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 group in Cincinnati has converted an old, vacant building to create a green tech lab for green construction and design projects.
The Ford training center in the Twin Cities has plans to close its doors by 2011 and will lay off hundreds of employees in the process. A few area groups have decided to use this manufacturing site as a green jobs training program for wind turbine manufacturing and installation, and light rail car production.
Here are a couple of examples of how greening our defunct manufacturing and industry plants in this country can help create jobs well within reach of those laid off factory workers, as well as help the U.S. to once again make products, all while helping the environment and hard-hit communities.
Among his first acts of business as President, Barack Obama has taken two separate actions to clean up the auto industry. He has asked the Department of Transportation to begin implementing a 2007 law requiring gas mileage standards to improve 40% by 2016, a law the Bush administration ignored after it was passed by congress.
His other move was more controversial: it was a request that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reconsider an application from 14 states that would allow them to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from automobiles. The same request was denied under the Bush administration.
California took the lead in requesting authority to implement limits at the state level that would require automobile GHG emissions to fall 30% by 2016. 13 other states have joined California in petitioning the EPA for this right: Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Well, it finally happened. Automakers finally got their bailout, excuse me … loan. After sitting on the fence for far longer than they should have, the Bush Administration took action late last week to stave off bankruptcy for two of the nation’s leading automotive manufactures by appropriating $17.4 billion to GM and Chrysler. The plan would provide the two companies with $13.4 billion immediately, but would require that they show proof of fiscal viability by the end of March; something many experts believe will be near impossible to do. This money will not be new funding, but rather will be appropriated from the first $350 billion of the $700 billion passed by Congress a few months ago to aid the financial industry. GM would have access to an additional $4 billion, assuming they prove they can be a viable company, out of the next allocation of $350 billion.
My father always told me that if you are going to ask for money, make sure you ask for enough so that you don’t have to come back for more. Well the Big 3 have come a begging and although they’ve asked for more than their original 25 billion, their new request of 34 billion has economists scratching their heads. Many estimate that the auto industry needs as much as $125 billion to survive, which begs the question, are the US tax payers being asked to throw money into a black hole?
When Bush and Obama met at the White House on Monday, one of the main topics of conversation was extending the recent $700 billion bailout to the U.S. auto industry. After all, why should the feds bailout Wall Street and not Detroit? Well, there’s always the decades of inefficiency, mismanagement, inferior products… bad business. However, if the U.S. auto industry collapses millions of jobs and billions in tax revenue could be lost in the short-term and there is speculation that this could push the current Great Recession into a full-blown depression.
The good news is that Barack Obama seems intent on doing more than just propping up the Big Three—GM, Ford, and Chrysler—so that they can continue with business as usual: he has indicated that as a condition of the bailout, the auto industry would have to become part of his comprehensive energy and environmental policy. The Obama/Biden “New Energy for America” plan states, “We must act quickly and we must act boldly to transform our entire economy—from …read more of Green Detroit here
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