on his first six weeks on the job: “Everyone who hears that you work in the White House thinks you see Barack Obama every day. I’ve seen the guy twice and I almost fainted the first time.”

Also from Van Jones: “It’s a long winding road from the time that someone signs a bill into law to the time when someone signs a paycheck.”

Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, a company that makes more sustainable building materials,  on the changes ahead: “This is a new industrial revolution. It doesn’t happen once in a lifetime. It happens once in 100 years.”

Again, Van Jones: “We have to rethink in a fundamental way, what is an economy for? How do we meet not only our own needs but the needs of our children and grandchildren going forward.”

Van Jones, again: “People need a paycheck. That’s for sure. But people also need a purpose. This is a movement about redefining what work is. Is our work going to be a curse on this planet or a blessing on all creation?”

Jones: “People talk about Barack Obama as the first black president – he’s the first green president also.”

Michael Morris, CEO of American Electric power, No. 1 emitter of CO2 in the U.S., on the transition to cleaner energy that is underway: “This is a very costly issue and America needs to know that. Let’s not pretend that this is free.”

Morris, when asked who opposes his company’s plan for a high voltage line to get renewable energy to major markets: “People who don’t want something in their backyard, which means most Americans.”

Michael Brune of Rainforest Action Network:  “The reality is that there is no such thing as clean coal. The physical requirements of doing that, the energy costs, the financial costs are so great. I’m not saying that it can’t be done. I’m saying that we shouldn’t even try. “

David Hawkins, climate analyst and activist,  Natural Resources Defense Council: “It’s not clean coal. It’s better coal.”

Hawkins, on why any climate legislations must appeal to coal-state Democrats: “Job one is dealing with the politics. Unfortunately, saying it will all be done with efficiency and renewables is not a compelling answer. We need a strategy that is going to get us legislation right away.”

Hawkins: “The coal industry has earned its bad reputation. The coal industry has been associated inextricably with environmental degradation. But we still need better coal.”

Fedele Bauccio, CEO of Bon Appetit food-service company: “Our chefs are implementing low-carbon diet without losing money or customers”

My friend Adam Lashinsky has a smart, quick look at the conference at the Fortune website, called Seven lessons about the green economy.

Finally, I want to enthusiastically recommend a FORTUNE article by Jeffrey O’Brien about IBM and its efforts to apply information technology to attack problems like gridlock, energy waste, and supply chain transparency. It’s a terrific read.

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They said it at Brainstorm Green

April 21, 2009

FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green began Monday afternoon (less than 24 hours ago as I write this) and my head has been spinning ever since. We’ve talked about Washington and the politics of climate change, Andy Serwer did a a great interview with Bill Ford, and I had a relaxed conversation with Paul Hawken during dinner that generated lots of nice buzz. This morning, we’ve done panels on nuclear power and cars. I can’t keep up with it all—you can find lots of coverage, including video, at Fortune.com. I’m about to interview execs for a panel that we are calling Green Superpowers—GE, Wal-Mart and IBM. For now, I’m just going to dump some quotes from my laptop into this blog to give you a flavor for what’s going on.

Better Place’s Shai Agassi, the dynamic electric-car entrepreneur who is making headway in Israel, Denmark, Hawaii and San Francisco: “If you’re wiling to give me what you pay for gasoline, I’ll give you a free (electric) car.” Electric cars will be dramatically more efficient that gas-powered ones as battery costs come down, he argues

Bill Ford, chairman of Ford, on the history of the auto industry: “We haven’t had a lot of revolutions but boy are we now. I love it.”

More from Ford, on how times have changed: “When I joined the (Ford) board, I was asked to stop affiliating w/ known or suspected environmentalists.” Ford now works with Paul Hawken and Environmental Defense Fund.

Hawken, on why a small-is-beautiful guy has agreed to advise Wal-Mart and Ford on sustainability: “I’m a slut for change.”

Ford to Ian Clifford CEO of Zenn Motors, an electric-car startup: “You guys are leading the charge, so to speak!” Ford really won over the crowd with his low-key charm.

PG&E CEO Peter Darbee, yet another electric car fan: “I believe the electric car will be one of the great areas of breakthrough that will change our industry.

More from Darbee: “The smart grid will be the key enabling technology for the electric cars.”

Peter Corsell, CEO of GridPoint, on the smart grid: “Current system was designed in an era when information was scarce, fuel was cheap and pollution was free.”

David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy, another utility guy who likes electric cars: “The electric car is our savior, It is the air conditioner of the 21st century.”

Alan Hanson, exec vp of nuclear power company Areva, saying concerns about nuclear waste are way overblown: “I don’t know of any part of the electricity generating world that treats its waste as well as the nuclear industry does.”

More from Crane: “I’m convinced that there will e three nuclear power plants built in the U.S. in the next 10 years.” Whether they will be anomalies (supported by a limited pool of federal loan guarantees) or lead to a nuclear renaissance remains to be seen.

Crane, explaining why there is no political constituency for nuclear energy in Washington, where Waxman, Boxer and Browner are anti-nuke but eager to accommodate the coal industry: “Right now the dominant wing of the Democratic Party knows they need to accommodate the coal wing of the Democratic Party in order to get energy and environmental policy passed.”

More to come when I can come up for air….and I hope to dig into the nuclear issue in a more thoughtful way within a week or so. I’m convinced that environmentalists need to think anew about nuclear, in light of new circumstances and the threat of climate change.

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