The Maps You Can’t Unsee

As Hurricane Sandy moved into New York City in 2012, I walked out to the Hudson River and watched the water churn. It was more gray-green than usual, and frothy, and high. Really high. On the Jersey City side, it seemed to be just a foot or two below the retaining walls running along the riverside walk. 

Hurricane Sandy, 2012.

Later in the day, the Hudson would break above those walls and flood into the streets. Like downtown Manhattan, much of downtown Jersey City was inundated. Parts of Hoboken, just up the river, would stay submerged for days.

Over the next days and weeks, climate change became local for many of us. Global mean projections rattled off in media reports turned into block-by-block discussions of who got flooded and where you could get heat and power. Opinions changed and hardened, and took politicians along with them.

Read the Medium story by Michael Segal - “The Maps You Can’t Unsee."

Rockefeller brothers divest from fossil fuels in moral move

On a perfect summer day in June 2014, on the grounds of a stately home overlooking the Hudson River, a handful of the descendants of America’s most enduring business dynasty made a fateful decision: they would cut their ties to fossil fuels in order to fight climate change.

The ironies were inescapable. About half of those gathered for the board meeting were direct descendants of John D Rockefeller – founder of the oil empire that eventually became ExxonMobil – and here they were, gathered in the estate he built at Pocantico Hills, New York, surrounded by a collection of antique gas guzzlers and limousines, preparing to take a highly symbolic stand against fossil fuels.

As descendants, they had an extra burden to fight climate change, said Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, a former middle-school special education teacher and chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF).

Read The Guardian story - “Rockefeller Brothers Fund: it is our moral duty to divest from fossil fuels.”

Clothing industry is the world's second largest polluter

“T

he clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world … second only to oil,” the recipient of an environmental award told a stunned Manhattan audience earlier this year. “It’s a really nasty business … it’s a mess.”

Eileen Fisher - she describes the clothing
 industry as a 'nasty business - it's a mess'.

While you’d never hear an oil tycoon malign his bonanza in such a way, the woman who stood at the podium, Eileen Fisher, is a clothing industry magnate.

On a warm spring night at a Chelsea Piers ballroom on the Hudson River, Fisher was honored by Riverkeeper for her commitment to environmental causes. She was self-deprecating and even apologetic when speaking about the ecological impact of clothing, including garments tagged with her own name. Fisher’s critique may have seemed hyperbolic, but she was spot-on.

When we think of pollution, we envision coal power plants, strip-mined mountaintops and raw sewage piped into our waterways. We don’t often think of the shirts on our backs. But the overall impact the apparel industry has on our planet is quite grim.

Read the EcoWatch story - “Fast Fashion Is the Second Dirtiest Industry in the World, Next to Big Oil.”