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Archives -
November, 2008
Be Careful What You Ask For – November 21, 2008
Maybe we’re finally getting it! A piece in today’s
Wall Street Journal seems to indicate that. And if it’s true, corporations are
worried. What I’m talking about is household energy usage, which, it seems, is
down significantly in a number of U.S. states. And power company executives are scratching their
heads to explain why. They don’t
think it has to do with housing foreclosures or other aspects of the economic
downturn. They are speculating that the message some utilities have been sending
to consumers to conserve energy just might be taking hold. My, my. Growth is
going to be challenged, say the execs.
Says the newspaper, “If the trend
persists, it could ripple through companies’ earnings and compel major changes
in the way utilities run their businesses.” Renewable energy, anyone?
Posted: 2008/11/21 12:48 PM
No
Green Holiday Gift Guide – November
17, 2008
PR types are inundating me with pitches for featuring their clients in
Natural
Life’s “green holiday gift guide.” Aside from being months too late because
the November/December issue was printed in September, these folks don’t
understand why we don’t publish holiday gift guides of any color. Our policy
is not to review or otherwise publicize products, brands or companies in
articles; that is an advertising function. (Keeping editorial and advertising
separate is a long-established journalistic practice that is, sadly, being
quickly eroded, but we think it is crucial to our editorial integrity and, for that
matter, to the integrity of our advertising.) At any rate, since a PR person’s
job is about
encouraging people to buy stuff, they certainly do not want to listen to my
explanation about how going green isn’t necessarily about going shopping. We
are not Scrooges and, in past
years, we have published alternative holiday guides...see here and here for examples
that we will be highlighting on the website soon. They focus on intangible gifts
like donations of time or money to charities or advocacy groups, or gifts that
you have created yourself (or at least purchased from local artisans) as a tangible reminder of your affection for the
recipient. I think the current economy will be inspiring many people to go that
route this year. That will no doubt benefit the environment and, I hope, will
result in a happier, less stressful holiday season (for everyone but the larger
retailers and their employees, of course, who might have to re-think their
business strategy in order to adjust to this “new normal”).
Posted: 2008/11/17 11:14 AM
Reshaping the Economy to Save the Earth – November 15, 2008
For awhile now, I’ve been thinking and writing about the links between
economics and the environment. (There were a number of blog postings last month
alone.) And I’ve just sat down to write once again on
that topic for my editorial in the January/February issue of Natural Life, which
goes to press next week. As often happens, serendipity – and, in this case, the folks at
Personalised Education Now –
pointed me to a series of articles in a recent issue of
New Scientist magazine on that very topic. Although not all the articles are
posted online for free, there is sufficient food for thought there about how we'll never solve climate change until we reshape our economy and lose the focus on growth at all costs.
Oh, and stay tuned for more about how the third E (education) fits into all of
this.
Posted: 2008/11/15 1:54 PM
Free to Be – November 11, 2008
I just had a chat with my youngest daughter Melanie about the fact that this is
apparently the 35th anniversary of the book Free to Be You and Me by Marlo
Thomas (a birth year that Melanie shares). It was part of the proliferation of
books from that era that opposed gender stereotypes. But, more than that, it was
about saluting values such as individuality, tolerance and happiness with
one’s identity. It became an Emmy-winning television special and an album
featuring such people as Mel Brooks, Diana Ross, Harry Belafonte, Carol
Channing, Tom Smothers, Rosey Grier, Dick Cavett, Roberta Flack, Alan Alda and
more. Oh, and check out this
video with a very young Michael Jackson…go ahead, you’ll like it (and there
are links to the rest of the video, like “Mommies are People,” which is one
of my favorites.) Marlo Thomas (perhaps better know as “That
Girl” from 1970s television sitcom) turns 71 in a few weeks – yikes – and is
married to the wonderfully progressive talk show host Phil Donahue. I read the book aloud over and over
again and, apparently, my young daughters took the message in. Unfortunately, not everybody
did and the book and music and their message are still needed today.
Posted: 2008/11/11 8:30 PM
Hope is Contagious – November
5, 2008
Yes, the U.S. presidential election was competitive, but the loser was
gracious in defeat. Yes, massive amounts of money were spent –
especially by the winner. And, you bet it was competitive. But reportedly, the voter
turnout was unprecedented. And Barak Obama is today the president-elect of the
world’s superpower due to a grassroots effort. This morning, people are feeling
part of something larger than themselves...and perhaps a little closer to their
government. Both Americans and those in the rest of the world are also
apparently feeling hopeful. Hope is contagious. I hope this is the beginning of
change, where we all strive together to solve our economic and environmental
problems.
Posted: 2008/11/05 11:00 AM
Imagine Cooperative Politics
(and everything else) – November 3, 2008
As I’ve been observing the
U.S. presidential election and Canada’s recent federal election, one of the things that has struck me is the
extreme competitiveness of politics. The terminology of sports competitions and
of war is often used to describe elections. Ethical standards are compromised as
candidates try to boost their chances of victory. Massive amounts of money and
human resources are spent on the contest. And the process often changes people,
prompting normally mild people to turn aggressive and cease walking their talk
(as I discovered during my brief tenure in the 1990s as leader of the Green
Party of Canada.)
This thrust for political power also motivates governments
who, in turn, compete with other countries for power, sometimes leading to war.
Nevertheless, competition is seen as central to democracy. There’s even
something called
the Center for Competitive Politics dedicated to ensuring a more competitive –
and therefore a presumably fairer and more democratic – electoral process!
Some social Darwinists claim that competition helps
determine the best-suited group – not only politically, but economically and
ecologically. But it can also be traced backwards to the schoolyard and even to
the classroom, where it doesn’t foster excellence or even survival. As
Alfie Kohn wrote in No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Houghton Mifflin,
1986), competition has a negative effect on the achievement level of students
and “turns us all into losers.” So, instead of being a community dedicated
to helping students learn, schools are mind-deadening institutions with adults
focused on forcing kids to churn out the best test scores. And, in the same way,
competition turns government into a “them-versus-us” thing. Although one of
the fundamentals of democracy is supposedly self-government, the competitiveness
seems to create cynical citizens who feel neither empowered to get involved and
create change nor interested in the game.
In the same way that learning about the world and how it
works needn’t be competitive (and works better when it isn’t), governing
ourselves in the best way possible shouldn’t be about competition or power
over others. It should be about people working together for the benefit of
everyone. Yes, there will always be philosophical and practical differences
among us, different ideas for how to solve problems, but in the ideal world,
governments (and the electoral process that creates them) would enable people to
work together to improve their own lives and those of their neighbors.
Tom Atlee, founder and director of the non-profit Co-Intelligence
Institute, in an article about
Transformational Politics, identifies a number of types of politics, including
co-operative politics (“Politics is public life, the shared solving of
problems. We come together to make things better and to co-create our common
future”) and holistic politics (“Politics is our conscious participation in
the whole [system, community, history, ecosystem, universe]. By increasing our
consciousness of – and taking responsibility for – our connections to each
other and our place in the whole, we can tap the wisdom of the whole and play a
constructive role in its evolution.”)
If we could find a way to have more of this sort of
politics and less of the competitive stuff, I bet we’d see more women in
politics. The Latin root for the verb to compete is “competere,” which means
“to seek together” or “to strive together.” Imagine.
Posted: 2008/11/03 6:20 PM
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