Green Living

Stairway to Cleveland: Evergreen Cooperatives, a New Model of Job-Building Success

THINGS GOTTA CHANGE—old-hat rhetoric? lachrymose echolalia? dyspeptic parroting of unfulfilled election promises? Well, taking an even cursory glance at just about everything driving the news these days, I’d like to reverse polarity and add a positive movement to this rather gruesome mix of new-decade decline-and-fall downerisms ad infinitum.

And I’m going to take Cleveland, and the “Cleveland Model,” as a new and enlightening nexus point, that is, its cooperative spirit, literal co-ops and bright green focus—and, hoop fans, I’m not talking LeBron James, Shaq, turn$tile revenues (green of another sort) and the concomitant full-glaze opiate common of professional sports. This is—drum roll, please—CHANGE TO BELIEVE IN! And I think we’re all ready for a true (a posse ad esse) annus mirabillis. Read More »

‘Turning Ego into Eco’: The Green + Musical Mind of Ryuichi Sakamoto et al.

WHILE FAR FROM A HOUSEHOLD NAME ON OUR SHORES (and I should add—being an admirer, with chagrin—despite an Oscar, Grammy and two Golden Globe awards), Japanese composer-performer Ryuichi Sakamoto holds a globally prominent position when it comes to the mutually beneficial collision of art and ecology, having recently been honored with a UN Environment Programme Eco Award in 2009.

Sakamoto’s been involved with green pursuits since at least 1994, when he first moved away from plastic-jewel-case CD packaging to biodegradable paper sleeves. And he’s traversed some mighty terrain since then—as he puts it, “turning ego into eco”—which includes his latest release, Out of Noise, featuring two haunting tracks (“Ice” and “Glacier”) inspired by a Cape Farewell Project trip to Greenland viewing imperiled arctic glaciers.

Sakamoto—whose music encompasses classical, experimental, film scores, ambient, pop, jazz and electronica—is at the forefront of a larger movement that’s afoot. The vibrant relationship between the worlds of music and that of environmental concern has unquestionably gained momentum of late, and has seen genuine far-reaching and -ranging adoption (and not mere feel-good, get-on-the-bandwagon lip service to sell more tickets and product) by artists as diverse as Willie Nelson, Radiohead, Melissa Etheridge, the Roots, Pearl Jam, Moby, Bonnie Raitt, the Dave Matthews Band and Green Day. Good for the Earth? Absolutely! Good for your ears? Ditto that, and perhaps coming this summer, in a carbon-neutral manner, to a concert venue near you. Read More »

The Negawatt Revolution Is Here and Now!

THE IN-AGAIN TERM “NEGAWATT” CONJURES ELECTRO-DYNAMIC VISIONS of both simple solutions that hearken back to pre-combustible-engine horse-and-buggy times and complex cyclopean constructs more aligned with sci-fi pie-in-the-sky dreams of a better, brighter tomorrow. Both visions are valid, both consider energy conservation from a near and far view, that is, a personal and societal perspective, and both are by no means mutually exclusive.

Considered one way, as Planet Green relates, “the greenest power of all is the Negawatt—the power you don’t use. The first thing you should be doing is just doing less, investing in CFL and LED lighting, turning off switches, junking your fridge if it is older than 10 years, and hanging your laundry on a line.”

Another way has it, and this from Thomas Friedman’s “The Energy Internet: When IT Meets ET” chapter of Hot, Flat, and Crowded, is a future realization of the “E.C.E.” (Energy-Climate Era) through a vast, interconnected, back-and-forth smart grid—this is the grandiose view from space, where “an Energy Internet would enable you, me, and your next-door neighbor to do extraordinary things by way of saving energy [negawatt = a unit of energy saved] and using clean power efficiently, and do them around the clock, all the time, whether or not you’re thinking about it.” This is also where individuals, organizations both public and private, big business and government(s) will have to agree on an executable plan (or many), strategy and tactics that efficaciously move forward such a grid, not get tied up in endless red tape, petty squabbling and boardroom fisticuffs that lead to insurmountable impasse and failure. Read More »

A Little Shameless Self-promotion Couched in Goodness: No Impact Man

STRIPPED TO ITS CORE, the quasi-eco-doc No Impact Man (now on DVD) can best be appraised by a simple question asked by the “man” himself, author Colin Beavan, about halfway through the film:

“Is it possible to have a good life without wasting so much?”

Well, depending on your own nature (plus irritability factor), you may want to either scream “YES, YOU MORON, ARE YOU KIDDING?!” or more calmly intone, “Absolutely, Mr. Beavan, I already get it and am doing what I can, but how do we efficaciously spread the gospel far and wide?”

Well, with response two lies the big question, which No Impact Man, the blog, the book and the movie, grapples with to varying degrees of success. As we’re already deep in cliche-ville when it comes to constant reminders of “it’s not easy being green,” do we need another reminder of how our modern world of 24/7 conveniences and heedless mass consumption clash head-on with getting back to planet-preserving simplicity, if not to the non-subsidized, people-powerd farm, preferably off the grid, where the vast majority of GDP-boosting consumer practices are eschewed or pilloried?

I believe the answer’s yes, especially if it sparks dialogue and debate, and seeps, burbles or boils further into the mainstream.

In No Impact Man, the movie, wider viewership (now that it’s on DVD) can be stimulated by its simple “reality TV factor,” which draws the trendy gaze by its train-wreck premise—How is Beavan’s family going to actually do this for a whole year without going batty? Can they survive without—gasp!—toilet paper, disposable diapers for the baby, a fridge, packaged foods, etc.? It becomes as much an intimate character study (there’s a bit of cabin fever on display here, too) as stick-by-your-guns eco-pledge, and it works quite effectively well in this potentially wobbly and at-odds context. It certainly shows the everyday challenges of attempting to live a no/low-impact life (the ice-cooler “cheat,” when it occurs, is entirely understandable and easy to commiserate with).

So if you’re not entirely put off by the book and blog gimmick tie in (Julie and Julia, anybody?), take a gander at No Impact Man while sitting in the dark, and why not? spread the gospel of wasting little and living more.

—Allen

Great Green Gifts—for the Holidays or Anytime

WHETHER YOU CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAYS OR NOT, here are some gift ideas that we think capture the spirit of green without going overboard—in other words, you won’t find a carbon-offset certificate “elegantly” carved into a lump of coal or a solar-powered recycled-materials rabbit hutch/chicken coop “peaceful coexistence” backyard combo shelter (although wouldn’t that be something to set up with a web cam, see in harmonious action and learn from?!—UN, Hopenhageners and world leaders, please take note!).

WILSON REBOUND BASKETBALL “Think globally. Hoop locally.” Hoop it up with Wilson’s first green product, made from 40 percent recycled rubber. The packaging is 80 percent pre- and post-consumer board. A great way to get active and green simultaneously! Read More »

Tapping into the Genius Loci: Buying Local and Making Good

THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT—no, not the latest Hollywood holiday fluff-fest replete with soulless characters, derivative plot points and vapid action, but a sensible way of reckoning the recyclic power of buying local to energize communities—yes, the classic “what goes around comes around.” As BALLE cofounder Michael Shuman writes in The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition, “The future of small business, the future of community vitality and the future of humanity depend on a fundamentally new approach to our local economies. The challenge is to find ways to nurture competitive local alternatives to Wal-Mart that can revitalize our local economies and communities.”

And with the holiday season upon us, what better time to—if you haven’t already— shop and buy local, and keep your cash, and attendant goodwill, recirculating in your community. So rev up that actions-speak-louder-than-words multiplier effect, it’s small-mart time! And I promise no descents into the vagaries of zero-sums and game theory, trade deficits, WTO WTF?!, China, India or, for that matter, droll laissez-faire Milton Friedmanesque spouts. Read More »

Ten Sequoia-Sized Myths of Green Marketing

LET’S JUMP RIGHT IN—there’s no time to waste when you’re myth-busting in a tumultuous age of run-amuck uncertainty.

#1 You should never, ever, ever use the word “green” in your name, tag line, PR or marketing materials.
There is nothing wrong with using the word “green”—if you mean it. Sure, it’s particularly ubiquitous these days and already attached to a multitude of businesses, products, ideas, publications, groups, etc., but it still connotes a space and position and way of thinking that resonates with the public. Co-op America changed its name to Green America, and it’s working out just fine for them. If you attend a Green Festival, you kind of know what to expect—and attendance, and spirits, are high. Don’t make your usage bandwagonesque, tenuous, forced or misleading (let’s call this “fuzzy quasi-green”), resulting in reverse marketing that’ll bite you deservedly in the butt, whether you’re wearing green jeans or not. Read More »

Blue and Green and American All Over

THE BLUE GREEN ALLIANCE IS AN ORGANIZATION WHOSE TIME HAS COME. With unemployment hitting a 26-year high of 10.2 percent (up from 9.8 in September) and Christina Romer, chairwoman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, proclaiming, “Having the unemployment rate reach double digits is a stark reminder of how much work remains to be done,” it is indeed time to get to work in novel ways that can bust us out of the torpor and downright moribund climate which surround us, and are dragging so many of us down.

Traditional methodologies and paradigms, and let’s throw in the $787 billion spending package, have thus far not done the trick—far, far from it (okay, the spending package has helped but it is not close to enough). Organizations like the Blue Green Alliance (BGA), on the other hand, are shuffling the deck and dealing new cards, even as they continue to establish credibility and put in place dependable means to get things done—”mission accomplished!” is not something they’ll probably shout anytime soon, but again they’re building that house with a canard-spouting chorus of naysayers over their shoulders, and these things take time—and there’s no time to lose.

Let’s take a closer look at this national partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations (not the odd bedfellows they at first seem) dedicated to expanding the number and quality of jobs in the green economy. Remember, in the words of Cicero, “Freedom is participation in power.” And freedom, as defined, should include the ability to find and maintain a livable wage in a healthy environment. Read More »

A Good Time for Radical Change: The International Day of Climate Action

WITHOUT TRYING TO SOUND ALL HELLFIRE AND BRIMSTONE OR DEEP-FRIED SOUTHERN GOTHIC, I’ve got to share the garish headline spiel I ran across on the back of an early-60s paperback I’m currently engrossed in: “step by step … deed by deed … they fashioned their own destruction.” It bejewels a musty, well-worn copy of Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away, but I was thinking—for Green Dynamind and with the International Day of Climate Action taking place tomorrow—that it’s an appropriate tag for where we’re heading if we keep on our current path of irresponsible and oblivious mega-consumption. And then the new issue of Scientific American arrived in the post, with its upbeat cover story, “A Plan for a Sustainable Future: How to get all energy from wind, water and solar power by 2030,” (more on this in a bit), and I thought, along with all the coordinated noise many will make across the globe tomorrow, maybe we can turn our spiel into “step by step … deed by deed … they fashioned their own salvation.” Now wouldn’t that be something to get excited about?! Read More »

Back to the Garden: A Review of Bringing It to the Table

“I LIVE IN A PART OF THE COUNTRY that at one time a good farmer could take some pleasure in looking at,” Wendell Berry intones in the opening essay of his new collection, Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009); a little farther down the page he continues, “Now the country is not well farmed, and driving through it has become a depressing experience.” This somber tone-setting essay, “Nature as Measure,” was written 20 years ago. Poet-essayist-novelist Berry—now in his mid-70s and who has farmed a hillside in his native Henry County, Kentucky, for more than 40 years—has had plenty to rail against when it comes to Big Ag, the politics of indifference and our alienating post-industrial age; but he also has had plenty to celebrate in clear-eyed observations of humankind interacting with nature, the value of true hard work (diametrically opposed to the digitally and plutocratically enabled “work” of accumulating phantom wealth) and the rewarding simplicity of sharing, of family, of community.

An out-of-touch cranky neo-luddite screeching for a return to prelapsarian times? Hardly. Berry’s vision is that of a hardy-yet-hoary realist, tinged by both optimism and pessimism (ah, the foibles of humanity!), attempting to show us a path out of our befoulment, a steaming, festering swamp we teeter face-first ever closer toward. And Berry’s prose? Gracefully worn and weathered to a burnished beauty, like a glacier-cast erratic, transfigurative in its straightforward simplicity. Read More »

Stairway to Cleveland: Evergreen Cooperatives, a New Model of Job-Building Success

‘Turning Ego into Eco’: The Green + Musical Mind of Ryuichi Sakamoto et al.

The Negawatt Revolution Is Here and Now!

A Little Shameless Self-promotion Couched in Goodness: No Impact Man

Great Green Gifts—for the Holidays or Anytime

Tapping into the Genius Loci: Buying Local and Making Good

Ten Sequoia-Sized Myths of Green Marketing

Blue and Green and American All Over

A Good Time for Radical Change: The International Day of Climate Action

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