The financial sector is failing. The dollar is already a lame duck in currency markets, and the Fed just printed up another trillion dollars (God knows where that will come from!) so Wall Street can pay their C-level executives. The presidential campaign is like a bad joke, and the absence of laughter in the crowd is deafening. And then there’s this woman.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!

Howard Beale’s “mad as hell” speech in the film Network is a famous one. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend this movie. Many of the themes in director Sydney Lumet’s 1976 film, about a fictional news network struggling with ratings, are surprisingly relevant today:

That was written over 32 years ago, and we’re still worrying about the banks, inflation, the Russians, and the oil crisis. What the hell has the government done for us in 32 years! What have they accomplished?!

As the economic crisis unfolds and especially as this presidential campaign plays out, I’ve struggled with a lot of disappointment in some of the people of this great country, and although I try not to be too political on this blog, it’s well past time for me to school some of you. As November approaches, I actually have plans to move abroad for a year, and in this post I’ll share some thoughts on why I’m eager to hightail it out of the U.S. for a while at this moment in history. I won’t even dance around the issue: this post is certain to be divisive and get some of your panties in a bunch, and I promise to offend! If you can stand it, please stick with me through the end of the post, where I’ll try to share some solutions to the questions I raise in this article.

First, This Bailout Business

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have been hard at work spending your tax dollars for the last several months. Not only my tax dollars and your tax dollars, but they’ve been spending future generations’ tax dollars, and spending Monopoly money we don’t even have! First it was AIG, then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now most recently a nearly $807 billion package to bail out nine of the largest banks in the country—including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, State Street, and Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

Wall Street has been making poor decisions for a while now, foremost with the subprime mortgage mess, and now it should be paying the consequences. But a free market doesn’t exist in this country and never truly has. If the market were allowed to function freely, the banks would suffer and in some cases even go bankrupt through the forces of free competition. (If you or I were going bankrupt, or your friendly neighborhood small business, you wouldn’t see Congress running around trying to help bail us out.)

Instead, the deregulatory, so-called “free-market conservatives” have turned us all into socialists to keep the banks afloat. And somehow they want to do all of this while at the same time lowering your taxes! Erica Douglass wrote a great summary of the banks’ poor moves in the long history leading up to this credit crisis. She quotes Henry Hazlitt on the economics of a bailout: ‘“The taxpayers must lose precisely as much as the people in X industry gained.” $700 billion is a little over $2000 for every taxpayer in the United States. That $2000 must come out of your pocket at some point. That is $2000 less than you had before, to spend, save, or invest.’ Meanwhile the Fed also flooded the market with another $620 billion in U.S. dollars worldwide, on top of the Congress-approved bailout package. So seriously, where does all this funny-money come from?! As Larry Edelson said: “The biggest cost is going to be the sheer destruction of the purchasing power of your money, an outright devaluation of the dollar that’s going to occur, no matter what.”

Boston Gal says it will discourage consumer saving, pointing out that the government is forcing individual workers pay for their retirement twice, “first by saving what [they] can in the individual accounts, then again as a tax payer by bailing out these companies. A horrible deal for the individual worker.”

Now let’s look at what we’re actually making this sacrifice for. At first it was a $700 billion plan, but to pass the House of Representatives, the legislation grew from three pages to 452, and over $100 billion in special interest earmarks were added to the bill:

• $109 million for Nascar race track builders.
• $200,000 a year for the manufacturers of wooden arrows for children.
• $192 million for rum producers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
• $19 billion over two years for companies who do research.
• $478 million for film and television producers over 10 years.
• $62 billion for 24 million households excluded from the alternative minimum tax this year.
• $17 billion for alternative energy producers.
• $8 billion for Americans affected by hurricanes and floods.

All of this was enough to make hedge fund manager Andrew Lahde leave the business, with his own finger-wagging resignation letter: “[L]egislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. […] Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt.”

Lies, Rhetoric, and Incompetence

Now who was there to lead the charge, heroically suspending his campaign and seeking to postpone presidential debates to go back to Washington and “save the nation” from economic crisis? Senator John McCain, just two weeks after being quoted as saying that he didn’t think U.S. taxpayers should be on the hook for bailing out AIG or anyone else!

The McCain campaign publicized on the Wall Street Journal online that he had won the first debate before it even took place (let alone before he had even clarified whether or not he would be there). Then McCain himself prematurely claimed responsibility for the bailout plan’s success, saying he had helped “bring everyone to the table” and agree on legislation, when it later turned out he couldn’t even secure the votes of his own Republican colleagues. McCain is quick to take credit, but his empty words mean nothing.

Then again, when you’re on TV, if you say something often enough and loud enough, people will believe it. McCain positions himself as a “maverick” who wants to end our oil addiction and clean up Wall Street. He loves to say what people want to hear, and he will pander to any audience you put him in front of (watch John Cafferty give a good summary of his flip-flops on oil taxes, offshore drilling, the Bush tax cuts, Guantanamo Bay, and torture).

Then there’s the Palin pick. It was as if John McCain turned this entire presidential race into a joke, at all of our expense, when he chose an inexperienced crony cheerleader from a backwater Alaskan town to be his VP. Time columnist Joe Klein summed up what a lot of people have been thinking—conservative and liberal alike—when he said “It was a gimmick. It was one of the most disastrous decisions I have seen in a presidential campaign since I’ve begun covering them.”

Palin sounds like a teenager who didn’t study the night before the big essay test, stringing together extraneous topics and peppering her answers with buzzwords, pretending as best she can like she read last night’s assignment. But there’s no substance. In her interviews with Charlie Gibson, Katie Couric, and even with Sean Hannity, as well as her performance at the Vice Presidential debate, it is clear that the woman is not fit for the job. She doesn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is! She claims Alaska’s proximity to Russia gives her foreign relations experience. She thinks the bailout plan is about healthcare and job creation. She can’t name a single news source she reads regularly. She had never been outside of the country before 2007! (Here are a few more interview clips that should confuse and/or frighten the hell out of you.) The campaign claims that her “executive experience” as a mayor and a governor qualify her for the second highest seat in the government—though Wasilla is a town of only 6,000, and the Alaskan constituency is only about 680,000 [source]. That’s smaller than population of the city I’ve grown up in, just one moderately-sized city in California.

Michael J. Cecchin is calling November 4th a national IQ test, citing that the folks in charge of running our federal government should be the cream of the crop:

“[W]ith the introduction of  hick-ish religious zealot and uninformed hockey mom Sarah Palin as the VP candidate, the rules have changed.  The prospect of having a future Vice-President with so many  fundamental cognitive loop holes and personality defects sends a terrifying shudder through most thinking Americans. It leads us to believe that if selecting Palin is the McCain administration’s first major decision its likely just the start in a line-up of future disasters.”

McCain has shown poor judgment with his selection of Palin as his running mate, and when he stalled presidential debates during the bailout talks. I admire McCain’s service to this country, but he’s quick to take sole credit for Congress’ successes, and he has demonstrated a strong tendency to be reactionary, aggressive, divisive, and out of touch—with the internet generation, with the majority of the American public, and with his own Republican colleagues in Congress. His ideas are old and exhausted: when he talks about foreign relations, he boils it down to military bullying. When he talks about energy policy, the only solution he can offer is to give big oil even more subsidy money and less regulation. When John McCain talks about “change,” he’s not talking about progress. He’s talking about maintaining the status quo, and giving even more power to the people who already have it.

The Politics of Hate

Together, McCain and Palin have been playing on the fears and hatred of American voters. The campaign has repeatedly incited racial, religious, and nationalistic hatred among supporters, at times accusing Barack Obama of fraternizing with terrorists. When General Colin Powell appeared on Meet the Press, he spoke of how McCain supporters have been allowed to call Obama a Muslim and link him with radical Islam and gone unchallenged by the candidates:

“Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, ‘He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”

He then goes on to tell the story of 20-year-old Kareem Rashad Sultan Kahn, an American Muslim who went to fight in the Iraq war after 9/11 and gave his life for the American people, making an appeal for religious equality and respect.

“Those kinds of images going out on al-Jazeera are killing us around the world… we have got to say to the world, it doesn’t matter who you are—if you’re American, you’re an American.”

A similar issue on the California ballot this year is Proposition 8. Prop 8 would change the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California, and provide that only marriage between a man and a woman would be valid or recognized in California. Ben Casnocha did a very thorough evaluation of both sides of the argument and comes to the conclusion that we should act to “keep out actively homophobic and discriminatory language from our constitution and keep in the state the people and culture which make this place so great.”

So, why is there such a strong push to repeal the decision that was made just months ago to award equal rights to gays and lesbians? I may disagree, but I can respect and understand other people’s individual moral and spiritual beliefs. I have no problem with a person’s right to feel however they choose about homosexuality and their right to define marriage as they see fit, but religious and spiritual beliefs of that nature are a very private domain. It’s time we stop allowing the conservative Right to determine civil rights for the Left and the Middle. Nobody should force others to adopt their religious ethics—biblical teachings are to be kept by the believer, not enforced upon the non-believer. And except in cases where someone’s well-being is in danger, I don’t think the government is suited to enforce a moral code, because there are as many different ideas about morality as there are people on this planet. When it comes to one’s rights in the eyes of the law, it’s well past time for everyone to be on the same playing field. This is no different than the civil rights or women’s rights movements.

Rick Jacobs, a homosexual columnist who grew up in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, says that “those speaking in the name of their God and prophets, led principally by out-of-state Mormons and joined by evangelical Christians, have made the removal of my rights a holy war for the new century.” He continues:

“I feel laid bare that people I do not know can vote secretly to remove my rights. This is, unfortunately, reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws that led to Kristallnacht, that horrible event 70 years ago next month that resulted in the burning of over 200 synagogues and countless other Jewish-owned establishments. The Nazis stripped rights from Jews piecemeal until finally Jews lost the right to eat and then to live.”

A young woman I know has to deal with the hard fact that her own father would vote to deny his daughter equal rights, because she is a lesbian. What does that say about our society?

It is funny in this country how many people claim that a vote for Barack Obama will lead to socialism. The media and Republican talking heads throw that word around a lot. But in fact, this nation is much further to the right than many people are willing to admit, and for some reason no one is comfortable to use the word “Fascism” when they speak about the Neoconservative agenda or the many constitutional trespasses of the current administration. I fear a move from the Right towards Fascism much more so than I fear a move to socialism from the Left in this country. When I look at how this government has chipped away at the Constitution in the last eight years, I see things aligning similarly to how they did just before Germany’s Third Reich—extreme social conservatism, civil rights abuses, a surveillance state, propaganda in the media, the looming threat of hyperinflation, imprisonment without charge, institutionalized torture, even internment camps!

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a huge supporter of Barack Obama either. On the FISA bill in June, Obama went from opposing warrantless domestic wiretapping to giving President Bush and the telecoms full retroactive immunity for the administration’s illegal wiretapping program. He also supported the $807 billion bailout mess just like McCain did. Nobody’s very fiscally conservative, no matter what they tell you. It’s business as usual, and Obama really is the lesser of two evils.

Both political parties offer us the same mediocre results. This two-party system has utterly failed us. It has devolved into a mindless back-and-forth popularity contest. They keep any third-party contenders out—intelligent folks like Ron Paul who actually want to discuss real change and restore our Constitution to its former supremacy. Big government and big business strive to keep the masses ignorant, because the rich prosper off of a large, stupid populace. As long as we have our flatscreen TVs and our gas-guzzling Escalades, the American people won’t ask questions. They fill our heads with myths about a “liberal media” and the necessity to stay involved in a war that costs us many, many lives and billions of dollars each month with no clear end goals. They frame everything as black and white, good versus evil, red states versus blue states, and you buy it. The political climate we live in is no different than the medieval Crusades. We still buy into an “us versus them” mentality, but it’s just not true. The world is not that simple.

I would have hoped that the human race would have evolved by now. I would have hoped that we would could get beyond wars as the solution to our problems. I would have hoped that we’d be a bit more intelligent, and realize that, like Colin Powell so eloquently said, “We have got to stop this nonsense, pull ourselves together, and remember that our great strength is in our unity, in our diversity.”

Really Nation?

Must we learn the same lessons over and over again? Must we really revisit a woman’s right to choose? Gay rights? Freedom of religion? Must we really let the Democratic and Republican parties distract us as usual with issues that were decided upon 30 years ago, while our young men and women are dying overseas and the value of the dollar is freefalling? It’s all a bait-and-switch. They are keeping us distracted from the issues that really matter.

As the election draws near, I have this growing fear that all of our worst qualities will become blatantly clear to the world on November 4th—the fear, ignorance, racism, hatred, bigotry—and the United States will show itself for what it really is: an uneducated, divided, fearful nation. I fear that if John McCain is elected President, it will seal our fate for another four years of poor judgment, gross mismanagement, poor international relations, economic recession, and perhaps much worse.

America was supposed to be the Great Experiment. This was supposed to be the most democratic, progressive, tolerant nation in the world. We pride ourselves on being the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. But we’re acting like the Land of the Fearful and the Home of the Bigots. Who did this to my country? Who’s responsible?

Every one of us is responsible. I’m not asking you to vote for Obama. Vote for Bob Barr. Or better yet, write in Ron Paul. Vote for Stephen Colbert. Or vote for me! I don’t care who you vote for. (Click here for the full list of candidates.) All that is clear, in this writer’s opinion, is which candidate you should NOT vote for. Smart Republicans are walking away. Take my advice or don’t, but whatever you do, don’t bury your head in the goddamn sand! Don’t ignore the issues. These topics will affect your life, and the lives of your children and your childrens’ children. Please make your voice heard, and please use your vote wisely.

If you agree with my sentiments, pass this article along to friends and family or vote for it on Digg or StumbleUpon. If you disagree, then call me names in the comments! But whatever you do, get fuckin’ angry, and get yourself to the polls on November 4th.

So what can you do? Well here are a few great articles by other writers (to get you thinking) and a few resources to make the most of this election and rough economic times ahead:

• Learn why many Republicans and Conservatives are voting for Obama at ConservativesForChange.com
• Read and share Ben Casnocha’s thorough evaluation of Prop 8 on the California Ballot
• Why I’m voting Obama by Andrea Zak
• Why You Should Vote for Obama, Even If You Don’t Agree on the Issues by Holly Hoffman
• Maximize Your Influence in the Election – Lifehacker
  
• How Do I Help Fight Prop 8 and Keep Same-Sex Marriage Legal in California? – Huffington Post
  
• What Can You Do To Help Solve The Credit Crisis? by Erica Douglass
• Stash your cash in an ING DIRECT Orange Savings or Emigrant Direct American Dream Savings account
• AARP’s Divided We Fail site
• DeclareYourself.com, where you can get state-by-state ballot info

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: I’m Mad As Hell and I’m Not Gonna Take It Anymore! This Government Is An Unprecedented Failure. It’s Time For Change!

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, wrote today about an opportunity for American Express cardholders to vote in a charity poll to donate $1.5 million to help pay for education & book costs for 100,000 U.S. schoolchildren.

Ferriss—who is one of my two top information sources for travel, technology, and all-around awesome tips (the other is Lifehacker)—is a master at cutting out information overload and spends much of his time traveling, yet somehow manages to keep his finger firmly to the pulse of important social issues. I know it can be such a faux pas to send mass emails to friends and business colleagues, but Tim is frequently on top of important time-sensitive causes that need a little help to go viral (this is the second one I deemed important enough to forward to my network; the first was about the recent FISA Bill).

This is from Tim Ferriss’ blog today. Unfortunately, I don’t have an AMEX, so I’m passing it on to you guys to carry the torch! See below for details:

One click here today can give 100,000 students $1.5 million for education. No joke and no exaggeration. Take a second and earn some karma!

There are less than 7 hours left to help 100,000 public school students get $1.5 million dollars in much-needed funding for their educations. A single click here is all I ask of you, and I sweeten the pot with a bribe below…

First, from the woman who convinced me to put up this post:

“Where you grow up shouldn’t determine the quality of the education you receive. To help level the playing field, I propose giving 100,000 children in low-income communities the books, technology, and other materials that they need for a proper education.”

The non-profit Donorschoose (who appear on the dedication page of 4HWW) only need 3,000-4,000 more votes to reach first place and receive $1.5 million dollars from American Express. As few as 500 more votes could lock them in for $500,000 (that means each vote is worth $1,000).

Earn some serious good karma and use this as your moment of Zen today.

You can make a difference in 100,000 lives with the click of a button. Please take these three simple steps to move from spectator to player in creating the world you want:

Vote here. If you don’t have an American Express Card, please forward this post to a friend and ask them to vote on your behalf.

If you use social media sites, help Digg & Stumble Tim Ferriss’ post up, or send a message to your friends via Twitter, Myspace, or Facebook. Let’s help them get at least 500 votes before midnight EST tonight to donate to 100,000 schoolkids.

Tim has also attached a little bribe for those who help spread the news and respond to his blog post. If I’m selected and get a chance to speak with Tim, perhaps he will agree to help me start off the new interview podcast series I’m planning in collaboration with Entreprini.com. I’d love to use the time to ask him a few questions from the readers and see what thoughts he has about entrepreneurship and lifestyle design specifically for college students and twentysomething professionals. There was trouble with the comment submission form on the 4HWW blog, so here’s my answer to Tim’s question about the most important teacher in my life:

The teacher who has been most influential on my life was my high school French professor, Alec Hodgins. I was in his classes 3 out of 4 years and became pretty close. His teaching helped give me an appreciation for a foreign culture that much of our country is afraid of for some reason. He was an early source of great world music, literature, and life philosophy, and also provided a great deal of travel inspiration for me, just as you have. I was lucky enough to have my first trip abroad on one of his class trips—spending a week with a host family in Cannes and a few days in Paris with classmates. The travel seed was sown! My interest in Thailand was first stoked when he shared about his experience taking his family there for an extended vacation. That interest was reinforced by your advice about geo-arbitrage, the positive experiences of dozens of other friends, and now I’m making it real and going to live abroad in Southeast Asia for the year ahead!

[source: Deadline in Less Than 7 Hours - An Important Bribe (Plus: Happiness Research for Economic Crashes) - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Tim Ferriss is Turning Me Into a Spammer! (OR: Why You Should Sacrifice 5 Minutes of Your Time Today for 100 Thousand American Schoolkids)

It’s been a long time since I wrote about sustainability, but it is one issue that will challenge Generation Y like no other generation yet. I’ve shied away from it because I got tired of reporting on news that always seemed to be negative. I got tired of feeling like a doomsayer, which—unfortunately—is what a lot of environmentalists come off sounding like. But Wired Magazine’s 15th anniversary issue has stirred up a lot of talk in the global warming circles that caught my attention yesterday.

Despite the fact that the discussion can be a depressing one, and the options can at times seen hopeless, it remains that climate change is a huge, looming threat for human society, and it will have a huge influence especially on those of us who will still be around in 30 to 50 years. A lot of my peers are passionate about green living and sustainability, and that’s encouraging, because the choices we make with our daily lives, and more importantly the advances we make in science and industry in our lifetimes will have a large influence on whether our planet will sustain human life for the next several hundred years.

I’m not here to argue how much human behavior has impacted global warming—that’s a moot point if you ask me. In my opinion, yes, climate change—to some extent—is inevitable, even without the impact of human society. But the fact still remains that we must either learn to deal with global warming one way or another, or our species may not be able to survive on this changing planet. Regardless of who’s fault it is, our generation has an opportunity to make some big changes. And the difference between failure and success could be several million human lifetimes. I’d rather see our generation preserve the Earth as a hospitable place for our children and grandchildren.

Wired’s latest cover story asks environmentalists, and all the rest of us, to rethink what the green movement means. The writers propose ten controversial “solutions” that run counterintuitive to traditional environmental agendas, citing that “winning the war on global warming requires slaughtering some of environmentalism’s sacred cows.” Here they are: Wired’s ten unconventional remedies for global warming. Click through to learn more.

Wired’s 10 Green Heresies

1. Urban Living Is Kinder to the Planet Than the Suburban Lifestyle
2. Air-Conditioning Actually Emits Less C02 Than Heating
3. Conventional Agriculture Can Be Easier on the Planet than Organics
4. Harvest Old-Growth Forests That Can Actually Contribute to Global Warming
5. Coal-Coughing Industrial Giant China Actually Leads the Way in Alternative-Energy Technology
6. Bio-Engineered Crops Could Put a Real Dent in Greenhouse Gas Emissions
7. Carbon Credits Were a Great Idea, But a Carbon Tax Would Work Better
8. Face It. Nuclear is the Most Sustainable Source of Industrial-Scale Energy
9. No-Brainer: Test-Drive a Used Car Instead of That New Hybrid
10. Climate Change Is Inevitable. Get Used to It

The Wired blog is attracting a lot of discussion—most of it negative. I can sympathize with those who place a great deal of value on conventional environmentalist tenets like conservation and energy efficiency, but I think it’s important to recognize that only a very small percentage of the population is ready to embrace the “less is more” mentality. As the article states, “We must accept that the world’s fastest-growing economies won’t forgo a higher standard of living in the name of climate science.” All across the world, as societies become more affluent, they become more materialistic and they consume more resources and energy. Changing that intrinsic human behavior will prove to be a much more difficult challenge than adapting to it. It’s time to find solutions that can work in our business-centric, materialistic world. That’s the real world.

What do you guys think? Am I off my rocker for embracing used cars and nukes? Do you think Generation Y stands a chance of turning the world sustainable? How do you hope to contribute? Or do you still think all this global warming stuff is bunk?

[source: Wired.com]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 10 Controversial Climate Change Fixes to Spark Discussion—From Wired.com

Today I have the opportunity to share a fascinating interview with a young businessman that is helping to change the world for the better! Duff McDuffee is an inspiring jack-of-all-trades. He is co-founder of Falling Fruit TV, a conscious online media company, as well as a deeply passionate philosopher, life coach, and yogin. His work is concentrated on the possibilities of global change through the transformation of business, and on applying systems theory to personal growth.

Duff earned his Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Lawrence University, and has earned a great deal of experience with several conscious businesses and non-profits in the Boulder, Colorado, area. He has also served over 60 Life Coaching clients worldwide in tackling personal challenges and achieving goals. Duff also writes a fantastic personal blog at http://duff.zaadz.com, which I highly recommend, and he recently wrote a useful GTD resource that took off in the blog world. In this exclusive interview, Duff shares some of his encouraging thoughts on business, philosophy, and empowerment.

So tell us about the new startup, Falling Fruit TV. What separates you guys from the pack, and what is your mission?

Falling Fruit is a podcast network that is creating free audio and video shows on topics of personal and global transformation. We have shows ranging from how to change the world through business, to how to change your health through alternative medicine, as well as a popular show for serious meditators called Buddhist Geeks, and a new show exploring what it means to be a man, with many more to come. Our shows are currently audio-only, but we have some video podcasts in the works too, which are going to be HOT!

Our mission statement is “Through providing leading-edge media content, Falling Fruit connects, informs, and empowers world citizens who want to become effective agents of change.” Pretty lofty I know, but us Millennials tend to be pretty optimistic.

And for those not hip to podcasting yet, a podcast is an audio or video show broadcast over the web that you can subscribe to, usually through iTunes, usually for free, and then iTunes automatically downloads the newest episodes to your computer and/or iPod or other media player. We love new technology at Falling Fruit, and aim to use it for “technospiritual” ends, in other words asking the question “how can this cool new tech thing I’m drooling over actually be used to do good in the world?”

You co-host the Conscious Business show at Falling Fruit. What are some of the current trends in conscious business–and which organizations are on the cutting edge that we should keep an eye on?

Conscious Business is a name we’ve put on a number of emerging trends in the business world, especially trends for businesses that are addressing environmental and social justice issues, as well as businesses that are encouraging their employees to self-actualize.

One interesting thing to keep an eye on is the blurring of the line between for-profit and non-profit. The “triple bottom line” concept (people, profit, planet) is one example, where for-profit companies are actually creating metrics and pushing for new legal structures to hold themselves accountable to more than just quarterly profits. Another is “for-benefit,” the best example I know of being my friend Mathew’s business, eConsciousMarket.com, which is a “philanthropic eco-marketplace,” selling only socially and environmentally responsible goods, and 50% of profits go to the non-profit of your choice.

Another wild thing I’ve been noticing is how much innovation is occurring on the environmentally responsible end of things. We recently interviewed Joshua Onysko, founder of Pangea Organics, on our show. Pangea is almost not a business but an example of a business–they are innovating for the point of inspiring other businesses, to show them what is socially and environmentally possible while making a very significant profit.

My friend Christiana wrote up a great summary of other similar trends that’s worth reading.

Personally, I’m keeping an eye on Whole Foods. John Mackey has created an incredibly forward-thinking organization that has dramatically changed the grocery and health food industries.

You mentioned another show at Falling Fruit called Buddhist Geeks, and I know you practice Vipassana meditation. Please tell us more about Bhuddism and business. Do you think that it’s possible to reconcile a Buddhist philosophy with a mentality of career success and wealth-building?

I do practice Vipassana, and the teacher in my tradition, S.N. Goenka, was a businessman before becoming a Vipassana teacher. He too wrestled with the greed and corruption in the business world, and anyone who takes Buddhist teachings seriously will have to come to their own integration.

Personally, I don’t see any inherent contradiction between career success and insight into the fundamental nature of life, if you understand the purpose of business, which I believe is to serve human needs. Now keeping that in mind, we all have a need for food, and if you habitually overeat, then you are not truly meeting your needs for nourishment and health. A certain amount of wealth will feed your own needs — happiness studies in the US have shown that after about $36,000 in income, a person is no more happy if they make more money. However, it’s hard to fund a new venture without a stockpile of extra cash! Falling Fruit was started in large part because two of our friends had access to trust funds, which helped kick off the project. The purpose of large amounts of accumulated wealth is not to overstuff yourself with luxury, but to feed new things — new businesses, new projects, and yes, to feed people too, via philanthropy and the creation of new jobs!

Plus the definition of career success seems to be changing. A lot of young people are being raised by parents who have accumulated all they ever wanted and yet are obviously unfulfilled. We don’t want to go through their suffering, so we are looking to have our cake and eat it too, to make a good living AND to live out our passions AND have 2 months off a year to meditate and do personal development AND to serve the world in the highest ways we can possibly imagine. Nothing else feels like “success” anymore.

How can Generation Y best set about making positive changes in their lives and in the world through their careers?

There are so many ways! Now more than ever. Let me give you a little of my personal history first.

I was a Philosophy major, and almost a Psychology and Environmental Studies triple-major. When I graduated college in 2001, I was a member of something like 5 activist groups (several of which I started), and figured that all business is run by greedy, environment-killing capitalist pigs. So naturally I couldn’t find any work, and ended up in telephone tech support, which I hated with a passion. Luckily I did like people and solving problems though, so I was able to survive long enough doing this and web design work to figure out what I was good at and how I could make money while making a difference.

Along the way I found that business is not evil by definition, and that many people in business actually want to serve the fulfillment of human needs. Also many new exciting trends were emerging that were creating opportunities for people like me who want to make a difference but not starve working for a non-profit startup (which I did for a while), and who want to change the way business operates to make it more environmentally and socially responsible.

Here are my the top 3 things Millennial kids can do to change the world through work:

1. Know yourself. Engage in a study of your strengths and weaknesses. Take strengths assessment tests like Martin Seligman’s signature strengths assessment, or the Discover Your Strengths book, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Enneagram, etc. Learn exactly what it is that you are good at, passionate about and love, and do these things.

Account for your weaknesses by partnering with people who are good at those things, then figure out how to avoid ever doing those things on the job. There are already far too many people doing someone else’s job! Design your career path consciously, and then follow opportunities.

2. Follow your bliss. Keep doing what you love. The world needs people who are ALIVE, who are living at their full potential. Don’t settle for a crappy job, position, or project! Start a business, or two, or three. Every day ask yourself, “What do I want? What do I want to do today? What do I want to create today? What huge problem could I solve with my creativity and ingenuity? What great group could I organize?”

Don’t fall for the line of BS that you “have to” do X, Y, and Z. There’s almost nothing that you have to do nowadays. All the rules have been broken. Ask “what if?” questions often. “What if we could create houses that didn’t consume energy but actually produced energy back onto the grid?” “What if I could get paid to read personal development books?” (What my friend Brian Johnson is asking.) Great things happen from great questions like these.

3. Study marketing. Great ideas that nobody hears about don’t impact the world. Your idea must be good and cool to succeed. Plus you need to market yourself — be willing to brag about your passions and your goals, and your accomplishments if you have any.

The median age at Falling Fruit is 25. Until recently our president was one of the youngest guys in our company. Don’t believe the crap that “you are too young to start a business” or to do whatever it is you want to do. Dream big, and find a way! The world needs what you have to offer.

Tell us more about your life coaching practice. What methods do you use to help your clients achieve personal growth?

Coaching is wonderful work, really. It’s the kind of work where after a session you pinch yourself and say “I just got paid for that??” I help people become more alive and live their full potential — it’s my favorite conversation! And I’ve been lucky enough to work with 60+ clients all over the world so far.

I’ve been obsessed with personal growth work for as long as I can remember. So I use whatever intuitively seems appropriate for my clients. But more specifically, I help people get productive and organized using David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology (see my GTD checklist here). I also use a bunch of stuff I learned from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Tony Robbins, personality typing models like the Enneagram, as well as just general goal-setting and belief management tools and techniques. For a summary of tons of little techniques, I recommend The Success Principles by Jack Canfield, or checking out my friend Brian Johnson’s website ThinkArete.com, where he has 500+ “big ideas” — summaries of books and teachers — available for reading and listening! Lately I’ve been reading some wackier but very interesting stuff from Robert Anton Wilson like Prometheus Rising, which blew my mind when I read it last week.

What I find most amazing about the work is how our maps of reality keep us from experiencing joy and aliveness, and keep us from achieving what we want, and how incredibly flexible these maps truly are.

What does GTD mean for you? How do you use it in your business and personal life?

GTD has been a lifesaver for me. I’m an idea guy. You know those ideas that could change your life and the world if you applied them? Well I get like 5 an hour — faaaaar too many to ever actually apply!

GTD keeps me real. “What’s the next action?” and the “someday-maybe” list have been wonderful at getting me to take my ideas and put them into action, or to shelf them for another day. And I keep my email inbox to 0 or close to it every day now, which keeps me sane, and sometimes even peaceful at work. I can’t fathom having more than 20 emails in my inbox now. I came back from a meditation retreat recently and had 257, and I cleared them out in a couple hours right away.

Our business has been infused with GTD. We’ve created an incredible number of processes around the production of our shows, covering every detail, and always focusing on greater efficiency. Our website has only been up for a couple months, but we’re already a month or two ahead on most our shows! I can’t take credit for the efficiency though, we’ve got a great team of people much more productive than I am. I use GTD to keep up!

But it’s not just the system of GTD, it’s the discipline. At the GTD Roadmap seminar I attended, David Allen talked about how it takes about 2 years to fully implement the system. I think it’s maybe more like 5 years, but maybe I’m a slow learner. But I figure I’m going to be doing things for the rest of my life, I may as well do them productively!

And at the end of the day, “productivity” is about what you are producing in the world — what goals and dreams you are making real…and how! GTD can help make your dreams real and help you enjoy the process too.

And I’m interested in this concept you have about our “maps of reality” and how they can prevent us from achieving individual and collective happiness. I too have a lot of passion for helping people overcome fears and reach for their dreams. Please tell us more about your thoughts on experiencing joy and aliveness, as you say above, and reaching other BIG goals.

Well, according to Buddhism, achievement of your goals is temporary, because everything is subject to the law of impermanence. So the challenge with achieving happiness and other big goals is that if you were to ever achieve them, life would keep on changing and then you’d be unhappy again!

But Buddhism is not a pessimistic philosophy. The recommendation is to practice equanimity with subtle subjective experience with the aim of achieving total equanimity and emptiness (Nirvana), which of course also changes, but life is different at that point. I’m aiming for that in my practice, but it will of course take time. A Buddhist teacher and author I respect suggests that full enlightenment can definitely be done with regular meditation retreats and daily practice though!

In the meantime, temporary happiness can also come from flow, a state of total engagement with what you are doing, where the challenge meets your ability. Anyone can do this by discovering their passions and then going for them wholeheartedly. Simply ask yourself “What do I really, really want?” and then “What’s the next physical action I can take to get a little closer?” I’m big on visualizing and goal-setting, and creating mindmaps and written plans to achieving my goals. I set yearly personal goals, and set goals and intentions for other areas of my life whenever I feel dissatisfied or like I’m “settling” for less than the best. It requires continuous revisiting! But your life will be full of passion, you will sleep satisfied that you gave your best, and when you die you will know you lived and loved fully.

Alright, and the big question: what are 5 things that students and young professionals can do to prepare for a conscious life and career?

I don’t know if these things will help you attain worldly success, but they will certainly lead to a more conscious, fun, and interesting life and career!

1. Engage in personal growth. Deeply examine yourself and your experience, whether through psychoanalysis, Vipassana meditation, the Enneagram, ecstatic dance, philosophy, interpreting your dreams, psychedelic drugs, or whatever. Really know that someday you will die, and choose to live fully now. Figure out why it is you are here, your purpose for living, then go about living that purpose in everything you do, every single day. Study success, and how to make your goals and dreams real. Hang out with people you want to become more like. Cut out bad habits like watching TV and endlessly surfing the web. Develop good habits like meditating and exercising daily.

If you aren’t growing, chances are you are dying (slowly and invisibly).

2. Question everything. You’ve got to learn to create. In order to do so, you’ve got to learn to question. The world is a place full of opportunity and abundance, but in order to access it, you must be free of limiting beliefs and ideas about the world. Get curious about everything! Go out and explore! Ask “why must these two things be at odds?” Try to integrate everything and see what happens. Do something weird and outrageous daily.

3. Assume wild success. Henry Ford said “Whether you think you can do a thing, or you think you can’t, you’re probably right.” Ask “what if…?” questions daily. Assume that you can have it all, that you can get paid to do what you’d happily pay to do, that there are multiple solutions to this impossible problem, that of course it’s possible and profitable to make a product that brings the entire developing world out of poverty. Whatever you want most for the world or yourself, assume that it could be even more successful than you imagine and then go about making it real! The world needs people to think this way if we are to overcome the complex and “impossible” problems of today.

4. Get things done. It’s ok if your head’s in the clouds as long as your feet are still on the ground. This is called growth! Learn and practice GTD. Every day take 5 actions towards your most important goal. Keep your email inbox at 0. Get your typing speed up. Learn the disciplines of the digital age while you are young!

5. Serve people. In business and in life, you will be more successful and feel wonderful if you are serving the needs of others in all that you do. Make a habit of “networking” by asking yourself whom you could contact today and create extra value for. Reach out to people you don’t know and offer them something that could help them reach their goals!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: An Interview with Duff McDuffee of Falling Fruit TV

Karen Seeh is a young environmental professional and consultant in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, with over ten years of experience at the intersection of business and environmental sustainability. In other words, Karen has been doing this since before it was the cool thing to do! Karen exercises her passion for launching mission-based ventures as Principal of Jihi Consulting, offering business and non-profit development services, as well as by serving as an advisory board member for the Strategic Business Intelligence Group (SBIG), an informal group of professionals who promote social enterprise to the Dallas/Ft. Worth region. Karen has been involved in Net Impact, an environmental and social sustainability organization for young professionals that spans the globe, and she has spoken with me by phone before to share some great thoughts on succeeding in the sustainability niche. Here today you will learn more about the career path she has blazed for herself, and about developing trends in corporate sustainability and social enterprise.

You describe yourself as a Corporate Sustainability Strategist and a Social Enterprise Creation and Ideation consultant, which sounds very interesting! So, in layman’s terms, what do you do?

Well, as this field barely existed when I started my career 12 years ago and is still in the process of formation — I’ve done a lot of things to get to where I am today. Currently, I operate as an independent consultant providing business and non-profit development services (marketing/communications, fundraising/sales, multi-stakeholder partnerships, and strategy) to corporate social responsibility (CSR) ventures and social enterprises. I really enjoy laying the groundwork, connecting people, integrating ideas and data, and publicizing to get these ventures launched and/or scaled. And I most enjoy it when I can draw upon my experience in information technology/technology innovation, the environment, and small business and entrepreneurial development.

What does “business sustainability” mean to you?

Figuring out how to avoid the risks and take advantage of the opportunities presented to a business while still balancing economic, environmental (and human health!), and social considerations. All too often businesses focus on taking advantage of economic opportunities and only pursuing a risk management approach in terms of environmental and social considerations. This is probably not the best long-term strategy (but then how many businesses think long-term?). On the flip side, I think there is real value to be created when businesses start to think creatively about how to turn environmental and social challenges into a business opportunity.

When I say “social enterprise” in this context, I mean that the enterprise is “mission driven” — the founders have a passion for addressing a societal or environmental problem with a particular approach, service, or product. And then they just form the most appropriate vehicle around that solution (non-profit, for-profit, etc.) to accomplish the mission. Money is still important, but secondary to the mission. Especially in the case of the non-profit structure, they are often just seeking enough money to keep themselves self-financed.

Your most recent position was consulting for Envirofit International. Walk us through what a typical project like this looks like.

Envirofit is a growing clean tech non-profit in need of “expansion stage” funding. I developed a fundraising strategy and kickstarted it building relationships with government agencies, international development organizations and banks, social venture capital firms and foundations, as well as pursuing additional opportunities such as competitions, strategic partnerships, and low-cost publicity. Developing a fundraising strategy is a lot like developing a sales and marketing plan — you identify your prospects and determine your approach with each group. It’s just that non-profit fundraising is probably a lot more regimented than private sector sales and marketing; there are certain prescribed formats for letters and proposals.

You’ve worked in non-profit, government, and private business. Describe what that experience has been like, and how you got to be where you are now.

I never realized how unusual that was until I lived outside of Washington, D.C. as a professional. I formed my career in Washington, where it’s very commonplace for people to be “multi-sectoral.” It’s my sense that, at least within the space of CSR and social enterprise, the lines between these groups are increasingly becoming blurred. It was already clear to me 12 years ago when I started my career that there is no “us against them,” and the wave of the future was multi-stakeholder partnerships. Unfortunately, despite the popularity of such partnerships, they are often not as successful as they can be without mutual understanding. I think that my background enables me to provide this unique perspective.

What got you interested in sustainable development and sustainable growth?

I think it was a combination of things: many summers trips to Alaska during my high school years — was there the summer before and the summer after Exxon Valdez; saw the dried up Midwest from a plane during the summer drought of 1988. My father also worked for a large energy company, so growing up I was very aware of where my power came from — I was taught to conserve energy at a young age. Many people in my family, too, have been Peace Corps volunteers, so at a young age I was exposed to their stories about life in developing countries. I latched onto environmental issues and became a vegetarian somewhere around the age of 15…and it all evolved from there.

Do you feel like you make a positive impact with your career?

I think just about every career can be seen to have a positive impact, and some of us are more driven by impact than other motivators. I am definitely strongly driven by impact, and I do think that my career makes a positive impact at least in the short term. I cannot predict the impacts that I’ll have in the long-term. The impact that I value has changed over the years. I think it’s easy to get caught up in pursuing impact that is of national or international significance. However, all too often, such impacts lack a human connection. You may begin to wonder who did you really help. Because of this, I now gravitate toward opportunities where I can have a large impact on a small group of people or on one enterprise. Not that one way is better than the other, but you have to know what really gives you satisfaction.

When the job gets tough, what keeps you going?

I don’t know if I even think about work being “tough.” If there’s a problem that needs to be solved, it’s all I can think about to get to the bottom of it and move on. Work needs to be viewed in perspective: Think how lucky we are to even be given the opportunity of having work that also brings us great personal satisfaction. My parents and grandparents certainly did not have this. So, what on Earth do I have to complain about?

What do you recommend to students who want to get into your line of work?

I’m not quite sure if I know what “my line of work” is! I personally think it’s important to be a multi-sectoral professional and to be able to think “integratively” and creatively about business opportunities — to be able to flip an environmental challenge into a business opportunity by tapping into the resources of government agency X. But I’m not sure if a multi-sectoral career path is possible for all people, and I’m not sure if creativity is teachable.

International experience is always valuable even if you don’t intend to work internationally because it will test and change your ways of thinking about the world if you allow it to. An MBA degree helps to open doors, and these days is in demand by government, non-profit, and the private sector alike.

There are also many ways to have an impact — you don’t have to be a CSR or social enterprise professional. You can be a marketing manager who works for a green products company. You can make a bundle of money on Wall Street and then start your own foundation. There are many paths, and it’s not my place to value one over the other.

Karen, again, thank you so much for your willingness to share your incredible professional experience in corporate social responsibility and sustainability with us. For consulting inquiries, you can contact Karen at karen@jihiconsulting.com.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: An Interview with Karen Seeh, Corporate Sustainability Strategist

Contributed by Jaime McKibben.

Veganism and Sustainability continued

In part one I discussed the frightening ways that livestock production destroys our planet. To understand the full situation I suggest reading part one.

Many people are under the false impression that eating fish is not harmful to the environment. For starters, entire coral reefs are blown with dynamite to scare the fish into nets. It is no wonder that we are losing massive amounts of coral reefs to fishing at an alarming rate. Similarly to the way livestock are raised on land, fish farms pump the feed full of chemicals that often spill into open waterways from the submerged cages. According to the Toronto Vegetarian Association, “Disease pathogens spread easily among the high densities of fish, and concentrated fecal wastes and drugs can contaminate adjacent waters.” All of these individual issues amount to one massive problem; Entire ecosystems are being compromised, and sustaining these practices guarantees that our generation will be the last to enjoy such sea life.

Every hour, 3 plant and animal species are becoming extinct. According to the U.N. we are currently enduring the worst phase of extinctions since the dinosaurs. The primary cause? Human activities such as population expansion and farming. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement, “Biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate.” A global study published in the international journal Nature determined that industrial farming has caused 90% of all large fishes to disappear in the past 50 years. Shrimp boats, which drag nets on the bottom of oceans, are also to blame for the useless killing of many sea creatures. For every 1 pound of shrimp, 10 pounds of other marine life are collected. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization have found that 190 breeds of farm animals have become extinct in the last 15 years. The statistics are frightening and never-ending. We are literally destroying what remains of diversity on our planet.

So what can we do? The largest contribution you can make to reverse this situation is to go vegan. If you are already vegan, congrats, you’ve been doing the planet well and not even known it. A vegan saves 3,000 pounds of CO2 a year. In fact, veganism saves more CO2 than a hybrid car ever could. The environmental impact of soybean protein to that of meat protein is 4.4 to 100, to the disadvantage of meat. Fish require 14 times the energy input to vegetables per unit of protein. If the thought of giving up meat, fish, eggs, or dairy is thoroughly terrifying, think about cutting back. Try skipping meat one day a week and see if you can work up to 3 or 4 days per week. Cut down on the amount of these products you eat and buy local. In the end, any steps you can take toward consuming less of these resource-dependent and wasteful foods, is a step in the right direction. Our future generations, not to mention the animals, will thank you.

Special thanks to Jaime for sharing her thoughts and her research with us. Be sure to visit her at the Vegan Bug if this hits your sweet spot! Thanks sis!

References:

“Meat Production’s Environmental Toll” – Toronto Vegetarian Association
State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) reports 1996 – 2006
“Greatest Wave of Extinctions Since the Disappearance of the Dinosaurs” – An Animal Friendly Life.com
“Eat Lesss Meat, Fish and Dairy for the Planet” – 21st Century Girl
“Don’t Have A Cow: About 20 percent of farm-animal breeds are endangered, says FAO” – Grist.org
“Paint it Green” – Wall Street Journal Online
“Quantification of the Environmental Impact of Different Dietary Protein Choices” – American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Veganism and Sustainability, Part II

Happy Independence Day everyone! To celebrate, today I share an interview with David Anderson, a young entrepreneur who’s endeavors embody the pioneering spirit of the early Americans!

David Anderson is a young guy who wanted to make a difference, so he founded the company Green Options upon graduating from the University of California at San Diego! (And funny enough – he’s our second David Anderson interviewed here at Thrilling Heroics!) Green Options’ online media portal, GreenOptions.com, serves as your home on the web for “Greening the Good Life,” which sorts through the information overload to bring you the best quality green news and tips for green living. David studied political science, sociology, biology and law in school, and now focuses on sustainability issues and renewable energy policy. He lives in Berkeley, California. [Photo credit to David...he described it as exhibiting "a little wackiness" =) ]

David took the time to chat with me about founding his company, working with people around the globe, about fossil fuels, and solar power, and he had some fantastic thoughts to share, drawing from his experiences.

You attended UC San Diego. Tell me about your education and how you got involved in sustainability. What made you go green?

I was interested in all kinds of things when I entered UCSD, but I defaulted to political science. I always had an amateur interest in renewable energy, but the chance to connect it to policy during an internship in Washington DC really drove me to immerse myself in the green movement. At the same time, the ineffectiveness of the non-profit I worked at (despite the best efforts of many very talented people) convinced me that I had to look to market solutions — the business world — to really be effective at creating change.

That’s a pretty interesting insight. So when and where did the idea for Green Options come about? What was REConn?

After I graduated, I still didn’t know how to fulfill my desire to help bring the green movement mainstream. In the meantime, I took a job as a technical writer at a firm that aggregated RFPs [Request for Proposal] for architecture and engineering firms. Immediately, I thought “why isn’t there anything like this for renewable energy?” A few weeks later, I quit and began planning “The Renewable Energy Connection” (REConn), which turned into Green Options. Although our first 6 months has focused on our green media portal, GreenOptions.com, this summer we’ll be launching the tools that are based on that original concept.

How did you connect with your primary team and get Green Options off the ground? Were there much in the way of startup costs, dealing with VCs, etc?

I was lucky through persistence. As a recent graduate, I had very few business contacts to lean on for advice. I ended up starting a blog that examined the nexus of energy and environmental issues (citizengreen.com, which I have now passed on to one of our interns), through which I met Shea Gunther, a fellow blogger and self-styled eco-entrepreneur, and Jeff-McIntire-Strasburg of Sustainablog. Shea had the entrepreneurial experience to help me get funding and get the company off the ground, while Jeff (also an English professor and southern gentleman) made a perfect editor for the media portal we were building. We found an angel investor almost immediately, so I never went through the VC rigmarole.

Did you have any previous entrepreneurial experience before starting Green Options?

Nope. For why, see above. But I’d always been interested to find out how the corporate world works… and this is one way to find out!

What sets Green Options apart from other green media centers like TreeHugger.com?

Jeff was (until very very recently) actually a writer at Treehugger. Truthfully, there’s a lot of overlap. Treehugger has been the leading multi-author blog in the green blogosphere since shortly after its launch, and our content has to date been focused on building a base of readers who already hold green values. The difference is that there is a large majority of people that don’t consider themselves tree-huggers, and would be unlikely to visit a site with that name, even though they might be open to a lot of the same information. Over the next few months, Green Options will be focusing on breaking down the barriers that keep people from opening up to this kind of information.

What are some of the challenges you’ve had to overcome in running a company with consultants that report to you from all over the country?

You said it. The simple fact that there’s no easy way to poke your head over the cubicle wall to ask a quick question does cut down on the efficient flow of information to some extent. As we’ve grown in terms of staff, we’ve increasingly adopted specialized collaboration tools that attempt to replicate a shared physical workspace. When it was just 3 of us, most of those tools weren’t necessary. They are now.

I know you’ve done a lot of research specifically on energy. What are a few major steps you think we need to take with that infrastructure?

Thank you for asking this! We’re going to face a huge challenge in the coming years. At some point, the question of “what’s next” after centralized coal electricity production and a gas-based transportation infrastructure is going to demand an answer (probably through some shock to the system), but the more we can do now to create the solutions we’re going to need, the more prepared we’ll be when pop quiz day comes. Even though our electric grid is an antiquated patchwork in desperate need of shoring up, it currently looks like the best bet we have to decouple energy consumption and generation from specific fuels. Unless some breakthrough algae or cellulosic ethanol technology provides some amazing bounty, biofuels are never going to provide a full answer to the oil problem. Electric and plugin hybrid vehicles look like the most efficient investment on a macro scale when combined with massive deployment of grid-connected, distributed renewables and major investment in the national electric grid. To me, that is the only ‘new energy economy’ scenario that solves the distribution problem inherent to renewable resources without relying on some amazing storage technology that hasn’t been perfected yet. For example, although hydrogen will undoubtedly play a role, California could replace its “hydrogen highway” pipe dream — ahem, initiative — with thousands of cheap electric 10-minute charging stations fueled by on-site renewables and backed up by natural gas, with a much greater immediate effect.

What are the best green business and energy conferences that you’ve attended?

Without a doubt, GreenFest. I attended the one in SF last fall solo, vowing to be back with a booth someday, and sure enough, the GreenOptions.com booth was bustling at GreenFest Chicago this April. I’m also very interested by the seminars put on by various groups to explain the complexities of the California Solar Initiative to solar installers, but maybe that’s just the solar geek in me.

Do you have any words of advice for college students who, similarly to you, are interested in starting up their own green companies when they graduate?

Stay away! Just kidding. The one piece of advice I can give unequivocally is this: only work with people smarter than yourself. Also, find out what it is about yourself that adds value to others’ activities, and offer it freely.

Great advice, David! Thanks for taking the time to share with us about your startup. I look forward to seeing you guys develop the service provider side of GO in the coming months.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: An Interview with David Anderson, Founder and CEO of Green Options

Today’s guest post is authored by my sister Jaime McKibben. Jaime’s a student at Chico State, an actress, and self-described health food fanatic. She has studied nutrition and sustainability and advocates vegetarian and vegan diets. She will present a different perspective for many readers of THRILLINGheroics, however it is interesting to see her arguments for sustainable food. She’s just started her own blog, the Vegan Bug, where you can learn more.

Veganism and Sustainability

I’ve been sitting here on the floor of my new house for the past hour or so thinking about this article I’ve been planning to write for some time now, and it crossed my mind; why did both my brother and I end up so interested and involved in sustainability? Sure, I may have learned it from him (or perhaps vice versa) but more likely than that, I believe we learned it from our parents. As kids, our father was a bit fanatical about recycling, making me rummage through my garbage for paper before taking it out to the dumpster. He would hunt me down while I was doing the dishes to tell me to shut the water off during those in-between moments when loading the dishwasher. At one point, the entire family ganged up on me when I went through a let’s-leave-every-light-in-the-house-on stage. Looking back, I can’t help but be surprised that no one ever even mentioned the one most sustainable act a person can undertake: cutting down on meat.

Meat is the single most resource intensive food on the planet. Our land, water, ozone, habitat, and air are all suffering horrifying effects from meat and animal production. To then consider the innumerable number of species and breeds dying out every year makes one wonder why this penchant for meat has become so socially acceptable. Here are a few numbers to think about:

• Fish must travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles while frozen or refrigerated, of which 38% is shipped internationally.
• Meat production requires about 11.5 times as much land, 15.2 times as much water, 13 times more fossil fuels, and 6 times as many biocides as soy production. As far as soy is concerned, meat uses roughly twice the resources for production.
• When we compare meat to pasta, studies have found that meat uses 20 times the amount of land and produces 3 times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Also, it created 17 times the amount of common water pollution and 5 times the toxic water pollution.
• 12,000 gallons of water can produce 1 pound of beef or 200 pounds of potatoes.
• A meat-based diet requires 7 times more land then a plant-based diet.

Which bad habit produces more greenhouse gas emissions, livestock production or transportation? Yep, livestock production. In fact, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization it produces 18% more emissions than transport. This isn’t just CO2 either. Of all human-related nitrous oxide output (which is nearly 300 times as potent as CO2), 65% is derived from our production of livestock. The specific product that leads to many, though not all, of these emissions is manure, which then contributes significantly to acid rain.

Perhaps the most basic of all sustainability issues is simply having land to live on. Nearly every growing city in the U.S. has started building upwards because there just seems to be no more room to move outward. Consider that roughly one-third of the Earth’s land is dedicated to livestock. But it still isn’t enough for the meat industry. One of the leading factors in worldwide deforestation is the clearing of forests to open new grazing pastures. An example of this can be seen in Latin America. In the Amazon, 70% of former forests are now grazing lands. Ironically 20% of pastures have been deemed degraded due to compaction, erosion, and overgrazing. This ridiculous cycle of deforestation, degradation, and more deforestation will undoubtedly leave the Earth covered in completely useless land sooner than many people would like to admit.

Now I have a frightening proposition for you. Imagine 120 pounds of wet manure. Not only is this fetid and virulent animal waste, but it is loaded with chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics. Now picture this 120 pounds of shit being dumped into the river next door. Disgusting? Disturbing? Unfortunately, that is only one day’s worth of waste from one dairy cow. Multiply that by the thousands of animals in livestock plants every day. Unlike human waste, animal waste does not get treated before being dumped. Sometimes animal waste is dumped into mile-long holes dug into the ground, where it seeps into the land and eventually into the water, but many times it misses the earth altogether and is dumped directly into streams or rivers. Swimming in half of Arkansas’ streams has been prohibited because of the livestock pollution caused by Tyson Foods, just one example of the utterly unsustainable practices of the meat industry concerning our waterways.

By now the negative effects and nearly permanent damage we have done to our planet via livestock production and processing should be clear. But this is not all. The damage of the seafood industry and concerns about species extinction will be discussed in part two. More importantly, ways to stop this cycle, and even reverse it will be proposed. In the meantime, look at what you are eating on a daily basis, consider what the consequences are, and think about the positive impact you could be a part of.

To be continued. Check back for Part II of this article on Friday, and remember to check out Jaime’s great new site the Vegan Bug!

References:

State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) reports 1996 – 2006
“Soy You Want to Be a Vegetarian?” – Grist.org
TreeHugger’s Green Guides: How to Green Your Meals
“Meat Production’s Environmental Toll” – Toronto Vegetarian Association
“Livestock a Major Threat to Environment” – UN Food and Agriculture Organization Newsroom
“Eat Lesss Meat, Fish and Dairy for the Planet” – 21st Century Girl
“Free-Range at Last, Free-Range at Last” by Robert F. Kennedy – Grist.org

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Veganism and Sustainability, Part I

The Doe Fund is a self-described “non-profit organization that empowers people to break the cycles of homelessness, welfare dependency, and incarceration through innovative paid-work programs, housing, supportive services and business ventures.” Their Ready, Willing and Able Community Improvement Project employs homeless people and former convicts in the New York City area to provide them with responsibility and a fair wage while serving the local community. A recent Times article described the organization’s most recent project, RWA Resource Recovery, which serves three important purposes in addition to creating job opportunities: to provide an environmentally-friendly waste cooking oil collection service for food service businesses in New York City, to reduce improper waste disposal in the city, and to facilitate clean-burning biodiesel production for local use.

The group currently employs six workers, who collect grease from about 154 restaurants and other clients in New York for free, and deliver it to a biofuel plant on Long Island that processes it for commercial consumption. The team collected over 14,000 gallons in April, and continues to grow in scope.

I’ve seen operations like this cropping up at several universities across the nation — that collect the grease waste from on-campus restaurants and refine it into fuel for their own service fleets — and I think it’s a fantastic idea! This NYC operation attacks three problems with one innovative solution: creating work for people who need a second chance, providing a useful and free recycling service to local restaurant owners, and helping create an earth-friendly fuel!

Turning Grease to Fuel, and Despair to Hope [NYT, via Treehugger.com]

[photo credit: Earl Wilson for the New York Times]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: RWA Resource Recovery Solves Local Social Issues in NYC

Every time I go somewhere to listen to a green business speaker, or have a call with a sustainable consultant or entrepreneur, the name Interface almost always comes up. Interface Inc. is the world’s largest tile carpet manufacturer, and its founder, Ray Anderson, was one of the early movers and shakers to catch the green bug in 1994. Many of us look up to him as one of the big daddies when it comes to transforming industry towards sustainable business practices.

Last month, the New York Times ran a special on Ray titled “Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet.” I like Stanford’s summary:

Ray Anderson the founder of Interface, a carpet and tile manufacturing company, decided in 1994 that his company would follow the path of “do no harm”. His company would from now on do it’s best to be environmentally responsible. He challenged his colleagues to set a deadline for Interface to become a “restorative enterprise,” a sustainable operation that takes nothing out of the earth that cannot be recycled or quickly regenerated, and that does no harm to the biosphere. The deadline they ultimately set is 2020, and the idea has taken hold throughout the company.

To learn more about a first-generation sustainable heavyweight, read more at the NYT. [via: Jackson Blog]

[photo credit: Jessica McGowan/New York Times]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Ray Anderson 101: A Corporate Sustainability Giant

According to the Urban Monk, the blogosphere is coming to an end. If I had just one last post, what would it be? What would I say…to you guys…my audience…

I was thinking about what’s most important to me yesterday–what I’m most passionate about–”why do I spend so much time researching and writing about this stuff?” I thought to myself. I don’t get paid to write this blog. I’ve made about 54 cents, whereas it costs me about $90/year to keep ThrillingHeroics.com running.

Why do I do it, then? I spent my Earth Day describing to my dad how some of my generation feels like it’s inheriting this huge problem from those who came before us. Al Gore’s movie opened a lot of eyes to global warming this past year (including mine), and the damage it could potentially do to our world. And my personal life goal is to have a hand in changing the world for the better!

Now some people are still skeptical—my father for instance says that he has lived through far too many environmental panics that didn’t turn out the way scientists and environmentalists said they would. But I’m not interested in conjecturing or worrying about who’s to blame—that’s all a waste of time, and talk like that is designed to mislead you from the real challenges at hand. And yeah, we might avert the problem altogether…if we’re really lucky (in my opinion). My concerns don’t depend on the verity of global warming so much though—my issue is with the simple fact that our species is expanding very rapidly—exponentially—developing nations are fast becoming as industrialized and affluent as the United States, and we are burning through natural resources like there’s no tomorrow.

Well, there IS a tomorrow. At least, I want to ensure there is a tomorrow. These things only replenish so fast.

So my concern is more with the long-term sustainability of our society. I’m looking at consumption and growth trends. I want to have kids one day—but I don’t want them to be born into a post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland, and I don’t want them to starve because China takes all our resources, for instance. The problem is a simple problem of economics.

I’m an environmentalist at heart—because my dad used to take me camping and hiking and all that jazz every summer. I enjoy the “outdoors.” Now I approach my environmentalism from a business standpoint—because sustainability really poses a challenge to business and economic growth! Most companies look one year into the future to try to improve upon their past performance, but they need to look further into the future if they want to sustain over the long haul.

I’m not trying to scare you with doom and gloom. I’m trying to seek out individuals who are making a DIFFERENCE! Proactive people who are creating innovative solutions to these environmental and social problems—to hold them up as an example for future leaders…the best of my generation who will need to tackle things like poverty, hunger, the availability of clean water, natural resources, land to build our cities on, and so forth.

I think the best way to solve as many problems efficiently is to reduce the amount of work involved in the things we already know how to do well. That means using fewer resources and reusing what we can, increasing our energy efficiency, decreasing the distance we have to move food and raw materials, and so on.

There are a lot of people on this planet. And so far, it’s the only home we have. So I ask everybody to think critically about your use of energy and resources. Try to live more sustainably. Think about replenishable power sources. Buy local food, or grow your own. Do it for your kids, and your grandkids, and so on.

Also, if the blogosphere were coming to an end I’d have to ask you to look for me in print! Yup, that’s right–look for the THRILLING heroics book! One day…I’d like to publish the stories of dozens of cutting edge social entrepreneurs and “ecopreneurs” as I like to call them. People who are doing well for themselves AND doing good for the planet/for society at the same time. It’s not impossible…

Thanks to Nia for tagging me for this meme on her Leave America blog. Nia also has a neat blog where she looks at sustainable living in Portugal, among other things. If you want to participate in the Blog Apocalypse meme—Urban Monk will give $500 to charity!! Anyone who wants to participate is welcome—just link to my post here, and link to this page that tells you all about the Blog Apocalypse.

I’ll tag Adam, Ryan, James Van, James Britton, Steve, Patrick, Robyn, and Ron.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Last Thrill

Today’s article is a guest post from Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, Senior Editor for Green Options, your home on the web for “Greening the Good Life.” He focuses here on the story of No-Impact Man, who attracted the attention of the New York Times about two weeks ago. For the next year, No-Impact Man and his family are committed to leaving zero environmental impact while living in the middle of New York City.

Let the Seller Beware

Many of us in the Green Blogosphere took note of the New York Times’ coverage of Colin Beavan, aka No-Impact Man. Marketing guru Seth Godin also read the article and, as is par for the course, immediately grasped the big picture: “Zero is the new black.” In other words, simply “buying green” is no longer enough: consumers, particularly the “early adopter” crowd, have latched onto the concept that we must fully account for our environmental impact when making choices in the market. Beavan isn’t an oddity; rather, he’s the herald of a fundamental change in mindset.

If Godin’s right (and he’s remarkably prescient), then we’re seeing a cultural shift towards the question Bill McKibben asks in his new book Deep Economy: “is more better?” More and more, consumers may be answering the question in the negative, and that will likely prove perplexing to most business people. After all, how do you sell to consumers who’ve decided that simply buying things isn’t going to make them happy?

Certainly, consumers won’t stop purchasing goods and services, but smart business people will realize up front that those consumers are going to be asking a lot more questions, and that sellers better be prepared with substantive answers. Calling your product “natural” won’t get it anymore with buyers asking about local sourcing, carbon emissions, recyclability and life cycle impacts.

Let the seller beware: the marketplace of ideas influences the marketplace, and consumers have many more sources of information available to them than in the past. If zero is the new black, then businesses better be prepared to offer “zero”: zero emissions, zero wastes, zero persistent toxins. Anything less may result in zero profits.

You can read more content from Jeff McIntire-Strasburg on the Green Options blog. Jeff also writes regularly at sustainablog and TreeHugger.com.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Zero Is the New Black: Let the Seller Beware