But the Tower, in my mind, never had much to distinguish it other than a great view from the 103rd floor, its height of 110 stories and the convenience of the train station. But now everything is changing.

By the end of the summer, it will no longer be the Sears Tower. It will be called the Willis Tower, named for the global insurance broker. But more importantly, the building will undergo a $350 million efficiency and renewable energy retrofit that will reduce the base building electricity use by up to 80 percent - 68 million kilowatt hours annually or 150,000 barrels of oil every year. The retrofit will also create more than 3,600 jobs in the Chicago area.

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An environmentalist praising an American car maker and a NASCAR driver in the same post? Fasten your seatbelts!

On Monday, a team of drivers, including hypermiler Wayne Gerdes and NASCAR driver Carl Edwards successfully completed the 1000 mile challenge, taking a 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid 1005 miles on less than a single tank of gas. (Full disclosure time, my company, BLU MOON Group, does some work with Carl Edwards, but we weren’t involved in this event.) The 1000 mile challenge was also a fundraising event for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Here’s the best part, though; they made it over 1000 miles with almost 1/3 tank of gas remaining and achieved more than 80 miles per gallon from the same Fusion Hybrid that you or I can buy. Pretty cool, right?

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He currently manages Clark Strategic Partners and consults with the Los Angeles Community College District helping their nine college campuses become energy independent and carbon neutral. I caught up with Dr. Clark to talk about renewable energy, energy policy, bicycle lanes and why it all matters.

Leslie Berliant: How did you become involved in co-authoring the report from the UN IPCC that ultimately made you a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize?

Woody Clark At the time, I was at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. At that time, it was part of the UC (University of California) system and funded by the US Department of Energy. The lb itself was named after Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel prize winner in Physics. For 50 years after World War II, it was all part of the UC system. That’s no longer the case, which is a shame. Anyway, I became aware of the work the UN was starting to do in this area and while I was full time at Lawrence Livermore labs, I asked if I could participate in the panels. They said I had to do it on my own time and at my own expense so I did. I found some money and paid for my travel and took time off from work because I thought it was an important topic to pursue. I was a participant in the panels throughout the 90’s. As a result, I was asked to be the first research director for one of the areas of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; I was to look at environmentally sound technologies like solar, wind, and others and see how they could be transferred from developed countries to developing countries. I had 6 co-authors covering things like wind from Denmark and solar from Japan. It was a landmark study. My involvement with the IPCC went on for about 4 or 5 years but after a while I changed jobs and went to work in Denmark as a visiting professor and wasn’t able to participate anymore. Another interesting twist is that I was the co-author on the chapter on economic and finance and the co-editor on the chapter on legal and contract agreements. Those are two areas that I’m very much involved in today. In fact, it’s what I do professionally with the colleges.

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We poured ourselves coffee and tea into paper cups. We ate our potluck lunch on paper plates with plastic forks. We grabbed our bottles of water. We wiped our mouths with paper napkins and we grabbed our packets of printed materials to talk about how we could help push the federal government into making clean energy a reality, starting with identifying ‘green’ businesses to be our allies in this campaign.

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Courtesy of  Scientific American and Environmental Health News, another reason to despise plastic. According to an article by Matthew Cimitile, researchers believe that airborne pollution from plastics manufacturing may change the DNA of cattle.

It all started when ranchers living 4 miles downwind from the Formosa Plastics facilities in Point Comfort, Texas noticed that their steers were losing weight, their cows were miscarrying and having stillborn calves and some of the calves were being born with abnormalities like missing limbs:

Tests have revealed that herds as far as six miles downwind of the factories have more DNA disturbances than other herds not downwind, according to scientists at Texas A & M University. The changes in chromosome structure and other genetic damage can increase the animal’s risk of cancer and reproductive damage

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Next Wednesday night, March 25th, tune into HBO2’s premiere of the documentary They Killed Sister Dorothy at 8 pm if you want to begin to understand the violence and injustice that surrounds the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. If you aren’t going to be home, then set your Tivo.

I was fortunate enough to see Daniel Junge’s film last month at the City of the Angels Film Festival in Los Angeles. The documentary follows the aftermath of the murder of 73 year-old Sister Dorothy Stang, known as the Angel of the Amazon, a Catholic nun and rainforest activist shot in the back while trying to empower local communities to set up sustainable farms while fighting illegal logging and land grabs.

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Soon, however, there may not be meat at farmers markets, or meat raised by small farmers, at all. That’s because of the roll out of the National Animal ID System (NAIS), requiring farmers to attach radio frequency identification ear tags on cattle, dairy cows, pigs and chickens.

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Building America works with research teams that include builders, manufacturers and technical experts to develop technologies and strategies that lead to improved home energy efficiency. They also created the Builders Challenge; builders that agree to join the Builders Challenge commit to constructing homes that rate 70 or better on the EnergySmart Home Scale (E-Scale).

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In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8th, a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women, the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) and Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) have released three new case studies and a video on the impacts of monoculture tree plantations on women in Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and Brazil.

These tree plantations provide rubber for car and bus tires, palm oil for processed foods and pulp for toilet paper - all items being used in the west. They are also destroying local communities according to WRM and FoEI.

In the case of Nigeria, in 2007, the French tire maker Michelin came in to the Iguóbazuwa Forest Reserve, a biologically diverse region supplying food for around 20,000 people. Michelin bulldozed the forest and local farm lands to convert them into rubber plantations. Women living there lost their subsistence farms and the local forest which provided medicinal herbs and plants.

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According to research by consulting firm A.T. Kearny, compiled in their “Green” Winners Report, “companies committed to corporate sustainability practices are achieving above average performance in the financial markets during this slowdown.” The key is that the commitment to sustainability be authentic.

In cases where it is integrated into a company to deal with human and natural resources in a sustainable manner and sell products that have low environmental impact, those companies are outperforming their industry piers in the financial markets by as much as 15%. According to the report, “in 16 of the 18 industries examined, companies recognized as sustainability-focused outperformed their industry peers over both a three and six-month period, and were well protected from value erosion.” Not insignificant in these difficult economic times.

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Remember back in December when 250 laid-off workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors Plant in Chicago? As you may recall, the company was obligated to give the workers 60 days notice, but their creditor, Bank of America, had cut of the company’s line of credit, even after receiving $25 billion in government bail out money, making it difficult to pay the workers. The workers refused to leave until they got what was due them and, miraculously, they won.

Well now an even bigger miracle has occurred. Some of the workers are getting their jobs back because of around provisions in the stimulus package that put aside about $30 billion in subsidies for improved home energy efficiency. You see, California based Serious Materials, a producer of energy efficient building materials, took a look at that particular part of the stimulus package and realized they were going to be getting seriously busy since their windows qualify for a $1500 tax credit. Recognizing the need to expand to meet the coming demand for things like energy efficient windows, and having a desire to do some good in the world and to have a midwest location, they thought why not purchase the former Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, and while we’re at it, why not rehire some of those union workers, at their former union wages, and teach them about making our energy efficient products? So that is exactly what they did.

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Paper production is the third largest contributor to climate change, the biggest source of deforestation and has a significant impact on water issues. It’s a dirty business, from the use of toxic chemicals and chlorine bleaches to clear cutting of forests like this one on the North Carolina Coast:

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They will also receive training to become the future leaders of the climate action movement, with workshops on a variety of topics like lobbying members of Congress, corporate accountability, environmental justice, organizing 101 and more. They will also be connecting with other participants from their states and will be invited to a career fair hosted by Idealist and a graduate school opportunities fair.

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I asked Josh my favorite biofuel question at the time: If Willie Nelson can figure out how to run a car on vegetable oil, why can’t Detroit? I’d like to think we bonded a little over that. He had me test drive a diesel Volkswagen and told me that he had written some books and was going around the country in the Veggie Van, lecturing on the benefits of biofuels. He also said he was working on a film. I didn’t think much of the film making bit. I live in L.A. Every one is working on a film about something. Still, Josh had a sincerity and contagious optimism about him that was distinctly antithetical to being just another L.A. film guy.

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As part of the 2009 Greener Gadgets Conference in New York on February 27th (read about the 2008 conference here), the design magazine Core 77 is presenting a green design competition. There are 50 green gadget finalists and by voting before February 20th, you can help determine which will be the top 10 that make it to live judging from the stage during the conference.

Right now, Hernando Barragan’s environmental traffic light called Social-environmental Station is leading with 1182 votes.  These gadgets look like traffic lights and are meant to be placed in public areas. They will measure things like CO2 and visually display them so that environmental phenomena become more immediately visible to the public and less of an abstraction. Essentially, they will be “environmental signals that support decision making on environmental issues”.

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During the eight environmentally dismal years of the Bush administration, environmental advocates learned how to effectively use the U.S. court system to aid their cause.  We saw this with a number of lawsuits including the Supreme Court’s ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Now Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and 4 cities, including my very own hometown of Santa Monica, California, have settled a suit of almost 7 years (Friends of the Earth, Inc., et al. v. Spinelli, et al.) that will force two U.S. government run financing agencies, Export-Import Bank of the United States and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, to take into account the effects of their overseas projects on climate change.

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It’s nice when people put their money where their mouths are. For some time now, labor has been on the green jobs bandwagon. At this week’s Good Jobs Green Jobs conference, the AFL-CIO announced a $1 million investment from the Working for America Institute to create a Center for Green Jobs, showing just how committed they are to the symbiosis between green jobs and union jobs.

At a press conference announcing the center, United Steelworkers Union President Leo Gerard said:

We need to send the economy in the direction where the primary emphasis is on good jobs and green jobs. Don’t let anybody tell us that can’t be done.

We reject the notion that we have to choose between good jobs and a clean environment. It’s not one or the other. It’s both or neither. – AFL-CIO

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While the film talks about the destruction of the rainforest - 20 square miles a day being lost to logging and ranching - the real power of the film lays in the unfettered access that Junge and his camera crew had to the court room and the lawyers for the defendants. From the arrogant defense lawyers to the earnest government agents, the documentary captures the colorful characters and tragic lack of justice in a world where rich and poor live and die with the rainforest. Sister Dorothy was murdered for a $50 payment and over a 10 square mile tract of land known as Lot 55. But as the very flippant defense lawyer, Americo Leal, says “it’s very hard to survive when you irritate people in that region.”

What the film doesn’t talk about is the connection between these loggers, ranchers and farmers and the west’s appetite for virgin paper products and cheap meat in the form of fast food, as Gavin Hudson wrote about at EcoWorldly last year. If we continue to consume products without fully understanding their genesis, then we are complicit in the problem. If you consume soy products, find out where the beans are sourced. If you consume fast food, find out where the cattle are raised and where their feed is grown. Stop buying virgin paper products.

Up until Dorothy’s murder, in Para, there had been more than 800 murders over land disputes in 30 years. Of those, only one person had ever gone to prison. So as the film follows the three ring circus that is the Brazilian legal system and as the state prosecutors try to go after the rancher that paid for the murder, we see first hand the complicity between the systemic failures on every level and the destruction of the Amazon for commercial purposes.

While the environment, namely the protection of the Amazon, is at the center of They Killed Sister Dorothy, it is really a film about social justice and a horribly broken legal system. It underscores the incredible obstacles to protecting the Amazon and addressing poverty in Brazil, but it also highlights the number of people that want to do the right things. “Dorothy lived her faith,” says Daniel Junge, “she was faith in action.” Dorothy’s legacy lives on in Esperanza and the Sisters of Notre Dame who took over her work after she was killed.

The film is illuminating in ways that have the power to create change. It was shown to the Brazilian Congress, at the Economic Social Forum and won an award in Brasilia. Dorothy’s brother Tom Stang said he hoped the film would “bear good fruit.” The fruit it bears will be up to those that watch it and feel inspired to take action because of it.

Just over a year ago, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Roxanne Christensen, co-founder and President of the Institute for Innovations in Local Farming. The Institute promotes Small Plot Intensive (SPIN) farming techniques first codified by Wally Satzewich, a farmer from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The idea behind SPIN farming is to give step-by-step instructions for creating a profitable farm on an acre or less of land in order to promote the development of local, organic food supplies. Through their method, even a 1/8th acre part time hobby farm can generate $10,000 – $20,000 a year with a full 1 acre farm bringing in $50,000 – $65,000 a year.

This year, they have come out with a SPIN gardening guide for the home gardener. It is not just for those with large backyards, either. Like the SPIN farming guide, it can be used to help organize community gardens and neighborhood produce co-ops. The original SPIN farm, run by Wally and his wife, is spread out over 25 neighborhood backyards.

The idea of the SPIN garden is to turn your home garden or neighborhood land into a significant, valued food source. The guide helps you understand how to grow high value crops – those that retail for more than $50 per harvest per short bed - and calculate the value of your harvest, so you know exactly what you are saving by growing your own organic produce. At the same time, it gives you a list of equipment you will need, and estimated costs, so you can garden like a pro. High value crops include heirloom varieties of carrots, tomatoes and potatoes, salad and mesclun mixes, onions, shallots and scallions, fresh herbs and more.

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