Grow a garden on your roof – show 43

By on May 5, 2011   /   Family, Featured Media, Innovation, Women Of Green Podcasts with Carolyn   /   1 Comment
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Amy Norquist is one of the queens of the green movement. She has worked over twenty years in environmental research and education for many non-profits. With all her deep green experience, one day she had a thought, “I want to install a green roof on my home.” And that’s exactly what she did. Little did she know what she was getting into. That great idea turned into a “hellish experience” as she puts it. So she was determined to make sure other people do not go through what she went through. Thanks to Amy, they don’t. Her company, Greensulate, is a leading edge provider of design, engineering, installation and maintenance services in green roof systems. But what exactly a green roof anyway? Find out in this podcast with Carolyn. You may be ripping up the tar before you know it.

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Who’s the greenest of them all?

By on May 5, 2011   /   Innovation, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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What’s the greenest place in America? If you answered something like the granola-crunchy, Rocky Mountain-high town of Boulder, you’d be wrong. If you guessed the sea breezes and warm sunlight of Santa Barbara, you’d be wrong again. The greenest place in America is almost devoid of nature — the buildings outnumber the trees — and the air isn’t all that great. But what it has is density and efficiency — the twin qualities that ultimately define green in the global warming era. Applying those standards, the greenest place in America is New York City — specifically, the overcrowded, overpriced and sometimes overwrought island of Manhattan, which has a per-capita greenhouse gas footprint less than 30% that of the national average.

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A Royal Mess

By on May 3, 2011   /   Innovation, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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The Royal Wedding is said to have produce 12 times as much greenhouse gases than Buckingham Palace in a whole year. Ouch! They missed a royal opportunity to make a worldwide statement that trash has no class. But they blew it. And blew it big.

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Biodegradable Plastics: Plant Symbol Chosen As Icon

By on May 2, 2011   /   Innovation, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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As covered Tiffany Hsu in the LA Times Greenblog, more than 1,500 designers submitted entries into a contest seeking an icon to represent plastics created using potatoes, corn, wheat, tapioca, sugar, algae and other natural materials.

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What to Do This Weekend

By on April 22, 2011   /   Arts, Heart   /   Leave a comment
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This Saturday there will be a great opportunity to listen in to two inspiring leaders talk about how women can most effectively transform themselves and the world. You can listen in from anywhere.. and call-ins are welcome!

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BPA in my soup? Mmmm goodness! A conversation with MomsRising’s Joan Blades – show 42

By on April 19, 2011   /   Family, Featured Media, Health, Women Of Green Podcasts with Carolyn   /   Leave a comment
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Joan Blades is the President and Co-founder of MomsRising.org, a five-year-old organization that champions core motherhood and family issues. A million members strong, MomsRising works to support policies that help with family economic security like health care, paid maternity, family and sick leave, fair pay, early learning, and flexible work. One of the big issues that MomsRising takes on in a big way is toxins in our homes. In my interview with her, we talk about BPA in our canned goods (and ultimately in our blood stream) and flame retardants in our furniture (another toxic fabrication from the Big 3 chemical companies).

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Is it “Tilt: Game Over”? A Sobering Conversation with Hunter Lovins – show 41

By on March 23, 2011   /   Featured Media, Women Of Green Podcasts with Carolyn   /   2 Comments
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Hunter Lovins has been a vocal citizen of the planet for over 40 years – teaching, educating, consulting scores of businesses from start-ups all the way to conglomerates like Wal-Mart on sustainability and the bottom line. Right out of the gate in my interview with her she says, “We are very near a tipping point in which it comes to be recognized that behaving in ways that are responsible to people and to the planet are simply better business.” In her next breath, she qualifies this with a sobering smack, “At the same time, we’re losing every major eco system on the planet.”

Hunter believes that our current economic collapse was caused by the “fundamental unsustainability of the way in which we do business.” I would agree. So is it “Tilt: Game Over?” Or are we as a species going to collectively rise up and meet the enormous challenges in front of us? Listen to this podcast and you decide.

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Erin Brockovich Is Back and She’s Not Going To Take It Anymore!

By on March 11, 2011   /   Innovation, Leadership, Uncategorized   /   2 Comments
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Erin Brockovich has returned to the town that made her famous and is once again rallying residents, sampling the water and at a water board meeting this week is expected to announce that the contamination may be worse than the utility says, reports Huffington Post. The pollution that Pacific Gas & Electric was suppose to clean up is once again seeping into the groundwater of Hinkley, CA. “We didn’t bring a giant to its knees, all we did was wake it up,” says Roberta Walker, a woman who was instrumental in developing the original case in 1993. “This is not happening again – I can’t believe it.” Julia, where are you?

Let’s raise our voices this time with Erin and see what happens and follow the story here.

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Washington DC Says Women are Essential in the Green Economy

By on March 11, 2011   /   Leadership, Uncategorized   /   1 Comment
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Straight out of Washington DC, here are the remarks attributed to Lawrence J. Gumbiner, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.

“Women and youth are essential agents of change in society, and we believe they are particularly important in the context of the green economy. There are a number of ways in which educational opportunities, technical training, access to finance, and land and resource rights can enhance women’s roles in a green economy.” Tell us more Mr. Gumbiner. What exactly do you have in mind?

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Are You Strong Enough To Be Vulnerable? with Birute Regine – show 40

By on March 9, 2011   /   Featured Media, Heart, Women Of Green Podcasts with Carolyn   /   Leave a comment
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“The key to personal and social transformation is to see our vulnerabilities in a different light,” says the author of Iron Butterflies, Birute Regine. It takes “profound openness” she says to be strong enough to be vulnerable. Don’t you love that? Strong enough to be vulnerable.

“Soft is the new hard,” Birute playfully puts it. Her mission is to transform the meaning of vulnerability. “Our vulnerabilities will be our spiritual guides. They will show us and lead us to new strengths.” I couldn’t agree with her more.

In my own personal life, it took me years of peeling off the layers of ego to be vulnerable enough to be truly human. Vulnerability has nothing to do with weakness. In fact, it takes a strong, courageous woman to let her hair down, and her defenses, and be open to what’s present in any given moment. That is a leadership quality I want to practice more, to master. I believe this very quality is key to a peaceful and prosperous world. What other “soft” qualities do you think are needed?

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