WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last month’s U.S. election results elicited the predictable laments from the enviro crowd. “The re-election of President George W. Bush means that polluters will enjoy four more years of lax enforcement,” moaned the Natural Resources Defense Council.

But the political winds don’t seem to ruffle one prominent environmentalist: William McDonough, a 53-year-old architect and man dubbed a “hero for the planet” by Time magazine in 1999. “We don’t focus on politics, because they come and go,” McDonough said in a phone interview last week, adding, “Republicans are very attracted to what we do.”

Indeed, last January, McDonough was back at the White House, where he had previously accepted an environmental award from President Bill Clinton, expounding his ideas on ecologically sustainable design to a meeting of government officials arranged by Bush’s Office of Management and Budget. “We’ve met with many of the departments and agencies many times since,” McDonough says.

The subject of those meetings is what McDonough calls “Eco-effectiveness” and “Cradle to Cradle Design.” In short, it’s an effort to refashion architecture and industry so that they emulate the ecosystems found in the natural world.

Full story at Forbes.com

Every Autumn we have 17 equity experts–some bulls, some bears–test their mettle against the S&P 500. They get one pick and 12 months to either beat or lag the index. Those who succeed stay in the contest for the next round. Only a handful of the experts from our recently concluded contest have reason to brag. On average the five shorts skidded past the market’s 8% rise since October 2003 with a 55% gain. Bearish pick Research in Motion, which rose 300%, did most of the damage.

Nor did the bulls deliver. Their 12 picks collectively finished in the black but still fell shy of the S&P 500′s advance by three percentage points.

The best among the bears was Clarion Group’s Morton Cohen. Last year he warned of trouble at Bradley Pharmaceuticals, which fell 38%. For 2005 he puts the finger on Travelzoo, an online aggregator of travel deals. It’s an easy business to get into, Cohen says. He thinks that Travelzoo faces threats from upstarts below and giants like Yahoo above. And the stock doesn’t look cheap at 90 times projected 2005 profits.

Full story at Forbes.com