Is that all you've got? As I said to Erika Hall this week, if I had a nickel for every time a guy (always a guy) told me dismissively that I was just a feeble-minded fool who didn't understand AI, I would be able to retire early and comfortably. And then on Tuesday — in a very contentious meeting where a client blamed me for calling out the fact that their AI-written content was actually plagiarized directly from a competitor's website — I was called a Luddite. Clearly I was just a...
23 days ago • 3 min read
How sustainable content works We're going to interrupt the doom and gloom of the news cycle and talk about an example of a company that made some sustainable content changes. The company chose four pieces of content to measure: 1. The home page 2. A product page 3. A support page 4. The podcast We'll look at each individually below. TL;DR: in a pilot program using just four basic pieces of content, the company reduced their CO2-equivalent emissions by more than 7 metric tons. The home page...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
When planning doesn't work Would you believe that this newsletter used to have a carefully planned editorial calendar? Lately it seems like every time I start working on planned content more than 24 hours ahead of distribution, it's completely blown out of the water by some utterly batshit news revelation. What could possibly be worth saying here when [insert any one of 47,000 other things] is going on? This week, rather than having one overarching theme — which doesn't feel remotely...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
How do we create a greener web? A funny thing happened after the last issue when I spoke about hope: I lost nearly 1/3 of my readers. I'm befuddled by this. Did those people previously think that a newsletter about sustainability would be pro-colonialism? Pro-authoritarianism?* Did they think that I was in favor of net zero accounting instead of actual reductions? If so, I've been doing a terrible job communicating in this newsletter. With that said, I'm going to try to bridge the massive...
2 months ago • 2 min read
What a year, eh? I had a draft of a newsletter queued up for last Friday and then... y'all, the news just did me in. We've got oil invasions and extrajudicial killings and cuts to social services and and and and. And that's just domestically? Honestly, what the hell do I say in the midst of that? I can tell you what other sustainability newsletters are saying. They're talking about hope. But they're talking about it like it's this wispy, ephemeral thing. Oh, sure, we're invading countries for...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Wishing you the best in 2026 Nobody wants to read a newsletter on January 2. Trust me, that's ok. I hope you've all had a little down time during the year-end slowdown and can approach 2026 with renewed energy. And speaking of renewable energy... ha, no. Just kidding. We speak of nothing work-related until Proper January, after we've purged our inboxes of 2025's nonsense. It's going to be another uphill year in the world of sustainability. I'm still pitching conference talks and new projects,...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Belated thanks and thoughts on permanence Oof, it's been a while. To be fair, I had intended to post on Thanksgiving week, but then opted not to take my laptop with me on my family visit across the country. This seemed like a perfectly logical decision until I realized that I hadn't queued up a post, and there was no way I was typing the whole thing on my phone. Then we got back, moved into our long-delayed new condo and... well, nothing has gotten done work-wise as I tackle the box city that...
4 months ago • 3 min read
Capitalism is the answer, obviously Last week, I went to another sustainability conference. Look, I should know better by now. These things tend to frustrate the hell out of me, although each has its own special personality and experience. This one's personality was capitalism. It had it all. Allow me to pull out my Snoopy notebook and check my notes: An expo that included a company exhibiting its "sustainable" recycled fabrics for (*checks notes*) the upholstery in your private jet Sessions...
5 months ago • 4 min read
This is where things get weird TL;DR: Last month at New York Climate Week I leaned heavily into sessions from financial and consulting organizations. In the process, I got a lot of insights into macroeconomic trends, power (in every sense of the word), and of course, AI. I've been covering one topic each week, because hitting all at once could easily be the length of a new book. (If you need a brief recap of the strange way that Climate Week operates, you can find that in the newsletter from...
6 months ago • 4 min read