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 Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , , ,

The latest in a long series of “incidents” at the long-troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, just up the river from me in Vernon, Vermont: the tritium leaking for several months at Vermont Yankee has definitively reached the Connecticut River.

The Connecticut River runs along the Vermont-New Hampshire Border and through Massachusetts (including our Pioneer Valley region) and Connecticut before emptying into Long Island Sound (bordering New York State), and eventually the Atlantic Ocean. It is widely used for boating, fishing, and swimming.

If you are in that area, I would suggest not eating fish from or swimming in the Connecticut River right now. I would instead suggest lobbying your US Representatives and Senators to block the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—that word, “regulatory” should really be in quotes, as they don’t do much regulating and have never failed to renew a power plant license—decision to relicense this failing plant for another 20 years.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , ,

No, I haven’t forgotten you! I was on vacation in Iceland, and had very limited access to Internet.

I’ve known for years that Iceland is a geothermal paradise, but to see it in person was quite amazing. Everywhere we went, there were geothermal hotsprings. Everywhere, there were geothermally heated municipal swimming pools and hot tubs (one of the few bargains in a rather expensive country). We visited a geothermal power plant that contained an energy museum. We enjoyed hot, hot showers, as hot as our solar-heated system at home (we saw almost no solar in Iceland, in part because usually they don’t have too much sun, and in part because geothermal is readily available and produces much steadier power).
We cooked eggs in a geothermal spring, and tasted bread that had been baked in the ground, overnight.

One surprise for me was how much geothermal power is used to create steam and spin turbines to generate electricity; I’d expected most of it to be heating water for direct use rather than spinning turbines, because that cuts down on efficiency.

But efficiency and conservation aren’t such big concerns in Iceland. We were rather surprised that conserving water or electricity didn’t seem to be a value. People just ran the water or left lights on.

But that can change with education and a values shift. Meanwhile, Iceland can truly claim to have one of the greenest power grids in the world.

In a country with only 318,452 inhabitants as of January 2011 and approximately 116,000 households, this tiny country has the capacity to supply much of Europe’s energy needs. In fact, plans are afoot to build deep-sea cables that will export as much as 5 billion kilowatt-hours of clean, renewable electricity to the rest of Europe—enough to power 1.25 million homes.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, propaganda Tagged with ,

The word “greenwashing” is only a few years old; the practice, unfortunately, goes back much longer.

This morning, for some reason, I woke up thinking about a loaf of bread I saw in the supermarket some time in the early 1980s. This line of bakery products was very clearly marketed to the customer who wanted natural foods, and even back then, that included me. The packaging copy was all about wholesome whole grains, natural growing practices, and such–until I got to the ingredients list.

And there I saw the deal-killer: “calcium propionate added to discourage mold.” Back it went from my hands to the shelf!

I was so deeply offended to see this very common bread additive in a bread marketed as wholesome and natural that I can still recall the exact wording. In fact, I remember telling several friends how corny and false this company was, trying to disguise its use of chemicals by saying “discourage” instead of the more typical, and harsher sounding, “retard mold.”

And that got me thinking about another early greenwashing offender: nuclear power. As a child in the 1960s, and one who was impressed by the promise of technology, I was enchanted by the idea of clean energy that would be “too cheap to meter,” as one prominent nuclear bureaucrat famously put it.

This enchantment didn’t stop me from getting involved in a local group that was questioning the wisdom of a proposed nuke two miles from New York City, but back then, all we knew about was thermal pollution. Thank goodness the utility abandoned that plan!

Two years later, I chose as a college research topic the pros and cons of nuclear power, and started reading in depth. Turns out, thermal pollution is the least of nuclear’s problems. Factor in these:

  • Potential for catastrophic accidents that could make Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island look like a romp in the park
  • Deeply subsidized limited-liability insurance that means if there is a catastrophe, private citizens aren’t going to collect on their losses without a massive infusion of billions of dollars of government money (this is a US law, the Price-Anderson Act, but many other countries have similar provisions)
  • A long and sordid history of literally hundreds of small accidents that could have become big very easily–this link with pictures and descriptions of the nine worst shows that five of the nine were AFTER Chernobyl
  • A 250,000-year pollution problem in the need to isolate extremely deadly wastes from the environment for a quarter of a million years (think about how few artifacts remain from even 5000 years ago, and almost nothing of human origin exists from even 30,000 years ago)
  • Huge inefficiencies that lead one analyst, John Berger, to conclude that nuclear–counting the entire fuel cycle–had actually consumed five times as much energy as it produced, so all this risk is for NO benefit (I have the full citation in my book, Nuclear Lessons)

And you wonder how any environmentalist (and several very prominent ones have) can endorse this terrible, deeply flawed, and very UN-green technology.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Politics Tagged with , , ,

Here’s a fascinating article that says the recent debt vote was actually a huge victory for liberals.

I don’t have time to do the fact-checking (I’m actually going on vacation in an hour and a half)—but taking the anonymous author’s claim that the claims have been verified at face value, it’s clearly a better bill than the media has reported, with half the original cuts and triggers to take extras out of right-wing pet programs.

In any case, I support the author’s call for massive voting. The paralyzing focus of the House this term could have easily been avoided by better mobilization of Democrats and progressives in 2010, and it will get much worse if there’s a Republican President and Senate majority next time around. Though I’d still love to see a Left challenge to Obama, whom I’ve been calling the Great Conciliator lately.

Whether this is indeed a victory, or simply less of a loss, is something I’ll leave to your judgment—and I’d love to see a spirited debate on this in the comments section, below.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , ,

New England Environmental, Inc.’s new headquarters in Amherst, MA just became only the fifth property in Massachusetts (and the first in Western Massachusetts) to achieve LEED Platinum Certification.

I toured this facility several months ago during a Chamber of Commerce event, and saw features such as

  • Pavers that allow water to drain off driveways and parking areas
  • The 40KW photovoltaic array, providing solar electric power
  • Wonderful use of natural light
  • Waterless urinals

The green design features of this design are expected to save the company $21,000 a year, according to today’s Daily Hampshire Gazette (warning: typically, Gazette links are only open to subscribers).

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Marketing Tagged with , , ,

I just love this! While one of Los Angeles’ major freeways was closed (the so-called “carmageddon”), and Jet Blue offered $4 airfares for the 40-mile jaunt between Burbank and Long Beach, a group of cyclists

 issu[ed] a modern-day John Henry challenge: on their bikes, they would beat the plane to the other side of the city.

And they did. The cyclists, part of a group called Wolfpack Hustle, made the ride in an hour and thirty-five minutes. Another member of the group drove to the airport, arrived the requisite hour early, waited in the security line, boarded the plane, landed, and took a cab (which apparently got lost) to the finish line—arriving more than an hour after the cyclists, and after a challenger who made the trip by public transit and walking, and another who rollerbladed it.

That’s right: On Sunday, an airplane got its butt kicked by bicycles, metro rail, and a pair of rollerblades.

Score two for self-propelled transportation (bikes AND inline skates), and another for land-based mass transit. I thought it was pretty cool that when I was a high school student in the Bronx, I could easily beat the bus coming back from school on my five-mile bike ride, and took about the same time on the way there (uphill). But this, I have to say, is so much cooler. 🙂

(Thanks to Eric Eustache  (@E_volution on Twitter) for sharing this terrific article.)


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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,

For more than 30 years, one of the arguments I’ve made against nuclear power is the chilling effect on our freedom.

Now, it seems that Japan may have passed a law heading down that slippery slope. Or not—I am not so far convinced that the claims are accurate.

A blogger for the UK Progressive put up a rambling, jumbled article claiming that Japan has passed a law giving sweeping powers to shut down bloggers, people who post videos on Youtube, etc. when they’re critical of the government and/or TEPCO.

I did a bit of Googling and found dozens of other blogs basing their story on that same article, which I consider unreliable. But I did find this in the Tokyo Times, which seems to be a genuine news organization that fact-checks and posts corrections. The Tokyo Times article says the Computer Network Monitoring Law was passed on June 17.

It also says that during March and April, even before the law was passed, government agents sent 41

“letters of request” to internet providers, telecom companies, cable TV stations and others to take measures in order to respond to illegal information, including erasing any information from the Internet that can be seen as harmful to morality and public order.

However, this article links back to coverage in the Examiner which again ties back to the original, untrustworthy blog post. I certainly am not going to pore over all 6000 citations to see whether this story is legitimate. But it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, Protests and Crackdowns Tagged with , , , ,

Here’s one for the Encyclopedia Idiotica: Entergy, owner of the sorely troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear plant (with a history of safety issues going back at least to 1974 when the plant was quite new),

Cooling tower failure, Vermont Yankee
Vermont Yankee cooling tower fails, 2008. Photo by ISC ALC, Creative Commons license

just spent $50 million on new fuel and committed another $42 million to installing that fuel, knowing full well that the state will consider any operation beyond March, 2012 illegal. And this doesn’t count $100 million in post-Fukushma upgrades that will be required in the next few years.

The issue of whether Vermont Yankee will be bound by state law and forced to shut down March 21, 2012 will be adjudicated in court this September: a lawsuit brought on by Entergy’s attempt to torpedo its 2006 agreement to abide by the state’s decision, once it became obvious that the vote was not going Entergy’s way.

Add to this a few other factors:

  • Vermont Yankee is one of 23 reactors in the US that use essentially the same design as Fukushima; it’s not out of the question that the federal government could unilaterally shut all those plants down.
  • The year-long Associated Press study on nuclear power safety showed glaring holes in the entire industry; a new citizen action network, like the one of the late 70s, could revitalize the safe energy/no nukes movement and bring enormous pressure to close all the nuclear plants in the US.
  • In New England, opposition to nuclear power is already deeply entrenched and fairly well organized. It was New England’s Clamshell Alliance, after all, that gave birth to the national nuclear shutdown movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Even if Entergy manages to win in court, it’s obvious that any attempt to keep the plant running will be met with massive citizen opposition including very public protests and civil disobedience. This will inevitably make keeping the plant open a very expensive and slow operation.

And I’ll bet that Entergy will raise an argument on the order of “you can’t make us shut down, we just spent $92 million to refuel.” Since the company knew full well that this money could be completely wasted and went ahead anyway, I hope that Judge Murtha not only refuses to consider that line of “reasoning,” but makes sure the entire cost is borne not by innocent taxpayers and ratepayers of Vermont, not even by stockhoders who had nothing to do with this decision, but by the members of the Board of Directors who voted to squander this money, and to the executives that pushed for this vote.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Publishing Tagged with , , , ,

Guest post by D’vorah Lansky

Video is the most effective way to connect with your online audience because they can both see and hear you. This medium permits viewers to get to know you and find out more about your book. Adding video to your website and marketing campaign is one of the smartest things you can do. Video captivates your visitors, provides them with a warm welcome and keeps them on your site longer, so they are much more likely to take action.

Creating Web video might seem intimidating but the truth is that it can be easy, affordable, and even free. Creating Web video can also be a great deal of fun. You can either record your message with the camera facing you or you can create a screen capture video, using a free software program such as JingProject.com, and record something that is displayed on your computer screen. The technology has advanced to the point where it is easy to record a video, even if you are not a technology expert.

How Authors Can Use Video to Market Their Books

There are unlimited possibilities as far as what you can create videos of. Here are a few suggestions for you to draw from:

Create a video book trailer. Market your book by creating a video book trailer which you can post on YouTube and on your website. A video book trailer is a short video or multimedia presentation that helps to promote your book. Typically, it is less than two minutes, and a thirty-second to one-minute video can have even more impact, as people are more likely to watch it all the way through. The goal of your video trailer is to get people emotionally involved in your book by identifying a pain or a challenge and sharing a solution.

The simplest way to create a video trailer is through the use of images, PowerPoint slides, video clips, voiceover, music, and sound effects that paint a story that invites your viewers to get emotionally involved in your book. An extremely simple way to create a video trailer is with an online program at Animoto.com. Simply upload images, select an audio track from a wide selection available on the site, click a few buttons and upload your video to YouTube.

Read a chapter of your book aloud. This is a wonderful way to connect with your audience as authors have been doing readings in person at bookstores for decades. You are simply keeping up with these technological times to reach a much larger audience of prospective buyers. You can either face your webcam or you can narrate while displaying PowerPoint slides to create a delightful presentation.

Record a video interview. Have someone else ask you a series of questions related to your book. Create a webcam video or a PowerPoint video of you sharing an aspect of the book, why you wrote the book, and how people can benefit from the content in your book.

Create a video book. We’ve all heard of audio books. What about creating a video book? You can create an abbreviated, separate video for each chapter and take your reader on an audio-visual journey through your book. This also provides you with an upsell product and/or a special give-away for those who purchase your book during your book launch or through a special promotion. At the same time, it is a teaser opportunity to get them to buy and read the entire book.

What ideas do you have?

Hopefully these ideas have stimulated some ideas of your own. What ways can you see yourself using video to share the message of your book? 

 

About the Author

D’vorah is the bestselling author of Book Marketing Made Easy: Simple Strategies for Selling Your Nonfiction Book Online – Visit her book blog and check out the full virtual book tour schedule at: www.BookMarketingMadeEasy.com.

D’vorah offers programs for nonfiction authors interested in growing their brand and their book sales through online book marketing practices and strategies. You can purchase her book on Amazon at: www.BookMarketingMadeEasy.com/amazon

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics Tagged with , , , , , ,

The thing Obama and the Democrats don’t seem to understand is that the ublic would have their back if they knew the facts. And thus, the Democrats need to articulate the facts: clearly, concisely (a challenge, I know), and consistently.

They would not have to give in at all on issues like Medicare, matching debt reduction with spending reduction dollar-for-dollar, and refusing all new revenue if they would put it out to the American people the way Lou Dubose did in the little-read but much-respected Washington Spectator of July 15. You can read the article here, if you happen to subscribe to that wonderful little newsletter.

So let me summarize some of Dubose’s points:

  • Under George W. Bush, the government raised the debt ceiling eight times—something that had not had to be done in the last three years of the Clinton administration, because Clinton turned the Reagan/George H.W. Bush deficits into a surplus.
  • George W. Bush’s first tax cut cost the government $1.3 trillion in lost revenue. His second tax cut added another $350 billion to the deficit. And his Medicare prescription bill (wildly considered a giveaway to the pharmaceutical giants) was an unfunded mandate of more than $600 billion.
  • These huge additions to the deficit don’t even count the enormous cost of our illegal and very expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; according to the National Priorities Project, the cost of these two wars is more than $1221 trillion as I write this, and escalating rapidly every second. You can actually watch the numbers jump at its Cost of War website.

Dubose quotes economist Chad’s Stone’ testimony at a Jont Economic Committee hearing June 21:

The economic downturn, tax cuts enacted under President Bush, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire federal budget deficit over the next 10 years.

The tax cuts alone, Stone concludes, represent 6 percent of GDP right now—but if they are not reversed, public debt will be an unimaginable 95 percent of GDP by 2019—not a legacy we want to saddle our children with.

So if I were Obama or Pelosi or Reid, or any Democrat who wants to win his or her next election, I’d be out there every day, telling the press and the public:

  • Spending cuts on programs for the poor and on economic stimulus measures like energy conservation programs make no sense when you’re trying to bring the country out of a big recession
  • Bush and the Republicans squandered the surplus on wars and tax cuts; that was a failed strategy and now it’s time to do it differently
  • The poor and middle class have already sacrificed far more than their share, including the shriveling of their investments, while billionaires and huge corporations have done very well of late
  • Public servants are actually paid far less than they would get for jobs with similar levels of responsibility in the private sector; they are dedicated teachers, firefighters, police officers, etc., who keep society functioning, and who deserve to be treated better than to be the whipping boys for government spending zealots
  • If you want to look at spending cuts, look at the military—that’s a lace with a lot more fat to cut
  • A one-sided set of demands with no room for negotiation is not a compromise, and is not acceptable.
  • Revenue growth has to be part of any deficit discussion
  • These deficits are of the GOP’s own making, as is the financial crisis that resulted from combining the big tax cuts with nearly complete lack of oversight under Bush—doing it again won’t solve the problem
  • We need good, clean jobs to rebuld the econmy, and the way to get them is through a Marshall Plan-style effort to get us off carbon and nuclear and into safe energy and deep conservation (I’ve written about this several times; see, for instance, my blog posts “Where is the LEFT Challenge to Obama?” and “Why the Democrats Lost: Failure to Be Bold”)

Etcetera.

In short, the Dems (and I’ve said this before) have to get much better at framing and messaging. They should study George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant. They need to understand that politics is about marketing, and the reason they lose so often is because they don’t have a clue about marketing. And they need to identify Republicans as the bad guys concerning why the American people have NOT gotten so much of the “Change” mantra that got Obama elected. Otherwise, he will deserve to lose next year.

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