At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
 NEW YORK — Early this morning, before the sun peaked over the roofs of the grand old apartment buildings of the Upper East Side, I followed the road bikers and dog walkers and joggers over to Central Park for a splendid four-mile run. New York is full of young people now, bright, educated, trim, and ambitious. A whole bunch of them are up just after dawn to clear their minds and keep their bodies tuned sufficiently to compete …
On the day late last month that Rachel Carson would have turned 100 years old I posted a piece on Mode Shift that focused on the surprising failure of the nation’s major environmental organizations to defend the mother of modern environmentalism. The free market right has set out on a deliberate path to diminish Carson, and by extension the American environmental community, as credible in responding to the consequences of industrial technology. The attack on Carson is …
Here’s a name worth paying attention to in the space where sustainable business practices and the non-profit sector cross. He is Joshua Scott Onysko, a 30-year-old native of Rhode Island who turned a bonding experience with his mother making organic soap into Pangea Organics, a very successful Boulder-based manufacturer of organic body and skin care products. I first learned of Onysko and Pangea Organics from a friend in Saugatuck who was as enthusastic about the company’s all …
Not long after he earned a graduate degree in journalism from Northwestern University Carl Ganter made a name for himself here in Traverse City, his hometown, as a young writer and photojournalist with an unerring grasp for great stories, and a superb eye for color, light, character, and drama. He could make an ordinary windmill, its blades lit against a dramatic dawn sky, look like the most exotic piece of energy technology ever invented. His wife, Eileen Ganter, …
This part of Michigan, where sable sand and blue water meet, is rich in people of intelligence and talent who came from someplace else. Texas and Ohio, New York and Arizona, Pennsylvania and Indiana and Missouri. They all have a story about how they got here.  And then there’s the story told by Jerry Linenger (see pix), a retired physician and astronaut who was raised in Eastpointe, just outside Detroit, and decided to settle in Leelanau County …
Laura Dunn, a young Yale-educated director (see pix) who lives in Austin, Texas, is creating a stir at some of the country’s important film festivals, including Sundance, with The Unforeseen, a feature-length documentary about the consequences of runaway development and sprawl. Writer Dennis Conroy, who saw The Unforeseen at the San Francisco Film Festival last month, offered this assessment: “A modest real estate developer, [Gary] Bradley had big ideas. His concept was the 4,000-acre Circle C Ranch, an upscale subdivision—a …
Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois Senator Barack Obama skipped across the big pond on Tuesday and landed in Detroit, where he stirred a modest amount of interest by scolding American auto makers for letting the Japanese take command of the industry, and then offering a federal hand in contributing to the industry’s health care costs in exchange for convincing auto makers to increase fuel efficiency by about 1 mile a gallon per year. [youtube]GpYkCNohmf8[/youtube] Big deal. Both ideas …
 People adore parks. Most people also love open space. That applies even to the three Grand Traverse (MI) County commissioners who last month suggested that global climate change was a leftist conspiracy ginned up by Al Gore, and suggested that emailing the sun was a useful antidote. A comprehensive study by the San Francisco-based Trust For Public Land, published in early March,  found sound economic evidence for why regions that embrace an aggressive program of park development and open …
Nielsen Buzzmetrics, which has offices in New York and Cincinnati, is one of the top shops for using Internet search engine technology and sophisticated analysis programs to understand consumer attitudes and predict powerful trends. The company combs millions of conversations occurring on blogs, message boards, and in chat rooms, sifts out salient details, and analyzes the results to forecast consumer behavior and values. Earlier this month Pete Blackshaw, one of the company’s senior leaders, published a Buzzmetrics brand association map (see graphic) that …
 We’re one-tenth of a penny short of $3-a-gallon gas today here in Michigan. Energy analysts predict that the price will approach or exceed $4 by mid-summer. Welcome to the new world of gas price politics and the emerging new culture of energy efficiency in America.  It’s a whole lot easier to make the case for land and energy-conserving development patterns, energy efficiency, and a new economic development strategy in the United States when consumers’ ire is stoked by the price at …