Ted is always looking for ways to minimize his ecological footprint. Professionally, Ted is working to gain the skills necessary to turn his passion for sustainable development into action, as an entrepreneur or financing sustainable businesses.
Ted studied economics and international business at Saint Louis University’s campus in Madrid, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and was honored as the Distinguished Student in International Business for his class. As the founder and president of the SLU Madrid Business Club, Ted focused the club’s activities on sustainability.
While working for commercial real estate multi-national Jones Lang LaSalle’s Madrid office, Ted strove to implement sustainable practices both within the firm and for its clients. He proposed and designed an Environmental Sustainability Action Plan for JLL Spain. Green Building and Environmentally Sustainable Development remain a passion for Ted: he believes that the intersection of sustainable infrastructure and sustainable attitude is where we’ll find a sustainable society.
Ted currently works for a private equity firm in Madrid, learning skills that he hopes to apply to finance Environmentally Sustainable Development in the United States and around the world.
Tracy is the CEO and Founding Partner of Technical Green - a green industry career site focused on clean tech and green research and development.
Tracy's professional experience are in the recruitment advertising and non-profit sectors and she has for many years maintained a sustainable lifestyle.
Marie Oser is a best-selling author, columnist, and host/producer of VEG TV. A vegan lifestyle expert, and environmental advocate with a focus on nutrition and its role in disease prevention, Oser specializes in creating original gourmet recipes with a solid nutritional bottom line.
Many prominent medical and nutrition professionals endorse her work, including Dr. Colin Campbell, Professor Emeritus, Cornell University and principal researcher of the groundbreaking CHINA STUDY, and Neal Barnard, M.D. founder and president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, DC.
Marie is president of VEGTV, Inc., a video production company producing content for TV and new media. VEGTV streams hundreds of lifestyle videos to more than 1,000 sites globally. In her role as Director of Product Development at Smart Planet Kitchen, she has created, Marie Oser’s Lean & Green, a new line of vegan and Fair Trade Certified products. Marie has appeared on CNN, ABC, National Public Radio, QVC, WUSA, WNBC, KCAL, KOVR, Home & Garden Television (HGTV), FINE LIVING, TECH TV, and Discovery Channel.
Vegetarian since 1971; vegan since 1990, Marie left a career in TV advertising to pursue her interest in food, health, and nutrition. Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, she studied psychology at St. Joseph’s University. Marie is a gourmet cook and organic gardener living in California, writing her 5th book and hiking every day with Travis, her Yellow Lab companion.
Cherl Petso is the Associate Editor at Disaboom.com, an online magazine for people with disabilities. Her writing expertise includes articles about the environment and sustainable living, and vegan/vegetarian issues. A vegetarian for 16 years and a recent vegan, Cherl is passionate about animal rights and issues. She enjoys writing about simple ways to lessen the impact on the Earth.
Cherl recently moved to Denver, Colorado from Bellingham, Washington. She enjoys hiking and hanging out with her puppy.
Nathanial Manning works for the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) as a Regional Analyst for Asia. He focuses on two programs for CCI, the Green Building Retrofit program and the Waste Management program. Nathaniel recently graduated from Brown University as an Environmental Studies Masters student, specializing in sustainable design and international carbon policy. Nat also completed a Bachelor of Arts in World Religions at Brown, focusing on the philosophy of ethics and the intersection between religion and politics. He is completing his Masters thesis on clean-technology-transfer within the UN's carbon credit mechanism (the CDM), which allows developed countries to invest in carbon mitigating technologies in developing countries with the purpose of promoting sustainable development.
Nathaniel has a long history of involvement in environmental development work ranging from waste-to-energy entrepreneurial ventures to designing sustainable homes for the Guatemalan chapter of Habitat for Humanity, to working for a tidal energy engineering firm in Singapore. Nat's passion is in how intelligent innovative solutions and technologies can be applied to create a sustainable and free world. When Nat thinks of the word "green" he does not just think of the word "environment" but how we as humans can design systems and solutions that create win-win situations.
Robert Cowin is a political consultant for environmental NGOs. His nomadic childhood reveals a world-class carpetbagger, but he masks as a Texan-New Yorker hybrid. Formerly with the National Environmental Trust (now the Pew Environment Group) in DC, he’s spent time on Capital Hill advocating for Kyoto ratification, clean air, renewable energy technology, and green energy policy.
Robert has also worked on marine conservation issues, directing the Conserve Our Ocean Legacy coalition in the Mid-Atlantic States which successfully worked to help strengthen and reauthorize the Magnuson Steven’s Act. He now happily lives in Southern California, flying back east often as he finishes his Masters in International Relations at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.
Dayanti Karunaratne is a freelance journalist based in Canada's capital city, Ottawa.
Since graduating from Carleton University's journalism program in 2006, Karunaratne has worked on the news desk at the Port Hope Evening Guide, the Ottawa Citizen, and the Molokai Times. Karunaratne's writing appears in the Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Magazine, the Globe and Mail, and other lifestyle publications.
Heather O'Neill is the founder of Eco to the People, a green living blog.
Before founding Eco to the People, Heather O’Neill wore so many hats in the field of journalism that even the Queen Mother would envy her collection. She has worked as the managing editor of a beauty trade magazine; as a copy editor for an online tech magazine; as the associate editor of a city magazine and as a newspaper reporter and columnist, and as the senior editor at the popular online newsletter ecofabulous.
Her work has appeared in many publications, including Parenting, Alternative Medicine, Natural Solutions, Marin Magazine, Greenwich Magazine and HOME.
Heather earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from California College of the Arts. She lives and works in San Francisco.
A closer look at the candidate’s plans to grow the US green economy reveals some stark differences, but also, an amazing amount of similarities (especially when you consider the historical positions of the two political parties on energy and the environment). Both candidates would build more nuclear power plants, drill offshore, and invest in renewable energy and energy efficient technology, Obama’s plan is more aggressive in cutting green house gas emissions and funding renewable technology development, but will it create enough jobs? McCain’s plan is far more aggressive in pursuing mass electricity generation and energy production, but does it create enough green jobs? Furthermore, will either candidate’s plan have a “jump-starting” effect on the US economy, and if so, what will that look like?
To start with, both candidates will force fossil fuel-based energy producers to reduce their workforce because the cap-and-trade system which both candidates favor will cut into profits and when profits go down, people get laid off. Because Obama favors an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to McCain’s 66% reduction, more jobs in that part of the energy sector would be lost under the Obama plan. Furthermore, McCain’s large-scale nuclear energy initiative will create more jobs in the short-term because his plan calls for more nuclear energy production than Obama’s, and unlike jobs created from renewable research and development, nuclear energy infrastructure can be built right now and come on-line quicker.
McCain would be more aggressive with offshore drilling than Obama, so the edge would go to McCain on the creation jobs in the areas of natural gas and oil extraction. The problem is that most of these jobs are short-term jobs and extractive industries are limited in their potential for growth (especially as environmental considerations become more important). Simply put, these are not “green” jobs and you could argue that the “drill baby drill” mantra only serves to weaken the new green economy by shifting precious resources and manpower to fossil fuel development and stunting growth of renewable energy technology by lessening the market impacts derived from less fossil fuel supply.
Speaking long-term, it appears that Obama’s plan would have the most positive effect on the US green economy because he goes much further with his incentives to develop renewable technology than McCain. Over time, these breakthroughs could spawn a whole host of businesses that would employ millions of people, and unlike many of the jobs McCain’s plan would create, these jobs would be permanent. Furthermore, the benefits derived from selling new green technological breakthroughs to other countries represent an extraordinary opportunity for making the green US energy industry a respectable part of our GDP.
In the short-term, McCain’s plans should create more regular jobs, but in the long-term Obama’s plan should create more of the types of green jobs we need to grow the US green economy. McCain’s plan would also slow the pace at which the green economy would grow by focusing more on non-renewable energy production. If either plan can have a “jumpstarting” effect on the US economy, it would probably be McCain’s however, that positive effect could be short-lived due to the temporary nature of the extractive jobs. Both candidates support revamping our electricity grid to be more efficient, and that would create lots of new jobs immediately. In short, both candidate’s plans could help jumpstart the overall US economy, and while McCain’s plan would do this much faster, Obama’s plan helps to better grow the green economy of the US and secure its competitiveness long-term.
This is a very good comparison of the candidates. Well layed out and written.
CH
October 28, 2008 5pm EDT
Mr. Cowin - Can you please explain why expanded exploration, drilling, and more US based oil production are considered short term jobs? It seems like these are the only places a good blue collar worker can earn a decent wage without worrying about his job being moved to China.
Jeff White Hawk
October 30, 2008 1pm EDT
Ok so both of their plans sound great and all but I’m sorta of lost is obamas gonna make it to where their is more jobs and mc cains is going to give more jobs but can easily be lost and moved somwhere else? if you can provide me with a more simple means of explaining their plans then please E-mail me please at mr.jeff_whitehawk@hotmail.com thank you =^_^=
Rob
October 30, 2008 3pm EDT
CH-
Extractive industries are not the source of long-term jobs if there’s not much to extract. According to the 2008 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, the US only has 2.4% of the world’s oil, and 3.4% of the world’s natural gas. While I agree that increased domestic exploration and production of oil and natrual gas will be important in the short-term, over the long-term there just simply aren’t enough resources to assume it can be the source of steady jobs. That’s why we need to move away from extractive energy production and into more renewable energy production.
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This is a very good comparison of the candidates. Well layed out and written.
Mr. Cowin - Can you please explain why expanded exploration, drilling, and more US based oil production are considered short term jobs? It seems like these are the only places a good blue collar worker can earn a decent wage without worrying about his job being moved to China.
Ok so both of their plans sound great and all but I’m sorta of lost is obamas gonna make it to where their is more jobs and mc cains is going to give more jobs but can easily be lost and moved somwhere else? if you can provide me with a more simple means of explaining their plans then please E-mail me please at mr.jeff_whitehawk@hotmail.com thank you =^_^=
CH-
Extractive industries are not the source of long-term jobs if there’s not much to extract. According to the 2008 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, the US only has 2.4% of the world’s oil, and 3.4% of the world’s natural gas. While I agree that increased domestic exploration and production of oil and natrual gas will be important in the short-term, over the long-term there just simply aren’t enough resources to assume it can be the source of steady jobs. That’s why we need to move away from extractive energy production and into more renewable energy production.