Can U.S. Labor Embrace Local?
Posted on May 7, 2008
Will organized labor finally make its peace with local business? Having just addressed the annual convention of the British Columbia-branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) – the largest union in the country – I'm pleased to report that the answer is increasingly "yes," if we’re willing to learn from our wise neighbors to the north.. — read more
Food Miles Still Matter
Posted on April 24, 2008
Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center at Iowa State University and one of the pioneers of the concept of "food miles," is the first to concede that it's smarter to assess the environmental impact of a food item over its entire lifetime. That means looking not only at transportation impacts but also those of production and distribution.
But not a few commentators have gone further, suggesting food miles do not matter at all. For example, Dr Adrian Williams of the National Resources Management Centre at Cranfield University, told reporters for the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom ("The Observer," 23 March 2008): "The concept of food miles is unhelpful and stupid. It doesn't inform about anything except the distance traveled."
Pirog has just pointed out to me three recent studies, however, which underscore that food miles still matter enormously. — read more
The Beginning of the End of Wal-Mart?
Posted on April 11, 2008
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest big box store, has recently been knocked down by a one-two punch of deepening recession and declining sales growth. According to Al Norman, the founder of Sprawl-Busters, Wal-Mart has abandoned 45 superstore projects over the last 10 months, and citizen groups have killed another 19. This loss – 64 stores in all – is unprecedented, and suggests that the retailing giant may have hit a wall in the United States.
Norman notes that same-store sales growth has been steadily dropping over two decades, from 13% in 1987, to 5% in 1997, to an anemic 1.9% in 2007. Perhaps the biggest reason is that new stores are now cannibalizing the sales of existing stores in the same chain. — read more
