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Weekly Sustainability News Summary
March 27, 2015
Company Initiatives:
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BP joins list of companies fleeing Alec — British Petroleum is the latest company to pull its
membership from the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the oil company announced
on Monday. Full Article: The Guardian
7 reasons Walmart has given me hope about green marketing — Last month, Walmart
announced a new program that identified products from companies deemed “sustainability
leaders.” Full Article: GreenBiz
Reports, Studies, and Opinions:
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Guardian petition to foundations: don’t fund fossil fuels — A Guardian petition calls on
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuels.
Full Article: Triple Pundit
Americans don’t care that much about the environment, poll shows — Americans care
less about environmental issues now than they have in the past—and they’re no more worried
about global warming than they were decades ago, a new poll shows. Full article: TIME
'Sustainability': Is it a dirty word? — Whether it’s through overuse or greenwashing, terms
like “eco” and “green” often seem to elicit eye-rolling and sighing from a wide swath of the
sustainability community. Full Article: The Guardian
Amazon forest becoming less of a climate change safety net — The ability of the Amazon
forest to soak up excess carbon dioxide is weakening over time, researchers reported last week.
That finding suggests that limiting climate change could be more difficult than expected.
Full Article: The New York Times
Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans — with potentially
dire consequences — According to a new study just out in Nature Climate Change by Stefan
Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a group of co-authors,
we’re now seeing a slowdown of the great ocean circulation that helps to partly drive the Gulf
Stream off the U.S. east coast. Full Article: The Washington Post
Can social enterprise help 700 million who lack access to clean water? — The problem
of global water access is as intransigent as they come. Some 768 million people – more than the
population of Europe – still lack access to clean water. Full Article: The Guardian
Government Action:
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New federal rules are set for fracking — The Obama administration on Friday unveiled the
nation’s first major federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing, a technique for oil and gas drilling
that has led to a significant increase in American energy production but has also raised concerns
about health and safety risks. Full Article: The New York Times