Green Lining Under Depressed Economy

I am usually fairly casual about my finances. Barely a glance at my Mastercard statement. I pay, no questions asked. Until today, when I noticed a monthly charge of $50.32, from New York Times Sales. That struck me as a lot of money, all of a sudden. The representative at the end of the line confirmed that I had been paying that amount for twenty months in a row. One thousand dollars, I could have saved.

Before, – that is when the economy was not such a scary word – I would not have bothered. Fleeting pangs of guilt from my budding green conscience, and thoughts of all the trees downed because of my indulgence, did not make a difference. I continued to read, and then quickly dispose of the daily paver that made its way to my door every morning. Promising myself that one day, I would switch to an online subscription. 

This morning, I resisted the advances of the New York Times representative to cut me a deal. Half price for sixteen weeks. Or maybe just the Sunday paper. Or would I prefer the weekday edition? No, I told him, I had made up my mind. With the economy, I could no longer afford the superfluous expense of $50.32, or any other amount. Plus, it’s bad for the trees anyway.

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11.1 Million Jobless . . . That’s a Lot of Potential New Businesses

I have this vision of millions of jobless folks sitting at home, waiting for their next job to materialize. 11.1 millions, according to the New York Times. That’s a lot of talents, and skills being wasted, while our soon to be next President and his economic team figure out a plan. 

Here is my idea. Imagine for a second a place on the Web, where the newly unemployed could go to connect. Not to find a job. There are enough job sites as it is, which by the way appear to be rather worthless in this new economy of scarcity. No, instead this new place would be for the jobless to list all their skills, and talents, and dreams, and passions, and ideas, and the kind of people they would like to work with. Notice I say ‘with’, not ‘for’. The site would enable local meetups between members with complementary interests. Where I am going with this is an organizing community that would take full advantage of the tremendous resources from all its members, to facilitate the creation of new businesses. 

After all, a business is nothing more than a collection of people coming together to create a product of a service. In the absence of money and banks willing to extend loans, the next best thing may just be people stepping in, and lending each other their skills and time. 

Just an idea . . . 

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Does the Green Message Need a Makeover?

I am learning lots from email exchanges amongst our green mom bloggers’ group. This week, the question was raised of how to cast the greening of Thanksgiving under a fresh new way? I latched on to the ‘fresh’ part of the question and voiced that we were past the “10 Tips to a Greener Thanksgiving”. One of the moms disagreed. 

I agree that it’s boring, but I think people still need to hear the basics sometimes.  Repetition might be the only way to help people realize they are capable of making small changes.  It may take years of hearing this stuff for my husband’s family to realize that buying “local” doesn’t mean running out to the nearest Harris Teeter for their prepared turkey and fixings all packaged up in nice little plastic containers!!!

Our exchange highlights a much bigger issue. Three years since the release of “An Inconvenient Truth”, what are the most effective strategies to spread the green message? As green communicators, are we to continue as usual, with our various how-to bits, or are we to adopt radically different approaches?

The advertising people tell us we are to pay attention to the following factors for effective communication:

1. First is recall, or the ability for people to remember the message
2. Second is persuasion, or the effectiveness of the message in persuading people to change their behaviors
3. Third is repetition, the number of time a message is impressed upon people’s minds; we know repetition contributes to recall

At stake in our green discussion, is the issue of persuasion. If we are going to drill a green message into the reluctant citizen’s mind, what should it be? Realizing that the same citizen is currently up to here with worries about his or her financial future. This is why I no longer advocate green admonitions. The way to go in my book, is through the connection with economic concerns. In other words, do not talk green. Instead, explore ways to save, and to survive in our dicey economy.

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