Green Options

Oh! The weather outside [can be] frightful, which is why Stephen Chu of the U.S. Department of Energy announced Monday that 7 states (Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire) will be the recipients of more than $288 million dollars, which will be put toward weatherization projects.

Several news sources are reporting that an Arkansas doctor in the town of West Memphis who is the Chairman of the Arkansas Medical Board has been life-flighted to a hospital in critical condition after his Lexus RX 400h hybrid SUV exploded.

>>UPDATE #1 2/4/2009 12:15 pm PST: CNN is now reporting that a bomb WAS found. It appears that police have changed their story. We’ll see how this plays out…

>>UPDATE #2 2/4/2009 2:30 pm PST: Local and federal officials are urging anyone with information to contact law enforcement agencies. The ATF tip line is 888-ATF-BOMB.

>>UPDATE #3 2/5/2009 8:00 am PST: Dr. Trent Pierce has lost his left eye in the blast and is undergoing multiple surgeries to save his right eye as well as remove shrapnel from his neck and abdomen. Investigators are still not sure if the bomb was placed on or near Dr. Pierce’s car. Apparently, the doctor was outside his car when the blast occurred.

Initially a local bomb squad was called in to investigate, but was sent away after no bomb was found. At the time, speculation revolved around a malfunction with the car itself. Since that time, the FBI and ATF have found evidence of explosives. There are no current leads in the case and no one can come up with a reason why a doctor in a smallish town may have been the target of an attack like this.

The Senate passed a bill on Sunday expanding wilderness protection more than any legislation in the past 25 years.

[Creative Commons photo via rjime31]

It’s actually a collection of 160 bills and covers over two million acres in nine states. THe land ranges from the Sierra Nevadas in California to Mount Hood in Oregon and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. It also includes areas in Virginia, Idaho, Michigan, Arkansas, and Utah.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund has released a new report showing that while animal welfare laws have made great progress in recent years, five states lag far behind.

My editorial work keeps me hopping, so I’m a bit late getting started on reporting about my trip last week to Bentonville, Arkansas, for Wal-Mart’s annual Media Day and Shareholders’ Meeting. As always, it was a whirlwind of activity combining trips to company stores in the area, press meetings with company executives, and a little entertainment thrown in. I skipped the Carrie Underwood/Keith Urban concert Thursday night, but did see Joss Stone, Jennifer Hudson and David Cook perform early Friday morning… with Queen Latifah handling the MC duties.

Yes, Wal-Mart does a fantastic job entertaining the troops, but my real interest was in further news on company sustainability initiatives. Over the next week or so, I’ll be reporting on those. Today, I just wanted to provide some initial thoughts, and perhaps get the conversation going.

In case you haven’t noticed, the economy’s in a bit of slump… and that means more people are turning to discount retailers for their basic needs and luxuries. Sales figures are up for the company, and all of the executives that spoke at various portions of the media conference noted the company’s founding value of saving people money. At some points, I began to wonder just a bit if the much-heralded sustainability initiatives of the past few years were taking a back seat to it’s ability to provide goods (and services) at low prices.

Red Bud Manor, a Victorian bed-and-breakfast in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, is offering a pretty neat special for the green-minded (and fuel-cost-conscious) traveler: the Carbon Neutral Package.