Thursday, December 28, 2006

Peace: What is it? and how do we get there?

Following the joyous holiday season, filled with love, giving and the occasional fight with a near & dear one, I wonder, What is Peace?

If I struggle to be in harmony with my flesh and blood brother, how can I be in harmony with my metaphorical one?

Thursday, December 21, 2006

A Banner Day for Bigotry

Is Barack Hussein Obama really an Islamofascist, Osama bin Laden sympathizer in disguise? Is MN Representative Keith Ellison a threat to the American Way of Life? Give me a break!

CNN wonders out loud if Obama and Osama are connected. MSNBC guests say that his middle name is the same as the former Iraqi dictators and that he dresses like the President of Iran.

Virgil Good, a representative from Virginia, suggests that Keith Ellison, an American-born Muslim convert choosing to use the Quran for his swearing in, is a threat to the American way of life and evidence that we should close our borders to immigration.

Is the media pandering to the lowest common denominator, attracting the ignorant and bigoted? Has Virgil Goode, a representative from Virginia, forgotten that this country was founded on the principles of religious freedom? Yes on both counts.

I suppose it is human nature to create an us-and-them. In the US, vocal racism is no longer acceptable and we don't have Soviet or Communist bad guys anymore. So, apparently it's fashionable and acceptable to bash Muslims.

I am saddened and disappointed by the state of our public discourse.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Am I a Cultural Creative??

Today I'm doing some research on how environmental considerations effect consumer behavior. I've come across some market segmentation buzzwords. Maybe those of you with PR/advertising/marketing experience know all about this, but it's new to me. The first I came across was LOHAS - Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (lohas.org). I guess it comes as no surprise that the same folks who want to buy a hybrid also do yoga and eat locally-grown food. I'd just never thought of it as a definable group before.

LOHAS.org claims that about 30% of the adult US population falls into this category and that it amounts to a $228.9B market. Closely related are the Cultural Creatives. I checked out culturalcreatives.org, which is essentially selling the book of the same title, which originally coined the term. This is a broader group than LOHAS, constituting a $540B market!

There is a quiz on culturalcreatives.org that helps you determine if you are one of them. It sounds like such a nice title, that I thought I'd try it out. After all, who wouldn't want to be cultured, creative, creatively cultured, etc? So, I gave the quiz a chance:

  • Do I care about my relationships? Yep.
  • Am I concerned about violence targeting women and children? Of course.
  • Do I want to see women reach parity with men in economic and social arenas? Absolutely.
  • Am I aware of the problems of the world, such as environmental destruction, poverty, and exploitation? Definitely.
  • Would I want to limit economic growth to solve those problems? NO!
  • Would I want higher taxes to solve those problems? NO!
  • Would I pay higher consumer prices to solve those problems? Quite likely.
So, am I a Cultural Creative? I want the world to be a better place. I've spent a career in alternative energy. I read about foreign affairs and am concerned about education and poverty in the third world, but limiting economic growth is not the solution. Am I a Free-Market Cultural Creative with an MBA? Amartya Sen's well-known book is called Development as Freedom. Micro-loans, expanding economic development, are the keys to solving poverty, exploitation and ultimately environmental degradation.

According to the website, "The Cultural Creatives care deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about relationships, peace, social justice and about self actualization, spirituality and self-expression."

I'm all for those things, but I'm not for protesting the WTO, being a global luddite, or imagining that limited economic growth helps anybody. Please take the quiz yourself and let me know if you are a cultural creative, and how that effects your consumer behavior.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Carbon Tax

I found an interesting paper this morning by Richard Cooper, an economist at Harvard, considering a Carbon Tax in the post-Kyoto world.

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cooper/papers/Kyoto_ct.pdf

And for reference, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change for the UK Treasury that was published a few weeks ago:

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/8AC/F7/Executive_Summary.pdf

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Why Dolphin Log?

Dolphins are smarter than we are.

I've always admired them for using their big brains to swim in the ocean, play and eat sushi all day. Much more fun than what I plan to talk about here - energy, international affairs, Central Asia, policy, the Middle East, alternative energy, and some travel.