Road Map To Shared Green Business Success

This Weblink provides insightful information how businesses and organizations can now collaborate (even as they sometimes compete, though often they are in different industries) in lowering costs, improving overhead -- sometimes even profits from new products and services, and "exponentially" or "multiply" green-ing both their daily and strategic operations.

There was a movie that popularized a phrase very evident in recent years in society: Greed is good. We disagree, and tangibly, measurably, provably are all about demonstrating for the bottom lines of businesses and organizations that: Green is good (for you!).

Take Action For Frogs: Your Inconvenient Truth

At this moment of planetary potential pandemic flu hitting the United States, and watching how all of humans' and Earth's man-made challenges are directly, shockingly, and (shouldn't be so) surprisingly inter-related, a potential, sensible, scalable solution can be found in a reset of how we treat ourselves in harmony with nature, not in some type of sick lose-lose competition -- especially again and again, from the accurately foretelling movie An Inconvenient Truth to this more recent article, regarding -- IF we will have the will to change -- our green friends the frogs. There is a powerful, even tangibly edu-taining scene in the movie showing an animated frog who senses a hot flash and jumps away, BUT if the heat is increased gradually, is lulled into false confidence, laziness, or whatever inertia until it is too late for survival -- and then the only hope is that an outside force for good would have to rapidly intervene to rescue the frog and snap it into action elsewhere. Sound too familiar, people?

For your own personal survival, if not for a higher calling, take action, now, on the we, not just the me (so to speak). Ribbitt! And seriously, thanks. When scientists almost universally agree that there is a CO2 in the atmosphere exponentially-rising emergency, but mass communications are manipulated so that more than half the public relations issued questions the legitimacy of the climate change crisis, even if you are skeptical (hopefully not) about the severity of global warming, the literal bottom line in business and more broadly, personal and family survival, is trust your gut, your inner voice that whatever the specific triggers, it is beyond doubt now that mass selfishness on the part of more and more humans mis-using limited resources is definitely setting in motion flus and other events that cannot be restrained if we together do not rethink the whats of life -- and definitely the hows.

This is a time for unity, for caring, for hope through faith. This can also be, around those enduring values, a time of real sustainable income-generating, doing well by doing good, exponentially green business and job opportunities. As the great New York Yankees baseball legend Yogi Berra said, "When there is a fork in the road, take it." Literally, let us pray for answers the only way they will work, going forward -- together.

Earth Day 2009 and beyond: YOUR CALL TO ACTION

No longer is the alignment of environmental protection and business development merely nice, or about global warming publicity or green consumerism, and renewable energy alone. Devastation in economic empowerment and employment (lost jobs) -- and public health -- from abusing our planet for too long, and its many "neighborhoods," including yours (!), is no longer isolated, or someone else's problem. This cannot be ignored yet again for one more day.

Whether it's the local Bay Area news reporting dangerous drugs and untreated sewage being illegally dumped in the San Francisco Bay, or this accurate, yet shocking in its accuracy (its cold, "dead zone" facts), Frontline television report on the equally substantial US East Coast Chesapeake Bay genuine crisis, please take this very seriously as your CALL TO ACTION, personally and for your families and our communities (not some distant, abstract ideas) before it is literally too late. Not being alarmist, but keeping it very real, this Earth Day 2009 must be only the moment in your life personally and ours when there is no turning back.

The environmental and economic interrelated "cancer" upon each and all of us is worse than the truly terrible Dust Bowl situation in the 1930's Great Depression years -- and yet today, as then, there might be survival IF we really stop sticking our heads in the sand, so to speak, and move as Americans beyond greed to exponentially green new opportunities to "profit the planet." Thank you.

The Year We Make Contact? A Space Odyssey Indeed.

We often believe when there is a disconnect between nice ideas and real world priorities, we see opportunities to "bridge the gaps."

Fact: In every aspect of our desires in our project, business concierge, and coaching work with "exponentially green" nonprofits and creative community enterprises, it is now possible to add value together -- to survive in tough times through thriving into the future...increasingly, which must be, for all of us, "now."

Here are brief Weblinks well worth your time. "This" is no longer "science fiction."

sustainableindustries.com/breakingnews/43036587.html

youtube.com/watch?v=cWnmCu3U09w

We hope to be helpful in the development of shared, sustainable income in these challenging times for so many...yet "tomorrow" tangibly will not wait.

Are you ready?

enterprisesunrise.com / nonprofitsunrise.com

Carrie's Coverage of Biodiesel Fuel Conference Featured in Bay Area Business Woman

My article highlighting the 6th Annual Biodiesel Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Feb 1-4, is now published in the February 2009 Bay Area Business Woman. See my web site under the Portfolio link, also linked to the article image at left.
Did you know?...

*Biodiesel fuels are half as toxic as petroleum based fuels
*Boeing recently launched experimental flights using plant derivatives instead of traditional petroleum, and not only were they successful, they proved more fuel efficient
*Melissa Etheridge is a spokesperson for biofuels, and traded in her "fancy cars" for a biodiesel van

Other important links of interest:

• National Biodiesel Board
• BQ-9000
• BioTrucker.com
• AskBen.info
• National Biodiesel Foundation
• AllThingsBiodiesel.com

Highlights from Biodiesel Fuel Conference

I was invited to cover one day of the 6th Annual Biodiesel Conference at the Moscone Center on Tuesday, Feb 3, for a local newspaper. It was truly a great day...at the Opening Session, the highlights included songs by Melissa Etheridge, who traded in her luxury vehicles for biodiesel, which she now uses on her tour buses as well. Daryl Hannah also provided commentary.

"You know, I used to think that biodiesel was a kind of a gas," she stated. "Now, I know that it is."

Over 4,000 attended the conference, which also featured a packed exhibit hall and many programs and sessions.

Another highlight was a press tour I got to go on, a sightseeing tour around San Francisco Bay given by the Red and White Fleet, powered entirely by biodiesel. I can vouch for the fact that it did not smell at all, the way these tour boats sometimes do, and kuddos to this company for getting it right. See videos below for highlights, and for my interview with Tom Escher, owner of Red and White.

The National Biodiesel Board honored Mayor Gavin Newsom with the "Eye on Biodiesel Award" for Initiative. The annual awards recognize champions of environmentally friendly biodiesel fuel in five categories: influence, inspiration, initiative, industry, and innovation. In 2006, Mayor Newsom issued an Executive Directive designed to increase the pace of municipal use of biodiesel. Today, virtually all of the City's 1,500 diesel vehicles run on B20.

Female rock icon and Grammy and Academy Award winner Melissa Etheridge tours around the world, powered by biodiesel when she can. Etheridge, another biodiesel "influencer" award winner, said she liked using biodiesel in her tour vehicles so much that she sold her personal cars to buy a diesel SUV, which she calls the "Bio-Beast." "Biodiesel inspires me and I believe it will inspire others, especially once they get that you don't have to make any changes to the engine to use it," said Etheridge. "I think America is going to come back as an energy leader through renewable, sustainable fuels like biodiesel."

Economist Article Highlights the Ocean's Troubles

An online story in the Dec. 30th economist highlights the latest damages to our oceans, which have serious ramifications for now and the immediate future. They include:

• an increase in carbon dioxide on the ocean's surface, which harms marine life and can destabilize the entire marine system
• increased carbon dioxide also causing global warming, and with it melting glaciers and rising water levels that can threaten entire countries
• masses of discarded plastic that swirl in 2 distinct areas in the Pacific
• red tides and the deterioration of marine life

This is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. The articles states:

"Each of these changes is a catastrophe. Together they make for something much worse. Moreover, they are happening alarmingly fast—in decades, rather than the eons needed for fish and plants to adapt. Many are irreversible. It will take tens of thousands of years for ocean chemistry to return to a condition similar to its pre-industrial state of 200 years ago, says Britain’s most eminent body of scientists, the Royal Society. Many also fear that some changes are reaching thresholds after which further changes may accelerate uncontrollably. No one fully understands why the cod have not returned to the Grand Banks off Canada, even after 16 years of no fishing. No one quite knows why glaciers and ice shelves are melting so fast, or how a meltwater lake on the Greenland ice sheet covering six square kilometres could drain away in 24 hours, as it did in 2006. Such unexpected events make scientists nervous."

What about solutions? The article is weak on this, suggesting only abolishing fishing subsidies, for example, and establishing international fishing agreements. Little is addressed regarding the pollution issue, only highlighting the seriousness of the situation, and the fact that it will take another Hurricane Katrina and other events to shake politicians up.

So the question remains: what are we going to do about our oceans?