Petey's
Pipeline E-zine
Issue #54
June 18, 2007
Contents
Business
First New
Paradigms for New Entrepreneurs
Random Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings
Resource Conservation
Write Thinking Emphasizing
Text Elements
Business
First (Editorial)
New
Paradigms for New Entrepreneurs
by Phil Hanson
When
Bob Black published his essay, The
Abolition of Work, in 1985, he obviously had a vision
of the future embedded in his brain. Just how prescient was
he? As it turns out, very.
As
it turns out, work for the sake of work—work for the sake
of income—is destroying the planet. Unbridled capitalism
is not a cure for poverty, nor is it sustainable (as capitalism
is currently practiced) over more than just a few decades. Unfortunately,
most of those decades are already used up, and we're about to
experience what happens when unsustainable practices collide
head-on with wishful thinking.
What
we, as individuals, as a society, as part of the global community,
desperately need is to find sustainable ways to provide for
our immediate needs without sacrificing the greater good of
a healthy environment. We need to build an economic system that
minimizes the amount of work that must be done, a system that
makes production more intelligent and consumption more conscientious.
It's
highly probable that in building such a system we'll need to
reassess everything we currently believe are the only ways to
structure tenable societies and vibrant economies. Just because
we've always done things a certain way doesn't mean that we
must continue doing them that way. There's always room for improvement.
It's what we call progress.
As
a new breed of entrepreneur takes the initiative and leads the
way on sustainability issues, businesses and industries will
change, politics will change, and society will change in response
to new paradigms effected to bring about a new Renaissance.
Our
failure to make these needed changes will have dire consequences
for all of humanity and for most species on Earth. Our failure
to embrace the need for these changes will keep us locked into
the status quo, which is a system without a future.
There
are two paths open to us, and those paths are diametrically
opposed. One leads to enlightenment and a more civil civilization,
the other to a brutish existence reminiscent of the Dark Ages.
Which shall we choose?
For
sure, the status quo—business as usual—is no longer
an option, because business as usual lacks the vision it needs
to survive. For those who are contemplating going into business
for themselves, be advised that business as usual is risky business.
Copyright
© 2007 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.
• • •
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Let's not defeat that purpose by being hasty or becoming careless.
Random
Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings
Resource
Conservation
by Phil Hanson
The
primary key to environmental protection is resource conservation.
As you might expect, our most important resource (other than
the environment) is energy, a crucial ingredient for all socioeconomic
activities. We depend on energy to heat and cool our homes,
grow our food, power our factories, propel our transportation
systems, energize our communications systems, and the list goes
on and on. Resource conservation begins with energy conservation,
a goal attainable only through demand reduction.
On
the face of it, reducing energy demand seems easy; make energy
consuming devices and systems more energy efficient and you
accomplish your goal. Or do you?
Let's
take a hypothetical community consisting of 100 homes and the
requisite number of businesses needed to support the members
of the community. At some point community members decide that
it's to their mutual advantage to cut the energy requirements
of each home in the community by 50%. When the community achieves
its goal of 50% reduction of home energy consumption, a local
energy-intensive manufacturer (and the community's largest employer)
promises to expand its facility. By avoiding the need to build
a new coal-fired power generation plant to replace the small
hydroelectric plant that has served the community so well for
so long, both the community and the plant reap the benefits
of continued low energy prices, increased production, more sales,
a few more jobs, and more tax money flowing into community coffers.
So far, it seems like a great idea.
Eventually,
every home meets the goal for energy efficiency. The manufacturer
expands his plant and for a short time, things run smoothly
and everyone is happy. Then, something unexpected happens. Because
of the plant's expanded production capacity, the company lands
a lucrative contract to supply widgets for an out-of-state jobber.
The only hitch is that the company will have to add a second
shift to keep up with the increase in orders.
Lured
by the promise of new jobs, workers from all over the state
and from out-of-state filter into the community. Of course,
these newly employed workers need homes of their own and, soon,
the upturn in demand for new houses overwhelms the ability of
local builders and contractors to keep up. They, too, find it
necessary to hire help from outside the community.
Sensing
opportunity, several developers and numerous entrepreneurs engaged
in a variety of business pursuits gravitate to the area to take
advantage of the economic boom that's sweeping the community.
New businesses spring up, and each of these require space, building
materials, and access to public utilities. As the formerly placid
little community grows at a near-exponential rate, so do the
problems associated with progress. Every advancement that delivers
a benefit also delivers a plethora of unintended consequences.
Soon,
the thriving community must do what it wanted to avoid doing—build
that coal-fired power plant. But, due to explosive population
growth, there's also a laundry list of other public works projects
either in the planning stages or already in progress. To cope
with increased traffic, streets and highways need to be widened
and traffic lights installed. Because the larger population
draws down the municipal well's water table faster than it can
be replenished, construction of a new water purification plant
out along the river is scheduled to begin in a couple of weeks.
The
new school will be ready in time for the start of school, the
new jail ready before winter sets in, and the new hospital wing
will be finished by spring. Along with population numbers, utility
costs—energy, water, sewer, waste disposal, and phone—are
up, as are the costs of education, health care, and crime prevention.
Then there's the noise pollution, air pollution, water pollution,
and ground pollution that always seems to accompany a growing
population.
Our
example might seem a little extreme but it's typical of what
happens when a local population outstrips the ability of local
resources to provide. The more resources that must be imported
into the community, the worse the problems become. The more
resources a society consumes, the more it's susceptible to the
ills mentioned in the preceding paragraphs.
Yes,
you can cut resource demands by maximizing efficiency, but in
the long run unchecked population growth defeats any and all
conservation measures. The only sure way to conserve resources
is to limit the number of people who compete for them.
But
doesn't that raise the specter of population control? Of course
it does. Many people oppose population control, and few people
understand the need for it. The public perceives population
control as something sinister, unsavory, and callous. Sure,
population control has its negative sides. As does the lack
of it.
Copyright
© 2007 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.
Write
Thinking
Emphasizing
Text Elements
When
writing for Web-based media, as in writing for traditional print-based
media, it's sometimes necessary to draw the reader's attention
to a particular word, group of words, sentence, or paragraph that
the writer wants to emphasize for purposes of enhancement or clarification.
There are several ways to accomplish this, but the method you
use depends largely on the tools at your disposal and the overall
effect you're trying to create.
For
instance, many e-mail programs don't support HTML, leaving you
"up the creek" when it comes to using Italics
or Bolded text for emphasis; these simply aren't options.
What you CAN do under these circumstances is use quotation marks
or all caps to emphasize words or phrases. A rule of thumb is
to use quotation marks in place of Italics and capital
letters in place of Bolding. The rule, however, is not
all-inclusive; context is EVERYTHING.
If
you've chosen caps to emphasize your point, use them sparingly.
Don't overdo it. It's almost always better to pick out a few (the
fewer the better) strong words for the capitalization treatment.
Avoid putting long sentences or entire paragraphs in all caps.
When everything is emphasized, nothing is emphasized, and nothing
stands out from the rest. Besides, long blocks of all-caps text
is harder to read than the same material written with the proper
mix of upper-and-lower-case letters.
Also,
be sure that the words you choose for emphasis are spelled correctly,
especially those words that are rendered in capital letters. Nothing
reveals your incompetence as quickly as shouting it to your readers.
Copyright
© 2007 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.
Disclaimer
The
articles appearing in Petey's Pipeline E-zine are based on information
believed to be true at the time of publication.
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