Community Mobilization

Find and Buy Local Food

Being a locavore (eating only what is grown and raised near you) is an amazing idea to not only ensure you get the freshest food, but it also supports your local economy and reduces the carbon impact from shipping food long distances. The challenge is that often times local produce is difficult to find and appears only in specialty markets or stands.

Local Dirt aims to connect local produce growers and those who want to buy the goods online. Althoug hthe system has few entires for produce sellers, and they are located mainly in the Carolinas, the concept is fundementally doun. The challenge is to get local producers to buy into the system and then only then can you begin to market to the locavore community. There is no sense in promoting an empty box. I hope my local market gets onto the system so I can see what is being grown and sold locally.

American Willing to Pay for Community Action on Global Warming

A very interesting Yale Study sent to me this morning  that points to the fact that between 2/3 and 3/4 of Americans support, and are willing to pay a bit to make a reality, any one of a number of government run subsidies that will help their communities be more green. These programs range from $5.00 - $8.00 per month increases in their power bills to help others get more fuel efficient furnaces, or mandate that their power company generate 20% of their power from renewable resources. The point of the study is to show you never know how many people will go how far until you ask them. With tis new knowledge it would be irresponsible for local municipalities to not ask their constituents the same questions, and then creating programs in accordance with the desires of the community.
Some of the findings included:

• 71 percent would pay $5 a month more in property taxes in support of a local subsidy to encourage homeowners to replace old furnaces, water heaters, air conditioners, light bulbs and insulation.

 

• 69 percent would pay $8.50 more a month for local regulations requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20 percent of their electricity from wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

 

• 68 percent would approve changing their city or town zoning rules to decrease suburban sprawl and concentrate new development near the town center.

 

• 65 percent would support changing their city or town zoning rules to require neighborhoods to have a mix of housing, offices, industry, schools and stores close together.

Future of Work

Business Week has a number of articles on the future of work recently.1 2 3.  I got me thinking back to a presentation I did about a year ago for a Division Board of Directors on the future of work. In the presentation I laid out the differentiating features of Knowledge work and set a long term realm of possibilities for the future of knowledge work. Technological advances have really created an environment ripe for mobile and off site workers. Moreover the upcoming generation is steeped in technology know-how, and the keyboard and phone are the preferred input devices over the pen and paper.

The workforcre will drive the future of work, but the future of management is more important. How will a 20th century management structure integrate a 21st century workforce? How will cities adjust to the new reality? A 21st century workforce is distributed all over the world because talented people will live where they want to live and work for whom they want to work. Drivers such as health care, cost of living, diminishing cost of broadband access, wireless technology, and mobile computing are changing the self employment landscape for many.  Below is a mind map of the drivers and outcomes of the knowledge workforce. Download end_of_the_workplace.jpg

Flying Your Conscience

Since I have moved to Cincinnati I now am facing a few new realities that concern air travel. Yes I am still on a Delta Hub but now I am near CVG, the most expensive airport in the USA. So when planning a trip to NYC I found direct tickets to all 3 airports close to $1,000.00 That is absurd, especially since this is donor money! Now I could fly out of Dayton (20 more minutes in the car) and connect through Cincinnati for the low price of $225 but that is 2 flights and a big carbon foot print. The kicker is that the American Airlines flies direct to La Guardia from Dayton. After the bad American Airlines customer service experience incident I refuse to fly with them under any circumstances. In conclusion I will be flying Continental into Newark and taking the train into the city. It is the best compromise I can find to save donor money, keep a smaller carbon footprint, and avoid giving American a single red cent of my money.

New Year Resolutions I Can Keep

Every New Year millions of us make resolutions that are either so monumental that they probably will never occur, or mundane and pointless in the long term scheme of life. In the face of this my resolutions are fairly simple and I think I am going to go with a community approach to help put some pressure on me to them. By making yourself accountable to a community you are supercharging the impact our your resolution. So keep reading to find out exactly how I am going to become a rock star, save the planet, and live forever!

Greenhouse-gas greenhouse

I just read a fantastic and inspiring article in The Futurist magazine about a greenhouse that is using the waste CO2 and steam produced by local Terra Nitrogen to grow tomatoes. In addition to sequestering 12,500 TONS of CO2 the greenhouse will also use waste steam to heat the greenhouse in the winter. Further reducing CO2 emissions this greenhouse will eliminate the need to import tomatoes from Spain in the winter. This is a perfect compliment to my previous post on Happy Shrimp, a company that is using waste heat water from a power plant to keep their shrimp farms warm in the cold Scandinavian winters.

Travel restrictions restrict British business

My friend Steven Aguilar-Milan sent out a few great links (The Independent and The Business) on the effect of the hyper tight travel restriction at UK airports, and here state-side. The point Steven is making is pretty darn compelling. When UK travelers are willing to take a 3 hour train ride to Paris to fly out to the United States simply to avoid UK security something is out of hand. Look and dig deeper - what is the impact on the creative class economy, the ability to export intellectual capitol? Are we strangling the Creative class for the sake of helping average Joe feel good about terrorism. The impact on the global economy could loom large as traveling and the business that goes along with it slowly erode evaporating some of the most valuable jobs around.

A carbon-negative meetings

Pop Tech was a fantastic event, and one aspect that enhanced the meeting further was that it was a carbon-negative event. Michele Bowman of Global Foresight, and the Association of Professional Futurists coordinated the carbon-negative aspect of the conference. She worked with the Solar Electric Light Fund to electrify Kalale District, Benin, Africa. SELF replaced countless kerosene lamps with solar panels and energy efficient compact florescent lights. This eliminates the carbon production but also removes the risk of fires that accompany kerosene lamps. Pop Tech created enough solar electricity to offset double the carbon emissions that all 500 attendees and presenters created while traveling to Camden, ME. You can read more about the project in the extended post below.