The terms “green” and “sustainability” are often used as if they’re synonymous or interchangeable. This misconception confuses the issues and often leaves us arguing about minutiae when we should be discussing meaningful solutions.

If there is one key takeaway from our SXSW panel on accelerating sustainability through social media, it’s that there is a fundamental misunderstanding between what it means to be sustainable and what it means to be green. Though these two concepts may be compatible and even complementary, they are far from synonymous. In the following we hope to clear up the confusion we’ve observed between green living tips and sustainable systems.

The panel started out with short introductions and presentations from each of the panelists. It turned out that these were none too short and tended toward the redundant. Ours addressed the first question most people have (Who is Max Gladwell?) with a few slides that illustrate what the brand stands for i.e. the nexus of social media and green living.

In the interest of time, we chose not to hit on the final two slides, which would have offered some real world context. Instead, we left off with the following comment (taken from our notes):

Sustainability is about new systems. New energy systems. New agricultural systems. New transportation systems and new information systems. That’s where social media plays a big role. Sustainability is also about decentralization. We need to decentralize energy and food production. Each of us can become energy producers through solar, wind, and efficiency technologies…in the same way we’ve become information producers through blogs, wikis, and online video.

Our presentation was the second of four, and by this time the audience was already getting restless. We were using the Twitter hashtag #SMFS, so we were getting real-time feedback. One Tweet referenced social media’s use of electricity as a paradox for sustainability, as if to say, “How can social media accelerate sustainability when it uses energy?” Another hit on the transportation issue of flying to conferences to talk about sustainability, as if those emissions couldn’t possibly be justified by the solutions we might discover through this collaboration, and another made an unsubstantiated claim that servers and computers will one day consume more energy than air travel, though that is conceivable. All of which is unfortunate because while the topic of the panel was sustainability, the bulk of the conversation centered on being green. Are the they same thing? Far from it.

Sustainability vs. Green

Sustainability is a macro concept. It’s a big concept that applies more broadly to entire systems and infrastructures such as the global economy. The true gravity of the term is somewhat elusive, in part because it is absolute. Either something is sustainable or it’s not. There’s no middle ground. To refer to something as “more sustainable” is to essentially say that something is more infinite. It’s also like saying that something is very unique. We make this mistake pretty often, but what this essentially says is that something is very one of a kind. Either it is or it isn’t.

Green, on the other hand, is a micro concept. We deal with green in our everyday lives with things like clothing, food, lighting, cars, and a long list of best practices. Green is a pretty easy concept to understand in part because it’s relative. It is measured on a scale from dirty to clean or toxic to non-toxic. We often think in terms of the different shades of green. One person’s green can be another person’s, well, not green. That’s also why we have so much trouble with the green label and why we always will. It’s why people from all sides of the political spectrum can point to supposed hypocrisies from those who embrace and support green living. Since the concept is relative, there’s always a way to be greener. As we like to say, the poor are pretty green but they’re positively wasteful compared to those living in extreme poverty. Sure, it’s absurd, but where do you draw the line in a world where everything is relative?

Despite our tagline (Social Media and Green Living), Max Gladwell is much more about sustainability than green. Admittedly, the choice to position ourselves as “the nexus of social media and green living” was driven by the expediency of the term. We’re guilty of using “green” as a lay term for sustainability simply because it sounds and works better. It’s vitally important, though, to acknowledge and understand the difference.

Going Green and Greenwashing

There is no shortage of green tips, products, or solutions. Again, that’s the result of being a relative concept. Anything can be green. Replacing your incandescent light bulb with a CFL is green, but so is replacing your whale-oil lamp with an incandescent light bulb. Riding the bus and driving a hybrid car are green choices…relative to driving a Hummer. But none of these green options are sustainable. If everyone replaced their light bulbs with CFLs or drove Priuses, it would only delay the inevitable (and assuage our guilt). We’d still be using non-renewable (unsustainable) forms of energy. We’d be using them more efficiently, but that’s still not sustainable. It’s just green…relatively speaking.

Before we delve into sustainability, though, we’d like to address the notion of greenwashing, as it was addressed during our panel.

A woman stepped to the microphone and tried to make the case that greenwashing was good because it drove awareness for green. In other words, despite the false claims being made by companies such as Clorox and BP, the awareness this type of advertising generates produces a net positive. In basic logic terms, this is known as the ends justifying the means, and we know that no matter how wonderful the outcome, it can never justify the immoral path that was taken to get there. If that were the case, we could justify slavery, genocide, and other atrocities provided we can demonstrate that the result was somehow positive. Regardless of the details of these types of arguments, they can be readily dismissed due to faulty logic. ‘Nough said.

A Sustainable Mail System

When it comes to the notion of sustainability, it is, by definition, absolute and generally refers to entire systems. Just as the Cradle to Cradle philosophy describes sustainable systems for designing and producing things, Jared Diamond’s Collapse details how unsustainable systems have lead to the demise and collapse of entire societies throughout human history. Cradle to Cradle opened our eyes to the notion of upcycling by design as opposed to downcycling by necessity. Recycling is green, but upcycling is sustainable. Upcycling is based on a new system, whereas recycling attempts to green an existing system.

The last slide in our presentation speaks to this dichotomy. It shows the homepage for Zumbox, which bills itself as the first “all-digital postal mail system.” We’ve written about the company several times and (full disclosure) currently provide web strategy services. The problem Zumbox addresses is the unsustainable nature of our current postal mail system i.e paper mail. We’re consuming 150 million trees per year via the USPS, not to mention the emissions and waste this generates, and nearly all of this mail starts digital. But because mail is stuck in the 19th century, those files are printed and trucked across the country as if they were precious parcels that just had to be physically delivered. It seems obvious that transporting digital files in this way is unsustainable on an environmental level. And if the financial losses are any indication, it doesn’t appear to be economically viable, either.

Zumbox isn’t the first to address this problem, but all other attempts have amounted to green solutions. You can use recycled paper. You can recycle the paper you receive. You can reduce the volume of paper you receive by hiring third parties stop junk mail, or you can selectively choose various types of online billing. You can also have your paper mail scanned and displayed online so you can choose which pieces of paper you wish to receive. Each of these seeks to compensate for the existing system by offering incremental improvements. These are the green approaches–the Priuses of paper mail, if you will. They’re commendable for sure, but they do nothing to address the systemic issue of printing and shipping digital files.

Zumbox rethinks the system itself. By leveraging a technology and communications infrastructure that’s been built up over the past 10 years (or more), Zumbox enables mail to be sent and delivered online with zero paper. This new system maintains some of the familiar methods of the old one, such as using street addresses to send mail, but it does so in a sustainable manner. Zumbox isn’t a green solution. It is a sustainable alternative.

The counterpoint to this might be that Zumbox is left with an energy problem that undermines its claim of sustainability, and that’s partly true. However, the actual system that Zumbox addresses is not energy but rather paper mail. Energy is a tremendous aspect of both systems (paper and paperless), and it needs to be addressed on its own. Energy is a nearly universal problem that affects all other systems. This conundrum is similar to that of transportation.

Electric vehicles are sustainable and internal combustion engines are not. Electric vehicles represent a new transportation system that can run on renewable solar and wind power today. Most don’t have access to those sources of energy, so they have to utilize the unsustainable energy system of coal and natural gas. This is done at higher rates of efficiency than internal combustion with zero tailpipe emissions, which makes the energy source green (relatively speaking, of course). But the electric vehicle transportation system itself is sustainable. It’s not an incremental improvement over internal combustion. It is a complete rethinking. Like Zumbox, though, it depends on an unsustainable energy system, but that doesn’t mean that the system itself is unsustainable.

A Sustainable Information System

Which brings us to the final point on social media. This phenomenon did not happen overnight. It was an evolution that required tremendous investment and technological innovation to achieve. We tend to take it for granted that social media and Web 2.0 just happened, while ignoring the trillions of dollars invested over several decades to get to this point. If we’d made that same level of investment in clean energy technology, we might have an energy system that functions as efficiently as our information system. The money we’ve personally spent on computers alone could fund a solar array for an entire city block.

What we’ve achieved through online technology is a sustainable, decentralized system of information with limitless inputs and outputs. It is sustainable in a way that the old system is not because it doesn’t rely on a handful of large companies to keep it going, and it spreads the knowledge base and mind share over millions of people as opposed to thousands. It is powered by the collective will and knowledge of all people (potentially). And we’re confident that by harnessing that power in so many different ways, we’ll enable the development and deployment of many other sustainable systems from energy and education to agriculture and transportation. Because sustainability begets more sustainability.

And that is how social media will accelerate sustainability.

A SXSW panel discussion about the nexus of social media and green living.

If you only see only one panel at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference, then see New Media in the Marketing Mix for Nonprofits and Activists with Beth Kanter on Sunday at 4:30 pm CT. But if you see two panels, be sure to check out Using the New Digital Social Media to Accelerate Sustainability with yours truly, Monday at 3:30 pm CT. We’ll be joining Jon Lebkowsky, Emily Gertz, and John McElhenney in this timely discussion:

“Sustainability requires doing more with less, constantly learning how to get more out of every pound of material and watt of energy. The creation and communication of this knowledge occurs in social networks of relationships, empowered by social media. Join us for a discussion and exploration of how social media are being used to accelerate our transition to a global sustainable culture.”

If our tagline is any indication, this is a pretty familiar topic. In August of last year, we wrote about the Ten Ways that Social Media and Sustainability Align in which we discussed the shared DNA between these two mega trends. Given the economic crisis that has overcome the world since then, the nexus of social media and green living is becoming more and more relevant every day. Sustainability has become a broadly relevant term as we consider the return, if there ever was one, to a sustainable economy with sustainable economic progress. Much of this has to do with green energy, green jobs, and technological innovation.

We’ve observed over the past year that the Web 2.0 community has been inching toward the realization that social media is about more than just amassing friends, throwing sheep, and building influence for its own sake. At last year’s Web 2.0 Expo, Tim O’Reilly set the tone in his keynote address when he said, “There is this amazing confluence of technology and opportunity at a time where we really can change the world. And there are some big problems that need to be solved.” This year’s Web 2.0 Expo, which takes place March 31 – April 3 in San Francisco, will explicitly focus on sustainability through a theme of “The Power of Less.”

We do some of our best work when we’re constrained: by budgets, by headcount, by technology, by the economy. These are the times when bureaucracy and waste die by necessity. What’s left are ideas, and the muscle to make them real. 2009 will be a tough year in many ways, but now more than ever, the core concepts of Web 2.0 provide an advantage. Lightweight tools, user interfaces, and development models will help streamline productivity and focus resources; new business models will emerge out of the environment of change.

The technologies driving social media are at the heart of today’s change movement. From electing Barack Obama President to his appointment of Van Jones as Special Advisor for Green Jobs and the countless small gains being made across the social web, we have a greater say in how government and business operates. If sustainability is the end, then social media will be a means.

If there are any specific topics you’d like for us to discuss on the panel, feel free to suggest those in the comments. The Twitter hashtag for our panel is #SMFS (social media for sustainability). Please RSVP for the Facebook Event and feel free to friend us.

We’re also going to attend Social Media for Social Good on Monday, 11:30 am – 2:00 pm CT.

After our panel we’ll head to Happy Hour for Anyone Who Gives a Damn from 5:30 – 8:00 pm CT.

Then we’ll head to the Convio Nonprofit Technology Bash from 8:00 – 9:30 pm CT.

Which will spill over into the Mashable Party from 9:30 pm CT until…

Hope to see you all there. Feel free to DM or @ us: http://www.twitter.com/maxgladwell. We’ll keep you updated on our whereabouts via Brightkite, as well. Feel free to friend us if you’re into Brightkiting.

We’ll also be representing Zumbox, the first all-digital postal mail system. If you’re interested in (a) how your business or nonprofit can benefit from using this free paperless mail service, (b) how you can develop applications using the Zumbox API, or (c) media coverage of Mail 2.0, then don’t hesitate to reach out via Twitter or meet up with us at one of the events. Look for Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed.

A classic yet timely TED presentation from award-winning scholar and author Jared Diamond.

Jared Diamond’s Collapse is one of the defining texts in the Max Gladwell ideal and worldview, which is why it has a permanent place in our “Recommended Reading” sidebar. Very simply, Collapse demonstrates how unsustainable living will, in fact, lead to a society’s downfall and total collapse. There are many other reasons why societies succeed or fail, but living within its ecological and technological means is chief among them.

Diamond’s case studies, as it were, include Easter Island, the Mayan Civilization, and the Anasazi…three societies that suffered complete extinction.

(Click on the Flash Player button below to see the video presentation if it’s not already viewable.)

The primary take-away from the book is that these isolated societies of history are analogous to today’s global society. Because we’re all connected in this global economy/ecology. And if we continue to operate as they did, consuming natural resources at a rate far greater than they can replenished or replaced, often in the name of status and conspicious consumption, we’ll end up as they did. We’re clearly on that path. It’s just a matter of time and whether or not we choose to do anything about it.

“As Malcolm Gladwell observes, ‘Diamond’s distinction between social and biological survival is a critical one, because too often we blur the two.’ Diamond’s ability to tackle daunting questions (and pose unsettling answers) in a straightforward voice may be reason enough to share his optimism that recognizing a problem paves the way for solving it.”

We share Diamond’s optimism. But everyone needs to buy into it.

As a related bonus, here is William McDonough’s TED presentation on one way we can avoid collapse: sustainable, cradle-to-cradle design. (Click on one of the buttons to open the Flash video player.)

The financial crisis has sparked plenty of analysis and debate about its impact on the environment. We round up a list of different perspectives.

In our post titled The Time for Sustainability is Now, written in July, we speculated that high oil prices and the global economic meltdown (the meltdown before the meltdown) would trigger a sudden shift toward sustainability and that 2008 would mark the starting point of this long-term trend. Since then, oil prices have plummeted from the $140s to the $60s, driven in large part by efficiency (a good thing) and a recessionary pandemic (not so good). In other words, the same market force that drove them up has driven them down: demand. And just before we entered the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression, we noted that this was (and would be) the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression. Now it’s finally here.

There are tremendous parallels between an unsustainable economy and an unsustainable ecology, and the consequences of each are equally severe. To most environmentalists, sustainability is narrowly defined in terms of managing natural resources, but it is much more than that. It’s a philosophy and mode of thought that transcends the environmental movement and touches every part of society, not the least of which is our financial system. The shift toward sustainability needs to be viewed as both an environmental and economic movement. These are two sides of the same coin, and our quality of life hangs in the balance.

The prosperity of the past eight years was largely a myth, both in terms of wealth creation and our greater well being. The combination of lax regulations, low interest rates, cheap capital from China, the devaluation of the dollar, complex financial instruments, a casino culture on Wall St., rampant speculation, the dotcom bust, good ol’ fashioned greed, and a government that encouraged risky lending has all lead us to this point. The increase in housing “values” will be erased, so just know that this is going to happen. There’s a good 10-20% more to go, depending on where you are, before we hit bottom. This was nothing short of a pump and dump scheme with people’s homes, and everyone was in on it. In the end, prices will revert to the mean only after overshooting to the downside. Not even government can break the laws of economics.

The real crime is that the pain will be felt by everyone, even the relatively innocent. You may not have lied about your income to get a mortgage you couldn’t afford, and you may not be defaulting on it just because you owe more than your home is worth. Chances are, you didn’t package and sell toxic debt. You were probably more responsible. It doesn’t matter. You’ll still feel the pain from those who did.

By this same principle, no matter how eco-responsible and green we are as individuals, we’re all going to feel the pain of living beyond our collective ecological means. The economic crisis may be in full swing, but the environmental crisis is just getting started. Global warming affects us all. Perversely, it tends to most impact those who are least responsible for it. The mismanagement of our natural resources, from soil to air to energy, is a shared burden, regardless of whether or not we, as individuals, have been good stewards. So while we need to behave responsibly and consciously, it’s largely for naught if we don’t have responsible systems and a culture of economic and ecological responsibility. The whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

For the past several weeks, we’ve been filtering stories on this topic of economy meets ecology. Here are several points of view on how the economic crisis poses both threats to and opportunities in the movement toward sustainability.

1. The Economist: Climate of Fear

How the European Union is dealing with ambitious emissions-reductions targets in the face of recession.

“Now the mood among Europe’s political and business elites is much more fearful and pessimistic: saving jobs has become a more urgent priority than saving the planet. Mr Dimas may need to be flexible. Under the original terms of the 20/20/20 pact, countries were expected to spend the receipts from auctioning permits on improving their energy efficiency. Last week, however, Mr Dimas suggested that they would be able to use the money however they wanted.”

2. AlterNet: How the Economic Crisis Will Affect the Environment

An upside/downside view of lower output and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s unclear at this point whether the crisis will do more good or more harm for the environment. In the short term, it will certainly slow the increase in carbon dioxide emissions. It will also cause a delay in developing environmentally hazardous projects like Canadian tar sands. But if the crisis also sets back the development of energy alternatives for any significant length of time, it will cancel out any of these positive developments. Many people are waiting and watching what happens in the global financial markets. Likewise, the verdict is still out on the ultimate impact of the crisis on the environment.

3. San Francisco Chronicle: Fiscal Woes Could Delay Climate Change Efforts

On the political ramifications of the recession in America.

“The truth is there is a very large question mark hanging over the idea that Congress would take economywide action on global warming with the economy in such anemic shape,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. In the short term, a declining global economy could reduce the growth in greenhouse gas emissions as consumption of goods and energy usage drops. But world leaders warn it could also undermine efforts to find long-term solutions.

4. Ecopolitology: The Obama Economic Plan is the Obama Energy Plan

On Obama’s plan to pull us out of the red-ink economy with a green-ink economy.

Obama said that in light of the current economic situation, some portions of any platform would have to be pared, simply because there is less money flowing into the Treasury. But he also said other programs are critical components of an economic recovery, and should not be abandoned. Obama said:

“To create new jobs, I’ll invest in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure — our roads, schools, and bridges. We’ll rebuild our outdated electricity grid and build new broadband lines to connect America. And I’ll create the jobs of the future by transforming our energy economy. We’ll tap our natural-gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in the United States of America. I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels — an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can’t ever be outsourced.”

5. Umair Haque: Not a Great Depression, A Great Rebalancing

On the need for better corporate DNA, which includes sustainability and transparency at every level.

In an era where our economic institutions are fast becoming value destruction machines, it is revolutionaries who can reimagine what the corporation should be who will be able to seize paths to new sources of advantage. Innovators who can, for example, renew obsolete industrial era DNA by reconceiving today’s toxic relationship between managers and investors will be able to evade and reverse the costs partially fuelling the macro crisis, and discover new sources of advantage built on more liquid, transparent relationships between investors and managers.

6. The Daily Green: With Oil Under $70 Again, What’s It Mean for Green?

On whether or not clean tech will suffer from low oil prices and less investment.

Meanwhile, according to at least some analysts, neither the rising price of oil nor the financial crisis has taken much steam out of investments in “clean tech,” which attracted $2.2 billion in investments in the first half of 2008 and is expected to account for 11% of total investments. And investing in energy efficiency programs, and renewable energy technology research and development, is increasingly being seen as the best hope for a new industrial revolution that would create millions of jobs and reverse the economic slide.

7. ENN: UN Says Credit Crisis Could Enable “Green Growth”

On the opportunity to rebuild a sustainable economy, both financially and ecologically.

“The credit crisis can be used to make progress in a new direction, an opportunity for global green economic growth,” de Boer, who heads the Bonn-based U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference. “The credit crunch I believe is an opportunity to rebuild the financial system that would underpin sustainable growth … Governments now have an opportunity to create and enforce policy which stimulates private competition to fund clean industry.”

8. EcoGeek: How the Economic Crisis Will Help Clean Tech

The Darwin approach to decarbonizing our energy in a down economy.

When money was relatively cheap, investors grew careless choosing their investments, most dramatically in structured mortgage products, but also in other sectors.  Now investors are more likely to careful about where they put their money.  For marginal or speculative companies, this is bad news, but it could be an advantage for dull but profitable businesses which might have been overlooked previously.

The first steps toward decarbonizing our economy do not need to be high tech; they need to be hard work. Energy efficiency is cheap (in fact, it usually pays for itself in just a few years, if not months,) but often requires new ways of thinking. Investors and politicians have been quick to talk up photovoltaic companies. Using the energy we already have more efficiently seldom received more than lip service.

9. CNN: The Meltdown’s Silver Lining – Cheap Oil

On why we need to put a floor on the price of oil and gasoline with taxes.

The bank also calculated how high oil prices have to be for OPEC countries to maintain their budgets. Iran and Venezuela, who are often the first to call for production cuts, need the highest price per barrel – $95. Russia needs about $70, while Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer and de facto ruler, needs about $55 a barrel.

But taking all these measures together, the bank says $60 a barrel seems like a probable place for oil prices to bottom out. That would represent a gasoline price of just over $2 a gallon. Good news for motorists burned at paying over $4 a gallon for much of the summer, but bad news if that price drop at the pump also comes with a pink slip from the boss.

10. ENN: Crunch May Put Price Tag on Environment

On a new paradigm for valuing natural resources.

“Most of our valuable assets are not on the books,” said Robert Costanza, professor of ecological economics at the University of Vermont. “We need to reinvent economics. The financial crisis is an opportunity.”

Advocates of “eco-nomics” say that valuing “natural capital” could help protect nature from rising human populations, pollution and climate change that do not figure in conventional measures of wealth such as gross domestic product (GDP) or gross national product (GNP).

“I believe the 21st century will be dominated by the concept of natural capital, just as the 20th was dominated by financial capital,” Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program, told Reuters at the International Union for Conservation of Nature congress in Barcelona earlier this month.

Photo: EcoGeek

The mega-trends of social media and sustainability share plenty of the same DNA.

The Arnold Palmer is an exceptional beverage. It takes two individual beverages, iced tea and lemonade, each very good in their own right, and creates an even better one. That’s how we feel about social media and green living i.e. sustainability.

There is nothing inherently green about social media. The Web 2.0 revolution is driven by code and the Internet as a platform. According to Wikipedia, it describes this as a trend in “technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.” This is largely a virtual world.

The move toward sustainability, on the other hand, is taking place entirely offline in the actual world. It is about balancing our impact and more wisely managing our natural resources. The United Nations describes it as commitment to “the provision of a secure environmental, social, and economic future.”

As different as they are, these two trends share one key quality: they’re changing the world for the better. They are changing politics, business, culture, and society. In the following we explore 10 ways that the trends of social media and sustainability intersect as well as align.

1. The New Politics

Barack Obama has changed political elections forever. Just as Kennedy used televised debates to his advantage in 1960, Obama has used the social web. It’s partly a function of his brand and overwhelming appeal with younger voters, but it’s also a clear sign of the times. This article in The Economist breaks down his strategies and contrasts his success with McCain. Obama’s decision to announce his VP via email and SMS is nothing short of brilliant. Not only is Obama building a massive database of emails and cell phone numbers, he’s end-running the mainstream media and going directly to the people.

We’ve also seen members of Congress increasingly embracing Twitter. One of them is Senator Joe Biden, our pick for Obama’s VP.

In terms of sustainability, candidates have placed renewable energy at the center of their respective energy plans. For McCain, it’s “The Lexington Project” with a call for “investing in clean, alternative sources of energy.” For Obama, it’s “New Energy for America” with the promise of “5 million green collar jobs.” Each plan addresses climate change.

What might these trends signal about the next administration? How will White House communications change in 2009, especially with Obama in the oval office? Will new cabinet-level positions be created to handle these new realities? The Secretary of Sustainability? The Social Media Director? Time will tell. What’s clear is that these two trends are playing equally significant roles in the new politics.

2. The Democratization of Information and Energy

The social web has decentralized the production and distribution of content. Technologies such as blogs, wikis, YouTube, MySpace, and Ustream have put control in the hands of people…the people formerly known as the audience. This trend is well on its way, and clean energy is following in its footsteps.

These are the people formerly known as a utility’s customers. It’s becoming increasingly more affordable and cost effective to produce our own electricity with solar and wind, not to mention maximizing efficiency and generating our own negawatts. This shift also includes community-driven efforts, driven by the Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) laws, which “allow communities to take over the role of purchasing electricity for its residents and businesses.” Local Power is working to help cities adopt CCA, specifically in San Francisco where the short-term goal is 51% green energy. According to this story in Fast Company, the utility PG&E is none to happy about it. Perhaps they could commiserate with the L.A. Times?

3. Losing the Adjectives

Because social media and sustainability are still such new trends, we rely on qualifiers to distinguish them from the norm. We refer to green products and green energy, as opposed to wasteful products and dirty energy. Blogging and online video are social media as opposed to traditional or one-way media. In each case we look forward to the day when green and social can be taken for granted. When all media is social and all products and energy are green. Then we can lose the adjectives.

4. Corporate Culture

Social media and sustainability present the same set of issues when integrating these new practices into a company’s DNA and core values. It is unclear with whom the responsibilities should reside, which departments will be involved, and what new position(s) should be created. The truth is that social media and sustainability can be integrated and adopted at every level.

A company’s story need not be the exclusive domain of the communications department. In many cases, engineers and designers can convey a company’s message better than PR reps. Marketing and customer service can benefit immensely, and the C-suite can go a long way toward humanizing a company through corporate blogging. All of which can generate significant upside in the form of brand equity, product development, research data, and much more.

In terms of sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR), these qualities start with corporate values and extend to a company’s every touch point and stakeholder. The role of Chief Sustainability Officer is being increasingly adopted, which gives this individual the necessary authority to implement policies throughout an organization.

Of course, each of these strategies is driven by return on investment. They have to make business sense. When it comes to implementing either, however, there is one guiding principle: transparency. Without it, social media and sustainability not only won’t be effective. They’ll typically blow up in your face.

5. Fast Company and Wired Magazines

The prevailing theme of these magazines is technology. Fast Company focuses on business and Wired skews toward the Internet. Web 2.0 has been a consistent topic for each since the coining of the term Web 2.0. More recently, each has devoted an increasing number of pages to sustainability.

We wrote about Wired’s absurdist approach to global warming. This month’s cover story is “The Future of the Electric Car” featuring Better Place; a few pages away, you can find a profile on gossip blogger Perez Hilton. Fast Company once featured Adam Werbach on the cover. This month, it has to defend its frequency of green coverage. In this same issue, social-media giant MySpace makes the cover story. These magazines can’t help but to cover the nexus of social media and green living.

6. Follow the Money…in and out of Silicon Valley

It’s no secret that Kleiner Perkins made its name (and fortune) in the dotcom era on bets like Amazon, Sun, and Google. The firm has also received plenty of press for its recent cleantech bets. Fortune magazine went so far as to say that KPCB was betting the farm on green and leaving Internet deals to the competition. John Doerr admitted as much. “‘We made a very deliberate and strategic decision,’ he says with the baritone of a deejay, which he was in college. ‘We could’ve doubled down on Web 2.0, whatever that is. We didn’t.’”

However, the author of this Fortune piece updates the story in a blog post, where he says he’d be “remiss if [he] didn’t note that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, its investment in the Facebook application maker Zynga.” This is in addition to the $100 million iPhone iFund, which is inherently social.

Vice President Al Gore also joined the firm this year. The Inconvenient Truth star is a champion of battling climate change, yet he’s also co-founder of the socially driven Current.com, where citizen journalists can upload videos to the website and, following a voting process, potentially have them aired on its television-channel counterpart.

This same duality of focus and investment is playing out throughout Silicon Valley and the entire VC community. These are smart bets being made on a smart future that’s both green and social.

7. New Jobs in the Social-Green Economy

As many as 40% of the jobs awaiting today’s fourth graders have yet to be invented. That’s just a guess, but consider how far removed our work in sustainability and social media are today from what was available in, ahem, 1981. Then consider the pace at which technologies in social media and sustainability are evolving. We’ve tagged Generation Y as the first that doesn’t know a world without the Internet. The Next Generation (a term we just coined), defined by those born between 1997 and 2015, won’t know a world where social media and sustainability aren’t part of everyday life, including their careers. In many ways, they won’t even realize it.

In sustainability, we’re talking about an entirely new sector of so-called “green-collar jobs”, which can include anything from installing solar panels to the aforementioned Chief Sustainability Officer. Van Jones is a champion of the green economy as a solution to not only our energy and climate crises but poverty, outsourcing, and inequality.

In technology and social media, new roles and responsibilities are being created in marketing, public relations, and customer service. You have entire consulting firms, such as our friends at Heavybag Media, responding to the growing need for companies to communicate more directly with their customers. Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester senior analyst specializing in social computing, frequently blogs about recruiters’ search for social media candidates. Yes, that’s two examples in one.

8. The Localization of American Culture

The era of cheap oil has lead to an unsustainable system where it is (was) economically viable to ship goods, such as vegetables and fish, all across the globe at a tremendous expense to our health, security and wellbeing. With this era coming to an end, the principles of sustainability dictate that we source our food and other goods as close to home as possible, which includes shopping at farmers’ markets and growing our own food.

This parallels the decentralization of information that’s been driven by social media and the ability to produce (grow) our own content and to become active participants in media as opposed to passive consumers. There’s an even more relevant example, though.

The Internet did for communication what cheap oil did for consumer goods. It brought the world seemingly close together. From the U.S., you could find people in New Zealand or China who shared your same interests and then build a global online community. It was liberating. And now social media has turned this on its head.

Services like Meetup and even the big social networks (Facebook and MySpace) are enabling like-minded people to find one another online with the express purpose of meeting up in the real world. In Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, he recounts how stay-at-home moms are the number-one group on Meetup. He says they are reinventing the social infrastructure of small towns and neighborhoods. Perhaps they’re getting together at the farmers’ market to do some local, organic shopping?

9. Grassroots Movements with Top-Down Results

Social media and sustainability started as grassroots movements. Whether it was co-ops for sourcing biodiesel fuel or the entrepreneurs of the social web, these mega-trends started small. They reached a point, though, where politicians and major corporations took notice and have more recently started to embrace them. Sustainability is part of Wal-Mart’s corporate culture, and social media has significantly impacted how companies like GM, Dell, and Comcast interact with their customers. Both presidential candidates use social media to its fullest, and sustainability is a platform within each campaign. Politics, business, and society will never be the same. Thanks in large part to social media and sustainability.

10. Now with the Downsides

Social media and sustainability are vehicles. Their virtues are a result of how we use them, and that may not always be for good.

Anorexia groups have sprung up on social networks like MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, and Facebook not to help women recover but to reinforce and support their behavior. Referred to as “pro-ana“, this is the “rejection of the idea that anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder.” We’ve also heard plenty about child predators using MySpace.

In a similar way, companies can poison the well of sustainability through greenwashing, which undermines legitimately green products and services by fostering skepticism and cynicism.

On a larger scale, though, sustainability can also succumb to zealotry, dogma, and fanaticism. It can start to emulate religion. Or we can allow government to play too large a role in pushing us toward a sustainable lifestyle. It’s not that the government has no role to play, but there is a clear line when it comes to privacy and liberty. As the political pendulum swings hard to the left, this will become a real concern.

We’ve also thought that the burgeoning carbon offset market, estimated at $1 trillion in a Fast Company article, could give rise to a new breed of third-world dictator. A valuable commodity is a valuable commodity, whether it’s oil, gold, diamonds, or CO2. If we’re going to rely on the third world to soak up all of our first-world carbon and generate huge profits in the process, it cannot be at the expense of human rights. The film “Blood Carbon” ought never to be made.

Two-thousand and eight could mark the year when the world shifts toward sustainability.

The writing is on the proverbial wall. This year could be a watershed, one to earmark in the history books as the beginning of a worldwide transformation, specifically the US, where we start the march toward sustainability.

But before we dive too deeply into what’s shaping up to be, perhaps, the most idealistic thing we’ve ever written, we should probably define sustainability.

The big ‘S’ is not a term we use lightly, in part because it’s technical but mostly due to its gravity. Sustainability implies infinity. Not absolute infinity but rather the infinity of the human race i.e. the duration of our existence. In terms of natural resources like fish and forests, it means using them in such a way that they replenish at no less a rate than they’re consumed. In terms of finite resources like fossil fuels, the term applies much differently. Managing non-renewable resources sustainably means extracting them at no less a rate than we’re consuming them, while also preparing for the day when they’ll run out. We’ve clearly not done this with oil. And when this balance of extract and consume (supply and demand) is thrown off, we get the price shock of 2008. It’s not sustainable, and something has to give.

We can also look at sustainability in purely economic terms. You cannot spend more than you earn. You can use credit, of course, but that’s not sustainable. This truth applies to the individual as well as the nation. The below chart shows the U.S. savings rate and how we crossed the demarcation line in 2005, shifting from sustainable to unsustainable.

It’s the first time this has happened since the Great Depression, with the WWII era registering as a big anomaly due to war bonds and the like. Otherwise, this is not the type of history one likes to repeat. Considering the economic climate, it will either continue to get worse or else things will change.

The impetus for this post is Umair Haque’s assertion that peak oil is a symptom of a much deeper trend: peak consumption.

“We’re not just addicted to cheap oil, as Tom Friedman and Al Gore have eloquently argued. There’s a deeper economic truth at work here. It’s not just cheap oil we’re addicted to: it’s cheap everything. And the world we’re entering isn’t really of Peak Oil as it is one of Peak Consumption.

Let’s re-examine the house of cards that is the global financial system. Emerging markets seek export-led growth: they undervalue their currencies, so their exports are more competitive purely in terms of price. That’s essentially a subsidy to consumers on the other side of the table – those in the developed world. As emerging markets accumulate surpluses, they recycle them: they lend them back to the US and UK in the form of government and mortgage debt, stabilizing their economies, and amplifying the existing consumption subsidy through leverage.”

In 2006 or thereabouts, the music stopped. The game of musical chairs the financial industry had been playing came to an abrupt end. Unfortunately, all of the players were still in the game, and there wasn’t a chair to be found. Indeed, this is playing out quite literally in the housing market. A recent story in the Financial Times is sobering to say the least. We’re in for a rough ride. But there could be a silver lining.

As we reported in Gas Price Cloud, the best thing to come from high gas prices would be its impact on demand and thus downward pressure on price. Lo and behold, Americans drove 10 billion fewer miles in May, and gas prices have fallen almost 20 cents since its high on July 16th. Meanwhile, Congress is pushing for higher efficiency standards, and consumers are starting to demand more efficient and economical cars. These are steps toward sustainability.

If our addiction to cheap oil is but one aspect of our addiction to consumption. And if the global economic crisis will have the same impact on consumption (less spending on better products) that oil has had on transportation (less driving with better cars), then this could be the makings of something quite remarkable.

In Haque’s article and another written by Green to Gold co-author Andrew Winston, each author challenges the conventional wisdom of American capitalism by claiming we’ll be better off by consuming less. And these are pro-capitalist individuals. Haque says,

“At the heart of next-generation advantage is, paradoxically, being able to break yesterday’s maladaptive consumption addiction – not fuel it. It is firms who can shift past nihilistic, meaningless industrial-era corporate purpose – beyond acting as mere pushers of an addiction – who will power the next global financial system.”

And Winston says,

“Green marketing expert Jacquie Ottman recently gave an eye-opening talk about green marketing today (at Sustainable Brands ‘08). [She] suggested that companies could start encouraging sustainable consumption. Perhaps, she said, companies could pitch buying less of something.

The big ad campaigns, combined with real world environmental pressures, will prompt many consumers to ask for something very different from the companies they buy from. Innovative companies will answer the call and happily eat their competitors’ lunch.”

This may not even be a choice on the part of companies. With help from good policy, we might actually witness a spontaneous shift toward sustainable consumption as a result of market forces, both from the bottom up and the top down. It could come about as a matter of necessity, just as we’re seeing with oil and cars. The costs of wasteful, toxic, and/or disposable products that are manufactured half a world away will become too great. We’ll become much more discerning about the products we buy because we’ll have less to spend and because the true costs will be factored into the price. Stuff will cost more up front.

This move toward sustainability does not have to come at the expense of our standard of living. In fact, it’s precisely due to our out-of-control consumption that our standard of living has been so threatened of late. Our economy doesn’t have to suffer from the shift to sustainability. It can actually thrive. Will we have less crap? Yes. But we’ll have more value, and our quality of life will markedly improve as a result.

As the saying goes, a rising tide raises all ships. Sustainability works in much the same way.

Update: Proper credit for the graphic goes to Writing Shop, which was well ahead of its time in 2005.

A climate change conference is compromised by absurdity and outright fraud, thus undermining the legitimate case for action.

Dr. Gurminder Singh is an active and you might say ever present member of the Los Angeles green community. Among other roles and ventures, he is co-chairman of the Green Technology Institute. Today, Dr. Singh sits on a stage in a West Hollywood theater. He is a featured guest for the SOS Climate Change International Conference, which is being promoted and organized by EcoFoodprint.org. In addition to Dr. Singh, the panel includes Dr. Jim Stewart of the Sierra Club and Professor Ryan Galt of UC Davis, and they are laying out the case for climate change action.

Dr. Singh starts by claiming we’ve already crossed the tipping point, which is a pretty controversial position. On a screen above the stage, the event’s special honored guest is attending via live webcast and cell phone. She disagrees with Dr. Singh. In fact, according to Supreme Master Ching Hai, we are exactly three years and four months (or was it four years and three months?) away from the climate change tipping point. How does she know this? Because she meditated on it.

For most reasonable adults, that’s the cue to find the nearest exit. But we stay and listen to Doctors Stewart and Galt make their respective cases. Both emphasize the contribution livestock makes in terms of greenhouse gases, especially methane and nitrous oxide. In the aggregate, livestock has a greater impact on global warming than the entire transportation sector i.e. planes, trains, and automobiles. Which means that simply eating less meat can potentially reduce your carbon footprint more than driving a Prius. Professor Galt presents plenty of excellent data about the energy and fossil fuel inputs that go into growing feed grains, raising livestock, and delivering meat to the dinner table. The panel then opens to questions from the audience.

Do they ask the scientist about his data? No. Do they ask the policy expert about policy? No. Each question is directed to the so-called Supreme Master, who is more than happy to pull answers out of her ass and feed them to her “followers” like so much genetically modified feed to cattle.

You can see where we’re going with this. Who the hell is Ching Hai, and what qualifies her as a Supreme Master? Is she the Reverend Moon of green? Is she building a LEED-certified Jonestown? Should we steer clear of the Kool-Aid? That’s certainly the way it seems, and it does nothing but undermine legitimate efforts to combat climate change. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that her reach amounts to much. She was preaching to the choir in this theater of a couple hundred, and her website gets about 12K unique visitors on its best month according to Compete.com. Hai’s lemming followers will defend her humanitarian efforts, which are legitimate. However, it does not excuse, nor do we have a tolerance for, blind following and cult-like behavior, regardless of it’s otherwise noble aspects or whether it’s a couple thousand people or a cool billion. Especially when it attempts to co-opt science for its own twisted agenda.

That said, we can still have a reasonable debate about the impact of the agriculture industry as a whole on global climate change, human health, and our economy.

One of the problems with this event in general is that the “vegan elite” have adopted global warming as just another way to push their “meat is murder” agenda. We have no problem with vegans and vegetarians. These are virtuous ways to live. But we do have a problem with zealotry and dogma. We touched on this a bit with Green & Clean Mom about environmentalism as a religion. It’s a dead end. The “vegan elite” wants to push its agenda based on moral grounds, but that doesn’t hold water. Because not only would they make the consumption of meat illegal, they’d also ban any type of medical testing. Which leaves two choices: test on humans or don’t test at all and eliminate any prospect for cures to cancer, AIDS, malaria, etc. Sorry, but these diseases will not be cured by a vegan diet alone. (Though we do acknowledge these diets to be very healthy ways to live.) Since livestock just happens to be a source of greenhouse gases and since global warming has spurred a global consensus, the “vegan elite” find it convenient to hijack climate change for their own ends. We’re not buying it.

So let’s not confuse the issues. If a vegan wants to argue that eating meat is immoral, go for it. But if they want to argue that eating meat is bad for our health and the planet, it’s another set of issues with a different set of implications. The former necessarily leads to a vegan lifestyle. The latter leads to more sustainable farming practices and more balanced diets, much of which can be accomplished through awareness and good policy.

The MC of the event, local television news journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell, questions why Vice President Al Gore doesn’t advocate for vegetarianism or veganism in his efforts. We can only speculate, but since Gore is a politician at heart he knows how that would go over. It would undermine his credibility and his message. He’s practical and realistic. Plus, his diet probably includes reasonable amounts of meat. After all, Gore doesn’t support a ban on driving or flying. He supports driving less in more efficient cars where the full price of pollution is priced into every gallon or megawatt and where we have clean alternatives available. Which brings us to Mr. Howard Lyman.

Lyman is the keynote speaker for the event, and he makes an impressive speech. He’s a cattle-rancher-turned-vegan, and his story is quite inspiring. Lyman is a walking library of information about farming and agribusiness. His central claim is that “chemically based agricultural production methods today are unsustainable, and therefore ecologically disastrous.” Which is true across the agricultural board. One of his more sobering claims is that euthanized dogs and cats are ground up to feed beef cattle. And that’s only the most troubling claim. However, this still does not imply nor prove that livestock cannot be raised sustainably and ethically. As with energy, it’s not all or nothing. But many things have to change.

The first question for Lyman was concerning a carbon tax on beef. His response was that not only should there be a tax, but we should end excessive farm subsidies. Just as the taxpayer picks up a percentage of every gallon that Exxon sells, we also foot part of the bill for every Big Mac. As with energy, this has a direct impact on the environment, our health, and our economy because the true costs of raising and consuming beef–especially fast-food beef–are not factored into the price. A 99-cent burger should cost five to 10 times as much. Some of that would take the form of a carbon tax (or its methane equivalent), which is politically difficult, but just as much would come from ending corporate welfare, which shouldn’t be difficult at all. When meat becomes more expensive, people will have no choice but to look to cheaper (and healthier) alternatives. We’ve already seen this happen as a result of high gas prices.

We essentially find ourselves squarely in the middle of this debate, ready to call bullshit when either side steps over the line. On one side you have agribusiness that wants to deny that their practices do harm. In fact, they want the government to pick up a large part of the bill. On the other, you have the vegan elite that would make meat consumption illegal across the board. The latter is prone to following false prophets in its quest for meaning, while the former seeks false profits in its quest to gain wealth at everyone else’s expense. Neither is right.

Our position was largely articulated in Food Crisis: The American Story. In particular, we tend to align with Mark Bittman, who makes an excellent case for reducing our personal meat consumption and doing so in a more healthy and sustainable way. He’s not specific in terms of policy but he doesn’t have to be. Eat less meat. Choose your food sources more wisely. For the individual it’s that simple. For government and business, it’s more complex and challenging. When all parts are working together and when we rely on science to guide us, that’s when real change can happen.

Santa Monica Community College offers six courses in “Environmental Living”

It’s tough to remember the last time a piece of junk mail not only didn’t frustrate us but was actually a pleasure to receive. Just minutes ago, we arrived back to the office and went through the ritual weeding of junk from non-junk. (This despite already signing up for two sites that promised to end our junk mail. But we also know of a stealth startup that will solve this social and environmental burden once and for all.) It’s to the point where you can sense, without even looking, what is and is not junk mail. You get into the habit of sorting mail by the recycler to make it easier. Anyway, this time it was different.

Shining through the coupons and credit card offers was this:

We probably got this because our office is basically adjacent to the Santa Monica Community College (SMC) campus…home of KCRW (best radio station ever). In particular, this is for SMC’s Continuing Community Education program, which includes six courses in Environmental Living, categorized by Building, Landscape, and Solar Energy. These range from four-day programs to a nine-month course (weekends) with a price range of $49 to $1,950. We’re guessing that financial aid is available on a need basis.

It’s exciting to see these types of courses being offered in this way. This type of educational infrastructure is vital to building the green economy and training people for green collar jobs. Despite being on the West Side of LA, we’re sure Van Jones will approve. We’ve taken the liberty of posting the courses below.

Is this part of a larger trend? Are other community colleges offering courses like this, or is this another case of the Santa Monica/California green bubble existence? Let us know what else is out there and if you’ve been pleasantly surprised by junk mail in the same way.

Sustainable Building Advisor Certificate Program

This nine-month weekend program—held one Friday and Saturday each month—provides specialized training for architects, engineers, developers, building owners, contractors, and other building professionals interested in learning about strategies and tools for implementing sustainable building. The program covers how to: Identify and articulate the key practices of sustainable building; Apply LEED™, GreenPoint Rated and other established green rating systems; Analyze the costs and benefits of incorporating sustainable building measures; Work with architects, designers, builders, building operators, and utilities to improve a building’s performance; Take advantage of financial incentives and technical assistance offered by governments, utilities, and nonprofit organizations; Establish sustainable design goals for project development; and Assist in educating and training your facility’s or firm’s staff in sustainable building. $80 textbook fee payable to Verde Concepts and $27 textbook fee payable to NaSBAP at first class.

Introduction to Permaculture

Come find out about permaculture, a holistic approach to integrating human shelter, plants, animals, soils, and water to create a more sustainable community. This powerful course covers everything from natural building materials and techniques to creating edible, water-saving gardens, and takes a look at useful, sensible strategies used by communities to lessen their carbon footprint.

Trouble-Free Drip Irrigation for Landscape Professionals

Prerequisite: Must be a practicing landscape professional. As water supplies get tighter and urban runoff becomes a bigger issue in Southern California, the advantages of drip irrigation systems become more important to landscape professionals. This workshop, presented by the Landscape Water Efficiency staff of the City of Santa Monica, will show you how to design and build trouble-free drip systems for all types of landscapes. Installation specifications and samples of recommended materials are included. Please note: Class fee will be waived if you are currently listed as a Sustainable Landscape Professional by the City of Santa Monica Environmental Programs Division.

Solar Power Systems for Career Seekers

Explore the basics of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Learn what you need to know about PV panels, how they interface with electrical systems, and how they power residential and commercial facilities. Find out about basic capacity and electrical requirements for system installations, PV system components, panel mounting hardware, standard codes, and safe installation procedures. Also, gain an understanding of the market, regulatory requirements, and infrastructure factors shaping today’s PV industry.

Solar Power Systems for Contractors & Workers

If you’re a contractor or worker in the building trades industry—or if you’ve recently been hired by a solar photovoltaic (PV) company as an installer—come learn about the components that are unique to solar PV systems and how they are integrated into residential and commercial projects. Find out what you need to know about panel mounting techniques and hardware, standard codes, and safe installation procedures. Also, gain an understanding of the market, regulatory requirements, and infrastructure factors shaping today’s PV industry.