Eric Schaffer - Engineering Sustainable Lifestyles

What is a persuasion engineer?

My hope is that is is not a 'green capitalist' PR marketing agent.

[Snort]

As an activist around here for reindustrializing rather than gentrifying my community in the wake of paper industry exits this past year I have become suspicious of much of what Christian Lander calls "Stuff White People Like."

And there was no solidarity whatsoever for Van Jones when he was attacked by the right and left the administration. I have not seen a good opinion piece by or about him since then. Where were the persuasion engineers then?

Finally on engineering itself. We live on a river. I see the use of the river for hydro power as a clean alternative. An engineering firm sponsored one of the green spokespeople here last year. But no movement has been made in that direction with regard to zoning or river usage for other than scenery and trails.

Thanks, there were interesting insights. Almost everything in a society is kind of planned or engineered, though without common goal. It should be possible to plann differently. Though it is difficult for me to see that people would make enough enlightened consumer choices. Anyway these are steps to the right direction. It is not only greenwashing BS.

There is some precedent for what I'm talking about. The Financial Times of London recently referenced our town for being the first with hydroelectric power-- anywhere -- in 1892.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2dcf907a-a75c-11de-9467-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

We have the landmarks etc for the tourists but we don't have the will to change. A hydro project with current technology should be a feather in the cap.

As a part of my activities I've also learned that Appleton WI and the Fox Valley have the worst sprawl problem for a peer size community in the state.

This leads into a lot of other discussion.

Did you ever find out what a Persuasion Engineer is?

I think the problem with your dam may be that it takes at least a year or 2 to do environmental impact assessments for these sorts of activities. The impact on the aquaculture of the river as well as erosive patterns of the river have to be looked at fully before a dam can be built. They do not just throw them up overnight.

The speaker of this presentation is not doing something in and of itself bad or deceitful. Though, anyone who's seen the carbon connection posted a few days ago here will know he's oversimplifying carbon offsets. His main deficiency is his inability to present his examples in a less hypothetical and clear manner. Also he approaches this from a marketing perspective, but there is clear evidence that he needs to expand his logistical knowledge of organization and speak more of the logistical changes than the veneer of marketing. Actually I think that the marketing aspect makes this presentation seem like it pitches unlikely concepts, by contrasting the marketing of the current consumer lifestyle to the post-consumer lifestyle. Concentrating on more varied aspects of these models he presents in more detail (something his presentation lacks like crazy) would vastly improve the portability of the material he is presenting.

Also, yes the dude is a green capitalist PR douche and his voice sounds like something off one of the satirical radio stations off of GTA4, but I can't quite place it. This information is not very useful to activists.

scavengertype,


You might enjoy this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7RU6_WCF94