L Studio: strategy. storytelling. sustainability

This week kicked off the COP21 climate talks in Paris, a city still reeling from the attacks on November 13th. In his speech on Monday, President Obama stressed the need to come to an agreement at this year’s summit, and how Paris’ hosting of the talks just weeks after the violence was an act of “defiance” in the face of terror.

Indeed, many predict that if the UN Climate Talks succeed in producing agreements for carbon mitigation, they will spur economic growth carbon-reducing technologies and services. While many decry the lack of action (and the huge amount of work that needs to be done to halt climate change before we reach a change of 2°C), there have also been big achievements in the field. According to an article last fall in New York Magazine, we can dare to be optimistic about the prospects for our planet.

Many organizations, such as Project Drawdown have committed to even lower targets than the 2°C mark. The human race has achieved incredible things over the history of our existence. Tackling climate change is the big challenge for the 21st Century, and we’re certainly up for it!

Read the full text of the President’s remarks at COP21

California’s drought is an ecological crisis, and like all ecological crises, it is tied to economics. Newspapers in California and across the country have been reporting the fact that income is the best predictor of household water use throughout the state, with wealthy neighborhoods and cities using an average of three times more water than […]

Personal water conservation doesn’t end with taking shorter showers, closing leaking faucets and letting the lawn go brown. Every product we consume, including the food we eat, has a “water footprint”. That is, varying amounts of fresh water are used in the lifecycle of a product, whether it’s a cow that is born eating grass […]

All Californian’s know that water is an issue for our state. The question is what to do about it, how fast, and who’s responsible for taking action. As with all complex questions (as conservation issues always are) the answers are also complex, encompassing both-and scenarios instead of either-ors. It’s easy to get caught up in […]

Time-lapse view of installtion of Truth is Beauty at Burning Man in 2013. Bay Area-based artist Marco Cochrane creates sculptures with the intention of releasing the often-oppressed power of femininity. Specifically, Cochran’s sculpture Truth is Beauty, a 55-foot mesh and LED structure, represents a world without violence against women. The liberated pose of the female figure is meant to evoke […]

Nearly 60 years after the Interstate Highway act changed the way America traveled, planned and built the cities, towns, suburbs and exurbs where we live, our nation is now seeing another great shift. The car is still dominates our roadways, but more people (especially on the coasts) are moving to urban areas and compact neighborhoods […]

It’s not funny. Really. But perhaps the fact that Medium’s Matter has published this list of 33 things to do before “climate change ruins everything” (plus entertaining graphics) is evidence that it has been fully adopted into the popular imagination. The days of  denial are over. As wildfires rage in the Western United States and […]

In our work assisting with the development of corporate sustainability reports, L Studio has come to value the process outlined by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for defining materiality of sustainability aspects as they relate to each unique organization. In the transition from the third generation guidelines (G3) to the fourth generation (G4), GRI places […]

The latest issue of L Studio favorite GOOD magazine focuses on human potential. And they’re not the only ones. Last week, we arrived at the 50th Anniversary of Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration of the War on Poverty. This segment of his 1964 State of the Union Address is essentially a call to make government act […]

Audio Slide Show: From Farm to Table from Orion Magazine on Vimeo. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, we thought it would be apt to talk about the state of food in America. Not the obesity epidemic, or GMO’s (though those are related), but the infrastructure of regulation and food distribution that binds us to […]