Scooping the New York Times
The New York Times is my favorite newspaper. Amidst all the media that I consume, it holds a disproportionately influential place in my life. It is a pleasure to read. In fact a number of columns I have written for this blog have been reflections on an article that I read in the Times. So it thrilled me today when I opened the Times and saw that www.evolutionshift.com had scooped it.
Several weeks ago, I wrote a column about Planktos and interviewed its founder and CEO Russ George. I had met Russ at a unique conference about the future of energy and humanity hosted by the Foundation for the Future and was so taken with his vision and what he was doing that I prevailed upon him to be interviewed. Just last week we met up again at a ‘green business convention’ in Chicago. He had just made the entire convention carbon neutral and had also made Mayor Daley’s car carbon neutral for a year. He does this by the planting of thousands of acres of trees in Eastern Europe and, more interestingly the seeding of vast plankton blooms in the Ocean. Both the trees and the plankton blooms absorb vast amounts of CO2, thus allowing Russ to build a business of carbon offsets, which helps the Earth survive until we can replace fossil fuels as our primary source of energy.
So it was with great delight that I opened today’s New York Times and saw that the cover story in the Business Day section was about Planktos with a nice big picture of Russ. Of course the Times had to cover both sides of the story, providing voice to critics of Russ’s methods, similar to the way that the media used to present both ‘sides’ of the global warming issue several years ago before it became clear that there is only one ‘side’ to that issue. Since the Times is ‘the paper of record’ I am happy that the vital yet simple way that Planktos is working to help fight global warming received such large coverage.
By the way you can go to the Planktos web site and buy carbon offsets for your household. I purchased carbon offsets for a year for my fiancés and my homes and cars. Until we can all dramatically lower our energy consumption, drive electric cars and lower toxic emissions, we should help Russ and the crew of his ship Weather Bird II seed plankton in our oceans.
While hundreds of thousands of people today ‘read it in the New York Times’ I hope that several hundred of readers of this blog saw the article and thought ‘I read about this first at www.evolutionshift.com!’
