Gil Friend’s Blog

As the days once again begin to lengthen, and the candles nearly fulfill their promise, and the possibility of rebirth dawns, and the rising of the light lifts our souls and rekindles our hopes, we wish for you, in the very challenging time before us, a year full of...

What if Bloomberg, Branson and Grantham came together to buyout the coal industry, close and clean up the mines, retrain workers and accelerate the expansion of renewable energy? (That's the subhead for the slightly abridged version of this provocation that ran in the...

Over the course of my more than 40 years of work on sustainability issues in business, government, and the civic sector, one challenge has remained central, reappearing again and again as a make-or-break element of all we are trying to accomplish. I’m encouraged to...

Cities are uniquely positioned to drive the sustainability revolution—whether in concert with national governments (as is possible in some countries) or on their own (which is necessary in some countries). Cities lead the way in greening transportation, the built...

When I learned of Nelson Mandela's passing earlier this month, I spent the afternoon in tears. Not tears of grief alone, but of love, admiration, awe, inspiration at the contribution this one man has made—both to the people of South Africa on their long path to...

This month I began serving as the Chief Sustainability Officer of the City of Palo Alto. As many of you know, I've been dedicated for the last 41 years, since cutting my teeth with Bucky Fuller's World Game in 1972, to connect the human economy with the laws of...

My friend Jonathan Koomey's invited perspective article, “Moving beyond benefit-cost analysis of climate change”, was just posted by the open access on-line journal Environmental Research Letters.  Here’s the abstract and the introduction. Abstract The conventional...

[I fully intended my recent posting, 5 things I've learned in 8 weeks of sustainability conferences, to be provocative. (No surprise there. You may have noticed that I'm inclined to challenge familiar thinking and push the boundaries of what's possible, profitable and...