A mutual funds company, Global mutual fund, has a “green” portfolio which it calls: “Portfolio 21″.

The corporation newly announced its top 10 companies. I was somewhat surprised to see companies listed which I never thought of as “green”.

For instance, the Autodesk corporation.  On the other hand, since 3D CAD cuts down the use of paper, that would make it a candidate. But Autodesk goes further, it has recently partnered with the U.S. Green Building Council with a goal of integrating its technology with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.

Railways are inherently efficient land-based transportation, and East Japan Railway continuously operates to decrease its power consumption. It has introduced reduced-weight railcars, and is installing solar and wind systems at some of its “eco stations”. The company is also working to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of the entire transport system by promoting inter-modal transportation by combining rail with additional modes of travel.

The Henkel company, out of Germany, creates an array of bio-based detergents and adhesives, minimizing the company’s reliance on fossil fuels. More than two-thirds of its products’ formulations are usually based on renewable raw resources.All new products must help with sustainable development.

Itron manufactures advanced metering national infrastructure system that allows two-way communication between utilities and consumers. This assists customers to participate in demand response and energy conservation programs.

Natura Cosmeticos, of Brazil, is more than just a cosmetics organization. It promotes the development and discovery of new and renewable raw materials, and supports sustainable agriculture and agroforest systems.

Potlatch is promising as being a leader within the domestic sustainable forestry industry. The company recently achieved Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for all its forestlands and also finds other business opportunities for its forestland by way of recreation leases and conservation easements.

Red Electrica is Spain’s leading power transmission company. It is responsible for the management of its country’s electricity distribution system. Spain has become the second-largest European wind-power producer and expects to have wind farms producing 13,000 megawatts by 2011.

Sharp, a well recognized name in consumer electronics products, is the world’s largest producer of solar cells and is one of just a few industry leaders to support a solution to e-waste in the United States.

Umicore is based in Belgium, and is the world’s leading recycler of precious metals. Examples include materials for rechargeable batteries, fuel cells, and auto catalysts.

Vestas, a Danish company, develops, manufactures, and markets wind energy products. This company has a clear sustainability strategy based on manufacturing equipment and operating facilities for the renewable energy sector.

Sometimes, even companies which you never thought of as “green” do contribute to a better environment.

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• Copenhagen and bad journalism I found an interesting story on what good journalism should be instead of what we have been served lately.It concerns Al Gore and Copenhagen, Cop15, sure turned out differently than what I expected.There was more talk about prostitutes and protesters being arrested.Al Gore just got some bashing concerning predictions about......
• Either way, you are right! Whether you think that 1,849 is the number of projects that I have or that project 1,849 itself contains 1,849 projects, either way, you are right. Project 1849 is about the sharing and the dissemination of ideas, information, knowledge. Over the coming months, I will present a multitude of topics......
• Masdar to be the first zero polluton city The city of Masdar near Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirate wl be the first city to produce its energy entirely by way of renewable energy such as solar and wind energy. They wil also recycle all their waste and as such, have a "zero carbon" footprint. Of course,......

• Weakon 115: Financial Industry One of the primary philosophies of Weakonomics is the status of the financial industry. No I'm not talking about Bear Stearns, Countrywide, and the credit crunch. They play a part and we'll get to them shortly. How Banks Make Money covered the basics but they aren't the only institutions......
• Green Home Makeovers that are Easy and Affordable Are you looking to save the environment, but you cannot afford costly options like solar panels? Are you looking for a way to cut down on your energy costs, but are not all together sure about installing wind turbines in your back yard? Don't worry! There are plenty of things......
• 25 Ways To Invest For Making Money Off Helping The Environment. Those of you who have been regular readers for a while might know that I run another site on environmental issues. Although I won't mention the site, it's not that hard to find as it is linked in my blogroll. I just received the October issue of Kiplinger's and it......

Clean coal, Carbon Sequestration, these are expressions we hear quite often when dealing with the production of electricity using fossil fuel other than oil. About twice a week, a new coal plant opens in China.

I came across a blog post on the topic of patents and innovations and the possible competition between China and the US regarding advances in the field of clean coal. The cold war between the former Soviet Union and the US helped advance our exploration of space and the resulting technology that has now become part of our lives. It is thought that perhaps a similar rivalry could stimulate the advancement of cleaner technologies.

There are two things to consider when it comes to energy: 1) Is it clean? 2) Is it renewable?

No matter how clean you make your coal burn, it is not a renewable resources and its mining can also be a source of environmental degradation.

Technological prowess  should be aimed at developing means to better harness clean and renewable energy sources.  The harnessing of  the wind has been done for centuries, certainly we could use that head start to our advantage.

Sometimes I feel like a lot of brain resources are wasted on too many dead ends when it comes to finding solutions to our energy needs.

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• GM files for bankrupcy--the end of the car era ? I wrote a little essay on the future of the automobile,"The end of the car era ?"in it, I talk about how the snootiness and myopic visions of American auto manufacturers led to this current situation. I also talk about whether it is a good thing to keep pushing the......
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With the inauguration of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, I think I should push on with the publication of my book. Getting all the facts right and all the details in before final review.

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• organic food - How green is my valley? Most people still have a bucolic view of agriculture. In fact, modern agriculture is far from green. It is in fact, one of the largest contributor to green house gas. Unfortunately, organic farming is not as productive. In fact, it is said that today's yield is bout 10 times......
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I found an interesting story on what good journalism should be instead of what we have been served lately.

It concerns Al Gore and Copenhagen, Cop15, sure turned out differently than what I expected.

There was more talk about prostitutes and protesters being arrested.

Al Gore just got some bashing concerning predictions about Arctic ice melting.

There is a Science teacher in the US that I follow on Twitter. He came up with a better researched and balanced piece than professional journalists at www.timesonline.co.uk

Click here to read the story, it is a good insight on how good journalism should be.

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• The only problem with politics is the politicians Politicians make me sick. In a recent post, I commented on my disagreement with Cap and Trade, and why it wouldn’t resolve any issues.  All the hoopla and controversy around the upcoming Copenhagen Summit has to do with politicians not agreeing on political issues.  The United States has yet to......
• Copenhagen and low-carbon investments A little quote from the BusinessGreen website "The potential impact on low-carbon investments of failing to deliver a meaningful deal at the forthcoming Copenhagen Summit was underlined last week with the news that analyst firm Point Carbon is downgrading its long-term price forecasts, primarily as a result of growing uncertainty......
• French train breaks speed record 574.8kph (356 mph). The previous TGV record was 515kph (320mph), set in 1990. The absolute train speed record was set by a Japanese magnetic levitation train is 581km/h (361mph) set in 2003. See a video of the train here That is fast! Faster than most single propeller planes such as......

• This Week On TechCrunch: Zuckerberg eaten by zebras, Al Qaeda invests in Twitter, Spotify profitable and more The only good thing about the deadline for this week’s TechCrunch round-up falling on Christmas Day is the absolute certain fact that you won’t be reading the results. After all, with the holiday season in full swing, no one in their right mind will be reading TechCrunch. I certainly won’t.......
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• Draft Al Gore Al Gore should be the president of the United States.  He is a visionary and a leader.  He won the Nobel Peace Prize for championing the must import cause in the  world today: global warming.  His movie An Inconvenient Truth brought unprecedented attention to this cause. In order to further the......

The Copenhagen Summit is happening right now. In view of the controversy over whether or not human activity is responsible for global warming, or if they’re is in fact a global warming, both controversies having been raised by scare tactics orchestrated the conservatives, I thought it would be a good time to talk about Greg Craven, that high school science teacher who put up a video on YouTube about three years ago asking the question “What’s the worst that could happen?“.

In the video, Greg basically set up a risk management grid. In later videos, he improved on that risk management grid based on the  feedback he had received from his original video. In total, he put up about seven hours of videos and even wrote a book to further explain the content of those videos.

With all that controversy about whether or not there is a human caused global warming, he figured that the issue should be analyzed by way of risk management, which is a very sound method used by insurance companies but also by businesses.

The technique is simple: draw a grid with four cells and to the left, write “false” and below it “true”. At the top of the grid to the left, write “yes”, for taking action, and to the right, write “no”, as in not taking action. Then, write up scenarios for what’s the worst that could happen if global warming is for real, we act accordingly, and the problem is solved. Then, write the consequences for if we act and spend money on something that turned out to be false versus the consequences of not doing anything and witnessing the apocalyptic disaster that happens if human caused global warming turns out to be true.

The risk of not acting if human caused global warming is true far outweighs the risk of doing something if global warming is not for real. If we do spend a lot of money to try to resolve the non-issue, we may risk an economic collapse due to overspending, from which we could get out of. But if we do not act, the global disasters that would befall upon us would be far worse than a simple economic collapse. The world economies have seen many economic collapses over the past century and the economy has always been able to get out of those crises. On the other hand, the compounding effect of all those disasters, as predicted from the effect of global warming, would destroy a lot of infrastructures which would make the world economies to take a far longer period to recover from.

Even those who do not believe in human caused global warming know that throughout the planet’s history there have been periods of ice age and global warming. They know what happens to the sea level, the vegetation, and to animal life, in general,  whenever there is a change in climate. They know what the consequences would be to our civilization if any type of global warming, human caused or not, were to occur. The conservative skeptics cannot absolutely deny the possibility that maybe human activity is causing global warming any more than scientists who believe can absolutely affirm that there is in fact 100% absolutely sure guarantee correlation between our activity and global warming. There is always uncertainty in science. Amid all the speculation over the possibility that maybe scientists fudge the data, even if there is the slightest possibility that human activity is actually causing global warming, risk management tells us that we should err on the side of caution.

For the Copenhagen Summit, the real issue is whether or not politicians will take the right measures to actually address the issue of human caused global warming rather than just apply a Band-Aid over the problem, as they often do.

You can purchase Greg Craven’s book at Amazon, simply use the link below:

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• French train breaks speed record 574.8kph (356 mph). The previous TGV record was 515kph (320mph), set in 1990. The absolute train speed record was set by a Japanese magnetic levitation train is 581km/h (361mph) set in 2003. See a video of the train here That is fast! Faster than most single propeller planes such as......
• Copenhagen Summit -- controversial for all the wrong reasons Last June, a group of scientists met up in Copenhagen as part of the preparation for the December summit. They hinted at some bad prognosis in regards to climate change. At the time, I thought that this would be the focus of the December summit: Forcing industrialized nations to put......
• The Cost of Oil Last week the barrel of oil had its highest one-day increase ever. Every time that I hear news concerning oil prices, that always makes me realize how dependent we are on oil. I try to imagine how we could get out of that dependency. The thing is, even if the......

• Global Warming Week: The Facts and History of Global Warming Fact: Earth is warmer today than it was in 1900. By about 1 degree Fahrenheit give or take a study. If you look back to the industrial revolution, largely responsible for our society today, there has been a positive correlation between man's carbon footprint and climate change. Concern of......
• Basic Knowledge About Global Warming Effect We all know that last several years we always hears about global warming issues, but what is the global warming itself? Well, global warming is a global heat, it is caused the ecosystem of the world has change, IPCC has reported that the world temperature increase into 0.15-1.30 C, if......
• Cool Foods Campaign: Take A Bite Out Of Global Warming. I know you know that some foods can have a detrimental effect on our environment, but do you know which foods and just how much damage they can do? Me neither, and that's why I was so happy to come across the website for the Cool Foods Campaign, which aims......