Social entrepreneurship is a way of using business to tackle social issues. Furniture on the Street is a social enterprise project that sells contemporary-designed pieces of outdoor wooden furniture. The key is that the tables and chairs are made by unemployed youth and the factory work prepares them for the job market.

As part of the programme, students get a one-year carpentry course and are taught the design process. The good looking planters, garbage bins and benches are made out of reclaimed wood and the frames are made locally.

The workshop activities provided include model-making, teaching basic computer design software skills and visits to timber yards. It’s a way to give the students and their customers a complete environmental focus.

Students can design the benches, work on the graphics and colors and see the concrete results when the products are purchased. And it’s not just a charity–a city council in north London bought ten benches. Says one of the organizers “We use local labor, our frames are made locally, and we have an environmental focus. You’re not doing us a favor. You get a competitive product.”

And they are making money and the trainees are getting jobs. All of them so far have gone on to continue their education and one is studying furniture design at a university. They want to extend the programme now to include fencing and metalwork.

It has been defined as a “halfway house between profits-driven businesses and charities” that can “take the profit motive to parts of the voluntary and public sector that have in the past been hostile to it.”

The gateway to a livable future is found in our communities. Seek it out.

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Source: Treehugger

There are so many good things happening on the transportation front in Omaha. Mayor Fahey recently announced plans and funding for an essential East-West link between the Keystone Trail and downtown which will use dedicated bike lanes. Everyone who lives here knows how important that is. The Young Professionals just completed their Bus Challenge and Activate Omaha has the Bicycle Commuter Challenge in full swing. Omaha recently announced their downtown master plan where pedestrians and cyclists are well accounted for.

Now there is another opportunity to build a positive future for our city. The Metropolitan Area Planning Agency (MAPA) now has a Long Range Transportation Plan survey available for the public to complete. The responses from this survey will be used in updating the Long Range Transportation Plan for the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area for year 2035.

Go to www.mapacog.org and find the link for the survey at the top of the homepage. The 15 question survey covers a multitude of transportation topics and respondents can use this as a platform to make suggestions about the future of transportation in the metro area.

The MAPA Long Range Transportation Plan will provide a vision for the metropolitan area’s future transportation system. Additionally, projects must be identified in the Long Range Plan to be eligible to receive federal funding.

Please take a few minutes to help out. Thanks.

John Burke, CEO of Trek Bicycles, and Andy Clarke from the League of American Bicyclists visited Omaha yesterday and gave a series of presentations to highlight the benefits of and encourage efforts towards building Omaha as a Bicycle Friendly Community.

They discussed how bicycle friendly communities can work to address a myriad of issues for a city. These issues include impacting the obesity epidemic, traffic congestion, pollution, dependence on foreign oil and carbon footprints. Creating bicycle friendly is accomplished through combining good city design and city policy supports with strategically targeted transportation dollars.

I attended the breakfast session, where business and non-profit leaders were introduced to these concepts. John and Andy outlined a number of troubling trends and statistics which they believe should motivate Omaha to rally towards solutions. While they pointed out that there are several solutions to this range of issues, they proposed that the bicycle is the simple solution to several of these complex problems.

John provided 4 examples that prove that bikes can support a metro’s transportation needs. He showed that in the Netherlands 25% of all trips are taken by bike, and in Boulder the number is 21%. He reminded us of London’s congestion reducing strategies, and explained some of the political initiatives that have helped transform Portland.

Omaha was challenged to educate the city’s residents and public servants in order to help develop bicycle infrastructure. The city leaders were challenged to make Omaha a leader in this initiative, and become a model for other cities to follow. They readily agreed that Boulder and Portland have different cultures than Omaha. But they show it can be done. And they believe that Omaha, a city in the heartland, can show that this model can work anywhere in the state.

Kerri Peterson from Activate Omaha (host) opened up by explaining that Omaha has previously applied to be designated by the League of American Bicyclist as a bicycle friendly community. Despite our expansive recreational trail system, the application was denied.

Since then, efforts have been underway to change that outcome. Over $500,000 in private funding has been raised to design and build a 20 mile bicycle loop.  The first bicycle transportation map has been created. The City has instituted a Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee to review and recommend infrastructure improvements. This momentum is just the beginning and we would like you to join us to continue the push to change the physical face of our community.

Kerri also pointed out that the Bicycle Commuter Map was so well received by the city, that the 5000 copies printed were all distributed within 2 months. The supply was intended to last 3 years. They are currently reprinting, and the map is available for download now.

I’d encourage everyone to be involved. Bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, along with a well-developed public transportation system, can change the face of the city in which we live.

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Watch a version of John’s presentation.

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The planet is headed for an ecological “credit crunch”, according to a report issued by conservation groups.

The document contends that our demands on natural resources overreach what the Earth can sustain by almost a third.

The Living Planet Report is the work of WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network.

It says that more than three quarters of the world’s population lives in countries where consumption levels are outstripping environmental renewal.

This makes them “ecological debtors”, meaning that they are drawing - and often overdrawing - on the agricultural land, forests, seas and resources of other countries to sustain them.

WWF’s David Norman says the world will need two planets by 2030

The report concludes that the reckless consumption of “natural capital” is endangering the world’s future prosperity, with clear economic impacts including high costs for food, water and energy.

Dr Dan Barlow, head of policy at the conservation group’s Scotland arm, added: “While the media headlines continue to be dominated by the economic turmoil, the world is hurtling further into an ecological credit crunch.”

The countries with the biggest impact on the planet are the US and China, together accounting for some 40% of the global footprint.

The report shows the US and United Arab Emirates have the largest ecological footprint per person, while Malawi and Afghanistan have the smallest.

(Harvard Business Publishing) If we have any doubt about the prevalence - and cost - of “short-termism” in global capital markets, the current economic meltdown is an obvious reminder. But, beyond the $700 billion bailout and other financial band-aids to stop the bleeding, the bigger debate is how to fix the regulatory and corporate governance systems to avoid future calamities — whether financial or environmental.

A critical question is to whom companies should be most beholden to — shareholders or society.

The question popped into my head last week viewing a short preview of a PBS Frontline documentary “Heat” about the challenges of reversing global warming. Among the film’s most poignant moments was an exchange between the film’s producer and a Chinese energy company executive who was asked if he felt any obligation to reduce CO2 emissions from his company’s fast-growing fleet of new coal plants.

The CEO’s immediate answer was an unequivocal, ‘no.’ “We must create money, not lose the money,” Shenhua Energy CEO Ling Wen said. “It’s my responsibility as a CEO of this company.”

When pressed whether he should make climate change a higher priority, Wen said that he would if his shareholders asked him. But, he added, “I’m afraid maybe all the shareholders, they cannot accept that concept.” In the meantime, China continues to build two new coal-fired power plants every week.

I wasn’t surprised by Wen’s answer, but it was a chilling reminder about the extent to which global capitalism — and the investors and companies that drive the global economy — has lost its way in terms of its overriding purpose.

While I’m all in favor of wealth creation and rewarding success, how we define corporate success is out of whack. Shareholders — an increasingly vague term with the growth of hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds — should not be the preeminent rulers of companies and quarterly earnings should not be the only gauge for measuring CEO performance. We need to broaden our definition of success so that long-term corporate sustainability and long-term global sustainability get the attention they deserve. Failing to do so will mean more global calamities, both financial and environmental, as the grow-at-all-costs global economy races ahead with little regard for social and environmental consequences.

I do not have all the answers on this, but many other smart people have been pondering these issues the past few years since the Enron debacle — and their ideas deserve close attention.

In June 2007, a broad coalition of leading companies, investors, and other stakeholders released the Aspen Principles for Long-Term Value Creation as a call to action to reverse the capital market’s bias toward short-term thinking. Among the key corporate actions it identified:

• Setting long-term metrics that de-emphasize earnings per share and quarterly profits as the metric of choice

• Incentive systems and compensation schemes that reward long-term focus and success

More recently, Corporation 20/20 came out with its own set of policies for fostering corporate long-termism. Among the group’s key principles is that the corporation shall accrue “fair returns for shareholders, but not at the expense of the legitimate interests of other stakeholders,” such as employees, communities, the environment and future generations. One suggestion the group makes for achieving this is reducing the clout of short-term investors (hint: hedge funds) inclined to quick fixes to boost short-term profits. One lever the group suggests is requiring investors to hold shares for a year before before gaining voting rights or increasing capital gains taxes on short-term trades. Similarly, compensation incentives might be changed to modify or even outlaw stock options, or make bonuses contingent on achieving social and environmental performance targets.

While these ideas may seem radical, they are worthy of attention once the dust settles on Wall Street and the focus shifts to addressing the fundamental market drivers that contributed to the collapse.

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Content from Mindy S. Lubber as posted on Harvard Business Publishing.

Cyclists and community organizers from around the metro gathered downtown on Saturday for an all-inclusive discussion of cycling accessibility. The event was hosted at the Midwest National Park Service Headquarters on the Omaha riverfront. I have to praise the location first. The building is situated right at the foot of the pedestian bridge, and has a wonderfull view of the river and downtown. To top it off, the building is Leed Gold Certified.

Corey and I were only able to attend a short portion of the day-long event, but we made sure to join at the portion that was most important to us. We were there for the review of the Omaha Streetscape plan hosted by Omaha By Design’s Connie Spellman.

She gave a concise but informative presentation about Omaha’s initiative to integrate pedestrians, bicyclists, and the environment into our streets. The streets that are now exclusively built for cars. (Did you know that Nebraska doesn’t have a Department of Transportation? Only a Department of Roads. Makes you wonder how we don’t have a better mixed use planning.)

She highlighted the successes in the Benson Ames Alliance master plan. Next year they are beginning the first phase of the streetscape redesign.

Connie made a point to motivate members of the audience to contact their City Council Person and the head of Omaha Public Works to advocate for better bicycle and pedestrian transportation options. She said that these public servants (an underutilized word, but so important in this time of jaded politics) really do want to hear from constituents and act on their behalf.

This summit reinforced the good and the bad for cycling in Omaha. The good is that Omaha isn’t a huge city. It is practical to move around by bike or foot. Also, the bus system has recently added bike racks to the front of busses. And of course, Omaha has over 80 miles of bicycle trails snaking across the city. The challenges are streets that are often poorly designed, crowded with drivers who are impatient and uninformed. And, the topography of our city, make East/West traffic difficult. The hills are challenging, but the bike trails and bike lanes are limited in this direction.

I asked if there is ONE street in particular that we should contact our local representatives about. I wanted to know which East/West street had the greatest chance of being renovated in the near future. She strongly suggested that we advocate for Leavenworth Street. This street is well graded, and is dangerous currently because it carries too much traffic. Redesigning this street can greatly contribute to the quality of life for neighborhood residents as well as cycling commuters.

I’m making my calls this week. I’d encourage you to do the same.

(Warning…Political Content) Watching the presidential debates a couple of weeks back, I couldn’t help but take note that there was hardly a mention of behavioral changes on the part of Americans to address gas prices and energy consumption.

There has been some lip-service given to developing public transportation infrastructure, but I doubt that will happen until it is virtually too late. I’m so frustrated now that so many Americans are demanding that the government and industry solve the resources problem for them.

At a meeting we went to recently on Transition Towns and Peak Oil there were some scary numbers thrown around about how technology solutions aren’t going to solve our problems. Hybrid cars, wind & solar energy, nuclear, or the mythical clean coal don’t stand a chance at picking up the slack left by declining oil production.

I’m a HUGE advocate for making changes to our behaviors in order to reduce consumption. The benefits are endless, you save money, help reduce environmental harm, and maintain better health. I sincerely hope that more people in the community start to adopt similar solutions.

But…I found this video today and am truly troubled. Watch for yourself.

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“Omaha—smack dab in the middle of America,” starts the city profile on SustainLane. Omaha ranks #25 on the site’s sustainability index of the nation’s 50 biggest cities, notably beating the front-range Colorado city of Colorado Springs and sunny San Diego, CA.

The site’s peer-reviewed, national study ranks cities by at least 16 factors, including each city’s ability to maintain healthy air, drinking water, parks and public transit systems, as well as a robust, sustainable local economy with green building, farmers markets, renewable energy and alternative fuels.

“We’re beginning to see the top- and bottom-ranked cities move farther apart, with the cities taking sustainability seriously increasing in desirability nationwide and enjoying better odds of long-term economic prosperity,” said SustainLane Media CEO James Elsen. “Specifically, the top 15 cities are creating more vibrant city centers and offer higher quality air, water, food and transportation choices that yield smaller carbon footprints per resident than those at the bottom of the list. We predict that the lower-ranking cities will increasingly struggle to sustain their resident and business populations and local economies.”

Why does Omaha rank where it does?

The city markets its own brand of compost called OmaGro. Omaha also recently switched to single stream recycling and has upped the types of plastics it accepts, making it easier for residents to divert waste away from landfills.

On the the transportation front, the city would do well to turn its attention to upping public transit ridership. In our survey, it 48th of 50 in this department. Mayor Mike Fahey is thinking about resuscitating the city’s old streetcar system; he might also consider offering alternative transportation subsidies, as many higher-ranking cities do.

The biggest limitation to making Omaha more sustainable may lie in getting more people to buy into the idea of living green, says the mayor’s deputy assistant, Andrea Fox. To help with outreach, the city is collaborating with the Green Omaha Coalition, a group that aims to promote a healthy, sustainable community through public-private partnerships, educational programs, and proposing policy solutions.

SustainLane.com is the web’s largest people-powered guide to sustainable living. The site connects interested consumers with the tools and information on everything related to green, including:

• The largest directory of local, green-friendly businesses in the United States with over 20,000 small business listings;
• Consumer-generated how-tos, news and product reviews of new green offerings in the marketplace; and
• A community of likeminded individuals willing to share information and personal experiences with each other.

I’ve found the site to be a rich resource for information on virtually any sustainability topic.

When the invitation showed up in the mail, we knew this was an event we couldn’t miss. The premier of the documentary film I.O.U.S.A. was to take place in downtown Omaha at the Holland Performing Arts Center and be broadcast to over 400 theaters across the country. After the film, a round table discussion featuring Warren Buffet, Pete Peterson and David Walker would provide insights into the film.

The event didn’t disappoint, our evening was spectacular on all fronts. After a brief introduction by the film’s director, the lights dimmed and my eyes opened wide in anticipation. The film clearly explained the state of our nation’s current financial crisis. It drove home the importance of not only national policy, but also personal responsibility.

I.O.U.S.A. examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions.

The numbers were staggering, the nation now has over $53 trillion in total liabilities, and that isn’t going anywhere soon. The nation’s budget is far from balanced, running a deficit year after year. Currently, our national dept is equal to 64% of our GDP and growing. Within 20 years, it is projected to exceed 100%.

In 2008, the Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of $357 billion ($553 billion excluding the Social Security (surplus). That estimate reflects the impact of the economic slowdown and legislated stimulus efforts, but not pending supplemental funding for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other purposes that could add more than $180 billion in deficit spending over the next two years.

The federal budget should serve as the fiscal roadmap for federal policy making. However, the budget and its related process have major weaknesses when it comes both to understanding and to managing the
financial condition of the United States government. The annual budget process focuses on the immediate budget year and largely discounts the future implications of current decisions. Decision makers do not devote the same level of scrutiny to future impacts as they do to current costs.

The film’s graphics did a fantastic job of offering a clear understanding of the scope of the problem, how issues are interrelated, and where the crisis is headed. As a way of throwing the staggering number in perspective, the $53 trillion was put into more understandable numbers. They calculated the burden to:

• $175,000 per person living in the United States
• $410,000 per full-time worker
• $455,000 per household

As the film ended, citizen’s were challenged to demand that Washington policy makers begin to address these issues. Rethink our priorities. We should focus on critical societal needs and programs and policies that work. In addition, we should not assign responsibilities to the government that we personally are not willing to pay in taxes. And also recognize that there are no easy answers.

The discussion that followed the film was interesting, but also strange. One member of the audience opened with a question that made me wonder if he had even watched the film. He asked, ‘Does anyone really want to live in a world where we all exercise fiscal responsibility?’ How bazaar?

I was absolutely impressed by Pete Peterson and David Walker, but was befuddled by Omaha’s own Warren Buffet. He just came across like a booster for the US financial system. He kept rambling on about the size of the ‘pie’ in order to help the audience understand that we could count on growth and continued prosperity. He was no better than the guy who asked the opening question…did he even watch the film? The he made some statements that totally reflected the Horatio Alger Myth, implying that we can all be billionaires if we just work a little bit harder.

I was so happy to hear the thoughts of Peterson and Walker, both of whom came across as grounded and insightful. They drove home the reality of our current financial crisis and discussed the practical issues which we must face in order to slow or stop the impending disaster.

The messages of the film was just one more reminder of the importance of Simple Living and a sustainable financial life.

If you are a numbers person and want to see how the film’s data played out, click here to download the complete citizen’s guide on the Financial Condition of the US.

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Simple living and a sustainable life, there are so many reasons to commit. It is natural for someone who first approaches these concepts to believe that they are just about the environment. While the environment is an essential concern, the benefits of these choices extend into many other areas of life. Health, happiness, and serenity also result, but financial freedom should not be overlooked.

The content below is largely a reprint of a story posted yesterday on CNN Money, written by Geoff Colvin. I thought it was an important story to share, being that a crisis may be approaching, and I believe that answers can be found in a sustainable life.

We made it through the bursting of the Internet bubble and now the bursting of the real estate bubble. Next we may be approaching the end of the most worrisome bubble of all: the standard-of-living bubble.

That conclusion comes from the latest data on credit card debt. It’s growing fast, but the problem is bigger than that - and to understand what it means, we have to take a few steps back.

For the past several years, the average inflation-adjusted total pay of American workers hasn’t been increasing. That means we haven’t been building a foundation for increases in our living standard. You might be tempted to say that by definition our living standard couldn’t have increased, but that’s not quite right. Even with stagnant real incomes, we can always live a little better every year through borrowing and pretending that our living standard is still rising, just as it was for decades.

So the Great Bull Market made us feel rich, and we felt justified in saving less and borrowing - and spending - more.

After stocks collapsed, home prices took off, making us feel rich all over again. So we continued saving less and spending more, creating the illusion that our living standard was still rising. In 2005 our personal savings rate went negative, but even that didn’t slow us down, because our homes were still appreciating - and rising home values meant that household net worths weren’t declining.

Of course, we don’t hear those assurances anymore. Stocks are back where they were eight years ago, and home prices are where they were five years ago. But personal debt is much higher than ever before, and average pay is still going nowhere in real terms. So now how do we live as if our living standard is still rising?

That’s where the credit card reports come in. Last year, just as the subprime crisis happened, credit card debt took off. The home-equity ATM had been shut down, so people turned to the last source of easy money they had left, the most expensive debt on the menu, credit card borrowing.

Since credit card debt has been growing much faster than the economy - more than 8% in last year’s third and fourth quarters and over 7% in May (the most recent month reported)- people are apparently using it as a substitute for income. Thus, for the past year or so we have still maintained the standard-of-living illusion.

But a big crunch is coming - and here’s why. Credit card debt, like mortgage debt, gets bundled, securitized, and sold off by banks. Citigroup, one of America’s largest credit card lenders, just reported that it lost $176 million in the second quarter through securitizing such debt. That happens when the buyers of those securities observe rising delinquency rates and rising interest rates, and decide the debt is worth less than Citi thought. More generally, the amount of credit card debt that is securitized nationwide has plunged by more than half in the past five months because it’s getting riskier. That means credit card issuers will be charging customers higher interest rates, and since the banks can’t offload as much of the debt as before, they’ll have less money to lend to cardholders.

The squeeze has already started, which is why Congress is in the process of passing the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights, which would prevent issuers from changing rates and terms without warning, among many other provisions. But bottom line, the credit card money window is going to start closing - and soon.

So now what? It’s hard to see where consumers can turn next. Home prices seem highly unlikely to start rising again soon. Stocks? You never know, but the Great Bull Market looks like a once-in-a-lifetime event. Homes and stocks are households’ biggest asset classes by far. There isn’t much else to borrow against.

It may be that the standard-of-living bubble finally has to deflate. Sustainable increases in living standards have to be earned, not borrowed, and that means performing ever higher value work that can’t be outsourced. We haven’t been meeting that challenge very well; doing so will probably require much more and better education for millions of Americans, which takes time and money.

The result may feel like deprivation, but I don’t see it that way. Who knows - we might even find that living within our means and saving a little money actually isn’t so bad.

New data from the Department of Transportation reveals that driving slid for the eighth straight month in June.

According to the DOT, Americans drove 12.2 billion miles less in June than they did in June 2007, a drop of 4.7 percent. That’s the largest monthly drop since the decline began in November.

A press release from the DOT says that, since November, Americans have driven 53.2 billion fewer miles than they did over the same period a year earlier, a drop that is more pronounced than the drop that occurred during the 1970s, a era marked by severe gas shortages. Rural travel has fallen 4 percent since late last year, while urban driving has fallen only 1.2 percent.

The biggest declines seem to occur in big states with wide open spaces. Driving was down 6.1 percent in Alaska, 6.2 percent in Kansas, 7 percent in Maine, 7.7 percent in Montana, 6.7 percent in Nevada, 6.9 percent in Washington, and 6.8 percent in Wyoming.

The Associated Press supplements the DOT’s data with a poll of the over-50 crowd, in which more than two-thirds say that high gas prices have prompted them to drive less.

Four in 10 said they have used public transportation, walked or ridden a bicycle more frequently since gas prices have risen, according to the AARP poll, which was being released Wednesday.

Elinior Ginzler, AARP’s senior vice president for livable communities, said she’s concerned that communities don’t have adequate sidewalks, bus shelters, bike lanes and public transportation options as more people look for other means to get around.

“More Americans age 50-plus are trying to leave their cars behind but face obstacles as soon as they walk out the door, climb on their bikes or head for the bus,” Ginzler said.

While a drop in driving is certainly positive from an environmental perspective – it directly translates into lower greenhouse gas emissions and more breathable air – all this suggests that many Americans, particularly those living outside of cities, are getting squeezed by high gas prices.

Maybe our energy crisis is also, in part, an infrastructure crisis. If more of us had access to public transit, if more of our neighborhoods had sidewalks and safe bike lanes, if more of us could buy our necessities on Main Street instead of at the strip mall on the outskirts of town, then our baseline would be lower, and maybe the spike in gas prices wouldn’t hit us so hard.

A lot of Americans would like to see these kinds of infrastructure improvements. One survey found that 40 percent of households would like to live in walkable urban areas. And, as I noted in my blog post in May, a survey by Rodale Press found that 40 percent of Americans say they would bike to work if they felt it was safer, and a 2008 Zogby poll found that 53 percent of Americans would take mass transit if it were close to their home and work.

But it seems that there is little political will to curb America’s car culture. Even as record ridership is straining mass transit, transportation officials seem more concerned about maintaining roads. In late July, amid worries that decreased driving is depleting federal funding for road upkeep, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters proposed a short-term solution of borrowing money from mass transit funding.

Source: Christian Science Monitor

On Saturday, Corey and I attended a meeting of the Omaha New Urbanism & Sustainable Development Meetup Group (website). The meeting brought together a diverse group of people whom all share a vision for vibrant and livable neighborhoods in Omaha.

The conversation was riveting, and those in attendance were up to their elbows in real-world experience. The members are clearly out in the community making change happen.

‘New urbanism is an American urban design movement that arose in the early 1980s. Its goal is to reform many aspects of real estate development and urban planning, from urban retrofits to suburban infill. New urbanist neighborhoods are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and to be walkable.’

Those of you who read my posts regularly already know how I feel about sustainable development. And if you check out the links to the right of this you will find several interesting resources on sustainable communities and transportation.

There are a couple of new urbanist developments in the work in Omaha right now. Omaha By Design has a nice online feature where you can learn more about Midtown Crossing and Aksarben Village. It is great to see these pedestrian friendly neighborhoods being born. They promise to bring excitement and new personality to the heart of the city.

As a side note, during the meeting we talked a bit about the Place Game. This program is hosted by Omaha By Design (see above), and teaches us how to evaluate our neighborhoods.

The Place Game is based on the key factors that make a great public space. These factors were identified 30 years ago by William H. Whyte in his book, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.

Check out the Place Game to see examples and learn how to play. And stay tuned for more from the New Urbanism group. Their plans are coming together for a really cool hand-on workshop in October.

It’s pretty clear that the business world is facing dramatic change driven by environmental concerns. Over the coming years and decades, we’re going to change the entire energy system and find new ways to design, make, ship, sell, and consume things. While it’s uncertain if quality of life will suffer (and I hope not), the quantity of resources used will change dramatically - e.g., using a lot less energy, or at least carbon-driven energy, to power our lives.

And this change is becoming a business imperative regardless of whether you buy the climate change argument. Just looking at the high price of everything from metals to food to fuels, the case for being radically more resource efficient is getting clearer every day. What’s also clear is that the world can’t currently provide for what will be nine or ten billion people who all want our lifestyle (the government of China has set a goal of moving half its population into the middle class by 2020 - that’s 600 million people; if they all use oil at our rate, China alone will need more than the world produces by 2030 or so). At current technologies and modes of production, there isn’t enough stuff. So there’s a business need and a system overload requirement that we innovate and do more with less.

But don’t just take my word for it.

The Wall Street Journal ran a stunning article recently titled, “New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears.” The shocking part of this article was the fact that it didn’t malign the idea that we may run out of things, which Milton Friedman-esque business people have been laughing at for 200 years (since Thomas Malthus first drew an exponential population chart plotted against a geometric resource growth chart and said we’d all starve). Yes, those doomsayers have been very wrong in critical ways, mainly related to our ability to innovate and substitute out of products when we found new options (like from whale oil to kerosene to oil).

But the Journal was deadly serious, talking about resources like water that we can’t substitute our way out of. The related point was that there’s really nothing left to substitute to — we know where pretty much everything is. Two quotes were fascinating: “Record highs in the prices for oil, wheat, copper…are signs of a lasting shift in demand as yet unmatched by supply”. The “as yet” is a big qualifier, but it feels a bit like wishful thinking, especially given the second quote from ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva: “I don’t think we are going to see the [oil] supply going over 100 million barrels a day, and the reason is: Where is all that going to come from?” So even the oil CEOs are telling us there’s not enough stuff.

So what does this mean for business and how is it connected to the green movement? First, rising prices for nearly everything mean we’re entering the big leagues. Whether you call it “green” or “eco-efficiency” doesn’t matter; either way, all the efficiency tools we have - such as total quality, lean manufacturing, six sigma - are going to be put to the test. If your company has a knack for cutting out waste and reducing resource use, it will survive and thrive. If you can’t reduce your reliance on fossil fuels in your whole value chain - from sourcing to manufacturing to distribution - you may be in trouble.

Second, if you can offer a new “supply” to help bolster that side of the Econ 101 curves, you will have a giant market to satisfy (those billions of consumers). And I’m talking about smart supply growth, not the corn ethanol kind that actually exacerbates all of our problems. I’m talking new low-carbon energy, water saving technologies and processes, good design principles, building efficiency, and on and on.

The mad race for renewable energy technologies and the dramatic shift in car offerings are good examples. The venture capital money flowing to new technologies easily recalls the Internet boom. But is this one a bubble? It might be, but these entrepreneurs are working to satisfy existing multi-trillion dollar energy and resource markets, not trying to create new markets or needs. So money from the biggest, smartest names in Silicon Valley is flowing freely. This is a very good thing. There will be a shakeout, but some winners will win big.

As demand for resources outstrips supply, the Journal worried, what if countries just try to grab what’s left in a big resource fight? Companies might go down a biggest is best path as well. But won’t the best companies profit much more if they just find a way to need less? And won’t the competitors that help their customers use less do extremely well?

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Source Andrew Winston

(Reprint from Alternet.org) For the first time in nearly two decades, I am no longer a driver. A few months ago, facing spiking gas prices and much-needed repairs, I donated my car to an organization that takes care of foster kids.

It’s an odd feeling to be on this side of being green. Without a car, my sense of time and space have been immediately altered. What was once a matter of expediency is now an effortful navigation.

“I’ll be there in 15 minutes!” I used to tell a good friend who once lived nearby but who now resides, without a car, at an inconvenient distance. Going to my favorite Asian food market suddenly has turned into another arduous chore: Once a 30 minute event, it has become a two-hour ordeal, with bags in hands, and bus transfers.

Owning a car has always been a luxury in the Third World, something beyond the pale of the middle class. In countries like Vietnam, Peru and Bangladesh, just to name a few, only the very rich owned cars. When I came here from Vietnam with my family at the end of the war, I remember such delight when my older brother bought his first car. We were still sharing an apartment with my aunt and her children, but as we cruised the streets at night, it felt as if we were becoming Americans.

The automobile, after all, is intrinsically American, and owning one largely determines how we Americans arrange our daily lives — it is as essential to us as the train and metro are to Japanese or Europeans. Indeed, a car is the first thing a teenager of driving age desires; to drive away from home is an established American rite of passage. Even the working poor are drivers here.

For immigrants, the car is the first thing we buy before the house. Vietnamese in Vietnam marvel at the BMWs and Mercedez Benzes that their relatives drive in America, and no doubt the sleek photos sent home cause many to dream of a life of luxury in the United States.

It seems a natural progression that the housing crisis should quickly lend itself to a car crisis. Both were readily available at one time, with easy loans and cheap gas. But now, with skyrocketing gas prices and faltering mortgages, many have had to give up one in order to keep the other.

Not surprisingly, the car is often the last thing that downtrodden Americans let go. “I can see losing my house, but I can’t imagine losing my van,” one unemployed friend told me. “I can live in my van. But not being able to get where I need to go would be worse than not having a house.”

Mobility defines us far more than sedentary life, thus the car is arguably more important than the house. Americans, despite accepting global warming as de facto, are still very much in love with the automobile. On average, we own 2.28 vehicles per household.

Our addiction to the automobile is as much a symptom of our nomadic culture as it is a matter of necessity: Urban sprawl, combined with little public transportation, makes the car essential. A job seems almost always to require it. The distance between here and there is daunting without a vehicle at one’s command.

The car, culturally speaking, is mobility and individualism combined. It is sex, freedom and danger. Thelma and Louise escaped from urban ennui by hitting the freeway with the wind in their hair, the horizon shimmering chimerically ahead. They found romance on the road. Indeed, their final moment approaches the mythic, as the blue Thunderbird Convertible flies across the Grand Canyon, taking the notion of freedom beyond any open road.

Our civilization, too, is driving toward an abyss. The covetous American way of life — in the age of climate change and dwindling energy resources — has become unsustainable.

On TV recently, former Vice President turned eco-activist Al Gore called for a radical change in our collective behavior. He wants us to completely replace fossil fuel-generated electricity with carbon-free energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal by 2018. “The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk,” he said. “The future of human civilization is at stake.” We are now being called upon, the Nobel Prize winner told us, “to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes.”

Going greenI wish he were exaggerating, but my gut tells me that the green guru is pointing us in the right direction. How and if we’ll ever get there, how we’ll find a collective will to act, I have no idea. But I do know this: Humanity has arrived at a historic juncture and it now seems that a drastic shift in the collective behavior is called for. If this means finding the will to be frugal and give up certain luxuries, then so be it.

America was built on the premise of progress and expansion. Yet our vision of a future of unimpeded opportunities and comfort is now in conflict with the health of the planet. The consumer culture requires continuous acquisition, and it is built on the concept of disposable goods. Our way of life — which is copied the world over — has created an unprecedented crisis on a planetary scale.

I can tell you from experience, however, that being on the right side of the green divide is not easy. As I trudged to work this morning, a 40-minute trek, I dearly missed my car. As I budget my time and memorize bus routes and timetables, it seems as if I am returning to my humble immigrant beginnings, repudiating some notion of being an American. But I’m not. Giving up the car is my new American responsibility.

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Reprint of article from Alternet.org written by Andrew Lam

Forbes reports, that business and government executives from across the U.S. gathered in Washington to exchange ideas on energy efficiency. The forum was a run-up event to the annual energy efficiency conference hosted by Johnson Controls, a Wisconsin-based company specializing in improving auto and building efficiency.

The focus of the gathering was to share ideas for improving energy efficiency that didn’t necessarily require a significant in technology. One of the primary focuses was on resource reduction in order to get the most out of what is available. This is also the strategy that Harvest uses in helping clients implement sustainable marketing programs.

UPS was noted as an example of using behavioral changes to reduce resource use. “Two years ago Big Brown established a policy instructing its drivers to save energy and gasoline by turning off their vehicles at even the briefest stops. Through a specialized computer system developed by UPS itself, the company discovered that by not idling their trucks, drivers ran their engines an average of 24 minutes less per day, for a savings of $188 per driver each year. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but with more than 90,000 drivers worldwide, that translates into a cost savings of close to $17 million annually.”

Forbes wrote up a list of 10 money-saving efficiencies that the group came up with:

Lighting Improvements
Compact Fluorescent lamps, which lasts up to 15,000 hours longer than the standard bulb, can save up to 75 percent in energy costs.

Reducing Vehicle Idling
By not letting vehicles idle, UPS saves about $190 per driver per year. And with more than 90,000 drivers under its wings, that about $ 17.1 million in savings.

Building Orientation
Buildings facing north-south instead of east-west can reduce energy consumption by as much as 20 percent. “E” or “H” shaped offices maximizes sunlight and window area, reducing light costs. While long, thin buildings maximize natural ventilation.

Green Roofing
Reduce cooling costs by planting green roofs to soak up sunlight during the day. Light-colored roofs can also reduce cooling expenses by about 40 percent because it reflects light.

Water Recycling
Industrial cooling to irrigation can be taken care of with reused or treated water.

Maximizing Thermal Efficiency
Save as much as 40 percent on thermal heating costs by maximizing the efficiencies of the entire production line instead of individual components. Operate furnaces and boilers at or close to design capacity. Restricting loose air used for combustion will lead to heat savings.

Bicycles
Use bikes as a form of transportation. This will reduce traffic and carbon emissions. In 2007 Paris made more than 20,000 bicycles available to subscribers, similar pilot programs are also planned in the U.S.

Energy Auditing
Have your building audited for wasteful energy to determine what efficiency improvements are needed. Reducing drafts alone can save around 30 percent in energy costs per year.

Driving the Speed Limit
Drive slow, fast driving wastes gas. Keeping tires properly inflated could also improve gas mileage by about 3 percent. Keeping the car light by emptying out unwanted items from the truck can also improve the car’s efficiency.

Lobbying
Lobby congressmen to renew policies such as the federal tax credits for residential energy efficiency improvements, which expired at the end of 2007.

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Source: Environmental Leader