When we talk about sustainability we often think about green issues, global warming and the very future of our planet and mankind.  However, sustainability can also be about lifestyle, politics and matters of faith. 

With the downturn in the economy a USA Today poll from late 2008 showed just 45% of Americans think their childrens’ lives will be better than their own.   This blog post addresses two of the largest siphons draining America’s economic power:  credit cards and health services.

The area that is most out of control and easiest to fix is the credit card industry.  Years of aggressive and clever marketing helped the credit card industry capture incredible market share over the last 30 years.  Coming from relatively modest roots, as the credit card industry’s power grew and deregulation increased, so did the volume of credit card offers sent out to Americans.   Over the years, people were enticed by multi-media campaigns promoting low introductory rates, purchase protection and fraud protection to increasingly use their credit cards.  

As the industry grew and the credit card industry recognized that their business was also unsustainable, in that they had extended too much credit to too many people, so they turned to government to bail them out in 2005.   Although it wasn’t called a bailout it clearly was one.  Rather than punishing irresponsible executives and crying out for reform in an industry out of control the government punished the American public instead.  The effects were immediate, long lasting and are eating away at the American economy like a cancer.   

The credit card industry successfully lobbied the government to make it very difficult for people that fall into hardship to discharge both credit card (and medical debt) under bankruptcy.  While there were legitimate abuses of the bankruptcy laws, the credit card lobbyist seized upon the moment and turned the tables to give themselves an unfair advantage over Americans who had genuinely fallen on hard times. 

More recently, as America and the rest of the World entered hard economic times where many families were impacted by job loss and most families had to cut back on spending, the credit card industry has responded by raising interest rates to 20 and even 30%.  These rates equate to outright usury and are a drag on the American economy’s ability to recover. 

For hundreds of years societies have banned usery by limiting interest rates that lenders could charge.  Fewer than half of America’s states cap credit card interest rates and because most credit card providers are not based in the states that do cap interest rates they are not subject to them.  In the terms and conditions of cardholder agreements the credit card company typically has period of time with a guarantee issue period and after that they give themselves the flexibility to change the rates based upon any number of triggers or time.  

By charging these outrageous rates the credit card industry has shown itself to be opportunist, morally bankrupt and evil.    While the Obama administration is taking some small steps to make the credit card industry give their clients more notice before gouging them, the government’s approach is weak kneed and woefully inadequate.  Make your opinon about credit card reform known.

On the other point, I need to open with a disclosure.  I am a health insurance broker serving clients across the state of Colorado.   A few years ago, I recognized that the health services model that we have today is not sustainable.  With annual increases of 15-20% easily outpacing wage growth and inflation, it was clear that health care expenditures have become a drag on America’s ability to compete in the global arena.  While most people tend of focus on the health insurance premiums, the reality is that health insurance carrier profits have been flat for years, and it is the underlying costs of health services that are driving the double digit annual premium increases to American consumers and businesses and leading to fewer people being able to afford health insurance. 

What this means to the average citizen is that every year they are paying more and getting less in return for the money they pay out for health services, be it through direct pay, employer health insurance, individual health insurance or government run health programs like Medicare and Medicaid.  

The American dream is alive but it is threatened by powerful industries and a government that did not look out for the best interests of its people.  While we are all paying the price now for those past sins, we need to strike a balance going forward that allows industry to innovate and compete, but not at the expense of the general populatons best interest.

Rather than making grand gestures that do not address the fundemental underlying problems that trouble these industries, they need to delve into the details.    The health care issue is complex but there are good solutions available.  Read about health insurance reform news at the Colorado Health Insurance news blog.

I plan to start the day by taking a nice walk and picking up some trash along the way.  I do have to work tomorrow, but I hope to see the new Disney Earth Movie that evening.  

What about you?

On Friday, April 17th, 2009 America turned the corner.  The EPA determined that carbon dioxide and 5 other industrial gasses threaten the planet.  

While that may not seem like news to many readers, this landmark decision enables the federal government to cap carbon emissions and has the potential to impact everything from how industries operate to what types of new cars and homes are produced. 

The Environmental Protection Agency named carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydroflurocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfer hexafluoride as dangerous to the environment.  

While the EPA said they will not make quick radical changes, the ruling in itself will increase the odds of Congress taking action.  Certainly, the business lobby groups favor Congressional action, as Congress is unlikely to do anything too radical that could harm America’s economic recovery.   Policy changes will likely cost business and the government billions of dollars.

There is no longer the choice between having a bill and doing nothing.   According to one lawmaker, “It’s now a choice between regulation and legislation.  

President Obama prefers a legislative approach to address global warming over the regulatory approach.   The Obama administration favors a ”Cap and Trade” plan in which heavy polluters would purchase Carbon Credits from more efficient companies, to help ensure no net gain in carbon emissions.

Whether the legislative or regulatory approach ultimately prevails, the writing is on the wall and will factor into business planning for the future, which should yield positive results.   

Source:Wall Street Journal Article – “U.S. in Historic Shift on CO2“  by Jonathan Weisman and Siobhan Hughes

I just watched an interesting documentary about the Great Dust Bowl on the History Channel. This bit of history shows the damaging impact that mankind can have on the environment. It also shows that industrious people trying to make a life for their family can inadvertently cause far more societal harm than good. The Dust Bowl disasters were manmade and caused by bad land management practices that started in the 1860’s and culminated in the 1930’s

The great grasslands of America were once home to buffalo and American Indians. In the 1860’s President Lincoln’s Homestead Act brought settlers to the grasslands. The settlers were farmers that replaced drought resistant native grass lands with money producing crops.

At the dawn of the 20th century, doubling of the prices paid for wheat drove even more people to plant wheat. Some small farmers made significant amounts of money and a new kind of “gold rush” type of mentality ensued. Life was good for a while. In the 1920’s the advent of the motorized tractor revolutionized farming. Work that used to take 3 days could now be done in 3 hours.

However, the good times would not last. After the Great Depression hit, wheat prices from $3/bushel to $0.40/bushel. President Hoover did not hear the farmers’ cries for help and insisted that the free markets would correct themselves in time. But, there would be no market correction any time soon and farmers suffered greatly. Things would get far worse before they would get better.
In 1931 a drought began after the region received 6″ less than normal and the first dust storms began to appear. In 1932 after a drought the wheat crop failed, leaving bare soil exposed to the sun. Then in spite of successive droughts the desperate and hopeful farmers plowed and planted and replowed and replanted, hoping there would be enough rain for the crops to take root and prosper. All that plowing and replowing lead to loose topsoil more than a foot deep.

Instead of rain and prosperity the drought continued and the 60 mile an hour winds common to this region combined with the loose top soil and the decade long era of the Dust Bowl began. It began with regional dust storms where visibility was often limited to 3 feet, strong winds blew windows out and the storms lasted for days. All people could do was pray that the storms would end soon. The first storms came with little warning. People caught outside during the storms would become easily disoriented, lost and sometimes died. The aftermath of these “Black Blizzards” left some residents having to literally dig themselves out.

The great Dust Bowl was comprised of 100 million acres of once fertile farmland, which stretched across vast sections of Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The dust storms themselves created their own weather systems. As super storms developed, storms with wall of dust over 10,000 feet high putting an estimated 350,000,000 tons of dirt into the air moved across the country. They caused 100 mile an hour winds, plagues of insects, disease, heat waves and death.  The dust storms themselves helped to perpetuate the drought.

Goodwill, Oklahoma, was hit by storms 70 times in a one year period. Dust clogged people’s lungs and they began dieing from a condition similar to the Black Lung Disease suffered by coal miners. While people were able to seek shelter in their homes, the cattle out in the fields died with their lungs clogged with dirt.

Swarms of grasshoppers filled the air, as birds left the region. The grasshoppers ate everything in sight and would even eat a wooden shovel handle. Insects came into the homes, including poisonous spiders and centipedes that were often removed by the bucketful. As natural predators left the region jack rabbits flourished and became a plague in themselves. Farm families were in despair and banks foreclosed on 200,000 family farms across the region. No real help came from the government until FDR’s election in 1933 and the advent of The New Deal.

In 1934, the storms grew larger and moved East, one storm left an estimated 12 million pounds of soil rained down in Chicago. The nation was shocked with a Dust Bowl storm travelled east hitting New York City and then Boston. The soil from the Great Plains traveled 1500 miles and eventually landed in the Atlantic Ocean. Amazingly 75% of the people that lived in the region stayed throughout the “Dirty Thirties” in hope that things would improve.

In 1935 a soil surveyer named Hugh Bennett caught the attention of the President.  He traveled across the country educating farmers about techniques to preserve the land.  He did not blame the farmer, but blamed government policies for setting the course for the disaster.  In 1935 alone, 850 million pounds of top soil blew away, which was 6 tons of dirt for every citizen of the United States.  The barren ground was so infertile it would never grow a crop again.   Eventually, the Soil Conservation Service was created and the Bennett pushed for the reseeding of Kansas with drought resistant native grasses.  Bennett taught farmers how to more effectively till the soil and preserve precious rainfall.  By 1938 the farmers began to see results and in 1939 normal weather patterns finally returned.

Not learning from history’s mistakes, poor land management practices are causing major dust storms in China, Korea and sub-Saharan Africa.  Living surviving farmers in the Dust Bowl areas of America still live in fear that droughts, poor land and water management may lead to a return of the Dust Bowl.  The lesson that must be learned is that mankind must respect nature and be a good steward of her resources.

Whether you have a single PC at home or run a large business, printing costs are simply too high.  The good news is that you can employ these money saving tips to reduce printing costs for your business and/or household.  An addtional benefit is that not only will you save money, but you will be reducing the environmental impact at the same time.

Tip 1.  Think before you print.  Many of us have developed a habit of printing emails and web pages so we can read them later.  This can be both costly and wasteful.  While you may still want hard copy of legal documents, you certainly don’t need hard copy of most emails or web pages.   Instead download a free pdf creator and save that email or web page as a PDF file.    In fact, you are still printing the document, but the output is a PDF file to be saved to your computer rather than hard copy.  It easy to organize PDF files as you can save them to a folder on your computer or to your desktop for later reference.

Tip 2.  Print Only What You Must.  How many times have you printed a web page or email and saw that the last page or two was almost blank and had useless information on it, so you tossed it in the garbage.  What a waste of paper and ink!  GreenPrint has a free software program that let’s you choose what to print and what not to.  For the average business with 50 employees, this program will save $4,510 annuallyin reduced paper and ink costs.   Also, includes a free PDF Writer (see Tip 1) that let’s you create PDF’s with a single click.

Tip 3. Refill and Recyle Your Printer Cartridges- Instead of buying new cartridges and tossing the old ones into the trash, recycle them instead.  While there are plenty of local shops where you can get ink refills, I have heard nothing but great things about EnviroInks.com and their prices are very attractive.  I just paid $70 to get my old HP LaserJet 4L’s cartridge refilled and I found the same cartridge and EnviroInks.com for $39.99.   They have free shipping on orders of $50 or more and your savings are increased when you return the old printer cartridge to EnviroInks using their pre-paid recycling mailers.

Tip 4. Use Recycled Paper.  Okay, this won’t likely save money, but we’ve saved you enough money on reduced paper usage and ink jet and laser toner usage that you can afford to give a little back.  When buying paper look to see what percentage of the paper is recycled (may range for 10% to 100%) and what processes they use to recycle the paper.  You can find a good selection of recycled paper at GreenLine Paper Company.

Tip 5. Recycle your waste paper.  Look at how much paper winds up in land fills:

Any other tips or ideas?  Please feel free to comment below.

US Drug Use Contributes to Murders of Over 6,000 People in Mexico

Back in the day, people said smoking pot was a victimless crime. While that may have been true then, today’s reality is a different story.

Consider the horrendous violence at the hands of Mexican drug cartels in the border towns that dot the US/Mexican border. United States demand for pot, cocaine, ecstasy and meth created Mexican Drug Cartels so powerful that they threaten Mexico’s political stability.

Mexican drug cartels use their drug profits to purchase guns and other lethal weapons from the United States to defend their drug markets, attack other cartels, bribe (or murder) local police and judges and generally wreck havoc on society.

As a result of this escalation in violence, more than six thousand Mexican people were brutally murdered in the last year alone. In these lawless border towns, hit men with automatic weapons rule the streets, while families hide fearfully in their homes unprotected by understaffed, underfunded and often corrupt local police.

Every April 20th, many Americans celebrated “4/20” by smoking some pot carrying on a tradition from a bygone era.  The story goes that 4/20 started back in 1971 with a group of teens from a high school in California that would get baked at 4;20pm. 

I hope that this 4/20 America’s youth will recognize that smoking pot or using drugs is no longer a victimless crime and that their behavior is endangering the very lives of impoverished Mexican families where it is no longer safe for children to play in the streets or to walk to the market to buy food.

We live in a global economy and the economic choices we make, whether buying weed or organic locally grown food, has a tremendous effect on the world we live in.  Use your money for good.  Do not support evil.

Hey folks, this post has moved onto a new blog all about greening the grid at:
http://learnshareact.com/greenpower/2009/04/18/new-solar-energy-plant-for-colorado/