Anna Clark, author and founder of EarthPeople Co., opened Net Impact DFW's first sustainability + me! event with her presentation on "How to Be Citizen Consumers"
7. Conservation Saves $$$
With six simple lifestyle changes, you could save:
1. Eat less meat $360
2. Buy minimally-packaged goods $500
3. Be a greener driver $600
4. Flip the switch $375
5. Skip the Starbucks and fast food $600
6. Stop buying bottled water $700
POTENTIAL SAVINGS:
$3,135
11. Sustain, verb
1. take personal responsibility for the world around you.
2. waste not, want not.
3.serve your global neighbor as yourself.
Editor's Notes
How did we go from the passion and courage of our forefathers to politically apathetic zombie consumers? Let me try to illustrate with this diagram. The nucleus of the amoeba represents the mainstream “middle of the roaders.” This is your average consumer and citizen. These people go with the flow and look for convenience. They are best characterized byToqueville’s observation:“Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.” Statistically, only 2% of people are estimated to like change. So how do we get people to change? In short, either pain or gain. It’s like my friend Boone Pickens told me. He’ll go into a room of people and say, “How many environmentalists we got in here…” They put their hands down. If it’s going to cost them money, forget it. On ChangeDr. Paul Brand made great discoveries about leprosy. He is credited with discovering that leprosy doesn’t rot your skin, it kills your sense of pain. He fell in love with the sense of pain because of that and all the things it teaches us. He tells the story of trying to help leprosy victims to protect themselves from getting too close to fires. If you don’t feel pain, you don’t know you are getting warmer or burned. So he rigged up a mechanism so that when a person got too close to the fire, it would give them a sensation in another part of their body where they could feel. You know what they did? They turned it off. It was inconvenient. They weren’t feeling the pain, but they didn’t want to leave the warmth. So, then he rigged up a mechanism that would give them pain in another part of their body when they got so close to the fire. You know what they did? They turned it off! What Dr. Brand learned is that people don’t change until they encounter pain they can’t control.