According to a new study by Environmental Health Perspectives, biking instead of driving for trips under five miles turns out not only to be healthful, cleaner, more fun, etc.–it’s also apparently good for the economy to replace car trips with bike trips.
As a long-term bike fan (and sometime bike commuter all the way back to high school), I’m not surprised.
(via @undriving)
Two commentators demonstrate why solar continues to be viable, and why the dramatic and very public failure of Solyndra has nothing to do with the viability of solar.
On Huffington Post, Graciela Tiscareño-Sato writes, in “A Teaching Moment About the Green Economy,” of several brilliant entrepreneurs who are helping us take big steps toward a green economy, emphasizing multiple benefits such as saving cost and carbon and creating jobs at the same time. Her examples (all from the Latino world, incidentally) cover the building industry (specifically, solarizing schools in California), fashion, eco-consulting, and more.
And in the New York Times, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman points out that Solyndra’s failure was directly related to the success of solar. Solyndra’s model was based in high prices and scarcity, but as solar becomes more popular, the energy equivalent of the computer industry’s Moore’s Law kicks in; we get ever-more-powerful, cheaper, more effective systems as the quantity goes up. Solyndra couldn’t compete with the new low-cost solar providers. (Note: this is a different aspect of the same article I blogged about yesterday.)
A new European survey shows a substantial majority of consumers and business decision makers are eager to invest in energy efficiency.
(Thanks to @thecentristword for sharing the link on Twitter).
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, in the NYT, on why the solar economy is really here, and why natural gas fracking is a lousy idea.
(Thanks for the link, Bobby Cookie Hirtle)
Busy week of interviews. Catch me talking about green marketing:
November 15, 8:00 pm ET/5 pm PT, January Jones interviews me: 818-431-8506
November 16, 7 pm ET/4 pm PT: Interviewed on Your15Minutes Radio’s “Brand This” with Shaun Walker and Reid Stone, https://www.your15minutesradio.com
November 17, 11 a.m. ET/8 am PT: Interviewed by Susan Rich on “Get Noticed Now.” https://www.richwriting.com/2011/11/shel-horowitz-on-get-noticed-now-w4wn-com/
November 25, interview with Susan Davis on Good and Green Radio will become available at https://wgrnradio.com/archive-good-and-green-radio-with-susan-davis/ as well as at iTunes
Here’s a description that Susan Rich wrote. It’s pretty accurate for all four calls:
Join get-you-noticed expert and internet radio host Susan Rich as she talks marketing ideas that help you grab attention and drives sales.
This week she’ll be joined by the ultimate expert in Get-You-Noticed tactics: copywriter, marketing consultant, author, and speaker Shel Horowitz. He has published eight books on the topic, the latest is: Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.
An eerie, devastated, and highly radioactive place, according to the New York Times.
Nuclear power is NOT the answer. It has an abysmal record. The March 2011 accidents are only the latest in a long line of hundreds of mishaps, including earlier accidents at Fukushima going back to 1985.
Even a majority of Republicans, according to this detailed survey of Americans’ feelings on alternative energy in Huffington Post.
A popular slogan during the 1960s was “If the people lead, the politicians will follow.” Might be time to bring that one back.
Thanks to C Gauvin for the link.
Did you know that war has been illegal in the United States—as well as in Australia, Canada, Czechoslovkia (now Czech/Slovak Republics), Germany, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Poland, Belgium, France, and Japan since 1929—when a 1928 treaty called the Kellogg-Briand Pact went into effect?
I discovered this thanks to a Veterans Day post by Roots Action, which highlights this section:
The High Contracting Parties solemly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.
The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.
I already made a Veterans Day post, about the grisly mess we left behind in Iraq—but this needs attention. Isn’t it time we—the peoples of these nations—demanded that this law be enforced?
Never, ever think that war solves problems. It multiplies them.
Before the illegal and immoral US invasion, Iraq was a garden-variety dictatorship, similar to at least 30 other countries around the world, where dissent was suppressed but society was basically functional.
Now, it’s a wreck. And of course, US mainstream media only talk about the impact on Americans: the US soldiers (and their mercenaries) who died or were wounded or who suffered post-traumatic stress, and their families who are impacted by the hurt to these brave men and women. The impact of the war on the people of Iraq is rarely talked about.
An article by John tirman in the November 15 Washington Spectator (not yet posted on the newsletter’s website) lays out some of the litany of chaos and devastation. A few “highlights”:
The first five bullets come directly from the article, “How Will We Remember Operation Iraqi Freedom?” The last two points are my own analysis. The stats that follow come from another article in the same issue, “Left Behind,” by editor Lou Dubose.
While the war was entirely a creation of George W. Bush and his advisors (particularly Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney), it hasn’t really gotten better under Obama. His withdrawal process has been slow and incomplete, and he’s leaving behind a “diplomatic” apparatus big enough to run a small country: 17,000 people including 650 American diplomats, in the largest embassy in the world (not counting several satellites around Iraq), with a $6 billion budget and another $13 billion in private contracts.
And why has Obama steadfastly refused to even consider war crimes trials?
Political advisors spew so much crap about the need to tear down your opponent. Here’s a refreshing case study that proves the opposite is possible.
Congratulations to the newly-elected mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, David Narkewicz. While his opponent went negative to the point of craziness (even going so far as to attack him for riding a bicycle, with an ad that talked about training wheels as a metaphor for inexperience), Narkewicz stayed positive, focusing on community-building, achieving widely held goals, and his own civic history. He was also deeply issue-focused and very articulate during the numerous debates (more than I can remember for any previous local election, in my 30 years in the area).
As a marketing consultant who has occasionally advised politicians, I have long held the opinion that such a positive campaign could be quite popular. I used this positive focus writing the press releases for the successful first mayoral campaign of a different mayor, who won in 1989 and went on to serve four two-year terms.
And while I predicted that his opponent’s strategy (using the considerable talents of a very good local ad agency), would fail, even I was pleasantly shocked at the margin of victory. Narkewicz took 70 percent of the vote, sweeping every ward, even the traditionally conservative western parts of the city. And he had coattails for progressives in every other contested race, as well as a ballot initiative to keep a land-preservation bill that the right had attacked.
Bravo.