The Next Evolution of Green

Last Saturday night, an innovative new green iPhone application launched at an event in Hollywood entitled "The Evolution of Green: From Hype to Habit." The 3rdWhale iPhone app is a product of a partnership between two green Internet companies - 3rdWhale (which builds green apps) and Creative Citizen (which offers a solutions engine). The partners built the application on a fully open architecture that invites radical collaboration with other groups.

The deeper question the event posed about the "evolution of green" goes beyond specific products or partnerships. With Obama in the White House and a top green swat team at his side, the green movement has matured in remarkable ways and now we have access to power and influence. Our central task moves from hype, as the subtitle of the event puts it, to shifting our habits on every level, from personal to corporate to political.

I believe a number of things will be required to make this shift real, a few of which may be controversial in the green movement:

Full integration of spirituality and religion

To shift our behaviors requires motivation and, in turn, our strongest motivations are tethered to our core sense of meaning and purpose. As spirituality and religion offer the vast majority of Americans their core purpose for life, an effective green movement needs to celebrate, integrate, and harness the full power of spirituality and religion or it will never succeed in changing behaviors on a wide enough scale. Imagine the power if mainstream Christian denominations were to embrace sustainability as an essential part of our divinity? Green living then becomes a form of worship and carries with it a moral imperative as well as a deep sense of reverence for the planet God has entrusted us with. Similarly, those with a more personal or eclectic spirituality can begin to see green decisions as expressions of their spiritual essence. Spiritual awakening often leads to a deep understanding of our interconnectedness. Making green choices then becomes a way to honor the interconnected web of life and the Spirit that animates it. Parts of the green movement have had an allergic reaction to fully embracing spirituality for fear of becoming seen as "woo-woo" or not intellectually grounded. In an earlier stage, this might have built credibility and allowed more atheistic scientists to go green, as well as giving green leaders a seat at the table of power. However, if green is perceived as anti-religion or anti-spirituality, that creates a major barrier to the widespread shifting of habits. When the green movement is fully embraced in mainstream churches, a true evolution will have occurred.

Becoming psychologically sophisticated

The Obama team is keen on using behavioral psychology to design solutions and policies, which is a great thing. Too often, the green movement has been strident and polarizing, which creates "green guilt" and not a lot of change. Far more effective (and often more fun) is designing green systems that harness our competitive instincts, social quirks, habitual ways of thinking, and intrinsic laziness. The key is artful design so that we get people to make green shifts by working with their existing psychology rather than the noble-minded ideals we believe should drive them. Feedback is key, as is social reinforcement. For instance, if people have a meter in their house that is visually tracking their electricity usage, they are likely to reduce their use somewhat. However, the real power comes if they are also seeing the average use in their neighborhood. The competitive drive and social pressures of keeping up with the Joneses makes it far more likely they will make a deeper reduction in their electricity usage.

Dissolving the silos

The green movement has sometimes isolated itself and its goals from other change movements. This allowed it to gain access to power because it wasn't lumped with a wide variety of other work, which might have triggered partisan sensitivities. But now that we are moving into a new phase as a movement, it's vital to see that the green movement and social justice movement are intertwined (as Van Jones' Green for All demonstrates) and that the green movement and the peace movement need each other, since we can't actually solve our planetary ecological problems while we waste our creative energies on conflict. The human potential/personal growth movement provides an important key to unlocking the quality of leadership required to go green. And finally, a robust entrepreneurial economy is required for making the shift to green, which is where green makes common cause with more conservative groups. That's why I'm increasingly interested in a larger "meta-movement" that integrates these other movements under a single umbrella -- a "shift" movement that aims to create a healthy, peaceful, sustainable, and prosperous world and one which recognizes that we need a foundational shift in our consciousness in order to achieve that goal.

Making it simple

We're in the early phase of developing a new green media company called GreenShifters and we're looking at what can we deliver in a few minutes each day that is informative, entertaining, and effective at helping people make green shifts. Our goal is to empower positive green choices in five minutes or less, harnessing high production media and solutions that have been streamlined, vetted, and made remarkably easy to participate in, as well as bundling multiple solutions together in a membership program. For example, offsetting one's personal carbon is a way to reduce our contribution to global warming but it often takes time to research, calculate, and register. What if it took less than a minute to sign up for an average American's carbon offset (at a group discount) and it was charged automatically every month? Simple. This monthly "green fee" then contributes to the development of a carbon offset market that can encourage more green entrepreneurship.

Harnessing technology

3rdWhale and Creative Citizen are working together to make green fully mobile and far more accessible. Their goal is for anyone with a smart phone to have fingertip access to a full database of green businesses, restaurants, events, products, and solutions they can engage in their immediate vicinity. This will help shift green from something that requires extra work to something that is woven effortlessly into our daily lives. As the delivery technology gets better and the database of information more extensive, companies that can compete on their green credentials will be rewarded with far more business, creating a virtuous cycle. This also makes conservatives happier because it allows the market to drive solutions and innovations rather than focusing heavily on top-down governmental regulation.

Radical collaboration

Scott Badenoch, the CEO of Creative Citizen, is firmly committed to "radical collaboration." This stance goes beyond the usual competitive mindset of business to allow an accelerated evolution of new ideas and novel combinations. While it may seem opposed to the more proprietary mentality of intellectual property, competitive positioning, and branding, it's proving to be a great business model for companies such as Twitter, whose open API has allowed hundreds of innovative services to spring up around it and drive its success. The deeper truth of the green movement is that we live in an ecosystem and that our health is dependent on that ecosystem thriving. Radical collaboration is a stance that flows naturally from an ecosystem viewpoint. It doesn't waste energy. It begins with a deep understanding that we are all interconnected as allies to each other. When we do business (or create social movements or policies) with a commitment to radical collaboration, we can better liberate the full potential of green. Radical collaboration even means reaching across partisan divides, national boundaries, and industries -- always seeking the place of synergy and alignment that allows something better to emerge. As we learn to translate this idea into full practice, we'll have a far more effective and catalytic green movement.

While that is far from a comprehensive list of what the next evolution of green entails, those six elements begin to point us in the right direction -- towards fully integrating green into our lives and value systems rather than seeing it as something separate we do. Now is the time to integrate green into our deepest beliefs, most cherished institutions and in every simple choice we make. It's a stance that marries inner wisdom and outer collaboration, with no parts (or people or movements) left behind. This paradigm shift can then fuel work that makes greenshifting fast, simple, fun, and profitable, all infused with a sense of reverence for this precious world we've been given.

P.S. On a similar note, take a look at the article, "10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media." MaxGladwell, in an unprecedented collaboration, posted the article to 100 blogs all at once, including the Huffington Post.

Follow Stephen H. Dinan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/stephendinan

Comments

[Katelon]

I love your articles Stephan because they combine spirituality, environmentalism, and sustainable business, as they are part of a whole. For thirty years, I have been working on a vision to create an International Wellness center resort/learning center, with an non-profit to work with youth and family. So often people would hear of my vision and assume it was just a spa/personal wellness facility and that is far from the case. All along, I have seen that in order to be well, as an individual, we have to create and sustain well families, well businesses, a well planet, well countries, all working together to honor each other and the earth. I wrote Robert Redford years ago, upon hearing of his work to get business leaders to be more concerned about the environment. What was clear to me was that until the business leaders became more conscious of and mindful of their own bodies, they would not be aware of or see the need to treat the earth kindly as well. So, thanks for pointing out the inter connectedness of it all!!!

[AndyMannle]

Amen to Radical Collaboration! As Ken Wilber says, "Life is a process of Envelopment, not Development." With all the focus on Competition in our cultural paradigms, we forget the collaboration underlies all competition. Collaboration is a survival skill, competition is an improvement skill. Remember you can only compete once you agree on the rules first; and when times get rough competition stops and strangers join hands - it happens every time.

We are on the verge of the greatest shift in 15,000 years. Because ~15tya our ancestors learned to move beyond scavenging food and work with nature to harvest food. The result was the explosion of consciousness we know as Civilization. Now we are learning to move beyond Scavenging energy and work with nature to Harvest energy. Because super-abundant sources of energy exist all around us (sun, wind, wave, geothermal, biomass) once we learn to harvest them energy will be as cheap and clean as a bag of organic apples. This too will create a radical shift in consciousness and usher in a new age where we will still hope, dream, strive and struggle - but not for material things.

Already non-material passions like theater, literature, art, video games, law, finance, travel, tourism, sports and science occupy more of our time than the struggle for daily bread.

This GreenShift (R)evolution is inevitable. It's already underway. And it's gaining speed. Join Us!

[AndyMannle]

Every few thousand years something AWESOME happens! And this is one of those times..

Amen to the green movement, spirituality AND religion all offering us paths to increased interconnectedness. Spirituality & Religion are different though. Spirituality is personal, internal, universal. You can have a spiritual experience alone on a mountain in silence. Religion is interpersonal, social, & communal; it requires language, symbols and actions. And yes, many Religious groups are recognizing that Stewardship of 'God's Green Earth' is a potent message for their believers. Google InterFaith Power & Light for more.

Becoming Psychologically Sophisticated is critical for this Shift, and the best guy doing work on this is John Marshall Roberts who was also at the event. Check out his book "Igniting Inspiration" for the most clear description of the mechanics of Inspiration, the basic stages of psychology, and how Systemic "Yellow" Thinking is sweeping the world. http://www.amazon.com/Igniting-Inspiration-Persuasion-Manual-Visionaries/dp/B001PIIL1G/ref=ed_oe_k

We come out of our silos when we shift from analytical­-linear-le­ftbrain thinking towards synthesis-­holistic-r­ightbrain thinking. This is the key to Green Design and 'integrating' our way through our challenges, instead of fighting them. Van Jones is a perfect example of this, as is Scott's 'Radical collaboration' and the reason these are so successful is that they follow ecosystem principles. Every cell in your body is a 'radical collaboration' of microbes and bacteria that have their own DNA and joined forces hundreds of millions of years ago.

[unenergy]

Great article. One of the things I've often wondered about is many of the religious groups in the United States appear to have overwhelmingly aligned themselves with the political party who is about a 'single use, throwaway planet.' It is OK to destroy whatever we want to make life for us a little bit more comfortable in this particular moment without any forethought to what happens 50 or 100 years from now.
It seems to me that it is contradictory to believe it is our right to use up all the resources now, pollute all others and to mock any move to a more sustainable way of life and at the same time to preach that you are looking out for the future or the next generation.
If anything, 'dominion over the earth and its animals' would mean that if you have the knowledge to obtain what you need without destroying the means from which you obtain it, then this is what you should do. That belief in sustainability does go hand in hand with other beliefs.

[greendig]

I wouldn't make a blanket association of religious organizations and environmental concerns. It has been proven over and over that this association is not true. In fact, one of the largest and fastest growing environmental groups is the Creation Care movement. Watch my video interview with the head of the organization here:

http://www.mnn.com/technology/research-innovations/blogs/evangelical-christians-rally-behind-the-climate-cause

Sadly, the Republican party has subverted the message of the Bible by allying itself with the most extremely radical part of the church, which represents less than 15% of the total U.S. population.