This article, “Do You Recycle? The Go Green Guy – 19 items you may not know that you can recycle!” opened my eyes on a few things. Shoes, for example.

I’d be cautious on composting dryer lint, however. It’s little bits of clothing, and unless you wash nothing but organic cotton, you probably don’t want a mix of heavily pesticided and/or synthetic chemical crap in your compost.

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After more than a week of traveling in Ireland and Northern Ireland, here’s some of what I notice:

  • Fairly high public awareness in general terms, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to behavior.
  • Wind power plays a significant role. It’s common to see large wind turbines (as in much of the rest of Europe), thouh for the most part in small clusters of one to five, rather than in the vast wind farms of say, Spain—and also to see older, smaller  private installations on individual farms, of the sort that were common on US farms in the late 1970s.
  • Solar’s role is minimal. I have seen exactly one rooftop solar hot water installation, and the only places I’ve seen photovoltaic have been on self-powered electronic highway signs. Of course, it’s not the sunniest place in the world; an Italian immigrant told us, “in Ireland, they call this a beautiful day. In Italy, we would call it a disaster.”  But there must be more than is obvious, because we passed quite a number of solar businesses, even in some pretty rural areas.
  • Fair trade has a lot of currency here, and you can find a fair number of fair trade items not only in specialty stores and supermarkets, but even at gas station convenience stores.
  • Big cities have some limited public recycling in the major commercial and tourist areas. I imagine there are recycling programs for households, too.
  • On the campus of the technical college we visited, environmental awareness was quite high. This school is also about to launch a degree program in sustainability and one in agriculture, yet they haven’t explored the obvious linkages between those two program offerings—in part because they’re slotted for different campus, 50 miles apart.
  • To my shock, the small conference center we stayed at in rural Donegal was still using energy-hogging incandescent light bulbs.
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Or so they claim, according to this article on Green Biz: “A Window into Microsoft’s Quest to Become Carbon Neutral.”

It’s a big, audacious, and probably difficult goal. Let’s hope they make it.

And if they do, it gives them bragging rights, big-time. I hope they see the amazing marketing advantages and act accordingly (I’ll even give their marketing department a copy of my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, if they request one.)

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I haven’t had as many chances as I’d hoped to be proud of President Barack Obama in his 3+ years in office. But yesterday was a day I could be very proud of him; as you certainly know by now, he is the first US president to acknowledge that same-sex couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples, including the right to marry. Obama has been ambivalent on the issue (and quite a few others) for many years, so a clear, unequivocal, uncompromising position is rare. Perhaps is voice is stronger because of his own history; the union of his parents would have been illegal in many parts of the country for years after his birth.

This should not be rocket science. Same-sex marriage has been legal in several other parts of the world (and even a few US states, including my own home of Massachusetts) for several years, and the sky has not fallen.

Still, when I attended my first few same-sex weddings back in the late 1970s, I didn’t think I’d live to see such unions acknowledged by any government. In less than 30 years, it’s become an inevitability. I remember President Bush reluctantly endorsing civil unions, even as he condemned gay marriage, and thinking that this was enormous progress. But a full endorsement is much better. And while it still seems odd to read or hear phrases like “her wife” or “his husband,” it’s a good kind of strange.

And yet, just a day earlier, the Neanderthals soundly thrashed same-sex marriage in North Carolina.

Here’s the bit I don’t understand from the so-called “family values” crowd: how is the ability of two people to marry—and with it, to visit each other in the hospital, to file a joint tax return, to attend parent-teacher conferences—in any way an attack on the institutions of marriage and family? As far as I can determine, these rights make the idea of marriage and family stronger. Marriage, whether heterosexual or homosexual, should be a partnership of equals that strengthens the family unit and builds family values. Living just outside the town that the National Enquirer dubbed “Lesbianville, USA,” I’ve seen this strength in the many same-sex couples I know with children, who were parents alongside my wife and me as our kids went through day care and then school. I can’t wrap myself around the argument that it destroys families.

I’ve tried to understand the position, but I just can’t grasp it. When two people of the same sex declare their love and commitment, they build a family just as real as any straight couple. And when a heterosexual or same-sex marriage falls apart, it’s tough on both partners as well as on children and friends. I just can’t grasp how allowing two men or two women to mary has any impact on relationships between a man and a woman.

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Editor’s Note: I’ve long been a fan of Van Jones and was really upset when he was forced out of the White House. This is such a good analysis that I asked him permission to post it on my site and blog. —Shel Horowitz, primary author, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green

Van Jones reflects on his time in—and out ofthe White House.

by Van Jones posted Mar 29, 2012 at https://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/the-age-of-obama-what-went-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it  — used with permission.

This article is adapted from Rebuild the Dream, Van Jones’ new book.

The 2008 campaign was a campfire around which millions gathered. But after the election, it was nobody’s job or role to tend that campfire. The White House was focused on the minutiae of passing legislation, not on the magic of leading a movement. Obama For America did the best that it could, but the mass gatherings, the idealism, the expanded notions of American identity, the growing sense of a new national community, all of that disappeared.

It goes without saying that clear thinking and imaginative problem solving are easier in hindsight, away from the battlefield. I was in the White House for six months of 2009, and I was outside of it afterward. I had some of the above insights at the time, but many did not come to me in the middle of the drama and action. Most are the product of deeper reflection, which I was able to do only from a distance.

Nonetheless, the exercise of trying to sort out what might have been and trying to understand why nobody was able to make those things happen in real time has informed this book and shaped my arguments going forward.

I say Obama relied on the people too little, and we tried to rely on him too much.

Let me speak personally: looking back, I do not think those of us who believed in the agenda of change had to get beaten as badly as we were, after Obama was sworn in. We did not have to leave millions of once-inspired people feeling lost, deceived, and abandoned. We did not have to let our movement die down to the level that it did.

The simple truth is this: we overestimated our achievement in 2008, and we underestimated our opponents in 2009.

We did not lose because the backlashers got so loud. We lost because the rest of us got so quiet. Too many of us treated Obama’s inauguration as some kind of finish line, when we should have seen it as just the starting line. Too many of us sat down at the very moment when we should have stood up.

Among those who stayed active, too many of us (myself included) were in the suites when we should have been in the streets. Many “repositioned” our grassroots organizations to be “at the table” in order to “work with the administration.” Some of us (like me) took roles in the government. For a while at least, many were so enthralled with the idea of being a part of history that we forgot the courage, sacrifices, and risks that are sometimes required to make history.

That is hard, scary, and thankless work. It requires a willingness to walk with a White House when possible-and to walk boldly ahead of that same White House, when necessary. A few leaders were willing to play that role from the very beginning, but many more were not. Too many activists reverted to acting like either die-hard or disappointed fans of the president, not fighters for the people.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama went too far to the left to accommodate his liberal base. In my view, the liberal base went too far to the center to accommodate Obama. The conventional wisdom says that Obama relied on Congress too much. I say Obama relied on the people too little, and we tried to rely on him too much. Once it became obvious that he was committed to bipartisanship at all costs, even if it meant chasing an opposition party that was moving further to the right every day, progressives needed to reassess our strategies, defend our own interests, and go our own way. It took us way too long to internalize this lesson- and act upon it.

The independent movement for hope and change, which had been growing since 2003, was a goose that was laying golden eggs. But the bird could not be bossed. Caging it killed it. It died around conference tables in Washington, DC, long before the Tea Party got big enough to kick its carcass down the street.

The administration was naive and hubristic enough to try to absorb and even direct the popular movement that had helped to elect the president. That was part of the problem. But the main problem was that the movement itself was na?Øve and enamored enough that it wanted to be absorbed and directed. Instead of marching on Washington, many of us longed to get marching orders from Washington. We so much wanted to be a part of something beautiful that we forgot how ugly and difficult political change can be. Somewhere along the line, a bottom-up, largely decentralized phenomenon found itself trying to function as a subcomponent of a national party apparatus. Despite the best intentions of practically everyone involved, the whole process wound up sucking the soul out of the movement.

As a result, when the backlash came, the hope-and- changers had no independent ground on which to stand and fight back. Grassroots activists had little independent ability to challenge the White House when it was wrong and, therefore, a dwindling capacity to defend it when it was right.

The Obama administration had the wrong theory of the movement, and the movement had the wrong theory of the presidency. In America, change comes when we have two kinds of leaders, not just one. We need a president who is willing to be pushed into doing the right thing, and we need independent leaders and movements that are willing to do the pushing. For a few years, Obama’s supporters expected the president to act like a movement leader, rather than a head of state.

The confusion was understandable: As a candidate, Obama performed many of the functions of a movement leader. He gave inspiring speeches, held massive rallies, and stirred our hearts. But when he became president, he could no longer play that role.

The expectation that he would or could arose from a fundamental misreading of U.S. history. After all, as head of state, President Lyndon Johnson did not lead the civil rights movement. That was the job of independent movement leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer. There were moments of conflict and cooperation between Johnson and leaders in the freedom struggle, but the alchemy of political power and people power is what resulted in the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As head of state, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not lead the labor movement. That was the job of independent union leaders. Again, the alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the New Deal. As head of state, Woodrow Wilson did not lead the fight to enfranchise women. That was the role of independent movement leaders, such as suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Ida B. Wells. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in women’s right to vote. As head of state, Abraham Lincoln did not lead the abolitionists. That was the job of independent movement leaders Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the emancipation of enslaved Africans. As head of state, Richard Nixon did not lead the environmental movement. That was the job of various environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club, and other leaders, like those whom writer Rachel Carson inspired. Once again it was the alchemy of political power and people power that resulted in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency

The biggest reason for our frustrations and failures is that we have not yet understood that both of these are necessary-and they are distinct. We already have our head of state who arguably is willing to be pushed. We do not yet have a strong enough independent movement to do the pushing. The bulk of this book makes the case for how and why we should build one.

Van Jones adapted this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions, from his new book, Rebuild the Dream. Van Jones, a former contributing editor to YES! Magazine and a former adviser to President Obama, is the co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform for bottom-up, people-powered innovations to help fix the U.S. economy. He is also the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and Green for All.

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At 72, Lily Tomlin is biologically old enough to be my mother.

I had the good luck to see Tomlin perform Friday night at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, MA (a venue where I’ve seen many great shows). She is not slowing down. She’s still hugely funny, passionate about her work and her beliefs, and very athletic on stage. She’s able to create fleshed-out characters just by changing her body posture, voice/accent, and stage lighting—needing neither costumes nor props to “channel” acerbic Ernestine, the schizophrenic savant bag lady Trudy, a Texas-accented suburban housewife doing vibrator infomercials, or a mother calling her son to put down those assault weapons and landmines and go wash up for supper. And she had obviously spent some time researching the town where she would perform one night and be gone; she incorporated a surprising number of on-point local references that went beyond the obvious.

It was one of the best comedy shows I’ve ever seen. 36 hours later, I’m still rolling some of her routines through my head and laughing.

Pete Seeger, who turned 93 last week, is old enough to be Lily’s dad. His voice doesn’t have the power it had when he was Tomlin’s age, and he’s backed off from the multi-octave, almost operatic singing of his peak years (go listen to his soaring “Wimoweh” from his 1963 Carnegie Hall concert). These days, he doesn’t perform as often, and when he does, he spends a lot of time teaching songs, talking/chanting them, and letting the audience do much of the actual singing.

But at 93, he’s still living at home in his little cabin in Beacon, New York with his wife Toshi. Last I heard, he’s still chopping firewood for his woodstove. Certainly he still devotes prodigious energies to his many environmental and social justice campaigns. In fact, he performed at an Occupy rally in New York just this fall. There’s even a grassroots movement to nominate Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize (note: as of this writing, the site is experiencing technical problems but claims more than 32,000 signatures).

I’ve been lucky to have great models for growing older all the way back to my childhood. I even worked as a paid organizer for the Gray Panthers for a year and a half in my 20s. And these two are only two of hundreds of people about whom I could say, “I want to be like that when I’m old.” But they’re both very public, and I happen to be thinking about them today. Here are a few lessons I take from Tomlin and Seeger:

  1. Doing what you love and are good at keeps you young
  2. Staying true to your values keeps you young
  3. Being appreciated by others  keeps you young (but note that Seeger was blacklisted and obscure for more than a decade during the McCarthy era)
  4. Finding the fun in life and enjoying the ride keeps you young
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I’ve heard of Health Care Without Harm, but this press release reminded me of them. Isn’t it ironic that the people who are supposed to keep us from getting sick have, in general, some very UN-eco-friendly practices? I hope HCWH becomes a catalyst for change, and in three to five years, doing healthcare in environmentally sensitive ways will be the norm. We’ve seen it in other industries, after all.

Meanwhile, congrats to the group on receiving this impressive award:

HCWH President Gary Cohen and Regional Director Bill Ravanesi Accept EPA New England Region
Environmental Merit Awards
Awards for Health Care Without Harm Work on Sustainable Health Care

(Boston, MA) Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) President Gary Cohen, of Jamaica Plain, MA, and Bill Ravanesi, HCWHBoston Regional Director, of Longmeadow, MA, today accepted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) New England Region Environmental Merit Award for their work in the region on behalf of Health Care Without Harm. The awards, which are the highest awards bestowed by the EPA in the New England Region, were presented for “extraordinary accomplishments to protect New England’s environment” in the Environmental, Community, Academia & Nonprofit category. A
Nonprofit

In its commemoration of Cohen and Ravanesi’s work, the EPA stated, “Health Care Without Harm, dedicated to helping create a more ecologically sustainable health care industry, consistently has been a leading advocate for green chemistry in the health care industry, locally and nationally. The organization, with Gary Cohen as its founder and executive director, was a major force behind the decision of one of the country’s largest health care providers to convert its intravenous equipment to more eco-friendly alternatives.”

The EPA noted HCWH’s support of the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI), a coalition of major health systems and organizations committed to improving sustainability and safety across the health care sector. Partners Health Care, of Boston, MA, is a founding sponsor of HHI.

“We are honored to receive this award,” said Cohen. “We are proud of the hospitals in the New England region of the country who in many ways have been leaders of the sustainable health care movement. Even though the work of Health Care Without Harm is international in scope, the idea is to make communities healthier for families, and our work in the region, we hope, will make New England healthier for all of those who live here.

The agency praised the work of Bill Ravanesi, who is responsible for working directly with hospitals in the area and is currently working on an initiative organized by the Boston Green Ribbon Commission on extending sustainability throughout the city. “Bill Ravanesi . . . helps New England hospitals in toxicity and waste reduction, green building services, energy efficiency and climate change programs, focusing on sustainability and resiliency,” said the EPA. “He is responsible for organizing program development and implementation, legislative and regulatory advocacy and policy reform initiatives and has engaged hospitals all over New England in adopting new ways of doing business that meet the challenge of environmental responsibility.”

The awards were presented today in Faneuil Hall in Boston, Mass.

HCWH is an international coalition of more than 508 organizations in 53 countries, working to transform the health care industry worldwide, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. For more information on HCWH, see www.noharm.org.

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Guest post by Seth Godin and Michael Bungay Stanier.

The blog connected with endmalariaday has more content than anyone could ever ever want. And that’s a bit of a problem, because more content is not going to help us sell more books, because it solves the problem “what’s in this book” rather than creating a problem “I wonder what’s in this book.”

I think what we need the authors to do is create a different problem: “You’re a good person and good people are buying this book”. There’s no shortage of stuff to read (with or without our book) but there is a shortage of easy and cheap ways to demonstrate your goodness, to be part of this tribe, to participate in a meaningful, efficient way that one can be proud of.

The big win, then, is for authors to be relentless in pushing this obligation/opportunity. “Here’s the book, take my word for it, it’s fabulous, and it’s important. It has content that will stick with you at the same time it has a benefit that you’ll remember for a long time. Buy a book, save someone’s life. How often do you get to do that?”

I fear that if we try to sell this merely as a book worth reading, we will not move enough fingers to click.

Bullet point summary of the project
The book is called: End Malaria: Bold Innovation, Limitless Generosity, and the Opportunity to Save a Life
$20 from every sale will go to Malaria No More. That’s 100% of the Kindle price, and 80% of the hard copy (The remaining $5 covers production costs.)
None of the contributors or the publishing house are taking any money from sales, and Amazon makes no profit
The book has 62 thought leaders (download PDF list of contributors) writing around the topic of Great Work – how to do more of the stuff that matters and less of all the other stuff that fills up your day
Includes such luminaries as Tom Peters, Gary Vaynerchuk, Sir Ken Robinson, Brene Brown, David Allen, Sally Hogshead and Mitch Joel
Divided into eight key areas of insight, including: Create Freedom, Disrupt Normal and Take Small Steps
End Malaria is edited by Michael Bungay Stanier and published by The Domino Project. It has an introduction from Scott Case, Vice Chair of Malaria No More
$20 sends a mosquito net to a family in need and supports life-saving work in the fight against malaria
Malaria No More’s mission is to end malaria in Africa by 2015
A child dies every 45 seconds from malariaEnd Malaria, https://www.EndMalariaDay.com,/a> , is an astonishing new book by more than sixty best selling business authors and social thought leaders who joined together to share information in a book whose entire profits go to buy malaria bed nets. Malaria is a disease that causes more childhood death than HIV/AIDS. 

Malaria bed nets are simple nets that hang over a window or a bed. They’re treated with a chemical that mosquitoes hate. The mosquitoes fly away, they don’t bite, people don’t get malaria. 

Every single penny spent on the Kindle edition goes to Malaria No More, giving them enough money to buy one or two bednets and to deliver them and be sure they’re used properly. Low overhead, no graft, no waste. Just effectiveness. None of the authors or anyone at the Domino Project receive money to be part of this project.  

Wait, there is one ulterior motive: We hope you are inspired. One of the sixty plus contributors might share a gem or spark an idea. The book is a collection of essays from 62 business and social thought leaders about the key drivers to live a life of meaning and impact. Contributors to the book (all of whom donated their work) include David Allen, Tom Peters and Keith Ferrazzi; TED speakers Brene Brown and Sir Ken Robinson; New York Times’ best-sellers Jonah Lehrer, Gary Vaynerchuk and Dan Pink; Daymond John and Dave Ramsey; and leaders from organizations such as Google and GlaxoSmithKline.

There’s a second motive: Stepping up feels right. It’s a few clicks to buy a book and for the rest of the day, or even a week, you’ll remember how it felt to save someone’s life. 

END MALARIA was born out of a passion to save lives by author and Senior Partner of Box of Crayons Michael Bungay Stanier. Teaming up with marketing and publishing innovator and creator of Squidoo.com Seth Godin, they found a way to sell a book and give away all of the profit in the fight against malaria.

” This is the power of authors working together, the power of ebook distribution and most of all, the power of people who care to make a difference. Over and over, we’re seeing that a new generation cares about business not just as a way to make money, but as a way to make a difference. These authors (and their readers) are making a difference at the same time they’re saving lives.” – Seth Godin.  

End Malaria Day is April 25, Twitter #EndMalariaDay , www.Facebook.com/endmalariaday

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