Category: Energy & Sustainability

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Nuclear Information and Resource Service reports in a recent newsletter that Congress received 15,000 letters and countless phone calls opposing the inclusion of $8 billion in bailouts (a/k/a “loan guarantees”) for new nuclear plant construction—and that the final interim funding bill to keep the government running did NOT include this boondoggle. The item is not on the NIRS website but you can find the entire newsletter reprinted here.

In other words, the power of an organized populace resulted in a victory, something that’s getting less frequent all the time but is still very much possible. Let’s hope for many more in the coming year.

Do not let anyone try to tell you that nuclear fission is in any way green. It’s an environmental disaster under the best of circumstances, and at its worst, it could make the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico look like a spilled cup of coffee. Here’s a post I wrote some time back that gives some among many reasons to oppose nuclear power (scroll past the feed from this blog).

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Events, Green Business, Green Marketing, Publishing, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

I have only half an hour left of being 53. It seems a good time to reflect on the whirlwind year I’ve had. Professionally, a lot has gone right for me this year.

First, of course, this has been my initial year as a Guerrilla Marketing author, and the publishing world is definitely nicer to authors who have hitched their wagon to a star. The folks at Wiley have been far more collaborative and helpful than many authors experience with their big NYC publishers, and certainly more so than Simon & Schuster was with me all those years ago. I’ve been promoting the book constantly all year long, and the publisher and even Amazon have also worked on that goal. And as a result of all that effort, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green has been on the Environmental category bestseller list for at least 11 of the last 12 months—we’re not sure about March—and was #1 in the category for part of April and May. Even cooler—within three weeks of publication, a Google search for the exact phrase “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green” brought up 1,070,000 hits—far more than I’ve ever seen for anything else I’ve been involved with. Some of those pages have come down since, but as of today, it’s still quite respectable at 551,000. And a search for my name peaked last month at 119,000, nearly double the previous high point of 62 or 64,000.

Because of the new book, I’ve also done quite a bit of speaking this year, including my first international appearance (at an international PR conference in Davos, Switzerland, home of the World Social Forum and World Economic Forum. This was a different event, but in the same venue, and it felt pretty trippy to be speaking from the same building that the likes of Bill Clinton and Warren Buffett speak from. And when you write a book called Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, you have automatic “chops” in both the green community and the marketing world—which is great, since the book really looks at the intersection of profitability and sustainability. I’ve spoken and exhibited at quite a few green events this year (ranging from the mellow, outdoor SolarFest in Vermont to the huge Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival in the Washington, DC Convention Center) and made numerous great contacts.

And I discovered, particularly when doing media interviews, that I really do know quite a bit about going green, on a much deeper level than just “made from recycled materials” stuff. I was very pleased with the quality of some of the more than 100 interviews I did this year, finding that a number of the journalists went a lot deeper than others I’ve experienced in the past—and I was able to take them deeper still. I’m not saying this to brag, but because I didn’t actually realize how much I do know about many substantive issues around sustainability until I started answering so many great questions about it.

Part 2 will discuss the most exciting part of my year: a way to get the message in front of a much wider audience. Stay tuned.

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

It sounded like a good idea from the blurb posted on the International Network of Social-Eco Entrepreneurs LinkedIn discussion board:

Ever wanted an energy question answering by the world’s leading experts?!

For all of you reading this, here is a rare opportunity to ask your toughest energy-related questions to the world’s leading energy scientists, including Dr Clement Bowman, Tom Blees, José Goldemberg, Marta Bonifert and Ambassador Pius Yasebasi Ng.

Simply click the link to this feature, and submit your questions by next Friday 26th November!

But when I got to the article, I was so appalled by some of the panelists’ credentials that I posted this:

Why are advocates of dirty technologies like tar-sands extraction and nuclear power judging energy prizes for a group called Eco-Business? If you look at the entire production cycle, including externalized pollution factors, these are among the dirtiest of all energy sources.

I believe our real energy future lies with much cleaner, fully renewable technologies like solar, wind, and hydro–all on a human scale and generating power at or near the point of use–and especially with what Amory Lovins calls “negawatts”: slashing energy consumption in existing buildings, vehicles, etc. Energy savings of 50 to 80 percent are achievable in many cases, thus removing the need to build more centralized power plants in the first place.
–Shel Horowitz, primary author, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, https://GreenAndProfitable.com

What do YOU think? Please use my comment field below, and then post it on the comments of the original article.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Peace and War Tagged with , , ,

As it happens, my breakfast reading this morning was the latest Utne Reader, specifically an article called “The Big Green Machine.”

It describes a speaking tour featuring four veterans speaking on climate change and energy independence. The vets are one unit in Operation Free, sponsored by the Truman National Security Project, which has an all-star board fronted by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Vets speaking as part of Operation Free have logged 25,000 miles in 21 states to make the case that switching off oil to renewable energy is crucial not only to our prosperity, but also to our national security. Speakers note that both the Department of Defense and the CIA have endorsed the energy transition and are taking major steps forward. “These are not organizations known for hugging polar bears,” points out Robin Eckstein, a former Army fuel truck driver in Iraq.

This might be the way we make change as a society: by moving people from sectors not typically involved in activism to convince others who don’t listen to activists.

Drew Sloan, who was badly inured in a grenade attack and went back for another duty tour in Iraq, says even if we don’t know everything, we have to make the shift:

When [people attack] the science of climate change, they ridicule the data as being uncertain. “Veterans know you can’t wait for 100 percent certainty. If you wait until everything is clear and laid out, you’re probably no longer alive. . . . Veterans know how to deal with ambiguity and still make decisions.

As Ms. Eckstein notes,

When certain individuals hear the words “climate change,” they shut down. For whatever reason, when they hear veterans speak on it, they actually listen.

Utne’s article was excerpted from a longer piece in On Earth, which ran under the title, “Patriots Act.”

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Business

Absolutely fascinating BBC News article about the ultra-energy-efficient, ultra-tiny future of supercomputers (Thanks, Twitter friend @whatgreeninvest).

I found some bits especially startling: According to the IBM researcher leading the team,

“The cost of a transistor works out to 1/100th of the price of printing a single letter on a page.”

“In the future, computers will be dominated by energy costs – to run a data centre will cost more than to build it.”

“It takes about 1,000 times more energy to move a data byte around than it does to do a computation with it once it arrives.”

Even the early protoype of the team’s water-cooled computer is half again as fast as today’s fastest supercomputers—but it’s larger than a refrigerator. Scientists want to shrink it to the size of a sugar cube!

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Uncategorized Tagged with , ,

I’ve written a great roundup of the cool Green trends I discovered walking the floor of the Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival in Washington, DC this weekend. some amazing stuff in fashion, transportation, shelter, food, and more. They’re doing another one in San Francisco November 6-7.

This will be the lead article in November’s Clean and Green newsletter, which will be published next week. If you’re not a subscriber yet, visit https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/ to sign up, so that you’ll see this coverage (no charge–just put your e-mail in the space at the upper right). You’ll also get eight freebies: Seven Tips to Gain Marketing Traction as a Green Guerrilla–and a series of seven action tipsheets covering:

  • Green printing (eight specific steps)
  • Saving energy (six steps)
  • Reducing waste (ten ideas)
  • Conserving water (five ideas)
  • Green transportation (six steps)
  • Deep-Green measures (six steps)
  • Effective Green marketing (six ideas)

So what are you waiting for? Just visit <a href=”https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/”>https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/ and leave your e-mail in the form at the upper right.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

Good article on Triple Pundit about how to discuss environmental issues with people who either don’t care or are actively hostile to the Green perspective. Five talking points you can use to reach people via their own self-interest.

The list includes the sweeping headings of population, education, “natural capital,” and the economy.One particularly thought-provoking point in the natural capital category: the easiest and cheapest half of any natural resource is always extracted first, meaning the environmental and economic impact of continuing to extract starts climbing very steeply once the low-hanging fruit is gone. This is why gasoline was only 30 cents a gallon when I was a kid, and floats between $2 and $4 in my area currently (much more expensive in Europe, by the way).

But on the whole, this article doesn’t give a lot of ammunition to environmental advocates in the trenches. The next step is to take these categories and make them specific and actionable, and really appeal to the self-interest of those listening.

Examples?

  • Whether or not you care about climate change, you should care about the huge inflationary spiral caused by soaring fuel prices. If we can reduce our fossil fuel consumption by 50 percent, that means your dollar will continue to go a lot farther than it would otherwise. Otherwise, it will continue to get worse because the oil that’s easy and cheap to get is already used up.
  • Do you know I saved 40 percent of my paper costs in my business, just by switching to a two-sided printer and using the double-side feature? Do you think that could work in your business?
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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice

Today is another Blog Action Day for social justice, and today’s topic is water. My slant on this, as someone who writes about environmental issues, is that access to clean, safe water is both an environmental and a justice issue. And that the easiest way to promote safe, clean water around the world is for us resource hogs in the developed countries to be much more careful not to squander the good water we are privileged to have.

Here are some facts provided by Blog Action Day (emphasis added):

1.      Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Unclean drinking water can incubate some pretty scary diseases, like E. coli, salmonella, cholera and hepatitis A. Given that bouquet of bacteria, it’s no surprise that water, or rather lack thereof, causes 42,000 deaths each week.

2.      More people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet. Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets. This means that sewage spills into rivers and streams, contaminating drinking water and causing disease.

3.      Every day, women and children in Africa walk a combined total of 109 million hours to get water. They do this while carrying cisterns weighing around 40 pounds when filled in order to gather water that, in many cases, is still polluted. Aside from putting a great deal of strain on their bodies, walking such long distances keeps children out of school and women away from other endeavors that can help improve the quality of life in their communities.

4.      It takes 6.3 gallons of water to produce just one hamburger. That 6.3 gallons covers everything from watering the wheat for the bun and providing water for the cow to cooking the patty and baking the bun. And that’s just one meal! It would take over 184 billion gallons of water to make just one hamburger for every person in the United States.

5.      The average American uses 159 gallons of water every day – more than 15 times the average person in the developing world. From showering and washing our hands to watering our lawns and washing our cars, Americans use a lot of water. To put things into perspective, the average five-minute shower will use about 10 gallons of water. Now imagine using that same amount to bathe, wash your clothes, cook your meals and quench your thirst.

So…not to leave you sunk, here are a few easy and cheap/free ways to use less water:

Don’t run the water unnecessarily! Whether washing dishes or brushing your teeth, think about low-water methods. For those dishes,  clean the insides with a
soapy sponge and then only turn on the water (at modest force) to
rinse. For tooth brushing, wet the toothbrush, turn off the faucet, brush, wet again to rinse–you’ll use teaspoons instead of gallons.

Unbottle yourself. Save bottled water for places where tap water is not safe to drink. Bottling water consumes vast amounts of water (several times what’s actually in the bottle), energy, and plastic (much of which ends up in landfills). And lots of bottled water is nothing more than expensive public water supply water anyway. In much of the developed world, filtered tap water tastes as good as many bottled brands and has a far lower environmental and financial footprint.

Eat less (or no) meat–see #4, above. As a 37-year vegetarian, I can tell you that the wonderful cuisines of the world opened up to me when I stopped eating meat. I eat healthy, tasty, nutritious food, and I don’t miss the stuff I used to eat.

Sign the Blog Action Day UN Water Rights Petition:

 

(For more water saving tips, please see my e-book Painless Green: 110 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle.)

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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary

Back to back, I saw two instances of organizations making a good step forward, but stopping half-way. Why do they stop there?

I’m in New York because I spoke at a conference today, at the Sheraton on 7th Avenue at 53rd. So of course, I took the E train from where I’m staying in Queens to the conference hotel. And since I was speaking, I had a handcart loaded with books to sell after my talk.

Getting off the train, I noticed an escalator up. Oh, good–it’s not much fun to carry 30 pounds of books and a cart up a crowded NYC public stair. And good, too, for anyone who pushes a stroller.

This is progress. When I was a kid growing up here, only a handful of stations had any kind of mechanized people lifter. A few escalators, a handful of elevators. Now, people with disabilities can navigate many parts of the system, but nowhere near the whole thing. The city is definitely making an effort.

However…the escalator only goes as far as the token arcade, and there’s still a flight of stairs from there to the street. And in the opposite direction, down to the platform, there is no option. It’s stairs–a loooong flight–or walk to another station. And no one in their right mind would take a wheelchair even on the part that has an escalator. Fail!

Inside the elegant hotel, I got to the conference room and was pleased to see, instead of the usual water bottles, the far Greener approach of carafes of filtered tap water and biodegradable (compostable, really) plastic cups. An excellent start–score one for Sheraton.

But to complete the circle, the hotel needs to collect those cups separately for composting. Instead, they’re going into the regular trash. Considering the premium price the hotel is likely paying for branded, custom printed compostable plastic, this is rather odd. Either the hotel should do glass, or collect the cups separately for proper, eco-friendly disposal.

Unlike the subway accessibility problem, which would be hugely difficult to re-do, this would be an easy fix, and would give the chain a lot more Green karma points.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , ,

I tried to make this comment directly on the article, at https://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/thegreenguide/2010/09/urban-foragers-cropping-up-in.html. It wouldn’t take, and I’m not one to waste a good comment.

I’m a long-time forager. Just today, I was checking on the Russian olives in my neighborhood (an invasive that I find quite tasty). I’ve picked plenty of wild raspberries and blueberries, and have a fondness for lambs’ quarters.

As the primary author (with Jay Conrad Levinson) of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet, I follow sustainability issues closely. I see foraging is one part of the sustainability recipe, as we move, society-wide, toward locavore diets.

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