Green Options

Welcome to the first official entry of a multi-part series documenting the green business, building, marketing, branding, and festival-izing conferences that are ramping up as the summer comes to a close (including Opportrunity Green). I’ve previously provided a first-hand account from WINDPOWER 2007 and Green Festival Chicago, and missed countless others.

I recognize all the benefits of green building, but, as I’ve never owned any kind of [...]

Yesterday I hopped down to LA for the first day of WINDPOWER 2007, the wind energy industry’s annual conference and trade show. It’s not an event that will make a lot of waves in the media (despite high-profile speakers), but I wanted to provide GO readers with an inside look at how the wind industry sees itself and what that means for the rest of us. However, it’s such a huge event that even one [...]

When we left off with Part I, Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center was asking “who is going to receive the benefits of exploding investments in green industries?

Hello from Chicago! GreenFest is over, and the Green Options team finally has a chance to relax after a hectic and amazing weekend. Our primary promotion, in which we worked with Renewable Choice Energy to offset GreenFest-goers' carbon emissions to and from the Festival, will result in 73,900 lbs. of total offsets. We haven't heard final numbers for the weekend yet, but rumor has it that over 35,000 people attended Saturday's festivities alone. To celebrate a smooth [...]

Yesterday, I had a chance to leave our booth in Liam and Noelle’s capable hands to head over to the main stage to hear Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center speak about “green collar” jobs as an avenue to social justice. The following is my lightly edited notes from his speech. I would have just taken a video and posted it via YouTube, but Green Festival sustains itself in part through the [...]

Update from 10 minutes before close on Day 1: So I have 4+ pages of unformatted notes on Van's speech (inspiring, even for a cynic… hopefully that will come through in my post), but haven't had a chance even yet to put it into publishable format. As you can imagine, time to sit, think, and type has been scarce today, but I'll get it up as soon as possible. As for Jeff's post, we decided that Hightower's speech, while incisive [...]

Besides welcoming him back from his Honduras hiatus, we here at GreenOptions want to wish a happy birthday to Clayton, our intrepid writer on biofuels (and the policy issues swirling around them). We love his thorough, academic approach to such complicated topics. Although they might not appeal directly to your average 'lite green' consumer in the same way that much of our other content does, Clayton's posts are always well-read, and tend to draw thoughtful, [...]

It's nights like this I'm glad I moved to Berkeley to start Green Options. Although it was only a few hundred people packed into the First Congregational Church, authors Bill Mckibben and Michael Pollan were there to talk about the mid- to long-term fate of our way of life, and what we need to be doing now to minimize the disaster, and ensure a reasonable quality of life for future generations. I feel like this [...]

Photo by Mike MagdaAs a rule, I avoid all things LA. The traffic, the sprawl–it's an intimidating place, and it certainly doesn't seem very environmentally conscious. Then again, life thrives in the most inhospitable environments; challenges spur innovation. Where better than the city with more roads and freeways than any other to introduce the next generation in transportation? Phoenix Motorcars is doing its part. Last [...]

Thursday I attended the birth of what sponsors Yahoo! and AC Nielsen hope will be a grassroots movement to upgrade incandescent light bulbs to a new generation of CFL bulbs on a national scale, saving billions of dollars in the process. A grassroots campaign with corporate sponsors? Weird. GO Contributor Michael d’Estries (who moonlights with us from Ecorazzi and GroovyGreen) was Johnny on the [...]