Author: Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert

A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Environment, language, Peace and War, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Progressives can be a gloomy lot. Too often, we focus on all the things wrong with society, all the problems we need to fix. I say “we,” because I’ve certainly done my share of that global kvetch.

But every once in a while, we actually win a major victory. I’ve been actively involved in a few of them, and I have to tell you, they feel great.

One of my favorite members of Congress, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla) knows the importance of celebrating our victories. He sent out an e-mail with the headline, “Hey, We Progressives Won Something.”

I opened the e-mail and discovered what we won: we didn’t go to war against Syria. And Syria destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile, under international supervision. The massive outcry of opposition certainly helped us get there.

Grayson gives us a lot to celebrate:

Let’s celebrate the war that never happened.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to hold sad and somber funerals for young Americans who would have lost their lives fighting in Syria.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to nurse and care for the wounded veterans who would have returned from the U.S.-Syrian war.

Let’s celebrate Congress NOT having to appropriate billions of tax dollars in emergency spending to support U.S. military operations in Syria.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to attend bitter marches protesting the U.S. war in Syria.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to rebuild Syria’s roads and bridges and schools, so that we can have a shot at rebuilding our own.

Let’s celebrate peace.

We won the battle, and the military-industrial complex lost the war.

We should be proud of our victories, because our victories matter. I know that politics sometimes can seem discouraging right now. Progressive often seem to lose, and lose frequently. But, you know what? Sometimes we win. And when we win, we save lives. We promote equality. We serve the cause of justice. We improve people’s lives.

(You can read Alan Grayson’s whole essay at this blog.)

Indeed, we do! Our actions–as individuals, and especially when we band together–actually do make a difference. Think how much poorer the world would be if the likes of Nelson Mandela, Lech Walensa, Wangari Maathai (the tree-planting woman of Kenya, who won a Nobel Prize for her work establishing a greenbelt in her country), Gandhi, Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn, and Martin Luther King, Jr. had not walked it.

And you don’t need to be an activist. The world is richer for the presence of scientists like the brilliant energy strategist Amory Lovins, who is still very much alive–and Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, and George Washington Carver, who are not…writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alice Walker, and even Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield (his The Success Principles is the one self-help book I regularly recommend)…and ordinary people whose names you won’t recognize, who turned their lives into blessings for the world. I’m going to honor one of those unknown heroes by name: my late mother, Gloria Yoshida, who was a civil rights volunteer in the 1960s. If a black person was told an apartment had already been rented, my 5’3″ white, Jewish mom was one of the people who would go and try to rent it afterwards. I remember her yelling at our own landlord, who towered over her, and looked pretty ashamed as she lit into him because “you just don’t want to rent to them because they’re black.”

That family history made it easier for me to take on a long list of causes over the past 40 years–even organizing the movement that saved a threatened mountain while all the “experts” said “this is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do.”

What are YOU doing to make the world better? Please share in the comments section, below.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language Tagged with , ,

My hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, MA, noted today that the City of Northampton’s Office of Planning and Development has been renamed the Office of Planning and Sustainability.

When I moved to town in 1981, Northampton was in the midst of a building boom and developers were snapping up large farm and forest parcels on the fringes of town. Sprawl was the order of the day.

Now, huge amount of acreage have been protected, both in Northampton and all surrounding communities; Hadley, the neighboring town where I currently live, has preserved thousands of acres. And the City of Northampton has openly changed the mission of the planning department to embrace sustainability.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environmenl, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Buying local. Worker co-ops. Neighborhood resiliency. Community control. Does it feel overwhelming trying to track and sort out all of these community economy movements and buzzwords?

Writer Laura Flanders, Yes Magazine, and GritTV have collaborated to make it easier for the rest of us. They’ve launched a new feature called Commonomics, and the first installment is a nice roundup of some of these trends, told through the stories of people whose stories rarely make it into mainstream media.

The initial installment is called “Welcome to Commonomics: How to Build Local Economies Strong Enough for Everyone,” and OI recommend reading it.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles Tagged with , , , ,

I recently interviewed Kelly Rudy of El Monte Sagrado, a green luxury hotel in Taos, New Mexico. In this 4-minute video, Kelly discusses some of the property’s unusual green features—especially the way water is handled and the types of plantings—in this four-minute interview .

To watch, just click on the link in the first line. Your comments are welcome.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

I revisited a post I’d written on election reform, back in 2007. In that post, I listed seven specific steps the United States could take to make its elections more representative and relevant.

But I left out a huge one—did I think back then, that it was so obvious it didn’t need to be listed?

Getting. Money. Out. Of. Politics.

That means not only repealing the wretched anti-democratic Citizens United decision, but much more. It means making politicians once again responsible to the people, and not to well-funded lobbyists. It probably means public funding of candidates, and limits on the dollars that can be spent. Ideally, it would mean an end to TV advertising of smear ads, and replacing them with a list of candidate websites (not just the largest parties but any party that achieves an agreed threshold of support) where people could learn the candidate’s positions on actual issues—in more depth than attack sound bites.

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Copywriting, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Reading a newsletter from a marketer I generally find thought-provoking, sincere, and personable, I was rather surprised to read an article where she took one of her subscribers to task for objecting to the word “sucks” on her home page.

To me, that word inserts an unnecessary barrier, the more ironic because she bases her whole approach on connecting person-to-person.

So of course, I wrote her a note:

As some one who does my best to–and *usually* succeeds–find the best even in the grumps (in that way, I’m like your late father, I guess)–may I put another possible interpretation out there? It’s likely that this person was just looking for an excuse to act out–BUT it’s also possible that he had good reason to be offended by the S word. I personally don’t use that word, because it can be can be interpreted as homophobic–being derived from a longer expletive that starts with a c, the first four letters of which represent the male organ (I’m not being a prude here by not stating the word, but I do have a goal of avoiding the spamfilters). For the same reasons, I don’t use the word “niggardly”, even though its etymology has nothing to do with the n-word–I don’t want people who don’t know that etymology to think I’m racist.

And there’s a difference between “plain language” and foul language. I grew up on the tough streets of the Bronx, and it was a minefield of F-bombs and other expletives–but I’ve lived in places where cursing is considered not just extremely rude but an offense against religion. So, take your choice–the left -wing or right-wing possibility of why he was teed off.

I don’t remember how I found your list, but I suspect I would not have subscribed if the first thing I’d seen was “disconnection sucks”. I have a thicker skin than to be offended, but there are always better ways to say it, and I would not have wanted to get into the network of someone whose language could have been interpreted as mean and deliberately offensive, because I surround myself with people who empower others and don’t denigrate them.

Luckily, I found you some other way (I have no idea how our paths crossed, actually)–and I know you to be a caring and empowering person. But think about the message you’re putting out here, intentionally or not. This is not so much a question of political correctness as it is of establishing unnecessary barriers. yes, I understand that you want to drive the wrong people away, and I respect that. I do the same thing. For instance, when someone approaches me about working together, there’s a paragraph in my reply that says,

“Please note that I reserve the right to reject a project if I feel I’m not the right person for it. This would include projects that in my opinion promote racism, homophobia, bigotry or violence–or that promote the tobacco, nuclear power, or weapons industries–or if I do not feel the product is of high enough quality that I can get enthusiastic about it.”

But I wonder if what your doing might drive the RIGHT people away too–especially since to me, it is so out-of-harmony with your real core message of marketing through the power of personal story.

I’ll be very curious to receive her response. And meanwhile, how about a response from you? Are curse words a barrier for you? Am I overreacting? Is she unnecessarily defensive? Why, or why not?

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By Posted on Posted in Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Earthship Biotecture World Headquarters, just outside Taos, New Mexico, is a deep ecology subdivision of some 70 homes, expected to grow eventually to about 130. It sits on 650 acres, of which 347 acres are parkland, owned in common by the residents. DSCN7767The houses look like a mating between the Taos Pueblo adobe of 1000 years ago and Starship Enterprise. Visitors can go through a self-guided tour with explanatory video and slideshow and learn how the homes—off-grid not just for electricity but also for water and sewer—are constructed to use very little electricity, water, or heating/cooling energy. I asked Ashton Wolfe, one of the media liaisons, what was different about Earthships compared to other passive solar earth-sheltered homes. She explained that:

  • Earthships are fairly self-contained: they generate their own electricity and all or most of their own water (the threshold is eight inches of rain a year, so in a dry, desert climate like Taos, extra water is sometimes needed). Passive solar design and thick earthen and rubber tire walls eliminate the need for any fossil-fuel-based heating or cooling system. Attached greenhouses not only provide growing space for food, but also create an essential climate barrier between extreme outside temperatures (ranging from -30° to over 100°F in Taos, assisting the homes in maintaining temperatures ranging from 65 to 75° all year long, without any need for outside power sources.
  • The key structural innovation is old tires packed with soil.
  • The buildings contain a large percentage of recycled materials, and thus are somewhat different from unit to unit. Many of these are not traditional building materials, but things like old cans and bottles, so Earthships also reduce landfill volume.
  • Water is used four times, filtered through a system of restorer cells that capture and purify wastewater. It starts with the highest uses: drinking and washing, then domestic uses, flushing toilets and finally, exterior landscaping: watering nonfood plants.
  • Earthship homes, which have been built in every state and in some 18 countries, lend themselves well to building on undeveloped lots. Much of the cost of a “normal” home is in the infrastructure: connecting water, sewer, and electricity, for instance. While Earthships’ construction cost is higher, at about $200-$250 per square foot in a place like Taos, the lack of infrastructure costs result in a house that is pretty much comparably priced with a conventional home—and of course, far cheaper to operate over the lifespan of the house.
  • The concept was developed by Michael Reynolds in the years after his graduation from architecture school in 1969. By 1975, he was using the filled-tire construction method, and the first Earthship incorporating self-sufficiency in water, power, heating, and cooling was constructed back in 1988.DSCN7775

 

The Earthship community has a very informative website at Earthship.com. It looks like there’s very little there when you srrive at the website, but scroll down or click through to the blog and you’ll see there’s actually quite a bit.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

I hope Obama and the Democrats learn their lesson. when they refuse to comprise on things that should not be compromised on, when they stand up for their principles, they win.

What a great president he might have been (and perhaps still could be) if he had figured that out in 2009. There is a difference between conciliation and giving away the store, and every time he kowtowed, the other side saw him as weak, and took out their lances again to whittle things down even further.

Of course, it helped that progressives and liberals came out in force to tell him he was doing the right thing. One of the lessons Obama should have taken from the 2008 election campaign is that he can organize a large constituency that “has his back.” and we progressives can also organize to push him leftward when he dirfts like a rudderless boat in the face of pressure from the right.

We have to remember that Obamacare was a Heritage Foundation invention. The left wanted single-payer, which Obama refused to even discuss.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Eco-friendly, Frugality/Frugal Fun, localism/locavore, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

When I get a good apple or pear, I eat it “right down to the bone.”

Apple core

This is an actual core from a wonderful Macoun apple that I picked myself. It was fresh, juicy, crunchy, and that wonderful combination of sweet and tart. An apple right from the tree is one of the great pleasures in life. When we go apple picking, I get home and immediately start drying them and making apple sauce, because even one day later, it won’t taste quite as good. And three weeks later, it’ll taste only a little bit better than a store-bought apple shipped from the other side of the country.

As a locavore, a green business profitability expert, and someone who attempts to live a very green, yet very comfortable life, I feel each of us has a responsibility to minimize waste. Eating every last bit of a tasty apple is one of the ways that minimizing waste can actually be fun. And of course, the few grams remaining go into the compost, to be recycled by Mother Nature into something else.

And those are the two principles of waste reduction: use things more efficiently so you generate less waste, and figure out what that waste can be turned into to create something else. Better than pollution, I’d say.

Please comment below about how you are—or how you could be—generating less waste or setting that waste up as raw material for something else.

 

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By Posted on Posted in media-general, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

My local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts, ran a brilliant editorial, “The GOP’s Ship of Fools,” on who’s responsible for the idiotic and totally avoidable government shutdown.

Here’s a little piece:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor led reporters into a room Monday and showed them an empty table, suggesting that if only Democrats and the president were willing to talk, the government would not have been hours from a new fiscal year without a budget. Do not be fooled. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats were about to get what they wanted — a government shutdown. Do not be fooled. Senate Leader Harry Reid observed that McConnell (R-Absurdistan) was channeling “1984” author George Orwell as his speechwriter, so upside down was his logic.

Want to read the whole thing? You’ll find it at gazettenet.com/home/8759377-95/editorial-the-gops-ship-of-fools —I recommend that you read it.

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