This video is a compilation of my harvests in the agroturismos of Italy, the desert of Argentina, and the sunshine of northern California. The music is one of my favorite songs of all time, it’s called Voyageur by Enigma. I moved out to California a year ago with a bottle of GrapeThinking, a bottle of ideas I guess you could say, that started filling up 5 years ago with conversation between myself, Jacob Bohall, Ruarri Rogan, Meghan O’Malley, and many others. Over the past year, those ideas have delightfully fermented, and the time has finally come for us to have a taste…

~circuit to cell, web to water, mind to vine~

The essence of this movement lies in increasing the ease and convenience for people to grow their own food, and thus their own energy. This will be what drives the greater connectedness and expansion of consciousness that so many believe to be at the core of the sustainable revolution. This can be through the use of personal gardens or more practically, through the shared space in an urban garden or biotower.

This is amazing work that feels solid and dense. Urban farming doesn’t feel flaky and granola like so many other things “green.” It is literally bringing nature to the grid. Green roofs are already starting to gain traction as they have functional purposes, such as better thermoregulation for buildings and rainwater capture. Urban gardens are accelerating especially in sustainably minded cities like San Francisco, and the concept of biotowers is becoming more practical (click photo below). The room for architectural innovation with urban farms is seemingly endless.

Again, the essence of this movement is inspiring people and making it easy for them to begin to grow their own food. Taking the innovations of the industrial and technological revolutions, connecting them to the land and agriculture, and thereby sparking the sustainable revolution. This very well could be the most powerful shift our world has seen.

Check out www.farmerd.com and his consulting practices. He is doing awesome things with school gardens and inspiring people to grow their own food. He’s also beginning some very interesting urban development projects. Stay tuned…

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It’s all starting. The environmentalists have so much energy and knowledge, and now they have the all-important swagger. The surety within that they’ve been longing for to go to the politicians and have their way with them. They’re going to get what they want because as the planet heals, the (eco)nomy will heal, and people will heal. Disease will dissipate, spirit will be connected, and cashflow will become circular. Capitalism will die and ecolism will be concentrically born through the power of each person’s advocacy.

Something that excites me more than anything is the youth of the world. The interconnected spiritual nature that we all feel… the connection to each other and the connection to our world. The essence of the millennial generation.

Take a look at all the involvement and care that school sustainability programs are advocating. Every little clean up, recycling, or education program is huge now that everybody feels the impact. The critical mass needed to clean up the mess and make real change is here… for the human effort to surpass the industrial decay. The next few years are going to be unprecedented in global awareness, connectedness, debate, warfare, and ultimate renewal. We are going to reach the brink, the vesica piscis as I like to say, and then we’re going to bloom.  Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard for so many years to help bring about environmental awareness.

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The LOHAS market in total represents $209 billion in consumer sales!

Personal Health: $118.03 billion

• Natural organic products
• Nutritional products
• Integrative health care
• Dietary supplements
• Mind body spirit products

Green Building: $50 billion

• Home Certification
• EnergyStar appliances
• Sustainable flooring
• Renewable energy systems (solar)
• Wood alternatives

Eco Tourism: $24.17 billion

• Eco-tourism travel
• Eco-adventure travel

Natural Lifestyles: $10.6 billion

• Indoor & outdoor furnishings
• Organic cleaning supplies
• Compact fluorescent/LED lights
• Social change philanthropy
• Apparel

Alternative Transportation: $6.12 billion

• Hybrid vehicles
• Biodiesel fuel
• Carsharing programs (pickup pal)

Alternative Energy: $300 million

• Renewable energy credits
• Green pricing

Biggest Market Growth:

• Retail Sales +28%
• Organic foods +15%
• Solar energy +20%
• Eco-tourism +23%

*Information provided courtesy of Lohas.com

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A good Italian, yet affordable, is going to come under the names Nero d’Avolo, Dolcetto and Primitivo. Key regions are going to be Sicily, Sardinia, Puglia, and Umbria. This is the perfect time to try something new. France? You can drink from there as well, but same thing applies; try something new. Draw yourself towards Loire, Rhone, Provence, and Alsace. These are the more affordable areas but of course you may come upon more expensive prices mixed in. Stay away from these. You can’t afford them. A general and fun rule that I suggest you follow is: if the label doesn’t make sense and it’s under $12 then buy it. Turn drinking into an adventure.

A friend of mine has a rule that she sticks to, an expensive one, but smart at the same time. The first bottle that she drinks is always a more expensive nicer bottle. If you have to get it out of your system then do it, and then buy cheaper ones after that. Also remember that everyday is not a holiday or occasion to be celebrating. If you believe that everyday is well then learn how to do it on a budget or invite me over. Little known fact about me, I do enjoy a good celebration.

It’s hard to drink American cheaply right now. For that I suggest you try something else that is in that price range and home grown: Beer. Microbreweries in the United States are really starting to produce great ales. Like all things, baby steps are required. Flying Dog, Dogfish, Rouge, Magic Hat, Brooklyn, Sierra, these are just a few suggestions. Go to your local beer distributor and follow that same rule, never heard of it, then buy it. If you are one of the many out there that believes that beer doesn’t have a flavor profile, then stop yourself now and start drinking ales. You are going to get that same old bland taste in a lager. Leave the lagers to drinking games. I’m not a huge fan of the Budweiser family beers, but the new American Ale that they are producing is good and possibly a stepping-stone for the masses.

Just because our nation is broke doesn’t mean you have to particularly live like it. When we stop having fun and laughing is when I leave the country (again). So run to your local beer distributor or wine store and Wine (or Ale) Your Diet.

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From a business standpoint, this translates into an evolution beyond cost per impression and cost per click into a real way to track affiliates, through online coupons and redeemable points. Recycle  Bank is doing some cool stuff by rewarding consumers with coupons and redeemable points at local stores for recycling their garbage. A resourceful site like Savings.com will help you find all the great deals on different internet sites, helping you become a savvy shopper. You’ll find promotional codes and coupons for the best deals online.

It would be really smart, as more local retailers get hooked into the online medium, for Savings.com to create search filters for location, helping people find deals at not just online stores, but also local brick and mortar restaurants, grocers, apparrel, etc. This would help the customer find the best local deal. Savings.com could develop an incredible business model by taking a cut of coupons redeemed. It will take some time and a lot of sweat, but the hard part is over. Platforms like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter have captured the attention and time of the consumer, and made every retailer and business under the sun take notice that this how they reach their customers. And when businesses are ready to spend money on online marketing and generate discount opportunities through coupons and promo codes, you know a real business model is coming for this crazy thing called the Internet… in fact it’s already here.

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The green movement has no doubt tipped into the public’s consciousness, and yet still hasn’t been consolidated into a feasible, economic starting point. I attempted to unify the myriad of renewable energy and consumption/waste innovations in my last post with the concept of ‘nature to the grid’, and will now attempt to expand on it further. The question is where can the average person start incorporating this concept into their life to not just benefit their ecolistic mentality and environment, but to save and make more money?

In continuance of our nature to the grid dialogue, I’ve come to the conclusion that it starts, from both an ecological and economical standpoint, with people taking a proactive role in turning their home into a renewable power station… turning their home into a ‘tree’ if you will.

This intuition has been a long build for me, from the passion that has developed over my life as an environmental scientist, to my first company doing insurance adjusting assessment and appraisals on homes damaged by hurricanes, to the Powering the Planet event at the World Science Festival in NYC last year where representatives of all areas of green power concluded that the home needs to become a power station, to the West Coast Green conference in Silicon Valley last September, which I thought was going to be filled with crazy energy innovations, and was instead 90% green building companies, not to mention a huge model green home in the middle of the trade floor. When you take all this into consideration and add on the bad debt/mortgages causing the current economic collapse, the realization hits. Our world is dealing with a natural resource crisis in building our homes and buildings, and the place to innovate and make money, the place to really seed this whole green movement is with the home.

Turning the home into an energy efficient power station is the way to take the green/clean/sustainable movement to the world and actually change it… one home at a time. If you use thermoregulated windows and wall materials, energy efficient home appliances, and solar installations and fuel cells, you’re on your way to having a self-sustaining renewable home that doesn’t need energy from the grid. It’s almost like a revitalization of the cottage industry, in which everyone can get involved with their own home, and those that are successful with energy efficiency and renewable energy systems will reach zero energy (needing no energy from the grid), and even produce a surplus to sell back to the grid! Add in growing your own food or buying locally, collecting your own rainwater, recycling systems that pay you for your garbage and prevent materials from heading to the landfill, and you’re home becomes a renewable system that contributes to a renewable community. Think of the home as an individual tree contributing to the forest… it needs to pull it’s own weight by generating its own energy and then sharing that with the ecosystem in a symbiotic relationship. Now that’s nature to the grid.

I had a great time with my friend Doug of Faithful Investments in Philadelphia this past week. Doug is a property investor/developer who likes to buy worn down houses, perform complete renovations, and then rent out to tenants. Say we test out various green building technologies over the coming years, making the homes more energy efficient, allowing us to charge a premium on rent by lowering utility bills for tenants, and upping the asset value of the house… not to mention helping the environment.

This seems likes such a practical solution to restore faith in the banks and the mortgage industry, as it will drastically boost the asset value of the home as well as the passive income potential! It’s investors like Doug that are in a position to make great change, as most people are clueless and aren’t able to afford green consultants to tell them what to do, and certainly aren’t in a position to get a loan with the state of the economy.

So let’s take it a step at a time. Work with real estate investors and developers (who have clout with banks) to implement green innovations that will make homes more profitable, while allowing the economy to gradually recover. Basing off this experience, develop a green building program to help the average person upgrade their home with energy efficient materials and renewable energy systems, which they can capitalize on when the lending industry has restored confidence and is granting loans again.

Conserve energy, lower utility bills, generate your own power that reverses the grid and puts passive income in your pocket. The home is the testing ground. This is where it begins.

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Life will always be a mystery, but can’t we agree the point is to be truly happy and free of suffering? And yet pondering this as an intellectual ideal or meditating on a mountain in Tibet for the rest of your life won’t cut it. We have to somehow feel it and incorporate it into the reality of our lives, which for good or bad largely centers around making money to provide a means to function in society. To many, money is perceived as the root of all evil and focusing on making a lot of it couldn’t possibly allow you to connect to something greater than yourself or benefit other people. It’s too competitive and you have to focus only on yourself or else you’ll be exploited by those that do.

But what if this is all wrong? What if focusing on spiritual growth, connecting to the force that powers you beyond your ego, and cultivating a sense of importance in benefiting other people, will actually give you an edge? What if the world is going through a dramatic shift from a linear system to a cyclical system, a renewable system, where a more, more, me, me mentality will lose, and a holistic, spiritual mentality will win? What will help traditional capitalism transcend into a new form of governance we like to call ecolism?

Currently, there are 3 types of entrepreneurship in our world.

Classical entrepreneurship is the essence of modern capitalism and engages a mindset of making as much money as possible within your business. Most entrepreneurs with this mindset are driven by status and materialism, and having great wealth to show a symbol of their personal power in the world. They tend to spend their profits on houses, cars, and luxury that they believe will buy them adoration and happiness. Classical entrepreneurs who reach the pinnacle, maxing out material indulgence, are ultimately reduced to the love of the deal and nothing more. Donald Trump is the prototypical classical entrepreneur. This method of entrepreneurship is not necessarily bad, in fact it was necessary over the past few hundred years to get us to the point we are at now. However, it tends to influence spiritual emptiness and results in the individual never truly finding the happiness or the inner peace they are looking for, no matter how much money they make. They always want more and don’t know why, and become confused as they gain more money and less happiness. This is what cultivates greed rather than love in peoples hearts and results in the chaos that our current economy is in. It’s this mentality built into the fabric of capitalism that is leaving our world in ruin with pollution, waste, depleted resources, and a stifled global economy. So to amend, this method has become obsolete and needs to evolve.

Social entrepreneurship on the other hand is driven by those who want to make a difference in the world, and are in a way, turned off by profits. The most practical example of successful social entrepreneurship is micro-credit lending, in which individuals create lending funds/banks solely for the purpose of helping communities and developing countries, while not focusing on profits. Muhammad Yunis and his Grameen Bank is probably the most successful example of social entrepreneurship to date. Yet the Grameen Bank has loaned out $5.72 billion since its inception 30 years ago and has only been paid back $5.02 billion. This type of enterprise is driven by a great social cause and hopefully will fulfill the individual in benefiting the world, but as a new form of economic governance how can it ever last if it doesn’t make money?

This leads us to spiritual entrepreneurship… the spiritual pursuit of profit. These types of entrepreneurs do not seek to make money to buy the fancy home or car or buy status and friends and fame. There isn’t a crave for more and more, but rather a cyclical, ecolistic way of perceiving the world. Instead they pursue money as a means to bring about great change to the world and become connected to the divine power. There’s a jewish term known as ‘tithing’, which means that you give away part of your wealth, whether it be to charities or other projects, because that genuine act of giving will come back around in the form of luck or serendipity to help you gain more profit. But it is crucially important to understand that this doesn’t mean you give solely to make more money and gain more self-benefit. You give so that you can make more money and continue giving. This has to be the drive to truly transcend from classical to spiritual entrepreneurship, and it entails a spiritual growth and humility within the individual in which they feel a connection to a force greater than themselves and their personal ego. They feel one with the world around them.

But, I can’t emphasize this enough… there is no linear procedure to find this authentic will in your life. There’s no secret path. It’s a matter of opening yourself up and feeling the connection for yourself. Think of it as being a medium… you aren’t a closed entity independent of the world around you. You breathe air, you need food and water, you are interdependent with your environment. You are not a separate entity here to amass large amounts of wealth and hoard money to buy material possessions. You are here to take in to simply give back in a better way, and when you can feel that and practice it in your life, you should be surprised by the success that gravitates to you.

A transcendence into spiritual entrepreneurship is quite possibly what our new world needs to get through these tough times. Capitalism needs a major upgrade. My friend Lee Whitfield and I believe it to be Ecolism. Check out his stuff at Ecolism.org

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The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years, and in those 200 years the nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith

2. From spiritual faith to great courage

3. From courage to liberty

4. From liberty to abundance

5. From abundance to complacency

6. From complacency to apathy

7. From apathy to dependence

8. From dependence back into bondage

Supposedly the United States has entered into the stage of apathy in which everyone has their hand out, and simply votes for whoever offers to give the most. This apathy leads to a dependent welfare state that breeds laziness, and an ultimate sacrifice of our greatest liberties and freedoms, which will always lead back into tyranny and bondage.

Our new President Barack Obama stands for such a symbol of hope, and we are all wondering how that hope will translate. Many of his opponents say that he’s a socialist… yet isn’t the ultimate form of government socialism with an unbiased intelligence to allocate resources? Communism failed not in theory, but because the allocation of resources was placed into human beings hands, in which case greed and corruption festered and led to its demise. But isn’t the same thing happening to us in this free market ‘democracy’?

The United States is in a very unique situation to transcend and create a technological governance. We are pioneering the Information age. Everyone is becoming more and more connected and gaining a greater ability to have the information of their life sent into an intelligent neural network. If DARPA and the great minds of Silicon Valley and Cambridge can in fact spawn a true technological intelligence… a collective intelligence that has a symbiotic relationship with its citizens… then resources can be allocated optimally and much time and money can be diverted away from bipartisan attempts to come up with the right ‘amount.’ Instead public servants exist to execute and neural nets and genetic algorithms allocate. More importantly, citizens will breathe new life into our democracy by becoming transparent and contributing life information to the system.

The great concern is that human greed will be inherited by this collective intelligence. If humans are programming the algorithms then, there will inherently be greed and power ingrained in the fabric. Okay, so then the computers need to program the algorithms, but then you realize you reach a never ending cycle, and ultimately come to the conclusion that we may not have the capability to prevent this and live in a symbiotic harmony with a greater intelligence because power is what drives us and greed is a means to achieve power. Think about how we exploit lesser intelligence on our planet. The cycles of ups and downs that greed creates are simply the waves of the universe and not something uniquely felt or expressed by humanity. The higher intelligence must always possess this force to continue to evolve and neuralize our galaxy and our universe, helping it become aware of itself.

Regardless if this is true or not (movies like the Matrix or I, Robot tell us we can in fact achieve symbiosis, but only after a period of battle), it is inevitable that we are heading in this general direction. There have to be intelligent systems created to allocate resources, balance the interest rate, optimize the energy grid, and on and on. The global economy is too fast paced for any Fed Chairman or NGO to come up with answers fast enough. The question is can we control our future? Can we transcend democracy? Can we harness the force of greed for the good? Is the human race genius enough to create technology that governs us without exploiting us?

We are certainly reaching a threshold as China continues to buy our debt and our economy continues to weaken.  We all know that if things continue to escalate, our nation will become vulnerable to attacks, and if we’re attacked we will be forced to retaliate and the world will be pushed to the brink.

However, there is restored hope with Obama in office and the world waits to see the results of his administration. Obviously, what I believe will save us is technological advancement. Renewable energy, collective intelligence, creation of a smart energy grid combined with the growing user generated content of the Internet. All serving to educate the public to get involved and feel ego-less motivation to share their information with the world. Becoming altruistically transparent for the good of the whole, and ultimately benefiting individual lives more! Gotta love ideals.. Ayn Rand would probably want my head, but maybe not because benefiting yourself to benefit the whole is the psychology that can win. The more genuine your purpose is to benefit yourself for the whole, the more benefit you will gain.

Pretty much threw the whole kitchen sink into this one… was feeling rather alarmist today, which isn’t so much my nature. I tend to be an optimist that sees beauty and eros, as the ancient Greeks would say, as the driving force of the human spirit rather than greed, but these are all potential realities that we have to face.

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Here’s a company that’s doing something very special. I watched Ron’s presentation at VLAB (MIT/Stanford Venture Lab) Green Tech for the Consumer Market this past January and got very excited. Then after hearing Trae Vassallo’s glowing presentation at the Silicon Valley West Coast Green conference, I knew they were out to change the world.

Recycle Bank is influencing the creation of a cutting edge process called single stream recycling. They supply their customers with a Recycle Bank garbage bin in which they can throw all of their paper, plastic, metal, and glass. The bin has an RFID microchip inside, which is read by special levers retrofitted onto city garbage trucks that weigh the amount of garbage. This value is sent to each individual consumer’s online Recycle Bank account, where it is converted into Recycle Bank Reward Points at a ratio of 2.5 reward points for each pound of garbage. These Reward Points can then be redeemed at local businesses that consumers normally buy from, such as Whole Foods, Bed Bath & Beyond, and many more. What an incredible incentive to get people recycling!

With such a dynamic program that will certainly increase the recycling rate, RB gains the credibility to negotiate exclusive long term contracts with city municipalities to deliver garbage from Recycle Bank customers to material recovery facilities (MRF) and in essence divert trash from going into a landfill. This creates great economic value for the city by allowing them to sell the trash to manufacturers such as Coca Cola or Pepsi instead of paying landfills to take the garbage. Wow, make money instead of pay money? and Recycle Bank takes a cut off the money saved from landfill diversion rather than the money earned from sales to manufacturers. A very smart marketing decision that influences cities to broadcast how much money they made in a year, which in turn gets other cities excited about the Recycle Bank program.

This is big for 3 reasons:

1) high profitability with exclusive municipality contracts and a valuable online advertising engine

2) environmental health through the elimination of waste

3) the ability to influence consumption behavior

This 3rd reason is what really fascinates me.  With other green businesses, sure it’s great to benefit the environment, but obviously the price has to be right for adoption. And yet, even when the price is right, people are lazy and don’t want to change their behavior. They might call their utility company and say I want green power, if and only if its cheaper (Austin Energy). With Recycle Bank, the single stream recycling program that they’re pioneering is enough to influence people to actually start recycling. And even more so, RB gains the ability to influence consumer purchases with their Reward Points system. For example, they’re planning to roll out a program that gives people greater rewards for shopping at ‘green’ businesses.  Organic food stores, LEED certified establishments, and even specific products.

This is a business that’s right in front of the American consumer’s face… they can touch it, they can feel it, they can put more money in their pocket, while being guided to a healthier life and changing their local environment. Recycle Bank becomes an incredible solution to the entire consumption side of the sustainability equation. We still need the west coast to figure out solar and fuel cells so we can get off coal and oil, but this is a practical solution to get us moving in the right direction. I’m lovin it!

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