This last week had the opportunity to interview Jim Corcoran who along with the help of Gary Marschke and other volunteers in Portland, Oregon founded the Aging Artfully Initiative (AAI). This interview focused on Jim talking about the four core values or promises of the AAI, all of which can serve as an excellent example for others in the planning stages of building an interdependent community around the concept of aging artfully. Visit Earthsayers.tv, voices of sustainability.
Author Archives: Ruth Ann
What is Sustainability?
The answer John Marshall Roberts gives is a simple, direct one (goes beyond green) and given in the context of what we need to do to call people to action and create radical change. We just added his presentation, Inspiring Sustainability in Skeptics, to our collection, Culture and Consciousness on EarthSayers.tv, voices of sustainability.
John Marshall Roberts teaches people and organizations how to overcome cynicism and inspire. He is a
communication expert and applied social scientist with a subversive sense of humor, and more than a decade of strategic consulting experience. His bestselling book “Igniting Inspiration: A Persuasion Manual for Visionaries” delivers an innovative paradigm for creating inspirational media and messaging called Worldview Design.
Oil and Gas Image in the Dump
And the Republicans
are making hay with another of the findings:
The sectors Americans view most negatively have all had well-publicized problems in recent years. 17% of Americans have a positive view of the federal government, the lowest of any sector tested this year, while 63% have a negative image. Only one sector, oil and gas, has a higher negative percentage, 64%. Other poorly ranked sectors include real estate, healthcare, banking, and the legal field.
Unsustainable practices and principles such as wars and pollution are bad for the image and, ultimately for prosperity, and, yes, business.
From Mediapost Blog Post.
Climate Change Reality: Action Campaign
It begins with an email: Will people “share” their accounts? I plan to as I have cause related facebook fan page and the same for a twitter account. Perfect use of both as far as I am concerned.
Then we move on to the campaign elements.
Focusing on a date, this is event marketing with social media extremely well executed. We can wait for the results, but in terms of best practices it has all the earmarks of effective marketing. Donate here your facebook and twitter accounts.
And less you don’t think the issue is climate reality, consider the positions of many of the candidates for President:
Bachman says global warming is a hoax, Perry says “one contrived phony mess…a secular carbon cult” and Mittie having in Massachusetts proposed plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and explored creation of a regional carbon cap-and-trade program, now, despite Supreme Court ruling to contrary, says federal law did not give the EPA authority to regulate carbon emissions.
We have an EarthSayers.tv special collection on Global Warming and Climate Change where you will also find the video the climate reality folks are using. We also feature the video in the main screen on our home page which rotates videos. Be sure to listen to Naomi Oreskes‘ presentation to understand how our citizens, maybe you, have been hoodwinked.
Donate your twitter and facebook fan page here.
Sustainability and Biodiversity
We have created a new special collection for environmental sustainability around the broad issue of biodiversity. The five videos we started the collection with include:
About the Leopold Education Project (LEP), Creating National Parks by Doug Tompkins, Biodiversity by Dr. Stuart Pimm, How Consumers can Help Promote Biodiversity, Queen of the Sun movie trailer about bees, and a short performance piece, Music Made with Bees.
Sustainability: Prosperity: Ceres Conference 2011
Did you miss attending the Ceres Conference 2011 in Oakland, California last May? I did and I’m sorry I missed it. Next one is April 25-26th 2012 in Boston!
However, working with 3bl Media folks we created a Ceres special collection on EarthSayers.tv based on the interviews 3bl Media conducted at the conference with Dr. Peter Graf, Chief Sustainability Officer at SAP, Amy Roberts, VP,
House of Cards Video Opened Conference
Government Affairs of OutDoor Industry Association, Michael McGuire, Wiser Solar Chairman, Anna Walker, Senior Manager of Worldwide Government Affairs & Public Policy at Levi-Strauss & Co., Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres and more….
Jack Ehnes, CEO of CalSTRS, one of the oldest pension funds providing retirement benefit for educators talks about investing for the long term and doing so in a sustainability framework and Ross MacFarlane of ClimateSolutions.org here in the Pacific NorthWest talks about a project they have been working on around sustainability aviation and what that industry here in the NW is doing, starting with putting their heads together to address climate change.
Give a listen and be motivated and inspired by the business leaders who drive their organizations from a sustainability strategy, where sustainability is front and center, not just an initiative, program, or project.
Sustainability Measures are Expensive and For Good Reason
British industry has reached a “tipping point” where the burden imposed by energy and climate change policies will begin to jeopardise jobs and investment, according to the EEF manufacturers’ association.
Oh boy.
Yes, it’s going to be expensive. Energy and climate change “measures” are going to be costly to both companies and individuals. Governments are starting to estimate the “burden” and this manufacturers’ association shoots back that they are underestimating the costs. Called out for special attention is the carbon price floor. “This measure alone would increase the electricity costs of energy-intensive companies by 10 per cent.”
What’s not being counted by the manufacturers association is the cost of extreme weather to the economies of nations and to businesses, not to mention the loss of life. Many of the sustainability leaders on earthsayers.tv, voices of sustainability, point to culture and consciousness as the real driver to change and until such time that the leaders of the manufacturers association begin to raise their consciousness about the seriousness of the situation, that 10% looks like a big number. If we can project what that 10% will save looking at the other end of the measure with a different, but very relevant lens, it will become increasingly obvious that it’s our humanity that’s at the wrong end of the stick, not mother nature, which we have treated as if being owned by organizations and individuals and, therefore, expendable and plentiful, but not renewable.
Yes, it’s going to be expensive and for good reason.
Putting Feet on Your Press Release
Using Prezi the presentation tool I suggest ways for making your press release easier to use by bloggers like myself as well as friends and colleagues who may also be on your press release mailing list. Social media is pushing marketing and PR together, blurring the edges, so it’s time to give the old press release feet. The presentation is targeted to organizations with an idea, cause or cure and to the PR agencies that support them.
You’ll also find Prezi an interesting tool if you haven’t already used it as a great replacement for the linear powerpoint presentations.
This American Life segment on Fracking: Game Changer?
This American Life episode, Game Changer, addresses the issue of fracking and the interplay of business, higher education, advocacy, and citizens having control over their community. A must hear segment.
Climate Change and Sustainability: Four PR Release Improvements
A recent climate change PR Release could have been improved in four ways: (1) by the simple addition of a recommended twitter post (one of the clients referenced in the release has a twitter account so the client will be writing one at some point), (2) by a landing page for, at a minimum, the PR Release so that in the twitter or Facebook reference I can send my audience directly to my source, and (3) by a video interview on YouTube addressing the issue and the findings.
What is the reason for spending money on a PR release in the first place if the subject isn’t worth broadcasting. Two aspects of marketing – frequency and consistency – need to be emphasized and the old school of PR release isn’t doing that by failing to integrate social media to include the triple play of Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Why do I emphasize these three?
Social media is a distribution tactic related to a search strategy (a.k.a being found strategy) of which a PR release is often the starting point.
Number 4 improvement- keyword strategy
Who is your primary audience?
Connecting the terms climate change, global warming, and sustainability will begin to influence the page rankings for the organizations and individuals advocating sustainability principles and practices, being more visible to citizens searching for information and guidance on anyone or all three of the terms. If the folks using search engines to find you and information on global warming, climate change and sustainability aren’t a primary audience who is? Searchers are active in the learning and buying cycle. They are the best prospect for your idea, cause or cure.
Therefore, it is advantageous to sustainability and climate change advocates to incorporate all three terms throughout their press releases and, most importantly, on all Web published documents – all content really.
Google Search Traffic
This represent approximately 1M citizens per month in U.S. searching on global warming; 670,000 on climate change; and nearly 370,000 on sustainability.
Who and what organizations get top page rankings on these terms?
Take a look by searching on these terms, now, in Google and on YouTube. The 1st and 2nd most popular search engines. Keep in mind that overtime large Corporations can own these top page rankings on key sustainability terms for both organic search (what I am talking about in this post) and most certainly through paid search.