Tag: climate change

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Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
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.

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By Posted on Posted in Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Innovation, Mindset, People Helping People, Psychology, Science, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , ,

NASA photo tracking 2011 Superstorm Sandy
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).

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Ethics in Government, localism/locavore, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Open letter to the government of the City of Northampton, Massachusetts

Context: Residents of a tiny one-block street called Warfield Place have been fighting to preserve a line of beautiful cherry trees planted several decades ago. The city (pop. 28,726) has claimed  that the street needed to be redone and these trees are at the end of their useful life, while residents said the trees could easily survive for a few more years–and that many other streets with more traffic and worse infrastructure conditions deserved higher priority. Both sides have brought in arborists who support their positions. The residents recently brought in support from national leaders in the Buddhist community, and ordained the trees as Buddhist priests. Neighbors were actively negotiating with the city, as well as seeking help in the courts. Thursday morning, the city brought in heavy equipment and a large police presence and destroyed the trees.

For the numerous stories chronicling the controversy over the past several months, visit http://gazettenet.com and use the search tool at the top to look for “warfield place cherry trees” (nonsubscribers get five free articles per month). See more pictures of the trees in bloom taken by Shel Horowtiz (author of this open letter and owner of this blog) and protest signs at (20+) Facebook

A Warfield Place cherry tree in bloom, May 2, 2021. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

A Warfield Place cherry tree--close-up of flower, May 2, 2021. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
A Warfield Place cherry tree–close-up of flower, May 2, 2021. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

It was shocking to read in yesterday morning’s Daily Hampshire Gazette that the sacred cherry trees the community has fought so hard to preserve that it actually ordained them as Buddhist priests–the trees that hundreds of local residents and many others from farther afield, including several of national stature, signed petitions and joined protests and wrote letters to the editor to save–were torn down with no warning, even while the city was aware that a judge was considering a restraining order, and even while the city and the residents of the street were still negotiating.
The trees were murdered at 9:00 a.m. and the restraining order that would have prevented their untimely death was given at noon.
Why the rush? Why the need to act unilaterally when many people were willing to work out a solution that made sense for all parties: the city, the residents, and of course, the trees?
This is the legacy of Public Works Director Donna LaScaleia and Mayor David Narkewicz. All the considerable good work of the 10-year Narkewicz administration will not sustain its former reputation for progressive policies and fostering democracy. When people remember this adinistration, they will not remember how it stood against racism and for inclusion, how it was a champion of addressing climate change. Their memories will be rooted in this horrible and utterly avoidable incident.
It was an attack not only on these beloved trees, but an attack on democracy–on the ability of people to feel they have influence over their own lives, and their ability to have their concerns listened to, and, hopefully, acted on.
And it was also an attack on separation of powers in government; the city was aware that a judge was considering the injunction that was eventually granted (too late), but couldn’t be bothered to let that process play out.
And of course, removing living trees goes against the Narkewicz administration’s long-stated goals of mitigating climate change locally. Trees are far and away our most effective weapons against climate catastrophe.
I think what may have happened was a felt need to be right at all costs–not to admit that there could have been one of several other ways forward that would have had far more positive outcomes, such as:
  • Harnessing the neighbors’ considerable energy into a working committee that would actively participate WITH the Department of Public Works Director to develop solutions that worked for the city and the residents. Even if the ultimate outcome were the same, the residents would have owned it.
  • Moving Warfield Place off the calendar for a few more years until the trees died naturally, while adding plantings of newer trees so when that day came, the street would have a decent tree-canopy-in-process.
  • Redirecting the construction funds to a city block whose need for repair was undisputed.
This need to be right, to save face, culminated in an extreme wrong. The city engaged in a “process” that not only disenfranchised the Warfield Street residents, ending in a hostile unilateral action–it undermined Northampton’s reputation as a citadel of democracy, a place that values its citizens’ public discourse and involvement. This violation of residents’ real concerns makes it harder for the next administration to get people to even trust–let alone become involved in–city government. And the city has even created a construct where it faces accusations of a hate crime–even though Mayor Narkewicz spent so much of his decade as mayor creating a wonderful climate of acceptance and even embrace of diversity.
It’s very sad. It’s irreversible–the trees are gone, democracy was seriously weakened, and the city’s reputation is in tatters–and it was completely avoidable. I expected better of Northampton and am deeply disappointed.
While we can’t bring the trees back, and this action has done potentially permanent harm to Northampton’s civic virtue, it is still possible to atone. I ask in all seriousness: How, specifically, will the city make restitution? How will this administration restore confidence in the city? How will the city offset the negative climate impacts of the tree destruction? And how will the city make the residents and neighbors of Warfield Place whole again? It won’t be easy, especially this close to the end of this administration, but it has to be done, and done very soon. What exactly is the plan?

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Environment, Ethics: General, Gratitude, language, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

One of my marketing buddies, Marisa Murgatroyd, posted a picture of Greta Thunberg along with an inspirational message about how Greta’s work empowered Marisa to find her own place to make change.

Greta Thunberg on the cover of GQ, with commentary by Marisa Murgatroyd (Instagram screenshot)

It attracted a lot of comments, many of them expressing thanks for a great post–but others, far too many, dissing Greta and her work. Here’s my comment, in italics.

Thanks, Marisa, for posting this. Shocking how many people are posting to tear this young woman down because she’s changing the world. She will probably grow out of her extremism but if the world is lucky, she will keep her passion. I ask every person who is putting Greta down: what have you done in HER lifetime to make the world better, and what are you doing now toward that goal? Why is it important to you to spend your good energy attacking someone who is making a difference in the only ways she knows how?

And before you attack ME for using the word, “extremism,” remember this:

  1. This was a response to people who see her as an extremist. I used their own talking point to perhaps be listened to–to increase the chances that I might change a mind or two.
  2. Greta is acting out of deep despair. She does sound extreme at times. But let’s remember how hard it is to act out of despair, even if you don’t have Asperger’s (as she does). Positive motivators tend to work much better. To act from a dark place in a positive way is itself remarkable. In time, she will learn (as I did) that the world can be a very positive place, and we get the fun job of making it more positive, harnessing and amplifying the trends in the good directions, doing our best to neutralize the haters and the planet-killers. And that while the pace may seem glacial, we are actually winning.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,
Multicultural contingent at a climate march. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Multicultural contingent at a climate march. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

You won’t normally see me starting a blog post with a bible quote, but…I’m quoting an article that quotes the Bible: 

In Genesis 1 God commands humanity: “Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (1:28). “Subdue” and “rule” are verbs of dominance. In Genesis 2, however, the text uses two quite different verbs. God placed the first man in the Garden “to serve it [le’ovdah] and guard it [leshomrah]” (2:15). These belong to the language of responsibility. The first term, le’ovdah, tells us that humanity is not just the master but also the servant of nature. The second, leshomrah, is the term used in later biblical legislation to specify the responsibilities of one who undertakes to guard something that is not their own.

–Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

The Jewish year divides the Old Testament into weekly portions that stay the same year after year.

My politically conservative, religiously Orthodox brother-in-law sent me the article I quoted, “The Ecological Imperative.” It turns out to be last week’s installment in a weekly series by a British rabbi on each week’s parshah, the Torah reading for the week. The readings assigned to each Hebrew-calendar week have stayed the same year after year, for centuries.

Joe knew I would like it. He didn’t know I’d be fascinated enough to write a whole blog post about it. I will share my takeaways from this article–but let me provide some personal background first.

 

My Back Story

I was a convert of the very first Earth Day, back in 1970, when I was 13. By 1971, I had joined my first two environmental advocacy organizations (one in my neighborhood, the other at my high school). That activism (and the lifestyle choices that support it) have been a strong part of my life ever since.

But my motivations back then were entirely secular. Three years earlier, my mom and dad had split up, and both parents had stopped being religious. I had moved from a yeshiva (religious school) with half the day in Hebrew to the regular public school. And as someone who’d not only been very frustrated with the many social and activity limits of Orthodox Judaism but who independently had questioned the existence of God by age 9, I welcomed those confusing changes in my life.

It was only many years later that I began to make space for a sense of faith. My image of God is very different from the classic image of the old man with a beard, throwing lightning. I don’t consider myself religious–but I can’t truthfully call myself an atheist.

In 2017, I began a process of reading major religious texts, starting with the Five Books of Moses, then continuing through the Four Gospels of the New Testament and now the Qur’an (Koran). So I’ve read Deuteronomy fairly recently. Of those nine books of the Old and New Testaments, I found Deuteronomy the most tiresome and challenging by far. It is largely a regurgitation in Moses’s voice of Leviticus and Numbers. As my secular side perceived it, it was a collection of random rules that made no sense in the modern world and maybe not much sense in the ancient world either.

 

Putting the Parsha in Context

But Rabbi Sacks reaches back from the week’s Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9 parsha (“Shoftim”) to the second chapter of Genesis, to show how the sages over these centuries have placed the commandment not to destroy your enemy‘s natural resources during a siege into a broader context of planetary stewardship, and even planetary healing.

The Sages, though, saw in this command something more than a detail in the laws of war. They saw it as a binyan av, a specific example of a more general principle. They called this the rule of bal tashchit, the prohibition against needless destruction of any kind. This is how Maimonides summarises it: “Not only does this apply to trees, but also whoever breaks vessels or tears garments, destroys a building, blocks a wellspring of water, or destructively wastes food, transgresses the command of bal tashchit.”[1] This is the halachic basis of an ethic of ecological responsibility.

 

Lessons and Takeaways

  1. Specifics in the Torah (and by extrapolation, other holy texts from other traditions) can be extrapolated to determine sweeping codes of social behavior/social responsibility.
  2. The texts support an earth-friendly interpretation that provides defense against the argument that the Bible commands us to subdue the earth and its other inhabitants.
  3. More than that, if we take these texts as the word of God, we are commanded to treat the earth as God’s creation, to treat it with great respect, and to maintain its abundance and its health for future generations.
  4. Given this imperative and the rapidly-closing window to solve the climate crisis, if we agree with #3, we have to support a political and business structure that encourages action. Presently, we face not only a global climate crisis (which I believe is still solvable through a combination of innovation and regulation), but a bunch of governments around the world, from the US to Brazil to the Philippines, that are actively attacking measures to preserve the environment (and, not coincidentally, attacking human rights at the same time). Just as Pope Francis’s climate encyclical provided impetus within the Catholic community, Rabbi Sachs’s interpretation can perhaps light a nonpolluting, non-carbon fire among religious Jews and even among Evangelicals (who of course see the Old Testament as part of the Word of God).
  5. The planet can’t speak up in front of a legislature or at the UN. So let’s get some movement going to get leaders who will speak on its behalf!

. 

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Consumer Issues, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, poverty, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Let’s just pretend for a moment that the climate deniers are right and nearly the entire scientific community is wrong. We spend a lot of time and effort so humans can continue living on this planet of ours–and it turns out we didn’t need to do all that. Let’s say all that happens is we switch to clean energy and super-efficient design, improve  our air and water quality, dramatically reduce pollution-related illness, free up more spending power among people who are no longer buying fossil fuels, create hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs, and so on–but it doesn’t affect the climate, or the climate continues to be just fine for humans. Let’s say that ending our reliance on fossil fuels changes our foreign policy away from resource-based wars and toward peace, quality-of-life improvements around the world, and international cooperation.

A storm-damaged pier. Courtesy freeimages.com
A storm-damaged pier. Courtesy freeimages.com

You know what? I’d be pretty happy with those outcomes. It would be worth making that effort even if climate change were not an issue.

BUT…what if the climate scientists are right? What if our future is full of massive flooding, wildfires, severe storms, food riots, and all the rest of it? I’m not actually worried that much about the planet. The planet has survived climate upheaval many times before, and it will again. So will the cockroaches. But I AM worried about our planet’s capacity to sustain human and mammal life, and the plants that we all rely on for our survival. The planet is indifferent to whether humans survive and thrive. It looks to me that the planet has begun to fight back over the past ten or twenty years; “global weirding” has become a thing, around the world. The climate we’ve been used to for a couple of centuries is not the one we have anymore. If we continue blindly down the path of climate denial and inaction, explorers from other planets will land here to discover that the cockroaches are in charge, and humans are either extinct or a tiny remnant living lives of deprivation in scattered little bands.

Don’t take my word about those consequences. Follow these links and listen to the real experts: scientists.

  1. First, a quick general-audience overview of why climate change matters
  2. A more scientific but still relatively readable report from NASA
  3. And finally, a more technical piece from the Union of Concerned Scientists (a group I’ve been paying attention to for about 40 years and for whom I have a great deal of respect) outlining why humans need to own the responsibility for climate change

Are natural causes also contributing to climate change? Sure. Volcanoes, earthquakes, massive forest fires and floods…all of those have an effect on climate. But it’s important to keep four things in mind about natural disasters:

As an example of that last point, consider the accident at Fukushima in 2011. Seismic activity caused a tsunami, which flooded one of the largest concentrations of nuclear power plants in the world (6 plants at the Fukushima Daiichi site and another 4 at Fukushima Daini, just 7 miles away), which led to explosions in at least four of the Daiichi plants, which led to a meltdown, which contaminated a wide swath and forced thousands to evacuate.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is another example. Around the world, numerous oil rigs, nuclear plants, chemical refineries, etc. sit on earthquake faults or next to large bodies of water. And this is simply nuts!

We’ve had 200 years to watch this crisis coming. We have plenty of technology to reduce our need for energy AND to generate clean, safe energy to power our world. If we’d started to get serious about dealing with climate change even as recently as 50 years ago, by now, we could have easily moved to 100% renewables, and if we had any sense, we would have. The good news: we could still convert to 100% renewables by 2050, or perhaps even sooner. The bad news: we may not have the luxury of 30+ years to figure this out, and at the moment, the US at least has a federal government that is actively hostile to climate science and puts dollars in the pockets of big business ahead of the health, safety, and livability of people and planet.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Green Marketing, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Social-good products like this solar-powered LED lamp make a difference AND a profit
Social-good products like this solar-powered LED lamp make a difference AND a profit

Too often, businesses think of sustainability as a “have to” instead of a “delighted to.” Let’s change that attitude! Here are three among many reasons why business leaders should be thrilled to embrace deep sustainability:

  1. The powerful business case. More and more stakeholders are demanding that the companies they patronize address wider environmental and social issues; those who fail to do this are starting to lose market share. Not only that, but going green the RIGHT way can substantially lower costs of energy, raw materials, and other goods while building in customer loyalty and tolerance for higher prices. To say it another way, greening your company can significantly up profitability! Companies in the Fortune 500 figured this out some years ago. Pretty much all of them have sustainability departments (under various names) and have made huge progress in the past decade. Of course, we still have a long way to go. But many smaller companies are resistant. Because they see expenses, not income streams, they dig in with their old, inefficient ways. But certainly, the low-hanging fruit–taking the steps with quick payback–increases profitability directly, by raising income and lowering costs.
  2. The ability to market sustainable goods, services, and processes to three different types of consumer: the Deep Green, who makes purchasing decisions contingent on social responsibility; the Lazy Green, who will do the right thing if it’s convenient; and the Nongreen, who is indifferent or even hostile to a sustainability agenda, but who will happily buy green products and services if they are positioned as superior (more comfortable, more durable, less toxic, etc.). Of course, these three kinds of customers need three different sets of marketing messages–something many green companies don’t understand, and thus leave a lot of money on the table.
  3. The power of business to go beyond sustainability—to regenerativity. To actually make things better: identify/create/market *profitable* offerings that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. Lifting people out of poverty (and creating new markets), ending war, solving climate change as ways to make money: how cool is that?

I’ve spent the last several years studying this trend and have written an award-winning book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, that shows how in detail. It’s been endorsed by over 50 business and environmental leaders, including Seth Godin and Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield. You can learn more at the Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World page at GoingBeyondSustainability.com (I think it’s by far the best of my 10 books, several of which have won awards or been translated and republished in other countries).Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, language, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Here’s a letter I wrote to US Cabinet Secretaries Tillerson, Perry, and Pruitt (State, Energy, EPA), and to Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (with a different subject line). Please write your own letter. You are welcome to model mine. Click to send an email directly to Pruitt and Perry and link to Tillerson’s contact form.

"I wrote a letter to the US government" (picture of handwriting)
“I wrote a letter to the US government”

As a business owner, I ask that you maintain the US’s role in the Paris Climate Accord. The Paris Accord marks a wonderful opportunity for American business to make headway against the widespread perception that European businesses are more environmentally focused. American businesses cannot win back the international market share they’ve lost to environmentally forward-thinking European companies if our own government is seen as sabotaging progress. It would not even shock me if, should the US pull out, activists start organizing boycotts on all US-based companies. Boycotts like this are economically disastrous for the US, just as similar boycotts created enormous pressure on South Africa during the apartheid years and are now beginning to affect the economy of Israel over its presence in Palestinian territories.

I am a consultant to green and social change companies, and I see the positive bottom-line impacts of meeting or exceeding climate goals over and over again. Industries have found that climate mitigation, done right, lowers costs and boosts revenues, thus increasing profitability. I recently attended a conference with speakers from Nestlé, IBM, Google, Pirelli, Coca-Cola, Paypal, clothing manufacturer VFC, and many other global corporations, and the message from every speaker was about the bottom-line benefit of greening their company. This is why companies as diverse as Monsanto, Intel, Dupont and General Mills are among the 1000 companies that signed a public letter this winter urging the US to stay in the Paris agreement.

Progress on climate will also have beneficial effects in the wallets of ordinary Americans–because it will improve health. Reducing asthma and other carbon-related diseases means more discretionary spending and thus an economic boost.

Finally, the long-term picture of addressing climate change in a meaningful way means the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the energy, manufacturing, and agriculture/food sectors as well as a more livable world for our children and grandchildren. If anything, the Paris targets should be seen as a starting point. And if the US embraces this fully and uses its technological leadership, it will create market opportunities around the world for US companies selling the technologies to make this transition.

Sincerely,

Shel Horowitz – “The Transformpreneur”(sm)
________________________________________________
Watch (and please share) my TEDx Talk,
“Impossible is a Dare: Business for a Better World”
https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/11809

Contact me to bake in profitability while addressing hunger,
poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change

Twitter: @shelhorowitz

* First business ever to be Green America Gold Certified
* Inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame

https://goingbeyondsustainability.com
https://transformpreneur.com
mailto:shel@greenandprofitable.com * 413-586-2388
Award-winning, best-selling author of 10 books. Latest:
Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson)

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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.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology Tagged with , , , ,

Delegates at an international meeting
A similar international meeting (in Bonn, Germany)

After the failure at Copenhagen a few years back, I didn’t have big hopes for this year’s event. Yet, I’m beginning to think the big Paris climate change conference known as #COP21 may actually accomplish some real change.

Oddly enough, my optimism is rooted in something I would have seen a few years ago as a fatal flaw: that the results will be based in voluntary, not mandatory, compliance.

Why? Because:

  1. We can’t GET mandatory compliance. In the US, that would require a yes vote in each house of Congress, or even worse, the 2/3 Senate support required to adopt a treaty. But even as far back as Kyoto, US electoral politics had become a toxic swamp of attack-dog partisanship. No climate change bill with teeth is going to pass Congress any time soon. And without US (or China’s) participation, any agreement would be useless.
  2. The US and China have already agreed to take climate seriously, and have negotiated their own agreement. Weaker than I’d like, but a heck of a good start, and one that seems to have helped apply the brakes on China’s mad rush to coal (the worst scenario for averting climate disaster).
  3. The business community has woken up. Often a force for conservatism, the business world now understands the catastrophic consequences of failure to make meaningful progress on climate change—and the profits to be made in doing the right thing. If the government won’t act, they will force action through other channels. The emergence of environmental activism among evangelical Christians and even a subset of Tea Party activists who care deeply about the environment is also very encouraging.
  4. The growing use of carbon markets provides additional financial incentives for cutting carbon.
  5. New technology makes it easier to do more with less, use. our resources far more effectively, and solve engineering problems with biological thinking (for example, letting bridge engineers study spiderwebs). We understand now, for instance, just how much energy and carbon we can save by going for deep conservation.
  6. Early discussions about whether the world should agree on a 1.5 degree Celsius vs. 2 degree C cap in global temperatures compared to what existed before the Industrial Revolution means we’ve finally gotten past the question that’s been holding us back for so long: why do we need to contain rising temperatures in the first place? For the first time, the world is pretty much in agreement that it has to be done. Not just scientists, this time, but governments, too. Climate deniers (other than in the US Republican Party leadership, apparently) are now as marginalized as environmental activists were 20 or 30 years ago.

I could keep going, but you get the message—we can do this!Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail