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The Cool City Challenge: Getting a Low-Carbon Lifestyle to Catch On
An article by Mark Fischetti of Scientific American on the pioneering work of Evolutionary Leader David Gershon
Most people are aware that reducing carbon emissions could help the planet. But convincing a particular individual to change his or her behavior in ways that emit less carbon—not to mention the behavior of an entire city—can be a monumental challenge.
David Gershon, founder of the Empowerment Institute in Woodstock, NY, is taking on that challenge, with help from three urban managers who hope their cities can become models for the future.
Gershon, who authored the 2006 book and program Low Carbon Diet, has spent 20 years researching how to change community behavior. He has found that the traditional approaches often don’t work: giving people information, passing laws, offering financial incentives or just plain pleading. Yet tests he and others have conducted show how a small group of people who commit themselves to a change in behavior can influence a wider and wider circle of people, potentially adding up to large scale change.
Evidence that supports this thesis came from a series of EcoTeams that Gershon formed in the early 2000s. The teams of five to eight families in a neighborhood began to practice various conservation steps, which gradually spread to their neighbors and eventually to 20,000 people. On average they reduced their solid waste by 40 percent, water use by 32 percent, energy consumption by 14 percent and CO2 emissions by 15 percent. And each household saved an average of $225 a year. Today there are more than 300 of these Cool Communities in 36 states.
Now Gershon has enlisted three municipalities in California, each with 50,000 to 75,000 residents, to try to scale up the cool communities approach citywide. He hopes that the cities will in turn inspire others to follow suit. Gershon is relying on one key manager in each California location to lead the charge: Mitch Sears, the sustainability programs manager for Davis; Debra van Duynhoven, the sustainability coordinator for Palo Alto; and Richard Dale, executive director at the Sonoma Ecology Center in Sonoma.
The plan is to get 25 to 75 percent of each city’s citizens to reduce their carbon footprint by 25 percent within three years. Each municipality will also team up with a local university or research institute to figure out how to make the entire city carbon neutral by 2025.
Gershon plans to create buzz by announcing the plan as the Cool Cities Challenge at the Rio +20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in June. At that time he will release the names of three Brazilian municipalities of similar size that will also begin the challenge. Results will be announced as part of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio.
Data show that 70 percent of the carbon being emitted globally is linked to cities, according to Gershon. “How we got here was pretty unconscious,” he says. “But we control the future.”
Photo courtesy of jimmywayne on Flickr
About the Author: Mark Fischetti is a senior editor at Scientific American who covers energy, environment and sustainability issues. Follow on Twitter @markfischetti.
From Scientific American
Spirituality and Economic Peace: The One-Percent Solution
By Tom Zender
"If you desire peace, cultivate justice but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace." – Dr. Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
My time with General Electric, Honeywell, other corporations and smaller companies gave me a solid business perspective of business and the economy.
Then, six years as the CEO of a global spiritual movement provided me with a strong spiritual view of business and our economic environment.
This integral combination led me to understand how spirituality plays into business and our resulting economy. Not just the economy that professors and politicians address, but the economy that is discussed at evening dinner tables in the United States and elsewhere. Spirituality is a tent pole in the lives of most people, yet it is the most underutilized resource in our shaken yet still powerful economy. We are immersed in an infinite pool of positive spiritual energy without ever thinking about accessing it in business – even as the structure of the economy around us seems to be falling apart.
This integral combination led me to understand how spirituality plays into business and our resulting economy. Not just the economy that professors and politicians address, but the economy that is discussed at evening dinner tables in the United States and elsewhere. Spirituality is a tent pole in the lives of most people, yet it is the most underutilized resource in our shaken yet still powerful economy. We are immersed in an infinite pool of positive spiritual energy without ever thinking about accessing it in business – even as the structure of the economy around us seems to be falling apart.
The 500 largest U.S. corporations achieved record revenues of $11 trillion in 2011, and total profits soared 80% over 2010 – with 14 million workers stuck in a stagnant job market. $11 trillion is 73% of the entire U.S. Gross Domestic Product of $15 trillion. In other words, just 500 corporations essentially control the U.S. economy.
Likewise, the European Union of 27 countries generated $18 trillion GDP out of a world total of $70 trillion, or 26% of the total world economy. Just 28 countries, including the U.S., and their largest corporations dominate nearly 50% of the global economy.
Clearly, corporations have an enormous economic resource that can contribute directly to improving the daily lives of people and our world. This extraordinary resource can improve our global humanity at all levels – creating Economic Peace with education, water, food, clothing, housing, health care, education, community and communications and ecology. Remember that one-half of the world’s population lives on less than $3 U.S. dollars per day.
If all corporations and businesses throughout the world were to contribute 1% of their annual profits directly to global humanitarian causes, this would provide hundreds of billions of needed dollars per year – without having to pass funds through inefficient governmental handling. This is Economic Peace, which leads to greater human peace at local, national, and global levels.
A living example of this action is Target Corporation, which for many years has been giving 5% of its operating profits to humanitarian causes. Target gains respect both for this work and for their ongoing financial growth and stability.
True giving at this level is a spiritually motivated social action. While this idea might shake the minds of some boards of directors, shareholders, owners, and other stakeholders in businesses around the world, the good done for those who vitally need this resource is immense. As we know from universal spiritual principles, multiplied returns are the gift to those who give freely – always.
We encourage all corporations and businesses to operate at a higher level of collective consciousness and to give a small fraction of their monetary and other resources to support our bodies and souls for Economic Peace.
Economic peace is a lasting peace.
[Reprinted from The Restless Spirit, August 2012]
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oncile differences, striking deep chords of optimism even as he describes facing the heart of darkness in conflict situations. His soulful but practical voice speaks universally to peace activists, mediators, negotiators, psychologists, educators, businesspeople, and clergy--and to all emerging evolutionary leaders.
Evolutionary philanthropist Lynne Twist, author of 
One focus has been on empowering youth, including this eye-opening one-hour interview by Ben Hart of the Shift Network with Evolutionary Leaders Oran Cohen and Nina Meyerhof during a week about education.
edge, we tip the scales of life and balance in our favor. And it all begins with our awareness of the deepest truths of our existence, and how we rely on those truths each day for every choice in our lives."
Evolutionary Leaders is a project of