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
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
Climate and Health: Side Issue, or the Bottom Line?
The fall has been so full of climate change-related seminars that I earlier forgot to write up this one: a day on The Health Impacts of Climate Change at Stockholm’s prestigious Karolinska Institute (Oct 11, 2011). (Here I must reveal that my wife works at the Institute, Sweden’s leading medical training and research center, as … Read more
Wailing on the Road to Cancún
“It’s so bleak, it’s very depressing. But we are activists. When things are bleak, we don’t give up. We get busy.” So said Meena Raman of the Malaysia-based activist group Third World Network at a small seminar on climate change held in Stockholm this week. For me, it was an excellent opportunity to get updated … Read more
On Being an American Troubadour at the Swedish Climate Change Conference
This is the third and last installment on my series of posts from the Climate Existence 2010 conference, organized by my friends and colleagues at Uppsala University’s Center for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS). To read the posts in order: 1. Bill McKibben 2. David Abrams I am on the 5:23 morning bus, leaving the … Read more
David Abrams: Breathing ourselves aware on planet “EAIRTH”
This is the second in my series of posts from the conference “Climate Existence 2010.” The series began with a post on Bill McKibben’s opening keynote. This one covers the afternoon keynote and the workshop I went to, which awakened some memories … “We don’t live on the Earth. We live in the Earth. Or … 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
Can a Glass of Orange Juice in Sweden be “Climate Smart”?
Sometimes you just wince. I’m complicit, of course. I bought the juice. I like the juice. And of course, I routinely wonder at the general sustainability of shipping orange juice (and a lot of other stuff) around the planet, using fossil fuels. It doesn’t seem quite right. There are a lot of things that “don’t … Read more
