As I was waking up this morning at 5:47 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, the New York Times was calling the election for Donald Trump. And when I checked a few minutes later, I literally burst into tears. I am not much of a crier but I feel upset, betrayed, a stranger in my own country.
It is going to be the worst presidency in the history of our country. This lying, thieving, predatory thug is going to do his worst to reverse all our hard-fought progress. Expect devastating attacks on:
The environment and the movement to reverse catastrophic climate change
The rights of immigrants, LGBTQ folks, people with disabilities, people of color, people who do not identify as Christian
Women’s reproductive freedom, and potentially even women’s place in modern society
Independent media featuring honest reporting
Low-income wage workers
Labor unions
And of course, democracy and personal freedom
But we can’t give up!
We have 2 months to organize a nationwide nonviolent resistance movement. We have four years to do what we can to clog up the evil work this man will try to do. We have been here before, in the 1850s, in the 1960s, and in the 1980s, to name three. We have resisted and we have survived. Never underestimate our collective power but never take it for granted either. Some of us may find ourselves organizing from prison or exile. But we can still organize.
Study and train in non-violent resistance. Follow people like Stephen Zunes, Erica Chenoweth, George Lakey, the long list of people who organized Standing Rock, the shrinking list of people who were active in the many-headed nonviolent revolution that brought us the civil rights, get out of Vietnam, modern feminist, and environmental movements, and whose (figurative as well as literal) children and grandchildren have been active in stopping carnage in Palestine and elsewhere. That is our future, that is our hope, and that is our call to action. We do not give up and we are not going back! Even if our government is.
You may thing that nonviolent resistance doesn’t work. But you would be mistaken. Nonviolent struggles are slow but they do work. Historicallty, they’ve worked better than violent revolutions. On multiple occasions, they’ve brought down govenments.
One lesson I take away from this is it proves that yes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I am totally shocked that 15 million fewer people voted for Kamala Harris then for Biden 4 years ago. It was about people staying home or voting third-party. That is the only way I can understand the huge drop between Biden’s 81 million 4 years ago and Harris’s 66 million. That’s where the election went.
Specific policies within Project 2025 are a fascist’s dream and a progressive’s nightmare. To list just some proposals, it would:
Choke off many types of legal immigration (even for survivors of crimes)
Cut off federally funded student loans from up to 10.7 million US students at schools that grant in-state tuition to DACA recipients and undocumented students
Ban most immigration from 13 countries that refuse to receive deported nationals
Repeal ALL Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations (putting about 700,000 long-term US residents at risk of deportation)
Stop processing refugee immigration applications
Eliminate work permits for many immigrants, denying them jobs and creating a burden on taxpayers
Require immediate expulsion if Customs and Immigration Service denies an application, even for simple paperwork errors, and even for people with valid Green Cards
Force state and local governments to provide driver’s license and other data to the feds—pretty much ending Sanctuary communities around the country
Eliminate ALL privacy protection for those without documents, leading to risk of harassment by private vigilantes and deportation or incarceration by federal agencies
Evict from public housing mixed-status families that include citizens or green card holders and people without documents
Immigration justice activists will also be badly hurt by non-immigration-related parts of both Project 2025 and Trump’s own hate-filled speeches such as how to handle dissent and dissenters.
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections…They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream…the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within…”
—Donald Trump, speaking at a rally in Claremont, NH, November 11, 2023
Attack Trump’s perceived enemies not only among Democrats (including Biden, Harris, and their families) and progressives but also Republicans who he sees as betraying him
Move control of the Federal Communications Commission (which regulates TV, radio, telephone, etc.) and other public protection agencies directly under the White House while eliminating the Departments of Education and Commerce entirely
Permanently eliminate career managers and replace them with political appointees loyal to Trump
Coupled with the recent Supreme Court Trump v. United States decision giving presidents they like unlimited powers to quash dissent, including even assassinating their enemies, we need to take these threats—and all the other threats wrapped up in Project 2025 and in Trump’s own words—VERY seriously.
Sitting out this election or voting 3rd-party is not an option if you want to protect democracy and prevent fascism. Without ranked-choice voting, any vote other than for the Democratic nominee is a vote for Trump and his brand of fascism. Is Harris perfect? Certainly not. But elections in a two-party, winner-take-all election are not about getting the perfect candidate. They are about who we’d rather be organizing against or trying to impact!
Although on a number of key issues–especially immigration justice and the war in Gaza–Harris is far from where we want her to be, we activists across the country will have a much better chance to extract concessions from a Harris-Walz administration than from the fascist alternative. As Abraham Josephine Riesman wrote in Slate, progressives do influence the Biden administration: “They have, at times, responded to pressure from their left wing in Congress (the so-called Squad and others), as well as pressure from unions and advocacy campaigns…”
National partners in the immigration justice movement (led by those most directly impacted) confirm that progressive organizing campaigns have led to recent wins (e.g. TPS for Haitian asylum seekers, legal paths and freedom from deportation for undocumented spouses and children of US citizens). Currently the ACLU and immigration justice groups are suing the Biden administration for their new anti-asylum executive orders. Under a Biden-Harris or a Harris-Walz administration, these suits and advocacy efforts can move forward. We don’t know what repressive steps would be taken if MAGA were to win.
As we continue to fight to save lives in Gaza and on the US/Mexico border, we must be assured of the best environment possible to continue to influence legislators and the administration, speak up and speak out, and push the news media to take stands in favor of peace and justice. With Biden and Harris, we have been able to push for better policies and we have had some wins. We need to elect Harris and Walz so that radicals will not be hunted down as they were during the McCarthy era and so we can build our movements to be as large and inclusive as possible. This is a long-term fight, and electing Harris and Walz is just the first step.
In fact, we urge you to vote for Democrats for every contested office this time so that Harris and Walz can get things done without getting blocked by Congress, state legislatures, governors, and judges at every turn. The choice this time is clearer than it’s ever been.
Lifelong activist Shel Horowitz wrote this on behalf of Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice, which unanimously endorses it and ran an abridged version in its newsletter. An author, international speaker, TEDx Talker, and expert in turning business into a force for social justice and environmental healing, his award-winning 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. Download excerpts from the book at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com Shel acknowledges Holly Bishop and D. Dina Friedman, whose significant edits made this piece stronger.
We are at the dawn of a new era in ESG (Environmental/Social/Governance, often rolled together as “sustainability). Following a long Model T Ford stage of kludged-together bandaid fixes, we are finally evolving into a much more holistic, much more regenerative approach. This incorporates several deeper methodologies like biomimicry, lifecycle costing, product take-backs, and multiple functions from single innovations, as well as massively scaled climate solutions that can actually reverse atmospheric carbon.
A lot of this progress is happening because the increasingly extreme weather of the last few years makes it obvious that we have no choice; we either learn how to be good neighbors to other species, ecosystems, and the planet—or the planet will drive us out. It’s going to be exciting.
We will see:
• Much deeper understanding of what the actual problem is. As one example: rather than focusing on building a better car, design ways to move people and freight across distances without requiring new roads, clogging existing ones, or pollution: something that would eventually make the private personal vehicle obsolete. It might look like modular mass transit bubbles that link together to move great distances at high speeds, then separate for last-mile door-to-door delivery—or it might look like “Beam me up, Scotty”—or, much more technologically and financially achievable, a group-conference immersion platform that simulates in-person contact through holography, smell receptors, and other techniques.
• Nature-based solutions that are far simpler, less expensive, and more effective than present approaches: emulating desert beetles for pure water supplies, bacterial fermentation to turn waste plastic into something useful, adhesives that replicate geckos, etc.
• Far more attention to the S in ESG, and integrating it with the E. For instance, green agriculture could create whole new industries that provide jobs and economic power to marginalized inner-city neighborhoods and depressed rural areas (or entire countries). And they could use open hiring procedures like the one that’s been so successful for Greyston Bakery to provide ladders out of poverty to ex-addicts, ex-felons, and ex-mental patients who have very little hope of finding a job through more standard approaches. Greyston is now consulting to other companies on how to implement a successful open hiring program.
Within a few years, these will be moving into the mainstream—providing significant competitive advantage over the companies that don’t embrace them: in energy and materials efficiency, reduced labor costs, and other direct operational benefits—and ALSO in marketing. These major steps forward will attract and retain customers, perhaps even turn customers into unpaid brand ambassadors.
We’ve been shown the path by visionaries like Amory Lovins, Janine Benyus, and Gunter Pauli for more than 20 years. We already know many of the solutions. Now we have to implement all these great ideas.
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Of all the eamples of greenwashing I know, none is more insidious than the way the nuclear power industry pretends to be green. In reality, it’s super-dangerous, with at least a dozen serious issues that threaten our liberty,our property, and our very lives. Nuclear power is unsafe, uneconomical, and is not a solution to the climate crisis. My first book was about this, and when I updated it after Fukushima for a Japanese publlisher, I saw that it was still unviable, and still a threat.
If you live in the US, the Senate and House will be going to conference committee to workout their different versions. And this is our chance to stop this horrible bill from becoming law. Below is the letter I’m sending to my Senators, which contains a lot of information about the issue. If you are moved to take action, please copy or modify it and send it it to your own Senators and Representive. You can reach them easily by clicking the Senators button at http://senate.gov and then selecting your state. You also have my permission to share it widely, including with groups you’re involved with and with the media. Don’t forget to change the blankline to the recipient’s name. I usedthe subject line, “Please STOP the Price-Anderson Act renewal–our lives depend on it”
Here it is (note that I have removed the fronts of web addresses because at least some Senators block a submission that has many hyperlinks):
Dear Senator ________:
As your constituent, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to REMOVE the giveaways to the nuclear industry from the reconciliation package. If we examine the package closely, we discover that:
1. It RENEWS the grossly inadequate and highly taxpayer-subsidized insurance “protection” of the Price-Anderson Act for 40 (House version) or 20 (Senate version) years, leaving the public almost completely unprotected from financial loss in the event of an accident. This is one of the worst bills ever signed into law, capping insurance payouts for nuclear accidents at absurdly low levels. Price-Anderson originally capped the federal share at just $500 million per accident plus another $60 million from the utilities, according to the 1969 book Perils fo the Peaceful Atom by Richard Curtis and Elizabeth Hogan, pp. 194-195. The private utility coverage has since expanded through secondary coverage, with nuclear utilities retroactively assessed to cover up to $16.097 billion per accident, according to a January 2024 report to Congress by the Congressional Research Service, crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821. By contrast, actual dollar losses from the single 2011 disaster at Fukushima are estimated at $20 trillion—more than 1000 times as much (see ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253929/#:~:text=The%20total%20cost%20of%20the,Bottom%20nuclear%20plant%20in%20Pennsylvania ). Property owners and taxpayers are expected to make up the difference. And this doesn’t even count non-dollar or indirect costs such as injury and death, loss of land for generations, forced relocations, loss of agricultural revenue, and more. According to this Newsweek report, 14,000 people were forced to relocate after the Chernobyl accident closed a 1040 square-mile area back in 1986 (38 years ago)—and scientists don’t expect that area to be safe again for at least 3000 years. See newsweek.com/chernobyl-aftermath-how-long-will-exclusion-zone-uninhabitable-1751834 2. It REMOVES much of the licensing oversight from new nuclear power plants. These are crucial protections for civilians. The nuclear power industry has had a long history of not factoring in things like earthquake faults when siting n-plants.
It is also important to note that well beyond the three catastrophic accidents (Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island) we all know about, there have been at least 133 potentially serious accidents just in the brief span since the birth of the industry in the 1950s. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country. We have been extremely lucky that only three wreaked significant damage.
Finally, the claim that nuclear is necessary as a tool to fight climate change is false on three counts:
• Clean, renewable energy can do the job better, more reliably, and MUCH faster (see sciencealert.com/here-s-why-nuclear-won-t-cut-it-if-we-want-to-drop-carbon-as-quickly-as-possible , sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629618300598 , and https://clamshellalliance.com/statements/statement/ ) • Many parts of the nuclear power cycle other than feeding radioactive materials through a reactor have a big carbon cost (see nrc.gov/docs/ML1014/ML101400441.pdf , especially Page 2) • When something goes wrong, as noted above, the detriments far outweigh any potential benefit.
It is long past time to end the subsidies for this dangerous, economically unworkable, and poorly performing technology and turn our attention to the real solutions such as solar, wind, and geothermal—and energy conservation/efficiency, which are the low-hanging fruit (see eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/efficiency-and-conservation.php ). I urge you to not only support true green energy but to convince your colleagues to block this terrible initiative.
If you have a socially or environmentally conscious business…
If you are an activist on any issue…
If you work in any way to better the lives of disempowered people—whether the disempowerment is social, cultural, medical, geographical, or any other cause…
Please read this next paragraph VERY carefully. It’s from today’s Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson (emphasis added):
How religion and authoritarianism have come together in modern America was on display Thursday, when right-wing activist Jack Posobiec opened this weekend’s conference of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Washington, D.C., with the words: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.” He held up a cross necklace and continued: “After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.”
This is a major Washington conference of influencers. Take it seriously! That is one of many ways fascism rears its ugly and dangerous head. Trump actually quoting Hitler, repeatedly, without attributing him is another. A series of Supreme Court decisions and new repressive state laws add more heads to this horrible Hydra.
The good news is they can’t do this without our help. Staying home on Election Day helps the wannabe fascists. And since most parts of the US don’t have ranked-choice voting yet, so does voting for a third-party candidate in the general election. Oh, and showing up helps our cause and hurts theirs. Show up to lobby your Members of Congress and your state and local elected officials. Show up in the streets to participate in protests against harmful policies or support demonstrations for those you favor. And show up to vote!
If, as I do, you disagree enough with Biden’s policies that you have a hard time voting for him, show that in the primary. Show up to vote and don’t vote for him. Either leave the president line blank or vote for an alternate candidate. My Primary is March 4 and I will either vote for Dean Phillips, who is slightly left of Biden, or write in Green Party candidate Cornell West.
But I recognize that Biden, barring some major development like a major health crisis, will be the nominee. And even though I live in a reliably Blue state, I recognize that his likely opponent will contest the results if they are anything less than an overwhelming victory for Biden.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
And speak out! Speak out for the socialists, the trade unionists, and the Jews. Speak out for Arabs and Muslims, for immigrants from anywhere, for people in the LGBTQ community, for those with disabilities, for those who Trump has threatened with retribution that includes rounding up and detaining opponents.
Speak out. For democracy. For decency. Speak out, ultimately, for yourself.
This could be quite the game-changer: a new technology that turns gas piping from a useless and expensive “stranded asset” to a powerful lever to green entire business and residential districts. And New York State just passed a law to encourage it.
On a quick look, I don’t see any obvious flaws. Do you? Please leave it in a comment. I’ll be taking a more in-depth look at this in my March newsletter. If you’re not a subscriber yet, please visit any page at my main website, https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/ You’ll get some nice gifts for subscribing, too.
He has supported Israel’s strategically idiotic and morally bankrupt wildly overreactive response in Gaza, resulting in the deaths of some 20,000 people (mostly civilians and including thousands of innocent children)—and the homelessness of millions; the US even vetoed a ceasefire resolution at the UN
And yet, assuming he’s the candidate in November, he will get my vote. I admit he might not if the US had adopted ranked-choice voting. But until it does, a vote for any third-party candidate is a vote for the main opponent of your preferred candidate. More importantly, I believe that the bad things Biden has done have been part of his own effort—sometimes accurate and sometimes off-base—to leave the world better than he found it. He is, fundamentally, a good person, And despite never having a majority in both houses of Congress, he’s done quite a bit of good as president:
Replacing skepticism with science on topics ranging from global climate change to the safety of COVID vaccines
Restoring US leadership on the world stage after it was torn to shreds by his predecessor
Supporting labor, the middle class, the poor, and the disenfranchised—and doing his best to hold big corporations and the super-rich accountable for dong their part
Championing the right to vote—and the right to have that vote properly counted
Please make sure you’re registered to vote. That your friends know why you will vote for Biden. And that the records of these two men while in office leave no choice.
Multicultural contingent at a climate march. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Once again, research proves it’s cheaper to do the right thing. An analysis by Bloomberg shows just how expensive the climate crisis is. “…The combined expenses from property damages, power outages, government spending and construction-surge inflation” come in around $7 trillion USD. And that doesn’t even include significant costs such as lost wages and higher insurance premiums.
Of course, that $7 trillion is helping some sectors. If you run, for instance, a flood-damage restoration company, you’re probably having a very good few years.
But for the rest of us, we have to add that into all the other costs of building an overly centralized economy relying on toxic, eco-destructive fossil and uranium power sources, massive inputs of unnatural chemicals, and massive waste. I just finished reading a book that talked about some of that waste. Did you know that the amount of waste to produce a semiconductor chip is 600 times the actual product weight? (The Sustainability Scorecard, p. 63)
This makes no sense and is totally unnecessary. In nature, there is no waste. I’ve been talking about biomimicry–engineering and design that borrows solutions from nature–for more than 20 years. This opens up many deeper, more holistic solutions that don’t just move the problem around or disguise it, but actually move us forward. It’s time to embrace not just our knowledge but our imagination, and move–as Transition town founder Rob Hopkins puts it in the book I’m reading now, “From What Is to What If.”
Drop me a note if you’d like to discuss how to put these principles to work in your own business. The first 15 minutes are on me, and that can make a very nice start.
NASA photo tracking 2011 Superstorm Sandy. Attribution: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Tracking_a_Superstorm_(8970258657).png
A friend posted her fears that the extreme weather we’ve pretty much all been experiencing is only going to get worse…that coastal cities (which includes most of the world’s great centers) are going to be hammered by storms that will make Hurricane Sandy—which wreaked havoc in NYC and elsewhere—feel like a gentle rain…wildfires that consume vast acreage, depleted aquifers that cannot regenerate and can no longer supply our farming needs…
I agree with her that the current path will lead to multiple calamities. But I remain optimistic that the rapidly closing window to fix it is still open for now; we can still reverse the destruction. We know how: innovation has reached astounding levels in the last 20 or 30 years, and we humans have developed and piloted hundreds of cool technologies and processes that accomplish multiple good outcomes with zero-to-minimal harm.
But we are 50 years late in making meaningful progress and we can’t be wasting time debating whether human-caused climate change is real. Nearly unanimously, scientists who are not funded by polluters agree that humans have accelerated climate change significantly. And even if the climate change is nothing more than the earth making course corrections, we still need to address/reverse/prevent the effects if human civilization is going to continue in anything like the way we know it.
With light editing for context and to mask the identities of others who posted in the thread, this is my response:
My Response to the Gloom-and-Doom Post
One thing we can all do—homeowners, tenants, farmers, business owners—is STOP SQUANDERING CLEAN WATER! We waste far more than we actually consume, and this has serious consequences as aquifers dry up. I just read this morning in a book called The Sustainabiity Scorecard that certain prescription drug manufacturing processes generate up to 7700x the product weight in waste, most of it water. I’ve said for more than 20 years that while our descendants might forgive us for squandering oil (which has substitutes), they will NOT forgive us for squandering water, which is essential to life.
Like most pieces of climate change, we’ve known how to fix the problems for decades—but we can’t find the political will. We should be living in a circular economy by now, where waste is transformed into input. We should be powering that economy with clean and renewable power sources including not only the common ones like solar and wind but more advanced, less well-known technologies like harnessing light and natural electrochemical reactions (see Gunter Pauli, The Blue Economy 3.0). We have known how to do this since at least 2001, and we’ve known we need to do it since at least 1970. This is our last chance to get it done before the scenarios [the original poster] is worried about become everyday reality—and lead to constant civil unrest, widespread famine, and various other calamities that dwarf anything we’ve experienced. Science fiction writers like John Brunner have been describing that awful world for generations, because they could see the logical consequences of hiding our heads in the sand and pretending everything can go on as it has.
BTW *I* am actually an optimist on this. I believe we can still fix it, but we damn well better hurry up and commit society to solving these interrelated problems just as we committed ourselves globally to de-fanging COVID (with amazing success in a very short time)—but the longer we wait, the harder the task. The window is closing while we squander the 50-60 years we’ve had to get it done.
And thus I AGREE with [another commenter]’s paragraph about mitigation. Yes, engineers and designers can fix a lot of stuff—especially if they come in not attached to particular solutions but look holistically at how integrated solutions can not only address multiple problems at once (e.g., climate, waste disposal, water and food insufficiency, human comfort) but provide lots of jobs and community revitalization at the same time. But too many engineers have been trained in the existing, failing ways of thinking. We need to think circular and lifecycle impacts (including end-of-product-life disposal or repurposing), with closed loops, zero waste, net energy consumption, or pollution, etc.—and not linear thinking that only acknowledges processes production cost. Engineering as usually practiced has a tendency to externalize things like disposal costs onto the backs of us taxpayers and our progeny.
I also agree that we need to look at pollution, waste disposal, etc. in other industries including chemicals and battery manufacturing, and I don’t see electric cars or solar panels as panaceas.
But I totally disagree with most of his other points. The overwhelming scientific consensus, at least of scientists not funded by fossil companies or others who would have to drastically alter their processes (and temporarily lower their profitability) to fix the mess they helped create, is that human-caused climate change is real, and extremely dangerous.
[Original poster] brings up fusion, as she often does. Fusion sounds great in theory, but I’ve been hearing for my whole life that it’s just around the corner, and yet we never turn that corner. We can’t sit around waiting for fusion. The most optimistic predictions still put it pretty far down the pipe as a mainstream energy source. Yes, let’s keep the research going, but meanwhile, dig ourselves out of this deep hole of our own making.
I know [the original poster] is also a fan of small-scale nuclear fission, but I am not. [In her response to my comment, she corrected me and said she is not either.] If you want to know why, visit https://clamshellalliance.com/statements/statement/ (disclosure: I provided some minor help in writing this, particularly the section on accidents). I have some expertise here: my first of ten books was on why nuclear fission is a big mistake. It was written in the aftermath of Three Mile Island (as a revision/update of a much older book by my co-authors) and I updated it again—for a Japanese publisher—after Fukushima.
Several years ago, I brainstormed a list of 111 things the average person can do to reduce carbon and water footprints. It’s not comprehensive, it’s not necessarily the most important—it’s just one person’s brainstorm from around 2009. It retails for $9.95 but I’m giving it away. Just visit https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/#Freebies and click “Painless Green” (yes, you will need to provide your email and subscribe to my monthly newsletter—but you can unsub if you don’t like it).
More than anything else, this is a piece about hope: about the power of each of us to have impact in our own lives, in the lives of those around us, in our communities, and to our ecosystem and the entire planet.
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Two case studies from my own life:
How a Single Demonstration Redirected US Energy Away from a Super-Toxic and Dangerous Future to a Much Saner Alternative
At age 20, I was one of 1414 protestors arrested as we occupied the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear power plant. At that time, the US government was envisioning 1000 nuclear power plants around the country. They never got past about a tenth of that, and I’m convinced that the ripples from that demonstration have a lot to do with why. On the 40th anniversary, I wrote a five-part blog series about what happened and my take on why. That link will take you to part one, with jumps to each succeeding part at the bottom. It’s really important reading for activists, authors, business innovators, educators, and others who want to change the world.
How Changing What I Eat Led Me to a Writing and Marketing Career I don’t know the exact date, but I think some time last week marked 50 years since I stopped eating meat. I know that I threw a party to mark my conversion and planned to stop eating meat as of that late August date, but I’d actually stopped several days earlier. I’m grateful for several things about that transition:
1) that after almost four years as an activist it was the first major step I consciously took toward living lighter on the earth, changing my lifestyle to match by beliefs;
2) that it was the first time I was really thinking long-term and strategically: I came home from a fishing trip at age 12 and announced I was turning vegetarian. My mom immediately responded that vegetarianism would stunt my growth. I was already a runty kid, small and weak for my age, and we didn’t have the Internet to check easily—so I promised her that I’d wait—and promised myself that I would remember and honor my promise to go off meat once I’d reached that milestone);
3) that I actually was capable of remembering and fulfilling a promise made four years earlier
4) that the whole world of food alternatives began to open up to me with this transition. Although Yoshi had been part of my life for about five years and thus I had some exposure to Japanese food, we had very little money and seldom ate out, and my mom’s cooking was tilted heavily toward kid-pleasing macaroni casseroles and meat loaves. She was into whole wheat and brown rice, so we were a step ahead. But I knew nothing about the flavor and nutrition and cooking techniques of Indian, Thai, Turkish, Mexican, Ethiopian, Vegamerican, Szechuan, Arabic… I’d never made bread, or yogurt, or sprouts, or pretty much anything from scratch other than salad dressing. The deeper my explorations, the more exciting eating became.
5) that I would arrive two months later for my first term at Antioch College with a new identity and lifestyle, and would not have to remake myself later in the eyes of my peers: something that deepened once I did arrive on campus and (with 600 miles between me and the stairwell where I was raped by a stranger several years earlier) almost immediately got in touch with my bisexuality and became active in the school’s flourishing LGBT community—which in turn led me to be involved in campus theater, campus radio, my first public speaking, my first time running an organization, an extended and public dialogue with the town’s mostly-progressive but homophobic newspaper that gave me a window into the power of the press (and thus my career as a writer and marketer), and more.
Lessons for Organizers, Change Agents, and Business Visionaries
In other words, there’s truth in the parable about a single butterfly’s wings changing the climate on a different continent. Our actions ripple out and ripple out and ripple out again, and we never know the full consequences of those actions when we undertake them. I had no idea when I stopped eating meat how far that would reverberate and how much it would shape me. I had no idea when I took the training ahead of the Seabrook occupation that we would leave a national movement in our wake whose effects are still felt almost 50 years later. Did Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Mary Kay, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Edison, Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web), Mother Teresa, or Nelson Mandela know at the beginning of their careers what impact they’d have? I very much doubt it.
