(Aside: the cowards who ran the factory let him come in anyway. They should have said, “No mask? Then no tour.” Perhaps they were afraid of being ridiculed in a nasty tweet. Or of losing a federal contract. The former, which was quite likely, would put them in a prestigious club of people and organizations important enough to be publicly scorned by the country’s most incompetent president. The latter would have been a juicy lawsuit, and meanwhile, New England’s governors would have been falling all over themselves to grab those suddenly available supplies.)
The man who also refused to take the necessary actions months ago that would have contained the virus impact, as countries from Vietnam to New Zealand did, along with countries more comparable to the US, like Germany and South Korea.
If it were either Juneteenth or Tulsa, it could conceivably have been a coincidence. But to have the kick-off event for the revived in-person re-election campaign held on that day, in that city, could not be a coincidence. It’s a dog-whistle to the racists, no doubt schemed up by one of DT’s senior advisors (I don’t think the man himself is educated enough to know about Tulsa, and it wouldn’t shock me if he hadn’t known what Juneteenth is.)
Like many on the Left, I was disappointed that a whole slew of brilliant progressives with the skills to be president failed to get traction. And I was dismayed by the Biden campaign’s sneak-attack success at undermining Elizabeth Warren’s chances just before Super-Tuesday, with the very public withdrawals and endorsements by Klobuchar and Buttigeig. If we had Ranked-Choice Voting and other long-overdue electoral reforms in place, this would not have been a problem. (Note: that second post is something I wrote back in 2007, outlining seven important reforms. At that time, Ranked-Choice was usually referred to as Instant Runoff.) But it left a lot of us feeling angry and left out.
With the withdrawal of Bernie and Elizabeth and their eventual endorsement of Biden in the weeks following, things shifted from who do we want as our ally to who do we want as our adversary? This is a very important distinction, brought to my attention by Erica Chenowith, who is known for her work showing that nonviolent struggle by just 3.5% of the population is enough to bring down a government. We will make more progress in a Biden administration than the current administration. We have already pushed Biden’s rhetoric well to the left and have given him the space to make the recent statements condemning DT’s racism.
Effigy of “the Donald,” photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC
I already voted, on super Tuesday. But if I lived in a state that was yet to have its primary, I would absolutely vote for Sanders in order to increase that leverage from the left. But that’s all it will do. Sanders will not be the nominee. That dream is over! While giving more strength to the Sanders coalition, we have to recognize that in November, barring some kind of miracle or catastrophe, Biden’s name will be on the ballot. And the more out of control DT gets, the more he tilts actively toward fascism as he has been doing with increasing strength ever since the impeachment failed, the more urgent it is to make the margin of victory so big that DT cannot steal it this time (the 2016 results will be under a cloud forever).
We need to fight for every vote in swing states even if that means having recounts. To delegitimize the current administration in every way possible.
The absence of DT’s actual name in this post is deliberate. It is one small way we reduce his legitimacy, and his bragging rights.
I was on an Indivisible NoHo call with our progressive Central/Western Massachusetts congressman, Jim McGovern, this week. He noted that Biden was not his first choice, or even his fourth choice. That’s true for me as well. I think of the 22 original candidates, I had him at about 17. But we lost that one. Again!
Yes, Sanders would have made a fine and successful nominee that I could have supported with a lot more enthusiasm. He was my second choice, after Warren. Yes, absolutely vote Sanders in the primary but recognize that Sanders will not be the nominee and this is about giving strength to the left to negotiate with Biden.
Have you been dithering about starting a blog? Blogging provides several advantages in your marketing, but a lot of people are scared off by the idea.
It’s not that hard. A no-cost tool called WordPress makes it easy.
WordPress dashboard showing the ribbon, file naming, and text-editing window
WordPress is a terrific platform. I have never heard of it not working on a site, though if your host company doesn’t support it, you’d need to do a manual installation (any web designer could help you with that). Most webhosts have one-click WordPress installation in their CPanels.
You do need to know some things about WP before you set up.
There is WordPress.com, which is hosted on THEIR servers, and WordPress.org, where your content is hosted on YOUR server (you don’t have to own your server–let your hosting company do that). You want .ORG, so you have full control over the content and cant be held hostage over it. Neither one charges money.
WordPress is a very simple shell that uses “themes” to determine the look and feel. There are thousands of themes out there, some at no cost and others for a fee. Find one you like that can incorporate your company branding, but play with it to see how easy it is to work. There are some that nest text inside Java routines as one example) and I have found it’s really tough to find the place I need to be to make minor edits.
Editing in WordPress is really easy, assuming you picked a theme that didn’t have the issue I just described. If you turn off the blocks feature, the interface is similar to Microsoft Word or GMail . So you don’t have to learn any HTML. Instead of using angle brackets to e.g. turn your text bold and then back to regular, you just highlight the text and click the B button in the formatting ribbon. You can see that ribbon at the top of the screenshot.
Find and install a few key plugins: a backup program so if WP utterly collapses, you still have your content; a file-namer that gives your posts a meaningful name taken from your headline (see where it says “Permalink” on the screenshot?), probably some others.
WordPress updates frequently, both to add function and to beef up security. Set yours up to automatically run the updater, but remember to check every now and then to see if you need to update your plugins. Updating is just a few clicks and very intuitive.
You have a choice every time you post new content: a post, which goes at the top of your blog (which posts in reverse chronological order so the newest is on top) or a page, which is part of your permanent website structure and can be organized with menus, etc. Posts can also be sorted by category, so your reader can see everything you’ve put in any particular category just by clicking on the category name. I find it very worth the extra few minutes to add categories, keyword tags (which help people find your post), a picture, and an excerpt.
Consider having a designer set up the site to begin with, making sure they know you want a theme that’s easy to edit posts, and then posting your own content from there.
A marketer friend in Connecticut sent out a wonderful tribute to his 95-year-old mom and used her to illustrate several points about customer-centric marketing and customer service. In the course of this article, he waxed rhapsodic about Amazon. I see Amazon (and some other companies) as not always so wonderful–and the public having blinders on about its predatory practices. This is what I wrote back to my friend. The third link is actually a very complete summary of the issues:
* * *
Great piece! I love the way you take your mom’s everyday activities and spin them into marketing do and don’ts.
While you certainly shouldn’t change it for Mom, you might want to rethink Amazon. It is very much a two-edged sword. It’s great that it has made the Long Tail [the ability to find obscure products that don’t support a large retail base and wouldn’t be stocked in physical stores] a thing and that any author has access to international markets. But…
They are a serious threat to the vibrancy of our downtowns. Can you imagine Stamford with only a few struggling chain stores? Goodbye to that nice falafel shop and Asian restaurant across the street from (Amazon-owned) Whole Foods (I’ve often eaten at one or the other on my way to NYC). Book stores, hardware stores, appliance stores–and all the traffic into town those stores bring–are increasingly shaky in an Amazon-dominated world. And when that foot traffic goes away (assuming it comes back after we’re finally out of quarantine), so do the restaurants, night spots, etc.
Their labor record is very poor. Their treatment of independent publishers is not only very poor but IMHO a violation of monopoly rules. Did you know that Amazon, a retailer, takes the 55% industry-standard wholesaler discount instead of the 40% retailer level for its smaller publishers selling them physical books? (They do have much better deals for publishers on the books their subsidiary KDP prints on demand.) This is one of the two reasons they’re killing the independent bookstores (the other is that they’ve successfully trained the public to think of them first). Also, they present used and new versions of the same title on the same results page, which is a complete stab in the back to publishers–sort of like offering counterfeit designer watches and purses. I have no objection to selling used books (and keeping them out of landfills)–but not in direct competition with the same book, new.
For a long time, Amazon didn’t charge sales tax, which was an especially cruel anticompetitive practice in that it not only hurt businesses who have to collect those taxes, but also reduced the availability of government services by reducing government revenues.
Amazon has actively and repeatedly suppressed competitors. This includes using its enormous data on customer behavior and buying patterns to manufacture its own products, sold through its own channels. And students of the company’s behavior see evidence that once competitors are eliminated or demand spikes (as on household cleaning products during the pandemic), Amazon’s prices rise, sharply.
For these reasons, I buy from my local independent food markets, booksellers, appliance, and hardware stores (on their websites, currently) and shortly after Amazon bought it, I stopped going to Whole Foods even though it’s actually my closest supermarket.
* * *
That was the end of my letter. I love the convenience of online ordering too, but I’m happy to do it at the websites of independent businesses, especially if they’re local to me. What are your thoughts?
We still have a long way to go on eco-friendly packaging. I just finished a box of crackers. I washed out the plastic tray and will add it to the plastics recycling bag when it dries, put the box in the paper recycling bin, and threw away the shrink-wrap around the tray in the actual trash.
Excess packaging: cracker box, tray, and inner shrink-wrap. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Most people won’t bother to do all this. Designers: this is a profit opportunity for you: create packaging that people only have to put in one place when it’s over, and that can be repurposed later–and remember that today’s compostable “solution” is only an alternative if people have access to an industrial compost facility. Most people don’t.
And businesses: as you adopt truly eco-friendly packaging, you’ve got a branding and marketing opportunity.
This challenge is based in Singapore. Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons.
Just found this announcement as an ad on a story I clicked on in Eco-Business, an Asian environmental newsletter that often has cool and unusual stories. If you have a project needing funding in urban food production, circular packaging, or decarbonization that could work in an urban tropical area like Singapore, get thee over to The Livability Challenge page. RIGHT NOW.
Finalists in The Liveability Challenge 2020 could secure the following:
• Up to S$1 million in funding by Temasek Foundation•
• 1-year venture building package at The Circularity Studio •
• A mentorship with Closed Loop Partners •
• A spot in TXG Sustainability Business Accelerator Program •
• and more to be unveiled •
I have not vetted and have no more information other than what’s on that page. But if you enter and get selected, I’d love to know that you heard about it from me. In fact, if you have a cool idea like that and have no interest in the contest or aren’t chosen, please share it. If I like your idea, I’ll give you a brief marketing consultation, no charge. And I might ask if I can feature you in an article or blog post. Of course, I won’t disclose your idea to anyone without your written permission.
Yesterday and today, I’ve listened to a bunch of the EarthDayLive2020 conference. It’s exciting to see this intergenerational, intercultural, and very smart group of activists and performers attracting thousands of viewers over Zoom.
One speaker, Erica Chenowith, tossed off a remark that changed everything I think about the 2020 US presidential election. She said—and this is so clear after all the progressives exited the race—that we get involved with this election not to choose our ally but to choose our adversary (she used the term “enemy,” but I think my term gets her meaning more accurately).
This, to me, might be the secret sauce for getting progressives to come out and vote. In this scenario, Biden migrates from lesser evil to far, far better adversary. With a moderate and relatively honest Democrat in the White House, progressives will have a much easier time moving our agenda forward. Biden will be more pliable on economic issues, on the social safety net, and on the environment. He is no Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, but he is someone who does listen, and who occasionally changes his mind—as he did on same-sex marriage. In the Bill Clinton era, he supported the horrid DOMA, but he pushed Obama well to the left when marriage equality came to the tipping point.
He is already likely to reinstate the US into the Paris Climate Accord. Once he understands how the Green New Deal will create jobs, put discretionary spending into people’s pockets, and reduce our vulnerability both to foreign oil oligarchs and to runaway multinational corporations—thus reducing the risk of war—I think he would support it or at least not interfere with it.
In other words, a Biden administration would be a much more welcome adversary. It would be more humane, more willing to work with other countries, interested in preserving rather than destroying the environment—and far more predictable. And it would be a complete rejection of the apparent main goal of the current occupant: to make himself even richer and everyone else be damned. In other words, Biden will be someone who will respond as we would like him to, at least some of the time—and who is unlikely to ever engage in the viciously destructive hate-based politics we see every day.
There’s ample precedent. LBJ, the long-time Southern politician, not JFK, the liberal icon, was the one who signed several pieces of civil rights legislation and declared war on poverty. Richard Nixon, a Republican and anticommunist extremist, was probably the president who did the most to protect the environment other than perhaps Obama–not because he believed in the cause, but because public outcry left him no other choice. (Of course, the good work Johnson and Nixon did on these issues in no way gives them a pass around the Vietnam war, domestic repression, etc.)
I’d love to hear from progressives who take electoral politics seriously—is this the way we attract young disillusioned progressives who are ready to sit out the election because we are once again stuck with a centrist candidate who doesn’t really represent us? Please weigh in
50 years ago today, Earth Day was launched as a one-time event. Who would know it would not only become annual but turn into a massive worldwide movement that has changed our world for the better in so many ways?
Photo by Stephanie Hofschlaeger
The Environmental Movement is Now Mainstream
Since that first Earth Day, we’ve made a lot of progress. A few examples:
Public awareness of climate issues–and of the lifestyle changes we can make to improve things–is at an all-time high
Millions of people have taken to the streets to demand action on climate
Science has made huge strides in areas ranging from green energy to biomimicry; amazing new green technologies are constantly becoming more efficient, less expensive, and more deployable
Many countries have shifted away from fossil and nuclear toward clean technoogies such as solar, wind, and hydro–and these technologies are much more efficient than they were 50 years ago
Veganism and vegetarianism (two of the easiest ways to reduce our personal climate footprint) are far more accepted, even in places like Germany that used to be quite hostile)
From bringing our own reusable bags (pre-COVID) to discovering foods like tofu, the way we shop and eat has drastically shifted, even for those still eating meat
Nearly every country in the world agreed to the Paris Climate Accord (which doesn’t go nearly far enough, and which the current US administration has pledged to leave–but it’s a start)
A 16-year-old Swedish climate activist addressed the UN, arriving in the US aboard a green-energy boat (yes, I’m talking about Greta Thunberg)
Almost every major company has at least a sustainability coordinator, if not a whole department–and these folks have drastically reduced the negative impact of business on the environment
Here in the US, the well-thought-out Green New Deal is getting serious attention
We’re beginning to recognize climate justice: looking at the environment from a lens that includes economic and social justice issues, such as why so many polluting plants are in poor communities and why so many of those communities are “food deserts” with little or no access to healthy foods
My Environmental Journey Started That Day
I was 13, and I was one of the people “captured” by that first Earth Day. Ever since then, I’ve given a lot of thought to, and taken a lot of action on, ways I can live more lightly–and how I can help others, both individuals and institutions, make that shift.
This has taken many forms, from street activism to lobbying to addressing business audiences with messages on how to make green social entrepreneurship sexy and profitable to writing books that show how this can be done.
I’ve also made many lifestyle shifts, from biking 5 miles to high school at age 15 and becoming vegetarian at 16 to converting my house to a heat and hot water system using cow poop and food waste from our farmer neighbors at age 61 and carting unbagged groceries out to the reusable bags I keep in the car at 63 (since we can’t bring them into the stores anymore).
In my activist life, I’ve been lucky to participate in three major environmental victories:
In 1977, I was one of about 2,000 people and 1414 who got arrested at the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. We had no way of knowing that our action would birth a national safe energy movement. On the 40th anniversary, I wrote about why this action was so important. (The link is to Part 1 of my 5-part series. There’s a link to the next installment at the bottom of each earlier one.)
In 1984, I worked with my city counselor to get the first nonsmokers’ rights regulations in Northampton, Massachusetts. Very few communities had any protection for non-smokers at that time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that within a few years, most restaurants in town were non-smoking and that the number of restaurants in town increased significantly.
And in 1999, I founded and became the public face of the movement that saved a mountain right near my house.
It was the success of Save the Mountain that led me into the work of educating the business community on how to be profitable while saving the world.
This is not new. Social impact companies have been around at least since the mid-19th century, but it’s been on the fringe. Believe it or not, UK chocolate giant Cadbury was founded as a social impact company. But I think now we have the chance to change the entire business culture, so profitable business social and environmental responsibility becomes mainstream.
But There’s Still Lots to Be Done!
For all its positive presence, business is still a long way from solving problems it largely created. Pollution, resource depletion, and labor issues are just a few of many issues that need to be addressed, especially as world population grows faster than at any time in history. And governments are not always our allies. The present Brazilian and US federal governments, for instance, are actively sabotaging the eco-agenda. Each of us needs to make the difference we can make–and each of us CAN find a way to make that difference (contact me if you want help figuring out what the most impactful way for you and your business).
No Cost Resources and MY Gift to Help You Celebrate Earth Day THIS Year
Let’s start this Earth Day party off with something that will help you save energy, water, and money–my ebook, Painless Green: 111 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. I normally sell this for $9.95, but as my Earth Day gift to you, you can get it at no cost. Just visit PainlessGreenBook.com and enter “earthdayblog” in the code box. This will also sign you up to my informative Clean and Green Club monthly newsletter.
Our national museum, the Smithsonian Institution, has organized an online Earth Optimism Summit with a fantastic lineup including Denis Hayes, who organized that 1970 Earth Day…Christiana Figueres, top negotiator of the Paris Accords…NASA’s former Chief Scientist and current director of the National Air And Space Museum Ellen Stofan…Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org (among many others)
Another national virtual summit, Earthday Live 2020, offers three days of programming and a strong social justice focus.
A group based near me in Western Massachusetts, Climate Action Now, offers several Earth Day events starting this evening with a 6:30 ET panel of legislators and activists. This may be especially interest if you live in Massachusetts, but it’s virtual and open to all.
There’s plenty in those three articles that absolutely makes sense in today’s world–but there’s also quite a bit that’s at least temporarily obsolete.
With tips about how to bring reusable containers into the stores and organizing used clothing sharing events, it made me nostalgic for that very recent time before everything changed. And with a strong focus on combining climate, waste, and social justice, it was a refreshing reminder at how much more aware even we green folks are than most of us were 20 or 30 years ago.
True, it’s a bit more challenging to maintain a green lifestyle these days. But for the planet, it’s been a chance to recharge. The enormous reduction in motor vehicles on the road, planes in the sky, and factories running at full capacity allows our air and water to clean and regenerate themselves. And not to be Malthusian (and certainly not that I think this is a good thing), but the massive wave of deaths does reduce strain on the earth’s resources.
These positive changes have been somewhat offset by a dramatic uptick of certain other resources. Medical equipment, sanitation products, and even toilet paper are in short supply–and even more concerning, so are the medical personnel and hospital beds. And I’m guessing that as a world population, we’re generating a lot more waste and reusing a lot less.
In our own two-person, one-cat house, we’ve shifted some things as well. Our new routines might provide useful examples of how to be protected while staying as green as practical, so I’ll share a few of the details.
Water Use
What with not only washing our hands constantly for a full 20 seconds but taking a new glass or spoon every time and throwing our clothes in the washing machine every time we go to the store, our water use is probably triple what it was. We used to run the dishwasher about two, maybe three times in a typical week; now it’s more like five or six.
But even when we’re washing our hands so many times per day, we don’t turn the water on full force, and we turn it off when we’re not actually rubbing our hands under the faucet. We use just enough water to do a good job.
Fortunately, our heat and hot water are both on a green system powered by residual heat from cow poop and food waste running through our farmer neighbors’ methane digesters, and we live in an area where water is not scarce.
Cleaning Supplies
We’re also using somewhat more disposable paper products–but not all that much. For years, we’ve tended to use rags rather than paper towels to clean surfaces or mop up spills. But we are using paper towels or wipes to do things like keep our hands from touching door handles going into or out of a public place, wiping down shopping carts, etc. And of course, disinfecting the packaging we buy is something we never did before, and that uses a few paper towels.
My wife made us each a reusable mask. Since we’re usually shopping no more than once a week, it’s easy to wash them between uses.
We are not stockpiling, and we think the idea is silly. We’ve always bought toilet paper in 12-roll packs, and when we’re about half through, we get another 12-pack. When our bottle of dish soap gets down to half, we buy one more bottle. These patterns have not changed.
We are using more laundry detergent. Normally, we use a reusable laundry ball in the washing machine. We still do for regular wash, but for those post-shopping loads, we use hot or warm water, which the laundry ball isn’t designed for. We are almost through the box of earth-friendly detergent we bought about four years ago, but when that’s done, we inherited a huge tub of Arm & Hammer natural laundry powder when my stepfather died in 2018. I expect that it will last us the rest of our lives, considering we mostly use the laundry ball.
Packaging
As green consumers, we don’t bring a huge amount of packaged food into the house to begin with, and we save reusable glass and plastic containers when we do. We actually choose our brands of yogurt and hummus in part by whether we can put the containers and lids through the dishwasher and reuse them–and we use them until they break, usually at least 20 times. (We also factor in taste, quality, and price, of course.) Since forever, we use those jars to store bulk beans and grains, spices, and flours. Now, if we buy boxed cereal, for example, we wipe down the box and then either take the inner liner out and put it in a box we just finished, or put the cereal in jars.
When we buy bread or loose produce, we remove it from the plastic bag it came from and put it in one we’ve had pre-crisis; we have an entire hamper full of them. Cans get washed down with disinfectant, but other than cat food (which we buy in cases so the cans are protected), a small amount of canned beans, and coconut milk, we used almost no canned products anyway.
Since we’re not driving much, we have the luxury of leaving non-perishables in the car for a few days to decontaminate on their own–and while we still disinfect when we bring them in, we’re not quite as hyper-vigilant
Most of our produce is harvested at or near our home by the CSA farm we belong to, farmers at the local farmers markets and farm stands, or in our own garden. We’re washing everything more carefully. We’re washing citrus with soap. We’re peeling items like salad carrots instead of just grating the peels in with the rest of the carrot–but leaving peels on for cooked foods when appropriate, since heat kills the virus.
For years, we’ve kept reusable totebags in the car and brought them with us into stores. Now, we leave them in the car, load everything back into the shopping cart, unbagged, after it’s scanned, and then load them into our own bags at the car. So we’re still not getting bags, for the most part. This does mean we avoid shopping on bad-weather days.
Transportation and Shopping Choices
We live out in the country, seven miles from town. We’ve always ganged our errands into as few trips as practical, but now we’ve become almost religious about it. Going through the decontamination process every time we go shopping is annoying enough that we’re trying to shop no more than weekly, and preferably every two weeks. When we go, we think about everything we might need for 14 days, where we can get it with the fewest stops (rather than the lowest prices), and what route minimizes the miles to visit those stores.
One of the greenest things to do at this time is to actively support local independent businesses. We’ve shifted a much bigger percentage of our shopping dollars to the businesses we want to make sure survive, the ones that make our community a desirable place to live. We’re also ordering more online from these local businesses, and either picking up curbside or getting things shipped.
And sadly, we can’t car pool anymore. When we meet our friend who lives a mile from us to hike together (10 feet apart), she and we arrive in separate cars.
I haven’t needed any clothing except a package of socks I ordered online and picked up curbside. I would probably not go to a used clothing store right now, because it could be a germ factory. But I did arrange no-contact pickups for some books someone was giving away on our local Buy Nothing community, and for some items I had to offer. I let the books sit in the car and I will wipe them down before I shelve them.
Like everyone else, I’ve been a bit grumpy (and a lot horrified) as the world shuts down to slow the spread of the killer virus COVID-19. But I also find myself being grateful for some of the changes.
Grumps (things I miss a lot)
Hugs (I still get them with my beloved spouse, thankfully)
Gathering with friends in person
Travel
Potlucks
Restaurants
US military photo of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.
Gratitudes (places where I see improvement)
Gatherings of widely dispersed friends and family over Zoom (tonight, we’re hosting a Passover Seder with participants in seven US states)
Still finding ways to make new friends–like the Sustainability Director for a major US city who became my friend after we were in the same breakout room in a Zoom webinar (and who then had me present to her daughter’s online learning group of high school kids)
An explosion of “compassionate creativity,” from the Italians singing on their balconies to the outpouring of live and recorded concerts, Broadway shows, and more, to the business owners who still pay their idled staff
The people who are using this situation to examine where our society could be improved both now and even long after the crisis ends: developing new approaches in addressing the carbon/climate crisis, education, transportation, health care, bringing people out of poverty, and more
Watching people rediscover nature (all the hiking and biking trails near me are getting heavy use) and realize that there’s more to life than looking at screens all the time
While-you-wait résumés over Zoom and free résumé critiques by email—and if you’re unemployed because of the virus, your first cover letter is a gift when you get your résumé written (this is an offer from me personally)
What are your highlights in this time? Please post in the comments.
