June 1st, 2010

BP officials are at their least appealing when pushing off responsibility for the oil spill onto the oil-consuming public. We caught a whiff of this attitude during their May testimony to Congress.

“Tragic and unforeseen as this event was, we must not lose sight of the reason that BP and other oil energy companies are operating offshore, including in the Gulf of Mexico. The gulf provides one in four barrels of oil produced in the U.S. – a resource our economy requires,’’ said BP President and Chairman Lamar McKay, testifying to to the Senate.

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April 23rd, 2010

After running our households, transportation is the second biggest way we humans degrade the environment. If we were traveling in droves, on say trains, it wouldn’t be so bad. But our penchant to scoot around solo or in small groups in gas-fueled vehicles has left an impressive scar on the globe. Starting with the paved roads that carve up wildlife habitat, and ending with those recently popular luxury SUVs that spurn air quality with their single and low double digit gas mileage, automobiles have created a huge carbon footprint.

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February 16th, 2010

Green Right Now Reports

A new Harris Poll finds that Americans are still acting cautiously when it comes to weathering the sour economy.

And some of the money-saving steps they are taking qualify as green behaviors, though whether or not this has been intentional was not addressed in the poll of 2,576 adults surveyed online between January 18 and 25, 2010 by Harris Interactive.

The poll found, for instance, that:

• 34 percent of Americans polled said they had switched to using refillable water bottles instead of purchasing pre-bottled water.

• 22 percent said they had cut down on dry cleaning

• 14 percent said they had begun carpooling or using mass transit

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October 13th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

The latest Harris Poll on green behavior in America is a good news/bad news story.

The good news: Most people have done something that’s green, by recycling a computer or cell phone; switching to tap water from bottled; made their home more energy efficient in some way.

The bad news: Only a tiny fraction of US residents (2 percent) own hybrid cars and vast numbers of people have not “engaged” in most of the green activities the survey asked about, like for example composting (only 17 percent do), walking or biking to work (15 percent), or even getting a low flow shower head (17 percent).

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June 23rd, 2008

But Some Confused About Eco-Choices

By Barbara Kessler

Ever wonder what your neighbors are doing on the green front – what with one fellow dragging four nicely sorted recycling bins to the curb every other week, and another seemingly sitting out the green movement?

So did the Nature Conservancy and the people running the Harris Poll. They collaborated on a poll that found about half of Americans (53 percent) are making green changes, but a significant number (34 percent) said they’ve not made any changes because they are confused about what to do. Another large group (29 percent) said they are not making changes because it won’t make any difference.

Education seemed to play a role in who was confused, fatalistic or moving toward more sustainable practices. Just under half of high school educated respondents (46 percent) said they had made green changes as compared with college educated adults (65 percent).

Of the total 53 percent who had made changes, the poll elicited these responses:

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