And please, keep sharing…

Vogtle #3 and Vogtle #4 as well as VC Summer #2 and VC Summer #3 are already under construction.

http://socialbusiness.socialgo.com/magazine/read/you-me-we-ethics-and-people-centered-economics_5.html

Progressive organizations need to take a lesson from groups like the AARP.

Wikipedia (AARP): AARP operates as a non-profit advocate for its members and as one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States, and it also sells insurance, investment funds and other financial products. AARP claims over 40 million members, making it one of the largest membership organizations in the United States.

Progressive organizations such as unions, the Democratic Party, MoveOn.org, and the Sierra Club that collectively have millions of members could offer:

*** Green Insurance. AARP contracts this out, but if some or all the progressive organizations worked in concert they could start a non-profit insurance company or HMO and turn it into a huge, private, progressive single payer system right under the insurance industry’s noses.

*** Green Credit Union. You can start a credit union with less than 100,000 members and do a micro-finance program. But again, if progressive organizations joined forces they could create a credit union to rival the big banks.

*** Green Retirement Funds. Guess what progressive organizations could do with the money in the fund–invest it in progressive organizations and green enterprises.

*** Green Venture Capital Fund.

*** Worker-owned green business incubator. This might be operated under the auspices of the green credit union and/or investment bank. A business incubator helps people create business plans, get financing, learn management skills, etc. It might also include things like office space and a pool of shared office equipment and labor. It could also offer payroll processing, tax preparation, accounts receivable, credit card processing, and other bookkeeping and financial management assistance.

Though underwritten at a national (or international) level, these services could be localized with local offices, boards, etc.

On Tuesday, October 4, 2011, Joseph Robertson delivered the fourth in a series of ClimateTalks, as a live webcast presentation of his book, Building a Green Economy: The Economics of Carbon Pricing and the Transition to Clean, Renewable Fuels. The talk was intended to focus on the technologies and strategies that can allow for a smooth, rapid, intelligent, and prosperity-inducing transition to a clean-energy economy. Click here to view the slides and video.

The World Bank hosted its annual Civil Society Policy Forum last week, and the clear, and very conscious, theme of the meetings was the connection between high-level transparency, stakeholder outreach and the building and securing of a functional and reliable civil society. In recent years, stakeholder outreach has been moving to prominence in the deliberations of global development bodies, like the UN agencies, the World Bank and IMF and the OECD.

That is excellent news! We will be in touch. Also, keep us posted here, and on Twitter, at @poet_economist

Good luck with the launch,
Joseph

I have created a non profit, community based model which accomplishes the functions you describe in your article. We are beginning in NYC, but will scale across the country very quickly. Feel free to reach out to discuss – we are launching imminently.

-Chris

According to the Guardian newspaper:

Clean-up crews have yet to reach the site of the pipeline break nearly a week after the rupture, which leaked 42,000 US gallons (159,000 litres) of oil into the Yellowstone, one of the last undammed rivers left in America.

State officials in Montana criticised oil company executives for offering conflicting accounts of the pipeline breach and its safety record.

SkyTruth, which came to prominence last year for satellite maps tracking the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has also questioned Exxon’s initial estimates of the size of the leak. SkyTruth’s founder, John Amos, said his calculations suggested a leak of 63,000 US gallons, or nearly half again as much as Exxon’s estimate of about 42,000 US gallons.

Pictures coming from the affected region suggest the spill is more widespread and reaching further along the river than the company has been willing to admit. This week, the governor of Montana accused the multinational of understating the crisis when it reported that oil had only been found along a 25 mile stretch of the pristine river.

Farmers have been sending images to the press, showing oil-infused river water flooding fields and contaminating agricultural land. There has been no publicly visible clean-up response from ExxonMobil for that particular area of potentially long-running contamination.