It is a challenge to raise money for non-profits and this is particularly true if you are a non-profit that deals with consumption and you are serious about sticking to your mission (www.newdream.org).  We work hard to rid the world of junk mail so we could hardly feel great about sending out a flurry of letters asking for operating funds.  Likewise, we are unlikely to send out membership premiums because one of the reasons that folks join our organization is that they fundamentally believe that they already have too much stuff.  Yes, renewable energy d

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As I was reading my normal flurry of electronic news stories I hit the CNN site to see what they were saying about GM new Volt and the Toyota Prius—basically which in their view was better (http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/14/autos/volt_vs_prius/index.htm).  You can read the play-by-play y

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Yesterday my wife made me feel guilty for taking one of her favorite "disposable" plastic bags.  And I am sure it was not a casual comment.  She was really attached to that bag and the message was take it, wash it, and bring it back to me. 

It is the type of bag that American's casually throw away by the millions each day, while at the same time they are buying millions and millions to replace them.  Doesn't make much sense, does it?  The solution to this could be having a wife or husband like me and a "bag tree." 

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I told someone recently that I thought that bottled water was the pet rock of wetness. The person looked at me with a purplexed look.  And then I told him of a time long, long ago when people paid someone to buy a small pet rock.  It was a very silly item that lasted a short time during the 1970s.

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Many of us in the US and Canada are upset over the General Motors (GM) bailout.  Some wish it never happened and others are peaved by the way it was constructed.  But the fact remains that the citizens in the US and Canada own 72 percent of the remaining company.  While I am sure someone will be quick to point out that the terms of the deal make us majority stockholder but did not give us or our governments voting rights.  To that I answer: Hogwash.  We might not have shareholder rights per se but there are any number of pressure points readily available to us from exerting market pre

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Now that we own 60% of General Motors I think it is only fitting that we ask around and see what we want as majority stockholders in our company.  Here is my friend Gregor's take.  Please watch this video and pass it around.  We, the stockholders, need to be active and aware.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=231091355436&ref=nf

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My staff and I spent a little time with film maker John Degraaf (Affluenza) today to screen and comment on his new film about the economy.  Pretty sobering.  Lots of facts and figures as well as comparisons about our current state and how it compares with the Great Depression. 

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Since I have an interest in bottled water from a number of different perspectives, I was intrigued by the following tweet from Bottledh2OBabe:

@SustainableArch Did u know there's a national shortage of rPET? Ask ur local gov to expand programs & offer public space recycling.

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When I say geoengineering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoengineering) a lot of you will probably just ask: What?  But it is another of a long line of bad ideas brought to you by the same type of folks who brought cane toads to Queensland and mongooses to Hawaii--i.e., those folks who think they understand the complexity of nature and think they are smarter.  GMO crops would fit in this camp as well.

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In the 2008 elections the vast majority of folks voted for change.  That was extremely clear, what isn't so clear is just exactly what change means.  We have not collectively communicated what we want.  I'd like to start that exercise by asking the Greenopolis community this simple question: What do you want American to look like in 2020? 

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As I ride my bike around DC in June I am reminded of the cycle of rising humidity and temperature leading to thundershowers.  It just seems like the sky gets mad and lets loose.  It is probably the same with the economy.  As things get tighter and the percentage of income going to the 1% of the very rich rises above 20% things get to an "angry" state and fall apart.  Look at the patterns of income distribution in 1928 and 2006.  See a pattern there?  And then look at times when the 1% got about 10% and you probably find that the overall happiness factor for the country was a little b

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It is interesting talking to people about the economy--particularly when recovery strategies other than growth or increased consumption are mentioned.  Anger and fear are likely to spring forth which is interesting because most research seems to indicate that consumption leads to unhappiness.  What are we afraid of losing, our sorrow?

http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/05/finding_happiness_in_poverty_and_thrift.php

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I survived (thrived) during my first day at our economic summit at Pocantico.  I spent most of yesterday morning contemplating the above equation.  And it didn't change.  Impact to the Planet continues to be a product of population size and general income that is either mitigated by or worsened by the technologies that we use.  Much as I looked at it, the logic was inescapable.

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I just accepted the position of executive director of the Center for a New American Dream (www.newdream.org). Great, wonderful, congratulations, etc., but given the recent sea change and various economic/environmental calamities, the question has to be asked: What is the new American dream? And how do we acheive "it" once we identify it?

Well, to start off with we know it is not what we have now. We work too hard and long. We spend too much on stuff we do not need and that gives us little satisfaction.

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Last night my friend Gregor Barnum from Seventh Generation and I served as emcees for an event featuring a speaker from The Climate Project.  The speaker, Dee Gish, did a fine job but there was an audience member who was a climate change doubter who kept bringing up site or time specific events as rebuttals for the accepted role of humans and carbon dioxide in this whole climate change dynamic. 

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