Why Russia Should Invest in Sustainability
Seven Reasons why Russia Should Invest in Sustainability — Three of Them Unconvincing by Alan AtKisson CEO, AtKisson Inc. & Author, The Sustainability Transformation On Wednesday, 10 February, I made the second keynote presentation (after Ashok Khosla’s opening) to a conference in Moscow called “Innovative Russia: Responding to Global Challenges.” The other participants on the … Read more
How I Created (Not) a UN Campaign
This article is about how I became obsessed with trying to create, or catalyze into being, an international campaign to dramatically increase renewable energy investment in the developing world — and why I now feel ready to let go of that obsession. The short version is this: The campaign is happening, and the UN is … Read more
How to Keep Doing Sustainability in an Absurd World
A professional colleague of mine recently resigned from the sustainability movement. Seriously ill from years of overwork, and despairing of the movement’s chances for success, this person had no choice but to quit. Trying to change the world’s destructive energy technologies, protect the rights of future generations to enjoy functioning ecosystems, and/or save the world … Read more
“San-ten-ichi-ichi” — what March 11 means to Japan (so far)
I was on UN business in Korea this week, but on Friday, I took a day off to fly to Osaka and meet with friends Junko Edahiro and Riichiro Oda, at a hotel near Osaka’s Kansai airport. I wanted to find out how they were doing, and how the country was doing, since the last … Read more
Revisiting the Big Push: A Strategy for Scaling Up Renewable Energy
While the Cancún climate talks were under way, I published several different versions of the following short essay, which first appeared as a blog post in “Triple Crisis,” then as a comment in Eurovoice newspaper’s “Comment:Visions,” and finally is slated for publication in the academic journal Solutions. Here is the Comment:Visions version: In late 2009, … Read more
Bill McKibben on Climate Change: The Depressing Bad News, and the Amazing Power of People to Create Good News
I’m attending a conference in Sweden called Climate Existence. I’m here not as a speaker, for once; I’m here as a musician, scheduled to perform this evening. I’ll blog some of the highlights over the course of the day. Here is what was happening just as I walked in (late) to the event, in Sigtuna, … Read more
Eco-House, Normal House
A Little Weblog Essay about Our New House, and its Various Environmental and Sustainable Features and Benefits This week my family moves into a new house that we have just finished building — or rather, that the builders have just finished building, financed by the proceeds on the sale of our previous apartment (we sold … Read more
The Asian Brown Cloud Up Close and Personal
On a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu, 24 March 2009, I caught a direct visual impression of the Asian Brown Cloud — brown haze below, blue sky above. I immediately used the resulting images in the keynote speech I gave there, in two slides, as part of a section on the need for … Read more
Climate Change Adaptation: from Big Taboo to Business Opportunity
Read my recent article on climate change adaptation generated a surprising amount of response. I will be focusing more and more on climate change adaptation issues in times ahead, both because I believe we all need to be paying more attention to it, and because my professional work with clients like the Nile Basin Initiative … Read more
Food, Fuel and Fiber? The Challenge of Using the Earth to Grow Energy
This article was commissioned by the Japanese energy magazine “Global Edge,” and reprinted also at Worldchanging.com. * * * In May of 2008, while visiting Jakarta, I came across a newspaper story about a protest there. Hundreds of people had gathered in front of the gates of a charitable NGO whose mission was to feed … Read more
