Tag: Biomimicry

By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Innovation, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Science, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , ,
Multicultural contingent at a climate march. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
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.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Business Ethics, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Innovation, Peace and War, poverty, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chris Brogan borrowed an idea from James Altucher: “Write a list of ten things every day. They can be 10 anythings. Ten terrible dates. Ten places to visit. Ten desserts I want to eat this year. Whatever.”

I won’t commit to making a list daily, but I was inspired to create these two after reading Chris’s post (which includes several samples of his own lists).

 

World Issues
  1. Help figure out how the 30-40% of food that’s wasted can instead be rechanneled to feed those who are starving–and help that get implemented (perhaps this is a place I can target my speaking; see Personal Goal #2, below)
  2. Help amplify the voices of those better qualified than I am to show countries how to solve disputes without going to war
  3. Help build more bridges between/among Left and Right/”woke” and “non-woke”/Muslims and Jews and Christians, etc.
  4. Corollary #1 to #3: Explore and amplify alternatives to counterproductive communication styles: calling-in instead of calling out, respect and listening while searching for common ground instead of shaming
  5. Corollary #2 to #3: Help people to understand that they are not stuck–that just because they have been caught in bad patterns doesn’t mean they are trapped there forever
  6. Continue to demonstrate that baking environmental and social justice directly into companies’ products, services, and mindsets can be highly profitable–find ways for this idea to gain much more traction in the mainstream business world (without having to join that world)
  7. Expose more companies to principles such as biomimicry, multiple function, and circular economy so that they can better understand the financial benefits of deep reimagining, deep re-invention, and regenerativity
  8. Show companies that solving these big problems while increasing profitability requires a mixture of Great Leaps and Kaizen, different in different situations–and that they can do both at once
  9. Corollary to #5: Bring the holistic and systemic analysis that helps determine the right solutions in the right situations, and recommend implementation strategies
  10. Help change mindsets from despair to active, participatory hope: helping everyone I meet understand that he/she/they have the power to effect meaningful change, in their own lives AND in the wider world. Show how ordinary people (usually working with others) have created movements that changed history.
Personal Issues
  1. Probe, discover, and overcome whatever internal barriers are still preventing me from achieving at a higher level–both in terms of impact and revenue–made good progress on this but clearly still have work to do
  2. Book more speaking gigs that pay a fee, whether virtual or live-stage or hybrid–especially international speaking that allows me to explore more parts of the world
  3. Land two or three new long-term consulting clients in the profitable social/environmental justice part of my business
  4. Find steady, decently-paying markets for articles or other types of content, as I had before
  5. Create the right offer for more readers/viewers/listeners to engage with me and come into my orbit
  6. Implement more of the enormous amount of good advice I’ve been given over the past few years
  7. Pick one of the several projects I’ve been tossing around, start it and run it: launch the retreat, the course, the pay-to-participate mastermind/mentoring group OR (not and) the resume-method licensing program
  8. Address issues of fatigue and focus, including lack of motivation, lack of follow-through, and more
  9. Keep up with the torrent of email, LI and FB messages, etc. and figure out a way to spot and respond to the important ones
  10. Continue to be a force in my grandson’s life, even if his parents move out of the area

 

And what are yours?

Please feel welcome to comment with some of your own goal lists. You don’t need ten things. Even one or two. And yes, you can share a whole list of ten if you want to. Just keep in mind that comments will be moderated and abusive or spammy ones will be removed.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Green Marketing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

If you’d like to know more about this, my award-winning 10th book Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World

Cover of Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World by Jay Conrad Levinson and Shel Horowitz
Cover of Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World by Jay Conrad Levinson and Shel Horowitz

offers lots of examples.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business-general, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Innovation, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,
Earth Lightning, by Stephanie Hofschlaeger
Photo by Stephanie Hofschlaeger

2016 is going to be a GREAT year for the green world, and the green business world in particular. I thought so even before two developments this past week that make me even more optimistic:

  1. COP21, the historic climate change agreement signed by 197 countries at the Paris summit, will cause pressure from governments and their citizens
  2. The US has extended the tax credit package on solar and wind (slated to expire at the end of 2016) for five years—adding as much as 39 gigawatts of clean energy

Add in the widely spreading understanding in the  business world that going green the right way slashes costs, boosts revenues, and generates profit, and it’s not surprising that 2016 will be a year of great progress. (If you don’t yet see the connection, order a copy of my new book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. It’s got hundreds of examples ranging from Fortune 100 to solopreneurs.)

Expect to see lots more high-level research, looking for holistic steps that create big jumps in energy efficiency and big reductions in waste. Already, we’ve made amazing technological leaps within just the past couple of years. I’ll name two among hundreds:

  1. Approaches like biomimicry—modeling how nature solves complex problems—will let sustainability ripple through the whole culture, relatively rapidly.
  2. Electrical storage (a major restraint on renewable energy growth) has made huge strides, including the vaunted Tesla battery systems.

All is not sunshine and roses, of course. The Act of Congress that extended the clean-energy tax credits also opened up the door for some of the worst kind of carbon-intensive development: exporting the dirtiest types of fossil fuel energy. Public pressure—activism in the streets, in the boardrooms, and in the halls of legislative power—must hound every proposal to put in fracking, use or transport tar-sands oil, build unnecessary pipelines, etc.

One key meme has to be “honor the commitments we made at COP21.”

If the business community, especially, makes it clear that it expects the US to do its part in meeting the targets, and that exporting fossil fuels across oceans will work against this, that open door may stay largely unused. But it will take vigilance.

One not-so obvious trend

The above predictions are relatively mainstream in the green world, even if they appear startling to those outside of it. Let me conclude with a much more “out-there” proposition:

Businesses will go beyond merely going green. Sustainability will be seen as a first step. More and more companies will be going beyond sustainability to create a world where hunger and poverty turn into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.

Why? Because they will see enormous profit opportunities, and because it feels so much better to oneself, employees, neighbors, suppliers and other stakeholders to see making the world better as a key success metric. How? I wrote a whole book to answer that question.

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Eco-friendly, Environment, General Commentary, localism/locavore Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Over the past several months, I’ve been learning more about biomimcry: emulating nature’s designs to solve problems humans need solved. Often, the results are aesthetically pleasing, environmentally friendly, and energy conserving.

While, as far as I know, he wasn’t paying attention to energy use or design challenges like harvesting rainwater in the desert, the famed late-19th/early-20th century architect and artist Antoni Gaudí certainly was a biomimic. Here’s what the Barcelona Tourist Guide says about Gaudí:

Most of Gaudí’s constructions have an organic look to them. This basic concept of using nature as the primary influences for his creativity is reflected in the use of the natural curved construction stones, twisted iron sculptures, and organic-like shapes—all of which are characteristic traits of Gaudí’s architecture.

I just visited Barcelona, where Gaudí left his mark and helped inspire the whole Modernist movement that gives today’s Barcelona so much character—and I found myself thinking often about biomimicry, and how the Modernists used nature forms to create a powerful aesthetic. Many of our other great inventors took inspiration from nature as well; Da Vinci and Buckminster Fuller were also biomimics.

In addition to his world-famous cathedral, La Sagrada Familia Basilica, commenced in 1882 and not yet finished, he did several residential buildings, a palace for his patron, and even a stunning municipal park.

But the Sagrada Familia is probably the single best reason to visit Barcelona. It’s just magnificent. The interior and exterior are completely different experiences. The exterior is almost like it was done by an out-of-control cake decorator with a compulsion to sculpt every available surface; the interior is serene and calm, yet soaring and spiritually uplifting. It feels almost like some of the great mosques in Istanbul.

The exterior is iconic; you’ve surely seen photographs.

Exterior shot, Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona
Arch and four towers of the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudií

But to me, the deeper experience of this building is the sacred space within the walls. This brief movie clip gives at least a little taste of the Sagrada Familia interior experience. 

 

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