A Practical And Accessible Strategy On Global Warming with David Gershon

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Protecting our environment is no longer just the job of environmentalists. With the reality of global climate change upon us, we're all waking up to the fact that saving the planet is everybody's business. But how can we make a difference fast enough to avert a global crisis? Climate scientists tell us that we have less than ten years to dramatically cut our carbon emissions before we reach a point of no return. Yet most of the large-scale solutions on the table will take far longer than that to implement. Fortunately, necessity is the mother of invention, and among the climate change pioneers there are those who feel that, if we step out of the box of the traditional social change model, we'll discover that we already have everything we need to make a huge dent in our carbon footprint-almost overnight. This "new social change formula" serves as the focus of this dialogue with David Gershon, who says, "What we've been looking at is a strategy I call 'Cool America.' The core of that program is a cool community campaign which is scaling up eco-teams within a community . . . This is a bold idea, and says if 50 to 90% of the carbon footprint of a community is the residential sector, and we've been able to demonstrate that 25%, on average reduction per household participates, we can scale up these eco-teams and can get this 20% reduction by 2010." (hosted by Craig Hamilton)

Bio

David Gershon is the founder and CEO of Empowerment Institute and co-founder of Empowerment Training Programs. He is one of the world's leading authorities on behavior change and large-scale transformation, and over the past three decades, has applied his expertise to a broad range of societal and environmental issues. At the height of the Cold War, he conceived and organized one of the planet's first major global initiatives, the "First Earth Run," during which a torch of peace was passed around the world.

David is the author of nine books including:

• Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life as You Want It (Empowerment Institute 1989)
• Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds--Be Part of the Global Warming Solution! (Empowerment Institute 2006)
• Journey for the Planet: A Kid's Five Week Adventure to Create an Earth-friendly Life (Empowerment Institute 2007)
• Social Change 2.0: A Blueprint for Reinventing Our World (High Point 2009)

To learn more about the work of David Gershon go to empowermentinstitute.net.

Topics Explored in This Dialogue

• Why changing our individual lifestyles is the fastest way to reduce global warming
• How we can engage our communities in stopping climate change
• The keys to creating a tipping point
• What you can do to make a difference for the planet
• How corporations can participate in saving the environment