Green Options

This morning I found myself thinking about inaugurations past. In particular, John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Inaugural Address. That, along with meeting Auden Schendler Executive Director of Sustainability at Aspen Ski Company a few weeks ago, got me thinking about my ideas of greening small businesses.

What would happen if we reframed the issue: ask not what the country can do to green you; ask what you can do to green the country?

We all know that in order to be a green business we have to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk.  And, walking the walk needs to be more than greening your individual business. Changing your business practices is only one piece of the greening puzzle. Just because you can’t afford to install solar panels right now, doesn’t mean you can’t make a big difference. In fact, the time you invest in making a difference may be as valuable to environmental progress as installing CFLs. What if every small business owner in America got involved?  Joined a green business organization? Strengthened their green requirements for suppliers? Provided customers with greener alternatives?

As news broke late last week that there might be yet another delay in the eight year battle to get Cape Wind approved, I had to wonder if Kennedy’s hand was somehow behind it. And according to reports, that is at least plausible.

Obama has already selected many former rivals, such as Hilary Clinton, for his cabinet, but the most important appointee he will make is the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Like many of my fellow citizens, one of my first thoughts after hearing Sen. Barack Obama declared the winner of Tuesday’s election was “I am so proud to be an American.”

Yes, my guy won. Yes, the United States elected it’s first African-American president (and that’s an incredible step forward). Yes, the issues that matter to me (and likely to you) will receive much more attention than they have over the past eight years. All of these are reasons to celebrate.

But, even more important, and more critical to our near- and long-term future: hope won.

While that sounds like a nice, abstract, feel-good statement, I don’t think we can underestimate the notion that Tuesday’s election came down to a choice between hope and fear. Let’s face it: the choice of Obama to lead the country for the next four years was risky. He proved his intelligence, eloquence and resolve during the campaign, but he’s still a relative newcomer to the national stage. He faces Herculean challenges upon entering office: a financial and economic mess, two wars, and, yes, monumental environmental threats… to name a few of the most pressing issues. And, of course, he has critics ready to pounce hard on the slightest perceived misstep.

Americans knew these things as they entered the voting booths on Tuesday… and yet the majority still chose Senator Obama over the much better-known Senator McCain. And while we can parse decisions and actions made by each candidate and his representatives, I really want to believe that what Americans voted for wasn’t simply a man, a party, or a governing ideology, but rather the spirit embodied in the exclamation “Yes we can.”

As I reported yesterday, a proposed wind farm near Cape Cod cleared a major hurdle when the US Minerals Management Service issued a favorable report in their Draft
Environmental Impact Statement.

The agency indicated that, in nearly all of the issues they studied, the project would have minimal impacts. The report did say that some birds would have “moderate” impacts, but that those problems could be mostly mitigated. Believe it or not, the only “major” impact cited in the MMS report was the view from boats. You can judge for yourself how those turbines might look by taking a look at the image above, which is a simulated view of the turbines from Nantucket created by the Cape Wind folks (link to more below). It seems to me that if the only major problem with the project is based on…