The Psychological Barriers to Green with Simran Sethi – show 38

How do you get people to care about green? Hint: It’s not talking about the polar bear, rising sea levels or carbon emissions. According to Simran Sethi, it’s about meeting people where they are and reframing these issues within the context of issues they care about. So instead of “organics” being an environmental issue, reframe it as a public health issue so that “everyone can understand it,” she says.

Simran is right in the middle of co-authoring a book about the psychological barriers to environmental engagement and I was fortunate enough to pull her away from her computer to talk to me about this important subject. Weighing in on this topic in her book are public figures such as Robert Redford and Newt Gingrich, along with a number of behavioral psychologists have helped her uncover why widespread information has not resulted in widespread engagement. If you think this topic is juicy, just wait until you hear Simran speak about it.

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Honoring the Spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Through Action by Annie Leonard

I am asking you to get involved. I am inviting you, urging you, welcoming you to join the movement for a better future. There are an infinite number of forms your involvement can take and lots of groups to connect with for guidance and company along the way. The important thing is not which issue we choose to work on but that we each decide to do something. To get involved.

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Why Women Business Owners and Sustainable Businesses Are a Powerful Combination

Both women-owned businesses and sustainable businesses are fairly new trends in business. Neither had an impact until perhaps the past 20 years, and weren’t even a consideration during the Industrial Revolution when many of our business practices were established. Now, however, they are both positioned to significantly change the way we do business in the 21st century.

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The Key to the Slow Food Movement

Fast food may be a defining characteristic of our contemporary culture, but competition is brewing. The Slow Food Movement is hoping to change the trend towards the globalization of agricultural products with an emphasis on traditional and regional cuisine as well as the empowerment of small, independent farmers.

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Reimagining Business: New Possibilities for a Green Era

Some of our most central business ideas were developed under vastly different circumstances than the ones in which we now find ourselves.

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Cultivating Women’s Leadership with Bioneers co-founder, Nina Simons – show 37

Nina Simons is one of those rare teachers who encourages and emboldens at the same time that she inspires curiosity about the topics of service, gender, and leading from the heart. She speaks here about the importance of collaboration between women (and between men and women) as we all strive to reinvent a model of leadership that can help steward the current changes taking place on our planet. “Liberate your own capacity,” she suggests “and get out of your own way!”

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Emulating Nature (Because All Life Depends On It)

Janine Benyus is the president of the Biomimicry Institute. She also teaches interpretive writing, lectures at the University of Montana, and works towards restoring and protecting wild lands. In all of her work her basic thesis is that human beings should consciously emulate nature’s genius in their designs. Below she introduces the concept of Biomimicry for a general readership in the hopes that each reader will develop the principles of Biomimicry in their own life.

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Meet the Queen of Clean Tech, Rhonda Dibachi – show 36

Rhonda Dibachi is a women to watch. Her company, The Noribachi Group, has funded and is building several Clean Tech businesses from LED/solar lighting to custom solar material manufacturing to light-powered consumer electronics to home energy storage systems. She believes that clean tech offers the same promise of transformation to the masses as the internet did in the ’90’s. Instead of info, it’s energy. Why? According to Rhonda, “Everyone has more power, more control over their power destiny.” And that is going to change the energy game very soon. “The way we live is going to be very, very different in the next 5, 10, 15 years,” she pronounced. She’s right. After listening to Rhonda, I am doubly excited about it all.

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Creating a Sisterhood of Change Makers – Show 35

She’s an avid social entrepreneur. She has helped train and mentor thousands of girls worldwide. She has started an organization that is the only global organization that is run by girls, for girls. She has advised political leaders and corporate executives, co-authored a book and has been featured in many more. She has received national awards for her achievements from the Coca-Cola Company, Nestles Corporation, Taco Bell Foundation, Glamour Magazine, the U.S. Secretary of Education, and the President of United States.

And she’s only 19 years old.

Sejal Hathi is a change maker, and she believes that “as girls work together, they can solve some of the world’s intractable problems”. She calls it “the potential of the sisterhood of change makers”. Need some juice to get your social venture off the ground? Listen to this podcast and hear how Sejal, and her two friends at the ages of 15-16 years old, started an organization with no special resources, connections or capital and turned it into the only global organization that is run by girls, for girls. May 2011 be the year for you to make the impact you were born to make.

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Cooking is a Sustainable Act: An Interview with Chef Kim O’Donnel

To me, ‘green’ means being aware and more mindful — of our health, the food we eat and how everything we do is not in a vacuum but deeply interconnected, that the way we live our individual lives directly impacts animals, plants, the planet and our relationships with family, community and the world at large. One mindful action a day is indeed being green.

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