This graph makes it clear that deforestation is a huge contributor to global warming. An acre of rainforest can absorb up to 14 tons of carbon (gotta love those carbon eating trees). And burning that same acre can release 80 tons of carbon, (those carbon munching trees are 50% carbon so when they get burned up, their carbon goes back into the air). The net impact is almost 100 tons of carbon per acre! This is why we track our adopt your earth program in terms of acres and carbon - because the acres have a double impact. Protecting acres keeps them absorbing carbon and prevents them from releasing the stored carbon.

One problem with convincing people to take action against global warming is the phrase itself. Global is a good thing, warming is a good thing, so it doesn't sound like a problem. Even good attempts to raise awareness end up making the issue seem like a benefit rather than a problem (e.g. "global warming performance"). Global warming is the result of human activity, but I think the consequences are what motivate people. And perhaps the most motivating consequence is that global warming will put their house underwater and make their city uninhabitable. Perhaps we should be using the phrase "Global Drowning" instead. It's Getting Hot in Here has a great discussion of the "personal, concrete and real" consequences of global warming. And they link to maps from the University of Arizona that visualize what Global Drowning would mean. I grew up on the East coast, so this one is my "favorite" - it shows the Northeast under almost 20 feet of water. How likely is this? From IGHIH: "Renowned NASA scientist James Hansen, who first testified to Congress about global warming in 1988, now estimates that without a significant decrease in our greenhouse gas emissions, we could experience sea-level rise as high as 80 feet globally." Here are some more simulations from PBS via Groovy Green. And RealClimate has an interesting, but more technical discussion of the issue.

From Alternative Source: "England is set to develop a 'sustainable' town with 10,000 homes meeting the Government's eco-standards and using micro-renewable energy." Looks like this is being done by English Partnerships, whose "overall aim is to achieve high-quality, well-designed, sustainable places for people to live, work and enjoy." Sounds like a great aim.

Chevy has a new campaign to make your own commercial for their Tahoe SUV. Japhet from RAN posted a version that made me laugh out loud. (See the video here while it is still up - I assume Chevy is going to take it down soon). It would be great if Chevy asked customers to actually help them design the car itself, instead of just the car ad campaign. Perhaps they would have come up with something like the 157 mpg Loremo. For some reason, this reminded me of the classic Simpsons episode where Homer designs a car. Chevy had to know that choosing an SUV for this campaign would generate some very funny and very negative responses.

Very interesting concept. I might have to trade in my Honda Civic Hybrid for one of these.

Interesting discussion at sustainablog about the impact of Wal-Mart's decision to offer organic produce.

Our mission is sustainable prosperity, so we like to see the phrase showing up on the web. From Treehugger: "A group of United States-based NGO's and consumers is petitioning the three largest mutual fund companies in the US to consider the financial impacts of global warming." Ceres has a great toolkit for managing climate change. It is targeted at CEOs, managers and investment professionals, but it is also a good overview for anyone with any public stocks, a 401(k), a pension or just a desire to retire someday.

From Grist, this AP story. "And gone are the days when green-built homes teetered on the fringe of being freaky with a mishmash of recycled tires and aluminum cans and awkward solar panels. Now, solar power systems can be hidden on rooftops, insulation made of recycled material becomes invisible behind walls covered with nontoxic paint, and more efficient heating and cooling systems are woven into the home’s inner skeleton."

I have been an Apple user since 1979. Wired has a nice tour of the Apple interface. Apple has admirable corporate environmental policies.

Subscription required, but worth the read: "Capitalism and sustainability are deeply and increasingly interrelated. After all, our economic activity is based on the use of natural and human resources. Not until we more broadly "price in" the external costs of investment decisions across all sectors will we have a sustainable economy and society. The industrial revolution brought enormous prosperity, but it also introduced unsustainable business practices. Our current system for accounting was principally established in the 1930s by Lord Keynes and the creation of "national accounts" (the backbone of today's gross domestic product). While this system was precise in its ability to account for capital goods, it was imprecise in its ability to account for natural and human resources because it assumed them to be limitless. This, in part, explains why our current model of economic development is hard-wired to externalize as many costs as possible. Externalities are costs created by industry but paid for by society. For example, pollution is an externality which is sometimes taxed by government in order to make the entity responsible "internalize" the full costs of production. Over the past century, companies have been rewarded financially for maximizing externalities in order to minimize costs."

That's how many Britons alone throw away. Amazing number. Unfortunately they are very toxic. Here is a very creative solution: "Kerry Kirwan has built an unusual mobile phone for himself. The cover is made of biodegradable plastic and inside is a sunflower seed. It's a perfect marriage of ecology and technology, he believes.

'When I've finished with my phone, I will plant the case in a pot,' said the Warwick University researcher. 'Its biodegradable material will disintegrate to provide nutrients for the seed. After a few weeks, I will have a nice sunflower in my garden. It will even absorb carbon dioxide that should make up for some of the emissions created in making it.'"

"The UN estimates that 20-25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from the destruction and degradation of forests, an amount similar to the volume produced each year by the United States."

Ever since we discovered an article in Nature describing the NPV (net present value) of an acre of rainforest, we have been saying that "money grows on trees." Of course, we are not the only ones that believe this, but it is nice to see the sentiment accelerating. The International Finance Corporation of the World Bank (via World Changing) has just published A Guide to Biodiversity for the Private Sector. The subtitle is "Why Biodiversity Matters and How It Creates Business Value." Business value, of course, means money. In addition to destroying biodiversity and economic value, deforestation is also a huge contributor to global warming: "Because of logging and the expansion of settlements, the Amazon region may soon emit more greenhouse gases than its rain forest converts back into oxygen, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said." So there really is no argument that can be made against sustainable forestry practices. The world will make more money and reduce global warming at the same time.

This is good news. We are big fans of FSC Certification and we use FSC paper when we have to use paper. It was more difficult to find an FSC printer than it should have been, so it is nice to see Harris right on their home page. They did a nice job using FSC paper for our business cards, which are currently the only paper we are using. PDFs and email have reduced our general paper usage to almost zero. It really is easy to reduce paper usage if you have the willingness to do it. And it actually makes us more productive.

The ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are melting at a faster rate than previously thought. The Times of London reports that at the current rate of thaw, cities such as London, New York, Bombay and Tokyo and large portions of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Florida could be under water by 2100.

The cover of Time: "Polar Ice Caps Are Melting Faster Than Ever... More And More Land Is Being Devastated By Drought... Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying Communities... By Any Measure, Earth Is At ... The Tipping Point."

These are great ads (here and here) from FightGlobalWarming.com (via Groovy Green). From their press release: "The ad launch follows the release today of a nationwide survey that reveals that most Americans recognize the problem of global warming and are willing to help solve it by changing their daily habits to save energy and cut pollution... The survey, conducted by pollster Whit Ayres of Ayres, McHenry and Associates, found that 71 percent of Americans recognize global warming is happening and more than half attribute the problem to human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels. But while an overwhelming majority (70 percent) of people polled agree that it’s possible to reduce the effects of global warming, only three-fifths (59 percent) thought it was possible they could do something about it as individuals. When asked if they were willing to take action, however, respondents overwhelmingly agreed to a wide variety of steps to save energy, such as caulking windows and doors (95 percent), recycling (94 percent) and turning the thermostat down two degrees in winter and up two degrees in summer (90 percent)." Nice to see our partner Carbonfund.org listed in the "what you can do" section.

We are very excited to have added Green Nest as an earthscreen partner. They have everything from non-toxic paints to organic baby clothing. I have to admit that it is a little scary to read about all the toxic stuff in my house, and I didn't even know that "baubiologist" was a word (it means the study of how buildings affect people's health). Lisa Beres, who founded Green Nest, is a certified baubiologist and she has been a pleasure to work with. You can read an interview with her here. But be prepared for an overwhelming desire to repaint and remodel your home.

This is a great visualization of the world's deforestation problem. Carbon dioxide gets a lot of attention because we all consume lots of energy with are cars and homes, but deforestation is a huge problem. It contributes billions of tons of carbon each year to global warming and it destroys the delicate biodiversity of our planet.

I love this idea, but it really could use some marketing help. The phrase "global warming performance" sounds too much like a good thing. But the idea itself is great.

Our partner Carbonfund.org ranked as the most efficient carbon offset partner. Congrats to them.

The 1990s was the warmest decade since the mid-1800s, when record-keeping started. The hottest years recorded were 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002 and 2003. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recently announced that 2005 was the hottest year in a century.

Sustainable is one of our favorite words because it has positive meaning for both the environment and the economy. While the sustainable idea has been around for awhile, we believe there is a new wave of cool companies creating solutions based on web 2.0 technologies and sustainable practices. Call it "environment 2.0". We will be posting more about each of our favorites and hopefully start a dialog over the meaning of environment 2.0. The environment 2.0 approach is what helps us achieve our mission of "sustainable prosperity." For us, the word "sustainable" means both environmentally and economically sustainable (i.e. achieving a sustainable growth rate). And "prosperity" means positive economic growth. So together "sustainable prosperity" means saving the environment with economic growth and creating faster economic growth (a higher sustainable growth rate) by factoring in the environment. We didn't come up with this idea all on our own. There is a lot of research and writing by very smart people who inspired us. In particular, we are big fans of Natural Capitalism by Hunter & Amory Lovins and Paul Hawken and Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Feel free to add your own thoughts about sustainable prosperity and links to environment 2.0 companies that you like.

We created our adopt your earth program to help save forests and reduce global warming. Our goal is to help fund organizations that are doing innovative work to help prevent catastrophic climate change. Carbonfund.org is our first adopt your earth partner. We work with them to fund forest conservation, renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation projects. You can learn more about the projects in our About Us section.

We created meaningful media to connect people to the beautiful places that we help protect. These places are under serious threat and they are some of the most vital acres on the planet. They are critical to a healthly climate and they provide us with food, medicine and clean air. Our first four earthscreen artists have created a wonderful collection of photographs from Ecuador, Nicaragua, Colombia and Belize. We will be adding more to the collection. Our members get new photos every day from the earthscreen collection.

When you shop, every choice you make impacts the planet. So we created earthscreen rewards to make it easy for members to save on stylish, earth-friendly products. Our goal is to make saving the planet save our members money. Our first partners are Vivavi, Organic Bouquet, and The Organic Wine Company. We will be adding more in the future.

As part of our community, we created friends to save the world to enable members to create their own group of friends to save more acres of forest and offset more carbon dioxide.

Our eco adventure to Belize is up and running. All new members will get a chance to visit some of the beautiful rainforest their membership helps protect. I have been to Belize and it is a magical place. An earthscreen member and a guest will get to visit and explore this paradise and stay in Francis Ford Coppola's Turtle Inn.

Vivavi was our first earthscreen partner. Josh, who started the company, is the host of The Lazy Environmentalist. He is on NPR right now. I love Josh's philosophy. We partnered with him as soon as I found Vivavi.com because their products are great.

We just partnered with OrganicBouquet and my first experience was to receive some beautiful Stargazer Lillies. The experience was amazing. Of course, it's always wonderful to get flowers, but the experience with OrganicBouquet was exceptional. The flowers come in a beautiful box that explains why their organic flowers are so beautiful and so good for the planet. And they were so easy to make look beautiful (cut stems, put in vase, add water). They last forever. earthscreen members can save up to 10% with OrganicBouquet. We will have the link up for members in the next few days.

I am a huge fan of TreeHugger and visit many times each day. They just launched TreeHugger TV and the first two episodes are now in my iTunes. I didn't think it could happen, but now I am an even bigger fan.

earthscreen is partnered with Carbonfund.org. We created our adopt your earth program to partner with innovative environmental organizations that help to solve deforestation and global warming problems. Since we like data, numbers and math about the environment, we really liked the folks at Carbonfund. They are great people and they have a cool carbon footprint calculator on their home page. We will be doing lots more with them in the future.

We started earthscreen to help save the world, and the approach we decided on is best summarized by Paul Hawkin and my former camp counselors, Hunter and Amory Lovins, in a book called Natural Capitalism. You can find more on the story of earthscreen in the about us section here.

Welcome to the start of the earthscreen. Our mission is to make it simple, beautiful and rewarding for people to make a difference in the world. And to communicate with you to figure out what we can do it better.

Welcome to the launch of earthscreen and our blog.