DAVID HEYMANN
Professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin

In the summer of 1999, I received a call from Laura Bush. She and then-governor George Bush wanted a design for a house that would blend into the landscape of an extraordinary piece of land they had just purchased in Crawford, Texas. We talked at length about environmental systems, and Laura was clear at the outset that they wanted to do everything possible to protect the land. It is exceptionally beautiful, with deep bluffs, streams and stands of native live oak.

The house is designed to use a quarter to a third of the energy of a normal house its size. With some modification, it could run entirely off the grid. There are dozens of features that contribute,

ROCKY ANDERSON
Mayor of Salt Lake City

In Salt Lake City, we've been able to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in our municipal operations by 31 percent in four years. We've eliminated 143 cars from the city's light vehicle fleet, and replaced 41 SUVs with smaller, more efficient cars. By retrofitting all city and county buildings with compact fluorescent bulbs, we save the city $33,000 a year. We then invest one third of that in wind power, making Salt Lake City the state's largest purchaser of wind power. We also changed all the city's traffic lights from incandescent bulbs to LED lights, which saves about $50,000 a year in electricity while also reducing annual carbon emissions by 500 tons. Those are just a few small, easy changes that net

MARY T'KACH
Executive director, Environmental Sustainability for Aveda

Since our inception in 1978, our focus has been on producing plant-based personal-care products. Currently, 90 percent of the essential oils that go into our products are certified organic, and, as we continue to learn about the functionality of plants, we are able to use even more. That's been a lot of work for our suppliers. In terms of the industry, we're certainly a leader, as a lot of companies have come into organics. In the scope of personal- care products, we're small but we've been a catalyst for so much change. The packaging of products, to how stores get designed, we're always getting chased. So it's good to see the big players step in and say there's some

ANDY RUBEN
Vice President for Sustainability, Wal-Mart

New stores will use less energy
Hurricane Katrina was a big turning point for us. It showed us that we've got a role we can play that might be greater than we realized. Two years later, we have prototype stores-the first is in Kansas City, Mo. It uses LED lighting in the freezers, and a heating and cooling system without a fan. That store uses 20 percent less energy than a store we'd have opened in 2005. One product we're promoting heavily are compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs. They account for only 5 percent of light-bulb sales, but at Wal-Mart we've been redoing our aisles to make CFLs more visible. Today 20 or 30 percent of the light-bulb aisles will be CFLs, mostly at eye

DAVID STANGIS
Director of Corporate Responsibility, Intel

Being green is just good business
As the largest chip manufacturer worldwide, Intel has been leading the area of environmental excellence for decades. For us, being green is just part of the way we do business. One thing that plays to our advantage is that our manufacturing process essentially gets refreshed every few years. We can anticipate that, so instead of having to retrofit facilities, we've applied a philosophy of design for environmental health and safety that projects eight to 10 years down the road. With each step we take in successive generations of the chip, we employ different manufacturing recipes every two years. So when we went from the eight-inch wafer to the 12-inch

ARTHUR H. ROSENFELD, PH.D.
Commissioner, California Energy Commission

Energy efficiency is the ultimate answer
If we're going to survive global warming, there are two things we must do. We have to move in the direction of renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, and we have to improve energy efficiency. You can measure it in different ways-passenger miles per gallon of gas, lumens per watt-but we need to think in terms of doubling efficiency. Not "conservation," which implies sacrifice. Efficiency doesn't involve sacrifice. If you compare a modern refrigerator with one from 1973, which was the year of the OPEC oil embargo, it's bigger, it's gotten rid of CFC refrigerants, its inflation-adjusted price is two thirds less-and it uses 75

Published on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 by the San Francisco Chronicle

We Are Doomed! Sort Of!

Earth in crisis, food and water increasingly scarce, people freaking out. Should you join them?

by Mark Morford

It would be nice to think much of the ugliness is coming to an end.

It would be lovely to imagine the era of brutal Earth-mauling technologies, coal extraction and petroleum and industrial agriculture and strip mining and clear cutting and industrial fishing and all rest, all the more rapacious and unforgiving notions of how we exist on this planet are, after an era of unchecked capitalistic greed and waste and over-consumption right along with almost zero concern for consequences and the ethics of sustainability, finally moving toward

It is unfortunate that we live in a present reality where the only way for global civilizations to transcend past pain and fear is to go trough it at such intense polarities; polarities that create extreme dissension and conflict. We can blame such adverse conditions on the Illuminati, Rothschilds, Bilderbergs, Rockefellers, and the remaining ilk of Secret Societies, benign aliens, Luciferians, government conspiracies, whatever you want. But in the act of blaming, we ourselves become the creators of the tribulations we experience. We can say that we have allowed such behavior to be cast upon us. Is that statement one that you can swallow? It may be a difficult fault to accept, but in its very essence it is a Truth. By pointing the finger to someone else, we have completely misunderstood and distorted the nature of life and essence of Free Will. For individuals, casting blame is a simple way of dissolving responsibility. This dissolution comes at a price; the price of self empowerment. Relieving the self of responsibility pulls one’s self distant from free will choices. To cast blame on to anything else but yourself, is the casting away of your ability to learn life lessons in our pursuit and attainment of Wisdom. Blaming someone else in an attempt at temporary relief or temporary fix to discomfort is a direct result of egotistical paradigms. It is a giving away of your inner strength, free will, and inner growth.

The idea of victimization is a classic form of suppression, an easy manipulation of the populace the end goal of which is to bury the eternal human drive of progress, keeping that drive in a stasis field of inaction. To be subject to victim tendencies is to give up your base human rights in a subtle, therefore brilliant, path to the disempowerment of individuals and individuality. Whether it comes from governmental institutions in the form of welfare, subsidies, and the numerous other types of programs that invisibly manipulate personal motivation and extract will from its disciples by encouraging participants to denounce the prime objectivity of the human condition; Betterment. Teaching societies of victim-hood is a preying on those individuals momentarily in need of immediate help and by strongly influencing those individuals to freely participate in these systems designed to disempower.

The ideology of victim-hood flourishes and branches itself in a self perpetuating manner into other areas of gross manipulation. In the U.S., frivolous lawsuits come to mind, feigning individual empowerment through the constructed claim, ‘I am a victim’. We have and are witnessing this illusory gleaming gem for the temporary fix of individualistic problems as they swell into unhealthy portions as the ones forfeiting to responsibility... take advantage instead.

This is one of many manipulation projects designed to disempower particular segments of populations for generations by giving them easy way outs to exist in relative comfort without the need of personal exploration or the valuable life lessons earned by self improvement. Other avenues using these various long-term degradating systems arise from our many religious institutions birthing this practice by its leaders since their inception; practicing various forms of victim-hood by convincing followers that, from the very beginning of our time here on Earth, we are all the victims of evil tendencies and are the physical embodiment of original sin.

The ‘victim’ concept teaches that the power to absolve our negative tendencies comes not from within the self (as it healthily should) but from without the self, from a source of power external to our selves. This further tract of manipulation effectively gives away your individualistic power to some falsely invented external force as a means to solve individual problems by dangling the carrot to bait their insecurities.

In denying our spirit the growth and experience that comes from personal solutions to personal crisis, we shackle the foremost tool that binds spiritual growth and conscious evolution. It is a surrendering, and resultant stagnation, of the gloriously unique personal spirit to a false ideal playing out as a savior, a savior disembodied from your true beingness imprisoning mankind, keeping steadfast the strength of individualism from percolating through to the overall collective conscious, thank the workings of Carl Jung. Organizations which prefer unending dominance will – as their base tenant – infuse the false basic premise of placing blame and the constituent victim-hood ideology on that which is outside of you. This clever formula strips the divine right of personal control and personal responsibility, diluting your own fortitude; however that fortitude should manifest in your life experiences. “Keep the sheep in line.”

Awareness of these debilitating tactics is surfacing across our collective, but possibly at a pace much too slow. People en masse are beginning to recognize disempowering social patterns created and vigorously maintained by our various institutions, but have yet to rise in tipping point numbers to reverse the overall effect in society as a whole. Though admittedly smaller segments of populations are displaying resistance to its poisonous grip and are therefore remaining resourceful unto themselves.

So rise up and take responsibility for your life. Cast the disempowering thought contextualized in that of being a victim. In so doing you put the control of your life, your spirit, back in your hands. In the words of Carlos Castaneda, Live like a Warrior.

"The global effects of meat consumption don't stop on land. Agriculture also requires water consumption, and animal agriculture is no exception. Animal production consumes an amount of water roughly equivalent to all other uses of water in the United States combined. Besides grains, animals need water to survive and grow until they are slaughtered. One pound of beef requires an input of approximately 2500 gallons of water, whereas a pound of soy requires 250 gallons of water and a pound of wheat only 25 gallons. Meat production is inefficient as it requires the consumption of an extensive amount of resources over many months and years before becoming a usable food product. With the water used to produce a single hamburger, you could take a

Technology provides us with some answers to the environmental challenges we are facing. Hybrid technologies have recently made it to the auto market, promising more fuel efficient transportation and less greenhouse emissions. Hydrogen fuels are a very promising alternative to the dirty energies we are using today. Ultra-clean and unlimited, it is the fuel of the future.

Renewable energy sources such as photovoltaics, wind and thermal energies and future renewables we can't imagine yet, promise to someday replace the dirty energy coal burning power plants used throughout the world today, maybe sooner than later for the residential communities.

Although technological advancement does have promises, it does not and will not get us out of

Materialism/Consumerism has succeeded as becoming the reigning king of the modern world. Almost all action that mankind does is measured in some means by this intangible creation. Though mankind claims to be concerned with the well being of other creatures he shares this planet with, this concern falls very, very short of the power material wealth and its measuring ugly-stick has over it.

It is not necessary to destroy or eliminate this material mindset in order for us to become an evolved species. WE MUST BEGIN TO SEE LIFE AS THE ULTIMATE MEASURING STICK UPON WHICH ALL OUR ACTIONS ARE MEASURED. If materialism falls a short second, no matter, life reigns. Life, no matter how small and insignificant has found its place in creation and