By: Jonathan Hiskes

When Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) unveiled their long-awaited American Power Act last week, it drew two sharply different responses from two collections of activist groups.

Two hundred groups that might be called “little green” immediately condemned the climate and energy bill in a joint letter, calling it “greenwashing in the extreme.” The coalition consists of regional environmental, peace, and religious groups — such as Don’t Waste Arizona, the Snake River Alliance, and the Turtle Island Restoration Network.

“This bill is just business-as-usual: taxpayer giveaways to giant nuclear and other energy corporations wrapped in the guise of doing something about our climate crisis,” they wrote.

Big Green issued its own statement the same morning. It was neither an endorsement nor an attack on the bill. It was thoroughly — impressively — devoid of any clear opinion of the bill.

“It is time for America’s leaders to get serious … the Gulf Coast oil catastrophe is yet another reminder … President Obama and leaders of both parties in Congress must provide the leadership necessary to develop a clean energy and climate solution,” said the joint letter from 23 larger and more D.C.-centric groups, including Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Sierra Club, Audubon, and the League of Conservation Voters.

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About EPA’s National Building Competition

EPA is hosting a national competition among commercial buildings to save energy and fight climate change. Competitors will “work off the waste” through improvements in energy efficiency with help from EPA’s ENERGY STAR program. The building that sheds the most energy waste will be recognized as the winner.

Nearly 200 buildings applied to compete. In the end, 14 were selected, including schools, hotels, dormitories, stores, offices, museums, and other buildings we see in our communities every day. Competitors come from across the country, from mid-town Manhattan to the mountains of Colorado.

Participants will measure and track their building’s monthly energy consumption using EPA’s online energy tracking tool, Portfolio Manager; make improvements to their building’s energy performance and share their progress. The building that demonstrates the greatest percentage-based reduction in energy use intensity over the contest energy performance period will be recognized as the winner.

Key Dates

• Mid-point “weigh-in”: July 21, 2010
• Winner announced: Oct. 26, 2010

By: Josh Dorfman

You’re selling a green product. You come up with a catchy slogan like “Think Before Your Write” for a line of biodegradable, disposable pens made from non-gmo potatoes instead of petroleum, which, by the way, is the slogan for a new product created by a company called DBA.

Your advertisements are clever and engaging. Now potential customers come to your website. But, uh oh, your web design looks a little dated. Or maybe it’s hard to find the “Add to Cart” button. Or it’s built in Flash and takes too long to load.

Guess what your website is saying about your green product? It’s saying that your green product probably isn’t so great. There’s probably a quality issue. Maybe the product will fall apart after a few uses. Maybe it just doesn’t work well to begin with. Why? Because your website is communicating to the marketplace that your company isn’t completely professional.

Or maybe you have an awesome website and an awesome green product, but for some reason you’ve refrained from putting your name as the founder and the names of your other team members on the site in the “About” section. Know what your website is communicating now about your green company? It’s communicating that it can’t be trusted, that the product probably really isn’t so green after all. Your oversight is causing potential customers to question the authenticity of your claims to environmental responsibility.

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Jim French, Oil Buderus Boilers, discusses their residential oil products. The G125 is one of the few oil boilers that qualify for a $1500 federal tax credit.

By: Senator John Kerry

I don’t think there are many people left who really question that we need a major transformation in the way we produce power, the disaster in the Gulf being the latest wakeup call for anyone who was still sleeping. It was the most recent reminder that 40 years after Richard Nixon started talking about “energy independence,” we’re still stuck or moving backwards — our economy constantly rattled by the volatile price of oil, our planet’s climate increasingly unstable thanks to the pollution we’re pumping into the atmosphere.

And, oh yes, we’re sending billions of dollars a day overseas, with the global oil market enriching some of the most autocratic and anti-American regimes around the world. Here’s one fact to stiffen the spine: as my friend Jon Powers and his band of veterans remind me, every day we keep going with what we’re doing makes Iran $100 million richer and takes over a billion dollars out of our economy. Every single day.

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