How To Profit From America’s New Shopping List

Hey America, if you are paying attention, you can make a lot of money right now!

President Obama just told us his shopping list for his three year plan (funny, it takes three years for fruit trees to produce). Obama is about to get a check for $825,000,000,000 dollars and he wants to buy all sorts of cool new things for America, such as:

10,000 school renovations – Great for all the folks who can help kids learn about chickens and growing vegetables and neat stuff like that

Improved local community communications networks – Hey, I sell those things!

75% of Federal building to be more energy efficient – You mean like ride sharing? Light bulbs? Turning computers off?

2.5 Million weatherized homes – Wow, whoever makes bricks and insulation from waste plastic bags & stuff will make a killing!

Double America’s renewable energy – Woo hoo! I sell hooch making machines! I’m gonna be rich!

Anyway, I am writing about this because the secret is, and always will be, to be a master of markets for things people really need. That means neighborhood collectives can team up and go legally harvest firewood and split it up among the community, where people volunteer their labor in exchange for good and services they need.

Money, as we know it, is just a means of representing value. What has real value to you? Probably the same things that have value to everyone else: Food, shelter, transportation, water, electricity, friends, resilient neighborhoods and communities, skills and stuff the community can use.

That’s the power behind Bright Neighbor. We offer a machine that helps fix community economies and ecology. Think about it this way…

Chickens are egg machines.
Gardens are fruit and vegetable machines.
Trees are fruit and nut machines.
Worms and mushrooms are soil fixing machines.

Bright Neighbor is a communications system, a carbon reduction machine, a money saving machine, and a community repair machine all-in-one. We have implemented it in governments, businesses, faith communities, private corporations, and with individual community organizers who want to fix their community. Our customer base now ranges in all of these markets, and if President Obama wants to buy any of these things, Bright Neighbor is one of America’s post-petroleum startups now open for business.

Three cheers for the Three Year Plan! I hope you make oodles of money.

- Randy White

PS: If you are interested in setting up a Bright Neighbor community communications system, please fill out this form.

The Recession and Depression of Plenty

Have you noticed how even homeless people have cell phones?

The peak oil community, for the longest time, has been freaked out about running out of resources. There have been all sorts of efforts to help people prepare for a society fighting over the remaining resources. The problem with our society and economic system, however, is the opposite of the normal peak oil argument – we actually have too much stuff, not the other way around. Granted – there are people that go without things like ipods – but they make due.

In general, we have created an over abundance of cars, toasters, programmers, and advertising sales people. The problem isn’t ’stuff’ depletion as much as money depletion. We have plenty of stuff. Which is why with food available, people aren’t trying to learn how to garden – they are just trying to land another job to pay their bills.

The fight is really between human laws and mother nature’s laws. We are at the peak of everything, but the cash is scarce – having been sucked into corporate officers’ pockets. Right now, CEOs and lawyers are still fat and happy, while your average worker is getting laid off due to their redundancy. The system hasn’t collapsed – it has retracted. Without any money in savings, the ability for people to live at the same level of comfort is what is threatened, not the monetary construct. We haven’t created a new economic system to replace the old one, so suffering is occurring as the old system ceases like an engine without oil.

If we all defaulted on our debts to banks – could the banks kick everyone out of their homes at once? We aren’t there yet, we are still in the peak oil ‘collections period’.

This means while jobs and money become more scarce, we are back to people trying to sell off their goods and services to make ends meet – creating a surplus of Nintendo Wii consoles on Craigslist. All the people with money have to do is wait longer, and the prices will come down even further. Yes, the general population has been fattened for the slaughter, and the feasting has begun.

So, what to do?

Well, I created a sharing system for friends and neighbors (or anyone in a geographic region or community for that matter) to share resources. If groups of people would inventory their stuff, they could share things. But sharing stuff only helps save money – it doesn’t generate it, unless you rent out your stuff when you let someone borrow it.

For instance – many people have tools. The stores have plenty of tools, too. So when someone needs a drill, they can either borrow one or they can buy one. But lots of people already have drills – and the folks at the drill factory are being laid off as the realization that we have materialized enough stuff for everyone kicks into our consciousness.

And when there is no more market demand for cars, toasters, or whatever has been produced enough – people get laid off. Those workers still need to make payments for bills and debts, however. So they ask for assistance from the government – racking up more claims and causing a drain on government resources.

How long can the government hand out food stamps and heating assistance before it is overwhelmed and more people are taking than adding to it? We are seeing it happen in front of our eyes.

So as this recession continues, it is the quest for continued sources of money – not the quest for ’stuff’ that is the way the average person is experiencing peak oil. I think we will continue to see more people living together rather than having their own private nests.

At least we have lots of Nintendos to play.

Ethanol Smear Campaign Exposed By US Senator

Stunning!

A US Senator has outed the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s well planned and executed smear campaign against ethanol.

Senator Chuck Grassley says “Ethanol and alternative fuels are being made the scapegoat for a whole variety of problems. Never before have the virtuous benefits of ethanol and renewable fuels been so questioned and criticized. The problem is, none of these criticisms are based on sound science, economics or even common sense.”

Senator Grassley has unveiled the the dirty, nitty-gritty details of the Grocery Manufacturers Associations’ smear campaign:

“Some of my colleagues here in the Senate have also gotten involved in this misinformation campaign. It seems there is a “group-think” mentality when it comes to scapegoating ethanol for everything from high gas prices, global food shortages, global warming and deforestation. But, as was recently reported, this anti-ethanol campaign is not a coincidence. It turns out that a $300,000, six-month retainer of a beltway public relations firm is behind the smear campaign, hired by the Grocery Manufacturers Association.”

WHOA!

Isn’t that what David Blume has been saying all along? Ask yourself – who runs the Grocery Manufacturers Association and why would those people not want you to know the truth about ethanol?

Oil is at $145 today. Last Independence Day weekend, drivers were paying just $2.95 a gallon for gas, about $1.15 less than today. Oil prices are up more than 50 percent since the start of the year. Prices rose by a similar amount in 2007 — but it took almost the entire year for them to make that trip.

Just this week alone, the price on a barrel of oil jumped 3.6 percent. So please keep in mind right now oil barons are laughing and spending your money on $80 million dollar paintings. Wake the hell up, folks!.

I happen to be involved with some folks brewing their own car fuel, and it’s actually pretty easy once you get the still up and running. Try sticking your nose into a vat of fermenting yeast sometime. POW!

Why Oil Companies Need $150 Per Barrel Of Oil – The Case For Destroying The Rewable Fuels Standard

The following is a letter to the EPA written by David Blume that was just published in Renewable Energy World.

by David Blume, Author

The purpose of the Renewable Fuels Standard is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, reverse the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, and eventually end the toxic releases from petroleum, coal, and other fossil fuels. The idea is to replace these fuels with clean alternatives like ethanol, which, unlike fossil fuels, are based on captured solar energy that is constantly renewed.

When the alcohol industry agreed to sacrifice the Clean Air Act’s oxygenate standard in exchange for its proposed Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), I was staunchly opposed. Advocates of the RFS said it was a more honest, direct way for us to work toward making our fuel renewable and American, and to wean ourselves from the toxic waste of the petroleum industry (otherwise known as gasoline).

Make no mistake about it: historically, gasoline has ALWAYS been a substance into which oil refineries dispose of whatever waste remains after making valuable products. Just as in the cattle industry, where half of the steer sells as US $15/lb. steaks and the other half ends up as cheap hamburger, in the petroleum business, half of a barrel of oil becomes gasoline. Quite frankly, no one wants to dispose of the 21 gallons of poisonous leftovers at the bottom of each barrel (just how much carcinogenic benzene, toluene, or xylene does anyone really need?)

The Clean Air Act’s oxygenate standard made sure that many of the toxic components in vehicle exhaust would be thermally decomposed (read: burned) to carbon dioxide, rather than remaining as Kevorkian carbon monoxide and a witch’s brew of volatile organics. Destroying these toxins in vehicle exhaust relies on the presence of plenty of oxygen to do the job, and alcohol is about 30% oxygen. Since the act was a regulation that had to do with our health, no discretion existed for waiving oxygenate. That standard was all that stood between Big Oil’s profits and hundreds of thousands of deaths each year from respiratory and cancer illnesses. It also was permanent-it had no expiration date.

But in a poor bargain, we traded a standard based on citizens’ health for one based on economic and environmental values, i.e., the Renewable Fuels Standard. The oil companies insisted that we couldn’t have both, but if we would let go of the oxygenate standard, they would not stand in the way too much on the RFS. Of course, they lied and then only permitted an RFS level that we were already meeting prior to passage of the legislation, so that the regulation had no teeth to increase our use of renewables (very clever of those oil companies).

Well, we did manage, over much opposition by Big Oil, to increase the RFS modestly above the existing level, and investment into the Midwest to make alcohol took off. Big Oil mistakenly thought it could keep the alcohol genie in the bottle…but much to its dismay, the genie escaped and started building distilleries in 2005-6.

Now at the time the bargain was made to trade in the oxygenate standard, I complained to everyone in congress and in the alcohol industry that the RFS would be very easy to waive. It was easy to predict all sorts of conditions where governors or the executive branch could say something like, “These environmental regulations are all well and good, but if they get in the way of economic interests, we just won’t be able to afford to do the right thing.”

“No, no,” the RFS advocates retorted, “we will make sure that a ‘no backsliding’ provision is written into the new legislation.” Well gee, that tidbit didn’t quite survive into the final draft. Now some oil-saturated governors are trying to use their statutory power to get the EPA to waive the standard, so oil companies won’t be forced to use farmer’s fuels.

Instead of cleaning up our air, dealing with Peak Oil, reducing dependence on foreign oil, and reversing global warming, we are doing exactly what I feared. We are talking about simply setting aside the RFS for reasons that ignore health, ignore national security, ignore our dependence, ignore our war to control Mideast oil, and ignore planetary climate stability in favor of simple short-term economic gains. The proposal is even more disingenuous, since the alleged economic gains are not even real. For instance, there is no shortage of corn, no matter what you read in the press. We just had the best crop in 33 years, and we are still trying to find silo space to store the huge surplus. We have increased the amount of animal feed we send around the world to record levels, which is a direct result of our increased alcohol fuel production. We use only cornstarch for alcohol, and all the non-starch parts of the corn become high-quality animal feed. More corn production for alcohol means more animal feed, which means more food. It’s simple.

Now that the data is coming in, we are seeing that in addition to the utterly nonexistent corn shortage, grain price increases have no basis in ethanol or the RFS whatsoever. In fact, the price increases result almost exclusively from the rising price of oil and greater demand for meat in China and other developing countries. If it were not for alcohol fuel, the price of gasoline would be even higher than it is today, and the net effect on a citizen’s pocketbook would be many times the alleged effect of ethanol on food prices.

This attack on the RFS has been planned since the day it was first passed. Because as we run out of oil, the fossil fuel industry plans to replace petroleum with more tar sands, oil shale, and coal to liquids. As the EPA, you are well aware that these fuels will increase greenhouse gas emissions scores to thousands of times the emissions from petroleum. They will also increase the pollution of our air with countless tons of metals and volatile gases, pollute what water is left after we drain the aquifers to make synfuels, and irradiate/poison the planet with radioactive particles and mercury from coal.

But for these environmentally foul fuels to be economically viable, the price of a barrel of oil needs to climb to about $150. Biofuels, on the other hand, can be produced realistically, ecologically, and sustainably for less than $70 a barrel, without any breakthroughs in technology. If biofuels, and in particular ethanol, increase in volume, the economic viability of all the alternatives that Big Oil wants to develop are in jeopardy. And that’s a good thing, since as the EPA, you know for certain that development of these fossil alternatives to petroleum are unbelievably incompatible with continuation of life on Earth as we know it.

No, the RFS is not a discretionary guideline to be set aside, as powerful economic interests and their tamed politicians dictate. The RFS is a health standard meant to protect all living things from the total degradation of our planet. You in the EPA are charged with the responsibility to act as a bulwark against corporate environmental irresponsibility, and doing the right thing requires more than standing firm on the RFS. Far from being waived, the standard needs to be increased annually, bear no expiration date, and remain in force until every single Btu of energy this country uses is renewable. Ultimately, that means an end to fossil fuels and an economic and energy system based on the sun.

A call to action:

The window to submit comment on this critical EPA waiver is closing June 23rd, submit written comments today, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2008-0380, by one of the following methods: One the web at http://www.regulations.gov, follow the on-line instructions for submitting comments, by E-mail: a-and-r-docket@epa.gov or by fax: (202) 566-1741.

Learn more about David Blume’s Fight to Save The Renewable Fuels Standard.

David Blume is author of Alcohol Can Be A Gas and Executive Director of the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture.

CNN Reports The Obvious: Consumers Pinching Pennies

Here is a Newsflash from Captain Obvious!

How are those Reagan-era economic policies working out for America? We could probably generate great revenues by taxing politicians’ prostitute activities, but since that will never happen, we are stuck with our economic meltdown. What’s so funny is how SMALL the government is making the text for their Mass Layoffs summary.

Gee, maybe if it’s small enough, no one will bother reading it!

Here are some highlights, including the 10 industries reporting the highest numbers of mass layoff claims:

1) Temporary help services
2) School and employee bus transportation
3) Automobile manufacturing
4) Professional employer organizations
5) Discount department stores
6) Light truck and utility vehicle manufacturing
7) Highway, street, and bridge construction
Motion picture and video production
9) Wood kitchen cabinet and countertop manufacturing
10) Farm labor contractors and crew leaders

It’s the Farm labor that throws me off kilter. Why are farm laborers being laid off? Don’t we have a food crisis? Are humans asking for too much with their already low wages for picking fruits and vegetables? What gives?

I can only wonder how long it will be until America’s laid off workforce are ready to take on some 1930’s Depression type jobs, desperate for anything that pays the bills.

I think we are getting there, especially since all the bottlenecks for more war have been removed.

How Corporate Owned Media Misleads You About High Gas Prices

Want to see an example of how Corporate media continues their brazen attack on gas price reality?

Check out this completely misleading headline: “Next Round Of Gas Hikes Won’t Be Due To Oil“.

I call bullshit. The corporate media have a lot of balls to keep misleading you the way they do. Here is how they do it in this particular article:

1) They lead with a headline that sounds like a factual statement
Ask yourself – who benefits from you believing our fuel problems are due to a gas additive instead of the real reason? In this article, the corporate media blame the next round of rising gas prices on the additive alkylate (a byproduct of the oil refining process), which they claim is needed to replace MTBE.

What they DON’T tell you is that alcohol (ethanol) can be used instead of alkylate! Oh sure, it’s buried deep in the article, but they try really hard to get you to think rising gas prices are because of some chemical additive rather than peak oil.

2) They tell a teeny, tiny bit of truth
Here is the very small and buried truth in the article that they printed:

“The federal government long ago required refiners to boost the oxygen content of summer-blend gasoline to make it burn more completely, a problem that was solved by adding MTBE and, more recently, ethanol.”

Ho ho! So they admit alcohol is a substitute they can use instead of alkylate, the culprit they would have you believe is the cause of $4-a-gallon gas. But then they try to discredit the fact that they can simply add alcohol to fix the supply problem. Watch this next slick move they make:

“But ethanol also has a high evaporation rate, so refiners increasingly have turned to alkylate, which Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J., calls the “magic bullet” in making summer gasoline.”

3) They tell you to get used to $4-a-gallon gas prices

“if production (of alkylate) doesn’t rise, American motorists will be faced with big jumps in spring gas prices for years to come.”

See how they do it?

Let’s review:
1) Blame high gas prices on an additive in short supply
2) Discredit market substitutes
3) Tell you to get used to high prices

America, the truth is that the world is now past peak oil. We are running out, and oil companies are currently shifting global fuel shortages around to their “less affluent” customers. If you live in a poor country somewhere in Africa, your economy will only crash further as America continues to suck resources dry.

Sorry, it’s the way it is. I wish you the best of luck. In the meantime, the west will continue to be able to fill up our vehicles, but not without paying political and oil company prices.

I suggest people wake up and learn the truth – which is that we can help reverse global warming by decentralizing control over fuel and make it ourselves in small batches. This is possible, and it pisses off the oil companies to no end. Rather than believe the crap these corporate media folks are pushing, America can run it’s auto fleet on moonshine made from potatoes, used donuts, mesquite, and a wide variety of crops.

The problem for oil companies and central banks is that when America starts learning that truth, these old codgers will lose control of money and the political system. They truly are a greedy old establishment, and the fact is they want to control you and everyone else. Hell, once you taste power, control, and hot American dollar sponsored orgies – you tend not to let go easily.

Suggestion for those of you in power – learn to let go. Sure, you will keep lying, but eventually people will wise up and rise up – you can’t hide reality forever.

Great Videos For Our Times

Oh, the excitement!

For more fun, head over to You Tube Theater!

America’s Going Out Of Business Sale

The recession of 2007 is in full swing, and people are calling their friends and former co-workers to line up prospective opportunities if/when they get laid off.

It’s amazing to see the networking going on right now as top level and middle managers get sweaty foreheads. I’m sure LinkedIn is active as ever and demand for Starbucks will remain steady through the beginning part of the recession. After all, people are meeting up to talk about lining up that next job.

After a while though, they will start meeting at their houses and save money by serving home-brewed coffee. Maybe dinner with the missus, and lots of ideas being traded.

That’s because no one’s job is safe anymore. The ship is crashing, and people are starting to feel it. Kinda scary, isn’t it? As John Michael Greer puts it:

“Debates about whether world petroleum production will peak before 2030 or not miss a point obvious to anybody who’s looked at the figures: world petroleum production peaked in November 2005 at some 86 million barrels of oil a day, and has been declining slowly ever since. So far the gap has been filled with tar sands, natural gas liquids, and other unconventional liquids, all of which cost more than ordinary petroleum in terms of money and energy input alike, and none of which can be produced at anything like the rate needed to supply the world’s rising energy demand. As depletion of existing oil fields accelerates, the struggle to prop up the current production plateau promises to become a losing battle against geological reality.”

Right now, people are starting to feel the big effects of peak oil and global warming. Disguised as economic hardship, it really means we are using more energy than we can drill and the cost of living will only continue to rise. Man, that just sucks.

“This is one hell of a shock to the financial system,” says Professor Tim Congdon, a leading monetarist at the London School of Economics. “A market that has taken 30 years to build has completely imploded in a matter of months. Lenders have been squeezed savagely. We’ve moved into a different era,” he said.

It will be hard work, but we can fix this place. To secure America’s safety and make sure you don’t get overwhelmed with stress, you had better listen up.

We need to work together and get smarter, pronto. We need the thinkers to come out of the woodwork and help fix this boat, because the ship is sinking fast and Americans are waking up in shock as they start to feel the cold water. Brrrrr!

If you get laid off, you should quickly learn skills in one of these areas:

– Small engine repair
– Small appliance repair
– Small scale farming
– Small scale alcohol fuel production
– Invention

That’s right, you need to become more inventive, right now. Think of what you offer society, or what skill you can perform. Do you have enough money to learn what you have always wanted to learn how to do? Could that new skill help you earn money in a downward economy?

There are still many opportunities to live a happy, secure life. You just need to wise up and start listening to folks who can help.

PS – If you are wealthy, consider using your wealth to improve the situation so that future generations remember your name with respect. There are some great inventions out there that can help with this mess and make you big money in the meantime.

Five Fast Ways to Save Your Business Money During The Recession

Co-authors: Randy White & Cedric Justice
November 27, 2007

Financial choirs around the world are finally singing that the US is in a recession. If you operate a business, you didn’t need to wait to hear that, you already know it. It arrives every month in the form of rising bills and smaller profits. As your operational expenses keep rising, you find yourself wondering how many more payrolls you can tolerate in these financial conditions.

Here’s the good news: You can quickly trim some fat right now without cutting or gutting your employees. Here are five fast ways to save your business thousands of dollars a month during the recession:

1) SOURCE LOCALLY
Sourcing local products and services improves implicit costs, such as delays in business, transportation costs, and depending on the industry, freshness. The sustainability benefit is three-fold: economically it potentially saves your organization money; socially, it improves dollar velocity, improving the local economy. This improves the potential work pool your organization can draw from as well as the local infrastructure and ability for local customers to afford your product or service. Environmentally, it shortens supply chains, which uses less fossil fuels in transportation of goods.

TIP: Small businesses can barter with one another. Big Box stores do not have as much luxury in that department.

2) DITCH THE WASTERS
Here are three common wasters you can cut immediately:

Water coolers refrigerate your water and also heat up the water. It is a redundant system that is an expensive luxury that is unnecessary. In areas like Portland, OR, the tap water is some of the best in the country. At worst, one can buy a Brita filter and have a pitcher of cold water in the refrigerator. Hot water can be obtained through the microwave or the coffeemaker. Additionally, office water heaters are available for purchase or subscription, whereby the service of hot/cold filtered water is sold to you, and the cost of the water is usually absorbed by the building. One client was spending $130/mo on bottled water and now spends $35 for the service of the water heater/cooler (Buying one of these units is about $600 with $35 for filters that need to be changed every 9-24 months depending on the model). It has saved them time, money, resources, and real estate. Environmentally, producing plastic and shipping water in trucks makes little sense, especially when our society has plumbing as a fundamental infrastructure. Water purchased in bottles is in the dollars per gallon order of magnitude, water that runs through plumbing is in the cents (less than $0.10) per gallon cost. Additionally, it takes out the element of employee passive-agressivism prevalent in offices where employees get upset because someone didn’t change the water bottle out.

Turn off the electricity when you leave and turn down the thermostat:
“Are you trying to heat the neighborhood?” “Didn’t anyone tell you to turn the lights out when you leave the room?” These are utterances from a grandfather (that and “I walked to school uphill in the snow both ways”), but they came from a time of scarcity. Heating a room that isn’t being used, leaving on computers when no one is using them, and lighting a building with no one in it simply doesn’t make any sense. In fact, I’ve worked in a building where there was a small break room with the light on and it was locked from the outside. What’s the point of that? If you use less energy, chances are, the lease terms you have next period aren’t going to have an energy premium set on them. In fact, why not work with building management to give you a share of the savings you implement? Set policies that encourage and enable people, don’t be an authoritarian or make people feel guilty, it doesn’t work.

Get a double-side printer and use recycled paper:
Many companies have a double-sided printer, but it isn’t set to default. Have your IT staff set the printer to default to double-side printing and you can save up to half of your paper costs. If you don’t have a double-sided printer, you can also set up a second tray of leftover paper to print to the back side of drafts you’ve already used. The idea here is to default to what is least resource intensive, and have the super-white virgin paper be a premium, not a default. Recycled paper is currently more expensive than virgin paper, but that’s due to the market and to externalities. If you demand recycled paper, it will become cheaper as more demand it… economies of scale. Plus, if you’re using leftover paper scraps, you’ve cut your budget for paper by nearly 50%, so you can afford a 20-30% surcharge. Paper creation is an energy intensive process that pollutes the environment with nasty chemicals (plus, paper mills stink!). Using recycled paper cuts the emissions for these chemicals as well as energy.

3) PROMOTE ALTERNATIVE COMMUTING OPTIONS
Telecommuting may not work for everyone, but it may work for some. A lot of productivity is lost when people have to leave early to get their kids from school and it could be a cost center for them to have their kids in daycare. Besides the child angle, people who don’t commute in grinding traffic for 1-2 hours today will be much more amiable and rested when coming to work. Paying for a parking spot is about the worst thing you can do for productivity, for the environment, for reducing taxes, and for your bottom line. Instead, give your employees options: some companies are starting to give employees a transit budget. To qualify, they have to take an alternative form of transportation. The incentive pays for public transit, and if the employee bikes to work, they keep the allowance. It is a taxable expense to the company (check with your accountant before going through with it, as laws are different everywhere) in optimal situations. This reduces your carbon footprint (which, if you could track, you could sell the carbon credits), increases employee health (less stress, more exercise), and increases productivity. Additionally, goodwill is extended to your labor, which pays off in innumerable ways: employee retention, corporate knowledge, productivity gains, decreased utility costs and real estate pressures (if you only have 200 employees in the office instead of 1000, you’re probably going to need fewer desks, square footage, and heating/lighting). You may even be able to pay less because your employees won’t be saddled with the costs of commuting in time, energy, and fuel costs, they can accept a bit less. Bicycles are much cheaper than cars to maintain, and usually the cost of one car payment to buy; daycare is the cost of most one-bedroom apartments. Making your employees aware of this can create some huge gains, both for you and for them.

4) WHEN BUILDING, GO LEED (OR BEYOND)
Green buildings have been shown to increase employee productivity, reduce energy inputs, cost less to maintain, and benefit society as a whole. Mark Edlen, clearly the most progressive LEED builder in the world, says “It is up to the new generation of Portland’s business leaders to take social and environmental responsibility to the next level, and in times of uncertainty, people must show bold leadership and not be afraid to take risks that seemed easier when times were flush and there was more room for failure.”

Holistic systems tend to work when they’re thought of together, and the added costs, if any, will definitely deliver a fantastic return on investment through your decrease in risk exposure to spikes in energy prices, fuel costs, political strife in faraway lands, etc. Your employees are the most expensive part of the building per square foot. Ask your employees what you can do together to spruce up the work place while making the space greener. And make sure you measure it. Metrics are everything. If you know how much energy your cell phone charger uses by being plugged in or how much your computer uses by not being on standby, then you can make the conscious decision to unplug or turn off. But you need the data first. Consulting firms and electronic gadgets can help you with this, measuring everything from waste outputs to energy consumption to carbon emissions. Most people care, but without having any numbers, they can’t make informed decisions. Get your bean counters involved; but remember productivity is by far the most bang for your buck.

5) TAP INTO YOUR INNER LEADER
Companies who employ the golden rule and who create inspired teams or tribes have a real advantage over hierarchical, authoritarian, ‘draining’ workplaces. One of the simplest things you can do to save money is treat others well. Re-read Dale Carnegie’s “The Leader in You”. If your employees hate working for you, they’ll do everything in their power to exploit the benefits you give them. If they love their job, it will show in the work that they do, and it will show in your organization’s bottom line. People who love their job don’t call in sick as often, which means that you can depend on your teammates and that meeting you call will be fully staffed with the expert you need to make the sale. Inverting your management structure is instrumental to doing this. Managers are support staff for production people. Once that mentality is implemented, there’s a grassroots shift in how the company operates. Drama, strife, and other interpersonal relations are smoothed. Asking your employees what they want/need will help you to better meet your clients’ needs, as anyone ‘under’ you is closer to the front lines than you are.

With the arrival of Peak Oil and a fast warming climate, we are entering a hard period of time. As the dollar continues to decline in value and consumers struggle to pay their debts, it is imperative your business be stunning. Now is your time to shine, and if you adopt these five practices, you will see improvements in your bottom line, employee attitudes, and general business health.

Randy White is the founder and CEO of Bright Neighbor.
Bright Neighbor was founded on the idea of the hyper-local. What are you doing that is affecting your neighborhood or street? We measure and report on the success of community adaptation to rapid planetary changes.

Bright Neighbor is:

* A free public tool that encourages sustainability, food system security, and thriving community practices for neighborhoods by encouraging green behavior through participation, evaluation and sharing.
* A Private Layer for collecting information on green behaviors by companies, as well as a tool to communicate special initiatives, private resources and information to a
group. Like how the Portland Trail Blazers want to use it for ride sharing.
* A advertising platform that supports large businesses to participate in the same way owners of Private Layers do, but who just want to have their name attached to “something green” without all of the work.
* A platform that can, in time, collect and report information relevant to emergency services and governments.

For our customers like the City of Portland, Portland General Electric, and Gerding Edlen Development, even people who join Bright Neighbor through private layers, are Bright Neighbor users first, participating in their neighborhood, and Private Layer members second. This is done to allow the continued participation of users in their own neighborhoods as the continue to improve their hyper-local community so we can track the results. This allows Private Layer customers to take credit for “sponsoring” the good works of their members while allowing them to track the results of their organization-centric efforts.

By focusing on a specific region per Bright Neighbor, we track activity or actions and their involvement in making their hyper-local community better. Though we do the work of a non-profit, we are a for-profit eco-fixing market development company. Local businesses are served through their participation in Bright Neighbor, and they shouldn’t necessarily need to pay for it. Bright Neighbor understands the collapsing economy and how to navigate it, working within the existing financial and political system until they realize money is not going to solve their problems.

Our paying customer markets include:

* Major sports franchises and arena-owners. Interested in keeping eco-costs low and lessening their carbon footprint through ride sharing and a way of communicating large-scale green initiatives to their sporting audience, employees and guest of their facilities.
* Corporations with a green agenda (PGE). Same as above, but with the ability to get more relevant reporting to encourage shifts in corporate culture.
* Municipalities interested in uniting their city-wide neighborhood outreach.

If you are interested in sponsoring Bright Neighbor’s October 2009 launch across North America, please contact us through www.brightneighbor.com

Peak Oil Exposes Home Builder / Housing Market Inefficiencies

Wow. No journalists in the media currently reporting on the Home Builder industry / Housing market seem to be explaining exactly what is going on. They keep blaming it all on the same culprits, from Credit woes to energy prices. While they are correct, there is much more to the story.

As an efficiency expert, I will try and give you some deeper insight into some root causes of the housing implosion. Let’s first start out with the see-saw reporting in the media:

Here is a report from October 26th:

‘Acknowledging that there is definitely downward momentum in the market at this time, with starts, sales, prices and permits off, and problems in the subprime and Alt-A mortgage markets, NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders said that housing should nevertheless begin a modest recovery next year.’
Source: NAHB

Reality, however, keeps on rearing it’s ugly head more and more every day. This new Housing report just came off the presses:

NEW YORK – U.S. home prices fell nationwide in August for the eighth consecutive month, offering little hope of a turnaround anytime soon, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday. Things could get worse, said Yale economist Robert Shiller, who helped create the index.

“There is really no positive news in today’s report,” said Shiller, chief economist for MacroMarkets LLC, which collaborates with S&P on the indicator. “At both the national and metro area levels, the fall in home prices is showing no real signs of a slowdown or turnaround.”
Source: MSNBC

Hrmmmmmmmmmmmm. Anyone know when the housing market will recover, if ever? Bueller? Bueller?

There are so many variables that are being left out of these stories, journalists obviously don’t know the whole story. Sure, they know simple facts like how America’s homes gobble up 25 percent of the world’s energy and are to thank for 19 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Home Builders are following the same logic they have in the past to try and fix their present problems. Right now, one of their solutions is to fire the present line of market managers in the hopes that reorganizing the company will fix things. You know, give those eager up-and-coming managers a chance at the reigns. Perhaps the advertising campaigns will be switched up, and more special pricing packages will be created.

These fixes will only work for so long.

This slump is not just about home sales and management shuffles! It’s about operational efficiencies, or rather inefficiencies of the home builder market that need to be examined. I’m not just talking about higher efficiency Energy Star certifications on fridges, microwaves, air conditioning units, heating systems and dishwashers here. You have to dig deeper.

So, all you Home Builder management types, listen up!

I know you are losing millions of dollars to theft of new appliances in freshly built homes. I know that in all likelihood, it’s an inside swindle being pulled on you by contractors, not ordinary thieves kicking in doors or breaking windows.

I know you are paying increased security costs to try and stem the losses from having to buy the same new appliances twice.

I know you are losing sales to people foregoing their deposit to re-purchase the house at a lower price as the market value of homes drops.

I know you spend a lot of money on advertising that goes to waste.

There are, of course, many more points I can nitpick at. But if you want to stop the bleeding and start making sales again, you are going to have to start paying attention and listening to experts like me that can help you return to better profitability.

There are solutions ready to go. Here’s just one idea for you, free of charge:

When one alarm goes off in the neighborhood, or a crime occurs and a neighbor wants to report it – have an opt-in neighborhood alert system set up. Every person in your branded DR Horton, Arbor , or (insert your company name here) community can become eyes and ears.

My company is called Bright Neighbor, and we have created the all-in-one tool to help secure your profits, communities, and sanity. Our solution is affordable, and will help you save millions of dollars right away.

You can get all the info you need here.