Brown Bag, Green Book #4: Coming Clean
In Coming Clean: Breaking America's Addiction to Coal and Oil, Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforest Action Network (RAN), shows us how we, as motivated citizens, can kick our own fossil-fuel habit and pressure policymakers and corporations to change their energy priorities. His vivid reports remind us of the economic, environmental, moral, and public-health costs of fossil-fuel dependence, and how our government and international banks are complicit. Brune also describes the most promising developments in renewables, biofuels, and efficient design, and offers an inspiring vision of the clean energy future within our reach.
Dr. Dana Christensen, Associate Laboratory Director of the Energy and Engineering Sciences Directorate of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) led our discussion. "Michael Brune is a political activist who has been successful in bringing attention to social/environmental causes," says Dr. Christensen. "His success in gaining agreements from companies such as Home Depot and Lowe’s toward not selling old growth rain forest products is an example of how a small number of citizens can change corporate behaviors when the cause is defensible. Coming Clean is his effort to change the purchasing habits of the general citizenry; a much greater challenge than influencing a small number of companies. Indeed, the general citizenry purchase electricity, not the coal used to produce the electricity, thus making the messaging even more difficult. The book represents an attempt to simplify the message about the impact that fossil fuels are having on our environment so that the general public will stand up and listen."
About Dr. Christensen
Dr. Christensen is the Associate Laboratory Director of the Energy & Engineering Sciences Directorate of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Dr. Christensen came to ORNL from the University of California where he was the principal Associate Laboratory Director of Threat Reduction at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prior to this he was the Deputy Associate Laboratory for Energy and Environment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, also operated by the University of California. He has twenty-nine years of management experience in material science, nuclear energy, fossil and renewable energy, nuclear materials management and scientific research in support of DOE and other government agencies and industries.
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