Here are two press releases from two different NGOs responding to the same major news event (and the graphic that one of them included). I’m giving you the headline and first paragraph, and a link in each headline to read the whole thing—and then I’ll dissect them for you. Neither of these is a client and I had nothing to do with writing them—so this is purely about the lessons we can draw.
Empty podium with Presidential Seal in Yosemite National Park—included in the BSR press release
BSR regrets today’s executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, a set of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies that are intended to reduce the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels and cut carbon pollution from the power sector by 30 percent by 2030. In combination with the administration’s dramatic cuts to climate programs at the EPA and U.S. State Department, this announcement undermines policies that have stimulated economic growth, consumer savings, job creation, infrastructure investment, private-sector competitiveness, and public health.
The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Climate Action Plan, including withdrawing support for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, “is completely misguided and ignores the irreversible clean energy economy that is already underway, creating good-paying jobs and economic vitality in communities across the country,” Ceres President Mindy Lubber said in a statement today. Lubber served as the EPA Administrator for the New England Region in 2000.
Which did you find more effective?
Ask yourself just two questions: which worked better for you, and why? Then scroll down to see what I felt worked well and poorly about each.
While the BSR release did a better job understanding the need for rich content, with numerous links and a picture, the copy was pathetically weak. This press release:
Used a wimpy headline that doesn’t take a position
Chose a stock photo that doesn’t add anything to the reader’s understanding—why not a photo of demonstrators thanking a company for providing clean energy and good jobs?
Made a terrible verb choice in “regrets”—which makes it sound like an accident that was BSR’s faults—rather than a much more appropriate verb, like “condemns”
Buried the real story in the second paragraph, which has hard-hitting facts to make a clear case against the Executive Order:
Just 18 months ago, the U.S. federal government estimated the net economic benefits of the CPP at US$26-45 billion, with consumers set to save US$155 billion from 2020 to 2030. In addition, the CPP provides regulatory support to the clean energy economy, which, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy and Employment Report, supported more than 3 million U.S. jobs in 2016. The public health benefits are also significant. Research suggests the Clean Power Plan could prevent 3,600 premature deaths and more than 300,000 missed work and school days by cutting pollutants that contribute to soot and smog. – See more at: https://3blmedia.com/News/BSRs-Statement-US-Administration-Executive-Order-Climate-Change#sthash.qUNCeiiF.dpuf
I would have used a headline like “BSR: Trump’s Short-sighted Reversal of US Climate Change Leadership Could Cost Consumers $45 Billion and Kill 3600″—and then moved right into a bulleted list of the facts. I also would break up BSR’s long paragraphs.
This very long press release has enormous amounts of juicy content, but you’d never know it from the headline and lead. Even further down, it notes that companies investing in carbon mitigation are seeing 27% return on investment, 29% revenue increases, and 26% reduction in carbon emissions. Isn’t that a lot more newsworthy than “BSR regrets…”?
The Ceres release, while also flawed, is much better. It starts with a headline expressing a strong point of view (although we don’t know who is stating this point of view), moves into a sound bite, and finishes the first paragraph with a significant and highly relevant credential.
So what are the flaws in the Ceres document?
The release itself is pretty much all rhetoric, without the facts to back it up. BSR had the facts, but didn’t call attention to them.
There’s no link to Lubber’s complete statement (and only two links in the whole release).
The important point about losing competitive advantage to China is all the way down at the bottom of the release.
Why do we continue to let ourselves get bound up in thinking that we can’t do anything about the biggest challenges of our time?
I say in my “Impossible is a Dare” talks that we have enough abundance for all, but big kinks in the distribution—which we can fix. Hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change are all resource issues. And when we see them that way, they are all fixable.
Hunger and poverty about not having enough to cover basic necessities; the resource issues are obvious
Wars usually start because of a chain of events that begins with one country’s perception that a different country is taking something that belongs to the first country: land, water, energy sources, minerals, labor ,shipping access, etc. Even religious and ethnic wars trace back to resource conflicts, if we go deep enough.
Catastrophic climate change is a bit different, but it’s still about resources. Instead of being about one country having too much or too little, it’s about using the wrong kinds of resources, or using them in environmentally destructive, socially harmful ways.
In fact, climate solutions require solutions based in abundance. We have to shift from finite, expensive, polluting energy sources such as petroleum products and uranium—whose extraction and refining as well as burning for fuel cause environmental destruction—to infinite, inexpensive, and clean sources such as solar, wind, small-scale hydro, magnetic, geothermal, and designing for conservation, deployed at or near the point of use. When we allow ourselves to think abundantly, problems have a way of turning into solutions. Turn loose the socially conscious, environmentally aware engineers!
When companies start thinking about solutions based in abundance, they have even greater incentive to solve these problems—because they can see the profit in it. But too often, we “should” them with guilt and shame—very ineffective tools. Instead of nagging them about how the world is suffering because of their actions, let’s show them how acting differently can address these problems not out of guilt and shame but in creating and marketing profitable products and services.
The creativity of business can create markets where none existed, using technologies we’ve never harvested. Think about how a small-space indoor vertical garden can provide fresh veggies in urban food deserts…how green lighting options such as solar-powered LEDs that replace toxic and flammable kerosene can better the environment, health, safety, and the local economy all at once…how studying nature’s amazing engineering—”biomimimcry”—can create new products like adhesives modeled after gecko feet or a fuel-sipping plane designed to mimic the most aerodynamic birds.
Yesterday, I posted something on Facebook about reaching a real, and sympathetic, human being on the White House Comment Line. Since the US election last November, I’ve called my elected officials a lot more than in the past. Someone wrote back, saying I was “like the Energizer Bunny” with my consistent activism.
My reply revealed the secret:
Actually, [his name], it’s less Energizer Bunny and more a matter of what I call “the fulcrum principle”: doing not all that much but doing in ways that leverage and multiply the impact…I use my time strategically so the 10 to 15 hours or so I spend on activism per week has a big ripple. Of course I never know when a meeting or demonstration is going to be worthwhile and when it will be a waste of time. I have guessed wrong on a few meetings lately—but then I go to one that’s so energizing and activating and inspiring that it actually recharges me. I went to one like that Saturday and hope the ones I plan to attend Wednesday and Thursday (and the socially responsible business conference next week where I’m MCing two sessions) will be just as awesome.
Three men on river structures with ladders and levers ” New York Public Library Digital Collection.
I’ve played with this metaphor for a long time. I was able to find rejection letters I received for my original The Fulcrum Principle: Practical Tools for Social Change, Community Building, and Restructuring Society book proposal as far back as 1992—and a printout of the proposal itself, though not the electronic file.
Looking at this proposal 25 years later, it would have been a big, ambitious, world-changing book. And other than
Adding in recent developments such as the Arab Spring, Climate Change activism, Black Lives Matter, and of course the massive resistance to the new US president, and
Technology shifts including the Internet and social media, smartphones, 3D printing, and the amazing breakthroughs in green design,
The proposal is still remarkably relevant. Let me share a few highlights:
The Fulcrum Principle lets us “achieve the greatest result with the least amount of effort,” including finding others to do some of the work
Change happens as fast as possible, but as slow as necessary
Why we need both “shock troops” and “put-it-back-togethers”
We build momentum for change by presenting the possibility (and manageability) of positive change, finding points of agreement with our opponents—and then expanding those points, changing enemies into allies
This momentum can change the world—and it has, many times
It’s accomplished more easily when you remember to have fun
Grassroots organizers can learn a lot from business (and with 25 years of hindsight, I’d add that business can learn a lot from grassroots organizers); similarly, Left and Right activists have lessons to share with each other
Economic and environmental goals can work in tandem (did I really understand that all the way back in 1992? I’ve gone on to write five books that explore this idea)
Organizers have quietly developed lots of tools we can harness to make this journey easier: new approaches to everything from how to facilitate productive meetings to how to get the most information in the least time by dividing up a book among different readers who report their insights
The proposal also touched on a raft of social issues, among them:
Nonviolent alternatives to the military
The role of multinational corporations
True democracy going far beyond elections
Does it even make sense for change organizations to chase after funding?
New ways of looking at drugs and crime, housing, healthcare, transportation, parenting, world distribution of resources, and even sexuality
Interestingly, without revisiting this proposal, I essentially put it into practice when I founded the movement that saved our local mountain in 1999-2000. And I think that’s a lot of why we won in 13 months flat. The “experts” thought we couldn’t win at all. I felt sure that we would succeed, but even I thought it would take five years. I didn’t realize at the time that I had already created the roadmap years earlier.
Perhaps I should dust off this proposal, update, and resubmit.
During a trip to Thailand, I kept my radar up to see how this small but sophisticated country deals with a number of environmental issues.
Disclaimer: This is not intended to be an in-depth look. It’s based on just two weeks in the country, much of it with an escorted tour—so I’m not pretending to be an authority. But still, I’m trained as a journalist, and with a combination of observations and interviews, I was able to get a pretty good sense of both the good and the bad. Here they are, in no particular order.
Forest Conservation and Biodiversity
The Thai government was a pioneer in forest conservation, outlawing the harvest of most teak all the way back in 1938, when the US and Europe hadn’t given the matter much thought at all. And even though much of the land has been cleared either for rice paddies and other agriculture or for construction, I didn’t see a single commercial lumber truck. I did see one pickup filled with thin branches (no trunks), but that might well have belonged to a tree pruner.
The older teak houses and temples show some signs of deterioration, and there are apparently some ways around the harvest prohibition. We met with the owners of a teak mansion built in 1999, now housing a cooking school as well as several family members. They told us that the house used new wood, legally obtained; they had purchased licenses for each individual teak tree in the project.
Quite a bit of rainforest habitat remains, with its wonderful biodiversity of palms, bananas, fruit trees (especially mangos), strangler figs, and epiphytes, and birds happily enjoy this ecosystem. Much of this is part of the various national parks, one of which we visited (and had a great hike).
Most farms are small. Some are quite diverse, with many types of fruits, vegetables, and staples like tapioca and sugar cane. However, monocropping of rice (and sometimes other crops) across multiple neighboring fields is common. In rural areas, it’s more common to see homes built of natural materials such as bamboo and thatch.
Roof made of traditional bamboo and thatch in the multi-tribe hill village. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Smog and Noise
Thailand gets a C+ here, and Bangkok gets an F. Many areas are choked with traffic and with fumes spewing untreated from two-stroke motorbikes and tuk-tuks. Four-stroke gasoline-powered cars and diesel truck and bus engines run cleaner, but not clean enough. Many “long tail” tourist boats are powered by old V8 automotive engines with neither smog control nor muffler. Thailand’s cities have very poor air quality, and they are LOUD. Hybrid vehicles are relatively rare, though they do exist. While not nearly as common as Beijing or Shanghai, many people wear surgical masks when they’re out and about (and in Bangkok, we wished we had them—though everyplace else we went, even the metropolis of Chiang Mai, smog was not a noticeable problem).
In Bangkok, smoking is common, which doesn’t help the air quality; smoking was much less popular in the north. We didn’t pass many factories, but those we did encounter seemed relatively clean. I can’t remember seeing any belching smokestacks.
Still, there’s a lot more work to be done. Pollution control on the two-stroke engines would be an excellent place to start.
Organic Agriculture, Crafts, and Natural Foods
To our surprise and delight, there seems to be a substantial movement toward organic agriculture, some of it driven by the late King Rama IX. Several of the rural hotels we stayed at grew many of their own vegetables, all of them organic. In the cities, it’s easy to find organic food in the larger supermarkets. In the north, we ate at several organic restaurants out in the country, some part of resorts and others all by themselves. Thailand has a rich and diverse cuisine that we’ve been enjoying since the 1970s, and Thais put enormous value on freshness. This trip was the first time I’ve ever experienced bamboo shoots or baby corn fresh. In the US, they’re usually canned (and awful), though I’ve occasionally found dried or pickled bamboo shoots.
Most restaurants were willing to accommodate vegetarians and many offered vegan options. When our tour stopped to eat as a group, our tour leader would always make arrangements and the restaurant would prepare close equivalents to the food everyone else was eating—even special soups with vegan bases. Much of Thai cuisine, including several wonderful curries, is based on rice and noodles (made from wheat, rice, or beans) with fish sauce, meat or fish, and vegetables added, so it was easy enough for restaurants to pull some aside before adding the parts we didn’t want.
When we were on our own, though, we avoided the curries unless we were in vegetarian restaurants, since pretty much any prepackaged curry paste is going to contain fish sauce. But we were able to find choices both at sit-down restaurants and in the stalls lining the alleys of the local markets, where we easily found healthy snacks like buns filled with taro, pumpkin, or sweet potato…coconut pancakes…terrific fresh fruits and smoothies…tofu dishes…and quite a bit more.
Local crafters are everywhere, though it takes an experienced eye to steer visitors to the right places. Our tour leader was very good at this, and took us to many crafters, including an organic coconut farm, a 76-year-old woman who showed us how to dye fabric naturally with indigo (she sells to Japan Air Lines’ duty-free stores), and various other cottage industries. Our leader also let us sample many of the local snacks, including a stop at a shop that sold about two dozen varieties of banana, taro, and sweet potato chips.
As a visitor, I feel some obligation to support these types of places as much as possible, and not buy much from the big malls that are beginning to crowd out the independents. And as a shopper, I found the prices low and the quality high. So everybody wins.
Water Conservation
Although water is ample (sometimes too ample, as flooding is a problem in many areas), Thais seem to have high awareness of just how precious water is. Many toilets are dual flush, taps are designed to be workable with low flow, and water-saving showerheads were very much in evidence. One four-star hotel not only displayed the usual sign about washing sheets and towels but another one explaining that water is precious and suggesting turning the water off while shaving and brushing teeth—yay!
Energy
Thailand has 22 operating hydroelectric plants with capacities ranging from 0.13 to 749 megawatts —four of them 500 MW or above (and several more in the planning stages). I saw almost no solar or wind. The solar I saw was all very decentralized, powering one building or part of one. I may have seen one wind farm but it could have been something else. Interestingly, one area that did use more solar was the village in far-northern Thailand where members of several different hill tribes live together and sell beautiful crafts to travelers. This is one of the late king’s numerous social betterment projects, and features running water and other amenities, while allowing the tribespeople to live a more traditional life than they could in a city.
I understand that commercial solar panels are expensive. But given Thailand’s subtropical to tropical climate, solar would be a natural, and some technologies (including solar water heating) can be done quite cheaply. Insulating more of those cheap houses and stores might be another good step. It wouldn’t make much of a difference in the energy picture because most of those homes, at least, aren’t air conditioned. But it would make a lot of difference in people’s comfort.
Despite the paucity of hybrid cars (I think I saw three Priuses and one Honda Insight), the vehicle fleet is dominated by small, high-MPG cars. As in much of Europe and Latin America, most of the trucks are also much smaller than the US fleet. However, there’s clearly an influx of new money, and one of the ways it shows is the rapidly increasing number of luxury and sports cars. I noticed several BMWs, a couple of Porsches, one Ferrari, and lots of Lexuses, as well as quite a number of Japanese-made SUVs and minivans. But the vast majority were small or mid-size Japanese and Korean sedans.
Bangkok has two separate rapid transit systems plus several kinds of city buses. Everywhere else, we saw no buses at all, just collective taxis: either converted pickup trucks with a bench along each side and one up the middle (called song thaew), or tuk-tuk minivans, called etans. We saw bus stops in Chiang Mai, but never saw a bus. Of course, there were thousands of regular tuk-tuks (which hold three passengers if you squeeze) and hundreds of metered taxis.
Trash and Recycling
Separation stations for glass and plastic bottles show up occasionally, but aren’t widespread. We saw no paper recycling at all—but we did see employees hand-sorting trash and removing and crushing plastic bottles, several times. Many of the farmers and gardeners compost, and we even visited an elephant refuge that collected the poop not only on land, but even while the animals were bathing in the river—crew members were stationed a hundred yards downstream, with nets and pails. They sold some of it as fertilizer and used some to manufacture paper. The fiber content is high enough, and the paper doesn’t smell. I actually know someone in the US who sells a line of specialty gift papers made largely of elephant poop, and they’re lovely.
Litter exists and in some areas is considerable, but much less than in many other countries we’ve traveled through.
Urban Oases
Every city we visited had plenty of parks, some of them stunningly beautiful. But even more than the parks, many of the thousands of Buddhist temples are urban oases, places where you can relax, distress, and meditate in front of the Buddha. Sometimes the plazas inside the gates are lively and noisy, but always, the temple interiors provide respite. And often the courtyards and gardens do as well.
Other Urban Planning
If Thailand has zoning, it doesn’t seem to be much enforced. Towns and cities grow in a tangled sprawl, using cheap construction materials and without regard for infrastructure. This leads to massively overcrowded roads and a sense of loss as the very beautiful indigenous architecture gives way to “anywhere” buildings.
As an example, during World War II, the area around Kanchanaburi—where the bridge over the River Kwai was built—was jungle wilderness. Now the main road is strip mall central, all the way from Bangkok.
In this profile in Ethical Corporation magazine—which calls him “CSR’s leading thinker”—Elkington restates his view that regenerative business models could create at least $12 trillion in opportunity and add up to 380 million jobs by 2030.
John Elkington, CSR thought leader
Elkington has some very cogent things to say about the shocking changes in geopolitics last year, from the Brexit vote to today’s change of US president.
But maybe the most intriguing thing is this little snippet:
…He is travelling to Germany to meet with Covestro, a spin-out from the German chemicals giant Bayer, which has just opened a plant using CO2 in place of polymers in mattresses and upholstered furniture.
So why not turn carbon dioxide into a salable product?
Insatiable curiosity about the world has always powered my writing and speaking. I wanted to know more about this. A few seconds of searching led me to Covestro’s page about this technological and environmental breakthrough. While the writing shows distinct signs of a non-nartive-speaking author, the information is quite cool.
Stumbling across this article on bicycle-powered-everythings (bicimaquinas) in Guatemala—grain mills, water pumps, nut-shellers, blenders, and more—I’m reminded once again of the key question to ask if you want to spark innovation while keeping an eco-friendly focus on using fewer resources.
Too often, we focus on the tool: asking questions like “how do I get a new tractor?” But what is a tool? It’s a means of accomplishing a task! So the real focus should be on the task: “How can I get this done?” Asking “how can I get harvestable plants” might lead to plowing with draft animals—or to no-till farming techniques.
Green entrepreneurs (or frugal ones) refine that question. It morphs into “How can I accomplish this with the fewest resources?” Money and time are resources. So are raw materials, energy, water, plant seeds, animals, and so forth.
The people at Maya Pedal, the organization profiled in the bicimaquinaarticle, understood this. They looked around and realized there were a lot of junk bikes out there that could still do plenty of useful work, just not as transportation. They’ve come up with 19 different models so far.
Bicycle technology is cheap, accessible, understandable, and versatile. In fact, my latest book Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World mentions a number of creative bike technology uses, even including a bike-powered trash hauling company. I also know of a fitness center that harnesses the energy of their bike-pumping clients to light the room.
We can ask this question in many situations—and it creates abundance. Asking “how can I power my electronic devices easily and cheaply without negative environmental consequences” might lead to developing something like the amazing Blue Freedom frisbee-sized hydroelectric plant (no dam required).
This blender is one of 19 different types of bicimaquinas—bike-powered equipment—developed by Maya Pedal in San Andrés Itzapa, Guatemala
Back when laser printers were retailing for $7000 and I had only a dot matrix, I asked myself how I could offer laser quality to my clients without spending that kind of money. That led me first to rent time on a nearby laser printer for a dollar a page, and later—when I spotted a remaindered model for $2500—to organize a co-op of four local business owners who chipped in $700 each to buy the printer and a sturdy stand for that very heavy machine. Since I organized the co-op, the printer lived in my office.
Amory Lovins, founder of Rocky Mountain Institute, asked himself how to build a really energy-efficient house that could fund the energy improvements out of capital savings. All the way back in 1983, he built a near-net-zero-energy luxury home that didn’t need a furnace or an air conditioner (in the snowbelt outside Aspen, Colorado, where the biggest industry is skiing). I have a detailed study of Lovins’ work in Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, by the way—including the energy retrofit of the Empire State Building that saves $4.4 million per year in that building’s energy bills.
What’s the second question you might ask? How has nature already accomplished this task? But that’s an exploration for another time.
Thanks Heath Dannis, @dannis_heath for sharing the great story about bicimaquinas.
As someone who is decidedly NOT a fan of the annual Black Friday shopping orgy—and who participates instead in celebrating Buy Nothing Day (like Black Friday, always on the day after US Thanksgiving), I just love this!
Patagonia had pledged to donate all of its worldwide online and offline revenues on Black Friday to environmental causes.
The outdoor clothing maker previously announced it would donate 100 percent of its global retail and online sales on Black Friday. It says it expected to reach $2 million in sales, but instead generated five times more. Patagonia says the fundraiser “attracted thousands who have never purchased anything from Patagonia before.”
Mind you, that’s not the profits from its $10 million in sales. It’s the whole amount, the gross revenue. Nothing set aside for product costs, operating costs, or anything else. I hope this generates many loyal new customers and lifelong fans. May the company’s generosity be a source of continued abundance, and maybe next year they can repeat and do even better.
All I can say is BRAVO and WOW!
Personally, I’ve been a fan of Patagonia for decades. I even profile the company in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. I didn’t happen to hear about this ahead, but might have actually moved from participating in Buy Nothing Day to making an online Black Friday purchase to support the environment. That would not have felt like the crass commercialism that seems to fill every moment of airspace in November and December, and feels especially extreme on Black Friday.
[Editor’s Note:] I read John Engel’s article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (my local newspaper) and immediately went to his website to ask his permission to reprint. It’s highly topical and speaks so strongly to something that I’ve felt for a long time but never got around to writing about, and that’s why I chose to share it with you. I generally enjoy his column (which you can read at his site—link is at the bottom) but this is the first time I was moved to republish one.—Shel Horowitz, “The Transformpreneur”]
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, October 26, 2016
As the presidential race approaches Election Day, rhetoric – from candidates, pundits and voters alike – has reached a fever pitch. My kids Zoe and Adam, at ages 10 and 7, are befuddled by both the hype and some of the more disturbing messages that have reached their young ears.
Filtering both the extreme and mundane, what continues to hold my attention is one of the election season’s most persistent themes – a steady beat of cries that the country is in disastrous condition and only getting worse. Some voices from this chorus are calling for a return to life as it was in the 1950s.
While I was not alive, let alone a father in the 1950s, my historical understanding of that era provides me with some insight about what my experience of fatherhood might have been like, in that most laudable decade of modern America. Granted, fathers probably were not writing columns about the experience of fatherhood, and since Al Gore had yet to invent the internet there were no Daddy Blogs – or Mommy blogs, for that matter – to peruse on smart phones, while children frolicked on play dates.
But had I been writing such a column in the 1950s, here are some important topics I may, or may not have, considered.
I might have expressed concern over the dangers families faced while traveling in automobiles, since protective child safety seats had not yet been developed and adult seat belts were not yet standard equipment.
Father and child (in the pre-safety equipment mindset) – Photo by Felipe Daniel Reis
Revolutionary as it was, I would not have been writing about the 1955 patent of a cutting edge chemical known as BPA, which for decades thereafter poisoned infants and children through contaminated baby bottles and Sippy cups until the FDA banned its use in these products, in 2012.
While it would have been socially unacceptable, I might have written about the customs of the day that relegated fathers to roles of provider and protector, denying them the opportunity to nurture their children and share equally, with mothers, in domestic chores and homemaking.
I would have been more than remiss, had I not written about the trauma experienced by people of color who were both routinely denied basic civil rights and subjected to extreme violence when trying to simply create a better life for themselves and their children.
I certainly would have written about the plight of women and mothers — and by extension families — who at the time had relatively little political power, limited professional opportunity, and were subject to persistent sexist norms. Though I probably would not have written about the domestic and sexual abuse women experienced because, as a country, we did not even begin seriously addressing these heinous crimes until the 1970s — and later.
And it would have been beyond taboo for me to write a column about the challenges parents faced when helping their gay, lesbian or transgender children triumph over discrimination and intolerance.
So, while I am not immune to experiencing fear-based nostalgia, calls for returning to bygone eras remind me that we humans often yearn for something we don’t have — and even harder for something we fear losing — all the while neglecting to appreciate what we already have gained. And this leaves us ill equipped for the hard and necessary work of identifying goals and actions that will guide us to a future that unites, not divides, us.
So as a father — in 2016 — I both celebrate, and seek to build upon, the gains we have made since the 1950s, regardless of who is president, because for me, hope trumps nostalgia.
My friend Kathleen Gage posted a quote from Albert Schweitzer about people sometimes reacting with hostility or obstruction to your attempts to improve the world. And then she said.
So if you are doing good for praise and accolades, you are doing it for the wrong reasons and it is no longer a good deed. It is an act of manipulation. Do good because you are called to do good and for no other reason.
I’m going to gently disagree. I agree with the first two statements. But I disagree about “for no other reason.” I’m guessing that really what we have is different definitions of the concept of a calling—that mine is a lot stricter than hers. And that’s because, a few times in my life, I’ve experienced a genuine calling: a feeling that I was put into this place at this time to do something very specific—and that I had to do it.
We do good for lots of other reasons than because we are called to: to show your children what is possible. To make conditions better for others. To improve the lot of a group facing oppression that you don’t belong to–or that you do. To right an immediate wrong. Not all of these rise to the level of a calling. But all of them (and far too many more to list). I became an activist at age 12 and remain one. Five times, I have felt that calling—to:
1. Do what I could to stop the Vietnam war
2. Move the country away from a reliance on nuclear power (maybe the worst technology ever invented)
3. Protest publicly when the US bombed Libya (and I was the *only* protester on the first day, but by a few days later, there was a whole group of us out in front of the courthouse)
4. Save the mountain two miles from my house (with a massive outpouring of community support, won that one in just 13 months!)
View of the Mount Holyoke Range, showing the land saved by Save the Mountain in 2000.
5. My current mission of showing the business community how to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance—not through guilt and shame, but through enlightened self-interest
Yet these are only the tiniest fraction of thousands of actions I’ve taken for social change. The rest were not a “calling” but simply the right thing to do. They were not done for self-aggrandizement. If that had been my goal, I would have taken far faster and easier paths (like the Internet millionaire meme). Some of them were tiny and easy, like signing a petition. Others consumed years of my life, like the time I spent building what we now think of as the LGBTQ movement or my involvement in changing the politics of the city I lived in for 17 years, and the small town where I’ve lived for the past 18. Most were somewhere between, like serving on committees for grassroots groups or local governments.
That said, I gleefully share that my current calling is the most exciting and meaningful work I’ve ever taken on.
When have you felt a calling? What was it for and what was the result?
Last night, I signed a petition created by Rep. Joe Kennedy about gun control. The page gave me the option to share on Facebook, and I did. Then I went to bed.
I was pretty horrified to check my page this morning and see my share that said “Stand With Rep. Joe Kennedy” and had a huge picture of him. Not a word about gun control showed up in the Facebook preview.
So I took it down and posted this note:
To those who might have wondered why there was a huge campaign ad for Rep. Joe Kennedy on my page last night. I had just signed a petition he originated on gun control, and wanted to share it. I didn’t check how it posted on FB. I felt tricked and betrayed enough to take the entire post down. Let him get signatures some other way.
This was a classic bait-and-switch. In fairness, Kennedy probably delegated this to some social media intern and most likely wasn’t personally involved. But if I lived in his district, this would make me look for someone else to vote for, because I don’t like being manipulated and cheated.
Only after I took it down did I think about blogging about this feeling of betrayal. If I’d decided to blog before I instinctively took it down, I would have grabbed a screenshot to post here. Instead, you get the logo of the ultimate-bait-and-switcher: Volkswagen.
Aging Volkswagen showing VW logo. Photo by Daria Schulte.
VW, of course, preyed upon environmentalist car owners to sell them a low-emission vehicle—but fudged the test results and was really selling highly polluting cars. This is costing the company billions, and it isn’t over yet. The state of Vermont just filed suit against VW two days ago. Vermont, tiny as it is, has the second-highest per-capita concentration of VWs in the country (after Oregon)—precisely because environmental consciousness is extremely high among its residents. In fact, a year ago, a group of those Vermont residents already filed a class-action suit against Volkswagen.
I used to think my parents and in-laws were overreacting with their continuing pledge never to buy Volkswagen s because of the company’s involvement with the Holocaust. After all, the people who made those brutal decisions are long dead or in nursing homes. But after this scandal, I can’t think of any reason why I would ever trust the company again.
Bottom line: in business and in politics, bait-and-switch has no place in ethical marketing.
