This push says that pension funds must not be allowed to even consider any factors pertaining to ESG–Environmental, Social, Governance. It doesn’t say they have to make sure that ESG investments perform as well as non-ESG investments (which, often, they do). That would be a reasonable law to protect retiree pensions. But this one would bar fund managers from even considering anything involving ESG.
For decades, smart fund managers have been shifting investment toward ESG, and their reasons are fiscally sound. From avoiding corrosive investments in “stranded assets” like fossil-fuel or nuclear processing infrastructure that’s been plagues, by leaks, spills, explosions, etc. to avoiding ethics scandals that destroyed once-respected companies like Enron and Arthur Andersen, ESG investing makes so much sense that, as no less an authoritative source than NSDAQ notes,
The article goes on to list six factors in ESG investment growth and notes that even during the pandemic, “funds with ESG strategies outperformed traditional funds.2″ (Click the link to see the footnote sources, too.) This updates and reinforces the research I did when writing my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, a few years ago. Every single one of the dozens of studies I checked at that time showed that ESG criteria lead to better financial results.
Net flows into ESG funds available to U.S. investors have skyrocketed, totalling $20.6 billion in 2019, nearly four times the previous annual record set in 2018, [1] while ESG funds in Europe also attracted record inflows of $132 billion in 2019. [2]More than 70% of funds focused on ESG investments outperformed their counterparts in the first four months of 2020, [3] and nearly 60% of ESG funds outperformed the wider market over the past decade. [4]
One unintended consequence I haven’t seen addressed anywhere is the possibility of widespread rebellion by private investors that could put the whole pension system at risk, as stakeholders demand that funds embrace sensible, profit-driven ESG corporations in their portfolio choices while an inane law makes that commitment illegal.
I value the metaphor but want to talk about actual cars for a moment:
A client once gave me a ride in his Maserati. The thing that shocked me was how utterly silent it was at 60 mph. At that speed, it was about luxury, not power and noise–a Fast and Secure in your matrix. I think it would have been a different experience at 100+ mph.
I’ve generally favored utilitarian car choices–cheap, reliable, boring. Mostly Toyota Corollas (including the Chevy Nova Corolla clone of 1988). But twice, I’ve been the accidental owner of sport sedans–high-performance cars disguised as boring. I bought a used 1975 Fiat 131 four-door sedan in 1981 when I moved from the city to Western Massachusetts, because I didn’t know any better–and only found out that Fiats of that era were notoriously unreliable when it was already our headache. We bought it for $1500 as economy transportation.
Fiat 131 sedan: Clark Kent on the outside, Supercar in handling. Photo by by Bene Riobo via Wikipedia (Creative Commons)
It was unbelievably fun to drive–when it worked. We got the car at 65,000 miles, which is the prime of life for a Corolla. In the ~9000 miles/nine months we drove it, we had failures of the entire exhaust system, the entire brake system, even the bleeping steering column–and if it was cold, rainy, or snowy, we often needed a tow. We were young and broke, used to public transportation, and not prepared to be owning a money pit. We sold it as a parts car for $500 and were lucky to get it. The second was a 2004 Mazda 3 hatchback that we bought new, thinking of it as an economy car that was a little peppier than most. Turned out it only got 30 mpg. It was also really fun to drive, and reasonably reliable. I guess it would be a Hot Rod but with zero visual indication of high performance. We gave it to our kid in Metro Boston in 2018 when my stepfather was killed and we got his ultra-low-odometer Honda Fit, six years old, 14,000 miles, not at all fun to drive (underpowered even compared to a Corolla) but incredibly well-engineered for storage. Definitely in the Boring quadrant. We’re still driving it, along with a 2005 Corolla. Oddly enough, Raf only got about a year out of the Mazda, which started needing expensive repairs. But at least it was 15 years old when it started to go.
Do I regret trading fun-driving cars for reliable ones? Not at all. The genuine pleasure of ultra-responsive steering, braking, and acceleration was fun, but ultimately, for me, the purpose of a car is to get me someplace. Appreciating the engineering that made at least the Mazda both safe and fun was like visiting a friend who spent ten grand on a really good stereo system. I could take joy in the moment but didn’t feel a need to own it. We live relatively simply and spend more on travel than on material things.
But I certainly have my own areas where I will spend more to get significantly higher value. It was true when I spent $3K on a Mac in 1984, recognizing that the much shorter learning curve compared to a pre-Windows IBM PC was going to pay big dividends in my career as owner of a writing business–especially in being able to produce resume while-you-wait and know exactly what they’d look like before hitting the print button. And while I’ve found ways to keep the costs down, I stock our kitchen primarily with organic and local items instead of chemiculture frankenfoods shipped from far away.
So let me ask you: what luxuries do you value enough to pay significantly extra for, and why? My own two areas, as noted above, are both experience-based.
Travel
I love travel because (at least the way we do it), it gives us chances to experience the world differently–to see different perspectives, different approaches to common problems–kind of like looking across from your chosen career to what the standard procedures are in some completely unrelated career (and what lessons can be found there).
Travel, for me, often involves staying with locals. But even if I’m not doing homestays, when I travel, I make a point of finding ways to connect with local people. I take public transportation, shop at independent local markets, wander through ethnic neighborhoods, strike up conversations, eat in places frequented by locals, take guided walks led by rangers, historians, and naturalists, visit artisan workshops…I don’t spend much time in the classic tourist areas.
And the insights I’ve come away with include noticing that…
Iceland’s non-vehicle power needs are met almost entirely by renewable hydro and geothermal (even as far back as my 2011 visit).
Quito has a public transit system (that I’ve since seen several other places) that combines the advantages of buses and trains, using dedicated rights-of-way and raised boarding platforms (aligned with the bottom of the bus door) that require turnstile-entry so when the bus comes, it can board much faster because all the passengers have already paid and no one has to climb stairs.
Peru and Guatemala figured out intensive high-altitude agriculture many centuries ago, and the Incan and Mayan agronomists were as sophisticated as any modern research team.
In much of the developing world, reuse and recycling are so integrated into daily life that nothing is thrown away if it has an iota of value remaining.
Judaism–and thus the Christianity and Islam that derived from it–has enough parallels with Hinduism (other than the schism between monotheism and polytheism) that it tells us there were active trade routes between South Asia and the Middle East thousands of years ago.
Two visits to Israel and Palestine, 28 years apart, gave me the chance to gain much greater knowledge on the conflict, and how it might be healed in ways that felt just all around. My wife and I met with the founder of an Orthodox Jewish peace movement, a Palestinian-American blogger who taken had moved to Ramallah and become a Palestinian citizen despite the restrictions on his movement this entailed, a man born in the 1930s who clearly remembered his entire village being evicted from the place they’d lived for generations, even right-wing Israeli settlers.
All of these observations find their way into my world view–and my consulting practice.
Food I’m willing to spend considerably more money for a fabulous food experience. I’d much rather pay $20 for a memorable meal in a restaurant featuring local specialties than $4 for fast food that’s indistinguishable and unmemorable. I shop local and organic because it offers both superior taste and superior health and nutrition. I buy fair-trade chocolate and farm eggs because I can enjoy their wonderful taste–and also I enjoy knowing that I am NOT propping up a system based on child slavery (non-fair-trade chocolate) or animal cruelty (industrial eggs).
But I will also find bargains! One of my favorite meals in my life cost 75 cents and fed two of us: we were in the Mexican heartland, walking to a national park. We inhaled the aroma of fresh tortillas and stopped into the tortillarilla to buy half a kilo of still-warm corn tortillas. At the little neighborhood market, we found a large, perfectly ripe avocado. We took our finds to that park, sat under a giant poinsettia tree, and enjoyed a feast that I still remember as divine. This was way back in 1985 and burned into my memory, happily, for ever–one of many wonderful food memories I keep there.
And What About You? So, once again, I’ll ask you: what luxuries do you value enough to pay significantly extra for, and why? Please share in the comments.
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
An energy consultant I’ve known since high school raised a frustration he has in his work:
Sadly, the biggest problem is culture, Shel Horowitz. Building owners have a mentality in their culture, in their business dealings of loving the status quo. I can’t tell you how many times I have offered free energy audits, to give them information and tips to save money, and they turn it down. Free (no obligation). They just don’t want to know. I have been involved in many proposals for simple upgrades with numbers that show that this will help their bottomline ($$$), for solar panels or LED lights, and they say no. As long as money is flowing in, they don’t want to change. How do you get over that mindset?
And I responded,
You have to approach changing culture with the mentality of a marketer and organizer–this is what I do, and I’ve helped to change some cultures in my time. Think about what the world was like when you and I met in the early 1970s: Environmental consciousness was close to zero. Most families had never tried organic produce, or tofu, or even yogurt. War was still raging in Vietnam, and you could be drafted at 18 but had to be 21 to vote. South Africa and Rhodesia had rigid apartheid. Dictators were running things in places like Spain. All of these changed because organizers and marketers changed the culture. When I moved to my current town of Hadley, in 1998, the dominant paradigm was “You can’t change Town Hall.” 14 months later, our landscape was threatened and I launched Save the Mountain, and did so with mom-and-apple-pie messaging like “[developer’s name] has wildly underestimated the love the people of Hadley have for this mountain.” I knew we’d win, but I expected it to take five years. We did it in just 13 months!
It’s true that culture change is usually neither easy nor fast. But it DOES happen. Usually, it happens because people’s movements for change bubble up from the grassroots. Sometimes, technological shifts speed the process of change, turbocharge it. As one example, the widespread acceptance of clean energy had to do with technological shifts that made those choices economically as well as environmentally superior–but it was the widespread rejection of dangerous, polluting energy systems such as fossil and nuclear that created the momentum behind the technological growth and price drops/efficiency increases.
I would suggest to my old friend that his offers need to be phrased in terms of how they mitigate pain and add profit. Marketing to others’ self–interest in order to foster your own agenda of social and environmental progress is totally legitimate. And if the case is made properly, they will see that the cost of moving forward is lower, and the benefits higher, than the cost and benefits of keeping things as they are.
I just came across a query letter I wrote in 2020. It raises a lot of questions that are still very much worth asking—and attempting to answer.
How some people view the world—Opportunity for businesses that genuinely care
In many ways, these questions were easier to answer back then. Unfortunately, as a society, we missed the window to create those kinds of sweeping changes when the active threat of Covid made them easier—but we can still make the effort. We can still transform society, our relationship with other beings, and the planet in our own lifetime. It’ll just take more effort.
Here’s the relevant section of what I wrote back then (I’ve removed a long paragraph with my credentials, as well as my closing.)—and I’d love to get your comments:
Hi, there,
As an experienced journalist and award-winning, best-selling ten-book author with several books on social enterprise as a profit center, I propose an article, Leveraging the Great Pivot: How COVID-19 Creates Long-Term Post-Pandemic Opportunities for Racial Justice, Economic Advancement, and Environmental Healing. Probably in the 1500-2500 word range.
The premise: For decades, activists have been told we can’t fix the crushing problems of our time, like hunger, poverty, racism, war, catastrophic climate change, etc. Yet, starting in early 2020, the entire world pivoted and everything changed. As education, many types of business, and even cultural events shifted online or reinvented themselves, we learned how resilient, adaptable, and creative we are. And that process created opportunities that could never have happened in the pre-pandemic world.
These massive global, national, regional, and local shifts prove we can reinvent the world as the place we really want to live in–and we can replicate the shift in other areas. As a society, we have to do this pivot strategically, and it has to involve many sectors: government, nonprofits, activists, community organizations, academia—and the business community.
Just look at how the massive expansion of the racial justice movement since May has changed perceptions around the US and around the world. And that’s one small piece of a big multi-issue cauldron of solution-driven thinking and activism; a lot of good work is going into solving those big crises, as well as protecting our fragile democracy. The question is: pivot to what?
Could health care coverage be shifted away from employers so the next time an emergency shuts hundreds of thousands of businesses, their laid-off employees don’t lose their safety net? Could this be the US’s chance to adopt the single-payer model most of the rest of the world uses? And to shift from treating the sick’s symptoms to maintaining wellness across the population so fewer people get sick in the first place? Can this be the moment to finally get away from fossil and nuclear, to combine clean renewable energy with massive systemic conservation so we’re no longer squandering our children’s heritage polluting and carbonizing our planet while depleting scarce resources? Is it time for decent affordable housing to be seen as a right? What are the best ways to create more housing that also protect the environment, create pleasant yet affordable neighborhoods, and avoid negative consequences like urban sprawl?
We can ask similar questions in every sector: criminal justice, job creation, transportation and shipping (moving both people and things), replacing armed conflict with peaceful conflict resolution, ensuring a pluralistic society that honors both its majorities and minorities, etc.
After four years of Trump and a year of COVID, it won’t be enough to go back to the “normal” of 2019, or even of 2015. But with the pandemic comes the luxury and responsibility of critically examining every aspect of society. We need to figure out what the goal of every institution is–and how to achieve or surpass that goal as we rebuild. Just as many developing countries skipped landlines and clunky desktop computers and went straight to smartphones, we need to ask questions like:
What are we *really* trying to accomplish?
Is this the best way to meet that goal?
How could we improve it?
How could we make it more inclusive?
Then we brainstorm with these ends in mind, using a seven-step process that opens up new thinking and lets us implement new solutions. To make this concrete, think about spending millions of R&D dollars to create a pen that can write in zero-gravity. But the real goal isn’t to have a pen that can write in space—that’s a means to an end. The real goal is to be able to write in space. And suddenly, with that framing, the solution is obvious: use pencils—or computers! Maybe you create a pencil lead that can make a darker, easier to read impression, create a Velcro mount for your device so it doesn’t go flying across the cabin, or make other little tweaks—but you’ve accomplished the basic goal, with resources you already have. Business has a vested interest in reinventing itself, as dozens of industries were rendered obsolete, as supply chain issues showed up unexpectedly, and as those sectors that strengthened and grew had to adapt. Small businesses can survive and even thrive, but not as it was in 2019. Whether a manufacturer switches from making luxury goods to PPE or a retailer learns how to blend online and (protected) in-person approaches, pretty much everyone has to pivot. Why not seize the opportunity to have that reinvention foster racial, gender, and class equity…green the planet while creating jobs…match product introduction and production not to advertising-created materialism but to solving real needs and getting paid for it? In the activist world, meetings that might have had 10 local people in a room can now draw 500 from around the world—and provide digital tools to mobilize action, such as Spoke, a texting platform that can allow volunteers to send 1000 or more text messages an hour and respond individually and personally when someone replies. In my own professional development this year, from the comfort of my own home, I’ve attended dozens of far-away events. Some had hundreds or thousands of attendees from dozens of countries (among them a worldwide UN conference, multiple 50th-anniversary celebrations of Earth Day, and gatherings on more niched topics such as the special situation of Jews of color). I could not have afforded the time and money to go to so many conferences, and several times, they’ve overlapped. But I was able to participate in more than one at a time, or listen to what I’d missed on replay. I’ve also participated in some thinking and brainstorming calls from widely scattered groups of thinkers and researchers working on global solutions to these and other problems. As somewhat more exciting examples, local cultural performers with no previous broader following are finding global audiences—and the sound technicians who can replace awful-sounding Zoom calls with concert-quality production are keeping busy.
Even on the personal side, some of the restrictions can be reframed as empowerment—just as we can think of a wheelchair user not as “confined to a wheelchair,” but “liberated with a wheelchair,” because it allows that user to go places that would otherwise be off-limits. My wife and I hosted a Passover Seder with family and friends from three generations and 9 different states from Massachusetts to California–most of whom would never have come in person.
At our best, America’s not a zero-sum society or for you to succeed, someone else has to fail. A promise in America is big enough, is big enough, for everyone to succeed. Every generation opening the door of opportunity just a little bit wider. Every generation including those who’ve been excluded before.
We believe we should leave no one behind, because each one of us is a child of God, and every person, every person is sacred. If that’s true, then every person’s rights must be sacred as well. Individual dignity, individual worth, individual determination, that’s America, that’s democracy and that’s what we have to defend.
These powerful words embrace what I’ve been talking about for years: that we have enough to go around, but have to address kinks in the distribution and a lack of political will that leave some clinging by a thread while others amass far more than they need or even can use. These truths are amplified in powerful books like The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Business Solution to Poverty, and my own Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
We don’t need to live in a world crippled by dire hunger and poverty–cutting off who knows how many amazing new discoveries because the people who would have made them are too busy struggling for basic survival. We don’t have to accept war as a consequence of limited resources, because the abundance mindset understands that a particular resource is only one path to a goal, and there are others. We especially don’t need to go to war over petroleum (which has incited so many wars, including US-conducted wars in places like Iraq and Vietnam)–because we are already using different energy resources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal, which are already edging out fossil and nuclear in both financial and environmental benefits.
And we can absolutely reject the outdated concept that if one person or group wins, some other has to lose. The abundance mindset is collaborative: we win by joining forces for common goals. This powerful frame can apply to material goods, and also to intangibles like love–as Malvina Reynolds made clear decades ago in her charming song, “Magic Penny.”
How are you using abundance to create a better world? Please respond in the comments (which are moderated, so don’t bother filling it with junk).
A whole bag of usable produce thrown away. Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dumpster-a-plenty.jpg
I have a moral problem with food waste when others are going hungry. In the developed world, our hunger crisis has nothing to do with insufficient supply–and everything to do with throwing out vast quantities of usable food, and the people who need it being unable to get it. 30 to 40 percent of all food grown in the US is tossed. Some gets thrown away because it spoils–but 1) a whole lot of perfectly good food goes to the landfill, and 2) if one area has gone bad (like mold one side of a block of cheese), in many cases, the item can be trimmed and most of it saved. Smell, taste, and appearance can help you decide what can be salvaged and what should go in the compost.
Where it does food waste come from? To name a few: Restaurants cooking more than they sell. Uninformed consumers who think food has to be dumped once it passes its sell-by date. Produce wholesalers who reject fruits and vegetables because of non-uniform appearance. Commercial processors who are not set up to capture and process every bit.
Grocery stores need similar programs. One step in the right direction is services like Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market, both of which sell reject produce direct-to-consumers.
On the consumer side, the biggest results will come from education. We need trainings that demonstrate:
What foods really aren’t safe past their expiration dates, and which are perfectly fine (in general, meat products should be used or frozen before their expiry dates, opened refrigerated dairy is typically good for at least three days beyond, and unopened often for a week or two, while many processed foods are shelf-stable for years)
How to preserve various foods
Where to donate if you have too much food that’s still good
How buying locally grown organic foods minimizes waste (including the huge environmental burden of transporting foods across oceans and continents
What makes sense for your size household to buy in bulk, and what’s much better to just buy as much as you need inn the near future
How to use smell, appearance, and small tastes to determine whether food is still ok
When it makes sense to trim bad parts off, and when to discard the whole thing
How to use leftovers without getting bored with them
Environmentally friendly options for disposing of spoiled food (compost, slops for animals, etc.)
Those of us in the US are probably used to hearing people go on and on about our high status in rankings of desirability. And in some ways, we are. (I am a US citizen and a lifelong resident, so in this post, I’m going to use “we” and “our” when referring to Americans.)
We are super-cosmopolitan, able to create cities where hundreds of different ethnic, racial, and religious groups not only live and work together but enjoy each other’s food, music, etc.
We introduced modern democracy to the world–a huge improvement over the divine right of kings
We have enormous diversity in geography, agriculture, weather conditions…whatever you want, you can find it somewhere in the US
US technology leadership sparked enormous progress in fields as diverse as computing, clean energy, and space exploration
BUT on a lot of other metrics, we fall alarmingly short. Consider, for instance:
Quality of life: The US is number 15. Not horrible, but we could certainly do better!
Robustness of our democracy: Sadly, once the shinning light to all nations, the US dropped from full to flawed democracy in 2016, and hasn’t recovered. Appallingly, we are rated #25.
I could go on, but you get the idea. In metric after metric, the US was once the leader and now lags.
Lakey sees the increasing polarization of modern US society as a forge: a way of generating the heat necessary to create lasting social change (toward freedom and equality or toward authoritarianism—“the forge doesn’t care”).
This is not a new trend. The Scandinavian countries had their huge social revolution of the 1930s in times of great polarization (something he chronicled in his earlier book, Viking Economics). The trick is to harness that energy and channel it toward gaining mass support. He walks his talk, too; in the summer and fall of 2020, he led or co-led numerous workshops on what to do if the Trumpists tried to seize power after losing the election, training thousands of people.
He charges us to express our best concepts—not just what’s wrong with the system but the vision to make it better—in ways that feel like common sense to working-class people who want the system to work for them, too. After all, most of us actually do want a system that promotes equal access, a fair economy, and real democracy. We have to show them that our vision “has a spot for you,” even if that “you” finds the movement’s tactics disruptive and uncomfortable.
But he says progressives have largely lost that vision since the 1970s; we need to get it back. If we can get the diverse movements working together to confront their common opponents, we foster an intersectional “movement of movements” capable of creating real change—as the Scandinavians did then, with farmers, unionists, and students joining together to drive the moneyed elite from power. He warns us that polarization will get worse, because economic inequality is built so strongly into the culture. He says that we should consider organizing campaigns as “training for [nonviolent] combat.”
And we should expect those campaigns to take a while. Campaigns are well-planned (but adaptable) and sustained over time. It might take years, but you can win. One-offs (like the Women’s March at Trump’s inauguration) don’t typically accomplish change on their own. Traffic disruptions don’t make change; they just piss potential allies off. Disrupting banking operations is much more strategic because the bank is the perpetrator of the evil. How is the specific goal of the campaign advanced by this action? If it doesn’t advance the cause, don’t do it. A campaign he was involved with moved $5 million into credit unions and cooperative enterprises in one campaign that started in a living room and grew to encompass 13 states.
Oppression is only one lens we can look at things through—there are many others (he didn’t elaborate). The elite seeks to divide us (by color, gender, values, etc.)—but canny organizers look for the cracks in those divisions, and expand them. And stays optimistic, not getting stuck in “can’t be done” but figuring out how to do it.
Campaigns often start small. We can build our skills when the stakes are lower and make our mistakes then. Later, as the big challenges arise, we know how to handle them. You can lose a lot of battles and still win the campaign (eventually). And any tactic will be greeted with “this will never work” skepticism. But “Anyone who is arguing for impossibility” should remember the Mississippi Summer volunteers. When news got out of the abduction of Goodman, Schwerner, and Cheney, Lakey (a trainer of volunteers for trhat movement) expected most of the next volunteer wave to abandon their commitments—but nearly all of them stayed, mentored by Black SNCC activists who had been living with the overt racism for decades.
The best-known antidote to terror is social solidarity. Get close to people. Organize campaigns not just with those who share your goals but those who are “willing to be human with you.” Make your peace with the personal risk, face it head-on. We risk by driving on the highway, we risk by NOT meaningfully addressing climate change. Accepting the possibility that you might die in service of the common good is liberating (and it’s not the worst way to die).
SNCC survived in the Deep South without guns; they would not have survived with them. Erica Chenoweth shows us that nonviolent movements have twice the success rate of violent ones.
If you want innovation, conflict helps to get you there. Yet, conflict resolution is a crucial skill, and it’s expanded enormously in recent decadesWe need those tools and people who will jump into the fray (to use them). But if our tools are too highly structured, you need to add interventions in informal settings.
Lakey expects surveillance and isn’t worried about it: “I think it’s a wonderful thing. We take that as pride: we are so important that they put staff time and energy into knowing what we’re up to—so we’re making a difference. Gandhi told India, if you gave up fear of them, the British would be gone. If people spread fears about Trump, invoice him for the hours because you’re doing his work.”
Most of the energy we use, whether it be coal, gas, or oil, is wasted, meaning the energy does no useful work. Energy, in its thermal or electrical form, powers systems that are badly designed and poorly engineered, including our buildings, cars, and factories. According to the National Academy of Engineering, the United States is approximately 2 percent efficient, which means that for every 100 units of energy employed, we accomplish two units of work.
Why? Because if we are wasting 98 percent of our energy that means all we have to do engage in a drastic campaign to increase efficiency and conservation. I’d guess that if we can get our efficiency up to 50 percent, we’d never have to drill for more oil and gas or mine for coal and uranium. If we can reach 80 percent, we’d be actively reversing catastrophic global heating. While the technological challenges are steep, they’re not insurmountable—and even if we can go from 2 to 10 percent efficient (and THAT I think we can do easily and relatively quickly, since other parts of the world, including Northern Europe, use far less energy per capita than we do in the US), the changes will be enormous. A lot of this can be done just by thinking different. For example, most of the fuel a car consumes is to move the car itself, not the passengers. If we can cut the weight of a car in half, or carry more people at a time, more of the fuel goes to moving the people and less to moving the vehicle.
Hawken says 82 percent of our carbon output is from burning coal, oil, and gas. So, since we’re wasting 98 percent of the energy those combustion reactions produce, being more efficient will lead directly to less carbon going into the air and sea.
He concludes with a clarion call to address social justice here and now, as a necessary step to cleaning up our energy act:
To reverse global warming, we need to address current human needs, not an imagined dystopian future.
If we want to get the attention of humanity, humanity needs to feel it is getting attention. If we are going to save the world from the threat of global warming, we need to create a world worth saving. If we are not serving our children, the poor, and the excluded, we are not addressing the climate crisis. If fundamental human rights and material needs are not met, efforts to stem the crisis will fail. If there are not timely and cumulative benefits for an individual or family, they will focus elsewhere. The needs of people and living systems are often presented as conflicting priorities—biodiversity versus poverty, or forests versus hunger—when in fact the destinies of human society and the natural world are inseparably intertwined, if not identical.
Social justice is not a sideshow to the emergency. Injustice is the cause. Giving every young child an education; providing renewable energy to all; erasing food waste and hunger; ensuring gender equity, economic justice, and shared opportunity; recognizing our responsibility and making amends to myriad communities of the world for past injustices—these and more are at the very heart of what can turn the tide for all of humanity, rich and poor, and everyone between. Reversing the climate crisis is an outcome. Regenerating human health, security and well-being, the living world, and justice is the purpose.
As Rebecca Harrington has pointed out, “In a single hour, the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth is more than the entire world consumes in an year.” Multiplying that hour by 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year, we learn that just from the sun, we have 8760 times as much energy coming in as we use. This doesn’t even count wind, hydro, geothermal, and many other promising, truly green technologies that can be designed and deployed in ways that minimize harmful impact (that’s another area where we need to work; not all alternative energy deployments are well-thought-out). I personally favor small-scale, decentralized installations that are designed with the particular site in mind and are easy and clean to install, service, and eventually disassemble–along with solar and wind on non-forest locations that have already been built upon. Building and vehicular rooftops, parking lots, and highway median strips are all very promising places for green energy deployment, to name a few possibilities.
In short, once we make the transition–and we absolutely need to–we can live perfectly well without the dirty and destabilizing fossil and nuclear technologies we currently rely on–and the first step is getting more work out of the energy we’re already using.
One of the graphs in the Leonhardt article shows that tax rates for the top 0.01 percent of earners are approaching the rate foe the bottom 90 percent.
But while those whose multiple lavish mansions represent only a tiny fraction of their financial worth also pay property taxes, most of their wealth is not taxed except that portion that arrives new each year (income).
The effective rate is much lower, though. Only the amount of income above the threshold for that rate (currently $628,301) is taxed at that rate. Each portion of income is taxed at the bracket for that level. So if you file singly and make $700,000 (and I don’t come anywhere near that), only $71,699 is taxed at 37 percent. The first $9950 is taxed at just 10 percent, the next $30,575 is taxed at 12 percent, and so on. This is why it is often an advantage to file jointly with your spouse–because more of your money is taxed at the lower rates. In the above example, $19,900 would be taxed at the 10 percent level, versus $99,000 if you split the income evenly and each filed separately.
Having dropped the tax rate on the wealthiest income earners by about 60 percent, the government has been considerably less aggressive about making up the difference. The One Percent used to pay heavily in the year they acquired the money–but now that they’re paying much less, an asset tax could help fund the things we really want government to do: Clean up the planet, educate and protect all its citizenry, provide services and a leg up for the disempowered, and make sure no one is crushed by the ever-growing costs of basic survival. In other words, Build Back Better and the Green New Deal. Both of these will create massive numbers of new jobs, clean up the planet, and leave the average person with more money in their bank account.
Advanced support systems for elders, children, people with disabilities, and others in need (this is a long academic paper but it has a one-paragraph abstract)
In our country, we are facing an absurd situation where two Democratic Senators representing less thanthree percent of the total population are holding America hostage. They say we can’t afford these investments, but they also shoot down all attempts to institute mechanisms to pay for them. And an even more absurd situation where most laws can only pass with a supermajority and virtually all Republican Senators refuse to vote for anything that the Democrats support. So much for the vaunted bipartisanship Senator Manchin in particular keeps insisting on. But the American people strongly support these investments.
It’s time to turn that support into action. First, write your Senators. You can find their addresses here. Use the appropriate sample letter (or letters, if you have one Senator in each party) from the three below as a model, but take three minutes to make it uniquely your own (especially the first sentence and the last three sentences), so it doesn’t look like a form letter. Better yet, write yur own, from scratch. If you live out-of-state, don’t lobby Manchin or Sinema directly. That will be counterproductive. Instead, reach out to friends, family members, people who are in the same organizations you participate in who do live in those states. If you are a business owner, start with “As a business owner and constituent in…”
Second, get involved. Do some phone banking or text banking or postcard writing. Show up when organizations like Fairvote, Movement Voter Project, Common Cause, voting rights divisions of NAACP and ACLU, and environmental groups hold rallies, lobbying days, meetings, and presentations. Personally contact your own friends and family. write letters to the editor for publication in your local newspaper. Be an election protection volunteer.
If you live in West Virginia or Arizona
Dear Senator,
As a constituent in [your town and state], I am deeply concerned at your role in blocking an agenda that most Americans support. 48 of your fellow Senate Democrats have shown incredible willingness to compromise with your demands–but you keep moving the goalposts. It is well past time for you to find a way to support these necessary Build Back Better, Green New Deal, and Voting Rights bills that will get the job done, give the Democrats something to brag about in next year’s crucial elections, and improve lives for all residents of our wonderful state. You will have another feather in your cap if you can bring these bills into law, even if it means getting them out from under the filibuster. But you will lose local support if you keep blocking the progress we so desperately need. I am eager to vote for a Senator who has put the needs of constituents ahead of narrow corporate and special interests. Please BE that Senator.
Sincerely,
[Your name and postal/email addresses]
If You Have One or Two Republican Senators
Dear Senator,
As a constituent in [your town and state], I am deeply concerned at your role in blocking an agenda that most Americans support. President Biden came to you in a spirit of bipartisanship. Senators Manchin and Sinema came to you in a spirit of bipartisanship. 48 of your fellow Senators have shown incredible willingness to compromise with your demands–but you keep moving the goalposts. We citizens of [your state] did not elect you to be an obstacle to programs that we desperately need, just because it wasn’t the Republicans who proposed them. It is well past time for you to find a way to support necessary infrastructure that goes beyond roads and bridges, address the carbon crisis with job-creating green initiatives, and ensure that every citizen has the right to vote and have that vote counted. Please, let’s see you be a Senator who represents the entire state, not just narrow special interests and conspiracy theorists. You will lose local support if you keep blocking the progress we so desperately need. I will use my volunteer hours and my campaign contributions dollars to vote for a Senator or candidate who has put the needs of constituents ahead of narrow corporate and special interests. Please BE that Senator.
Sincerely,
[Your name and postal/email addresses]
If You Have One or Two Democratic Senators
Dear Senator,
As a constituent in [your town and state], I am deeply concerned at the lack of progress on an agenda that most Americans support: upgrading necessary infrastructure that goes beyond roads and bridges, addressing the carbon crisis with job-creating green initiatives, and ensuring that every citizen has the right to vote and have that vote counted. I appreciate that you and 47 of your fellow Senators have shown incredible willingness to compromise–but Senators Manchin and Sinema keep moving the goalposts farther backward and the Republicans are not even interested. We citizens of [your state] are counting on YOU to move those goal posts forward again, to convince those obstructionist Senators that they need to represent the entire state, not just narrow special interests and conspiracy theorists. If you can get them to stop blocking the progress our nation so desperately needs, I will eagerly use my volunteer hours and my campaign contributions dollars to support you as a Senator or candidate who has convinced the holdouts to put the needs of constituents ahead of narrow corporate and special interests. Please BE that Senator.
