A Live Green, Live Smart™ Paper 
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Environmental concern has inspired trends research into how climate change will affect the way we live and do business. Researchers agree that some emerging issues and practices will alter the way we think about and respond to global climate change and shortages. From these dozens of new directions, the environmental educational organization Live Green, Live SmartTM has selected fourteen trends that will have impacts beyond just economic considerations.
These trends include the mundane, terrifying, and visionary:
- Double Flush Toilets: One flush for fluids and a double flush button for solids will reduce water used for waste disposal - if mandated for all new construction we should save an aquifer or two.
- Eco-Dating: Green becomes sexy: Dinner at a whole foods diner, an environmental documentary, bring your own cup for shade-grown java - and agree to meet next time for a jog (in organic cotton sweats) to a tree-planting.
- Wind Electric Generating Turbines on College Campuses: Alums are opting to donate so colleges can produce their own power - look out NCAA.
- Offsetting Greenhouse Gas with a Donation for a Net Zero Lifestyle: Politicians are buying carbon credits to pay for their energy consumption, and so are ordinary people. The idea is to donate money to organizations that invest your money in eco-friendly projects to reduce greenhouse gases so you don't need to park your SUV.
- Green Themes at the Movies and on TV: Turns out the planet makes for great drama, is topical and current, plays well to reality TV - and can win an Oscar for the director-in-a-supporting role.
- Lighting from Fluorescents, LED and Solar Technologies: The incandescent bulb will be replaced by these fuel-efficient alternatives: 3 bulbs per household across America would save the air from millions of cars worth of carbon, and answer the question: how much peer pressure does it take to save a planet?
- Political Eco-Activism: There's nothing like a presidential campaign to drive under-thirty voters (and politicians) to embrace a good cause.
- Geek Celebrities Emerge from Congressional Testimony and Talk Shows. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists reporting to everyone from the Senate to Leno are making the rounds - and the Internet gives them real range to go with their street cred. Individual media heroes will emerge as green becomes cool and the planet heats up.
- Green Stores: Micro market retailers are helping consumers find everything from environmentally friendlier paints to those double-flush toilets. These entrepreneurs focus on the large market niches left by the eco-naive and under-resourced customer service staff at big box companies that cannot easily make a conversion to greener practices.
- Green Construction: LEED certification for environmental and energy sustainable buildings and homes is the new buzz with city planners and, soon, homeowners. It turns out that Green buildings sell fast and for more - key for sellers in a depressed real estate market.
- Nuclear Energy Production: It is back on the table for discussion, and not the political hot potato of the past.
- Fuels from the Garden and the Wall Socket: Ethanol, bio-diesel, and electric cars - fuel is changing. Soon more fuel will be grown on the family farm, made from waste by-products - and delivered by the local power company through an electrical outlet. Hybrids will still be around, but less advertising and technology will be directed toward them.
- Dust Bowl Time for the Southwest: A new study lead by Mingfang Ting and Richard Seager of Columbia University and studies by the IPCC predict the American Southwest faces a drought-ravaged climate as soon as 2020. If these studies are heeded, it will change housing, lifestyle and ranching practices
- Organized Religion Gets Involved in the Green Movement: Looming environmental catastrophe brings religions together to preach, pray and inform the faithful of the need for changes in attitude and action - respect for the sanctity of human life and the organization that sustains it will demand social change, donations to the less fortunate and a drive to respond to the needs of those under stress from a warmer, thirstier, hungrier planet.
More about these important trends:
Double Flush Toilets: Coming to a restroom near you is a toilet that uses a lot less water. More overt than conventional toilets, this design has at the bottom of the bowl a flush hole the size of the sewer pipe it connects to and gives you the option of how much water you think it will take to flush away whatever is in it. Fluids take a single flush with one button or lever and solids take the two flush button. Amazingly less water is used, and plugged toilets almost a thing of the past. This technology is easily adapted to conventional plumbing, so is likely to mainstream faster than the waterless toilets and urinals that seem confined to the mountain top ski resorts and eco-havens: the public still likes to see water.
Eco-Dating: Driven primarily by college students and college graduates and spreading to the affluent teen-aged children of the baby boomers who are themselves rediscovering issues related to environmental integrity. The trend is to take your date to a documentary film like Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth or a talk or a seminar on Climate Change or zero population growth.
Eco-conscious daters can be identified by their organic cotton or recycled clothes. Their meeting places are coffee shops serving shade grown fair trade coffees, and they bring their own mugs for refills. They are getting to those shops and coffee bars on foot, bikes, and public transit; their personal vehicles are hybrids, or bumper-stickered subcompacts. Some do the group-dating thing and help clean a section of roadway as part of the Adopt-A-Highway or Adopt-A-Road programs. Eco-dating is often focused on low impact recreation that involves outdoor sports such as rock climbing, kayaking, cross country skiing, biking and running. These eco-daters also buy Carbon Offsets as gifts for one another to offset their carbon footprint. A $55 donation to the Carbon Fund can be used to offset up to 10 tons of CO2 emissions for that special friend's birthday or the summer road trip.
Windpowered Electric Generating Turbines on College Campuses: The next time you pass a college look toward the highest hill and you may see a three-story wind turbine. AASHE, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, has launched web seminars promoting the concept of colleges and universities raising money by saving on energy costs. Already wind turbines are generating electricity at dozens of schools across the country. A neat idea, since colleges often use as much energy as a small city, and a single turbine can replace up to 50% of that energy consumption. Also important is that alumni are willing to pay for the generators, since the energy is sustainable and increases the value of their donation. Student and faculty feel a lot less guilty about running all those computers, refrigerators, stereo systems, microwaves, computers and lava lamps when a wind turbine is part of the campus energy plan.
Offsetting Greenhouse Gas with a Donation for a Net Zero Lifestyle: Greenhouse gases are nasty CO2 gas from our energy hungry society, methane emissions from abundant landfills and industrial animal agriculture, hydro-fluorocarbons and nitrous oxide from vehicles and factories - the human-induced effects that are worsening global warming and a variety of health problems. The average individual driving 9,900 miles per year will contribute about 5 to 10 tons of CO2 per year from their vehicle, the average home will emit another 5 tons of CO2 per year, production of our food, clothes, electronics and other items used in daily life add another 24 tons of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere - and it's not the neighbors to blame, it's every individual one of us.
To offset their messy carbon footprints, individuals can purchase Carbon Offsets for prices ranging from $40 to hundreds of dollars from companies and non-profit organizations. By donating sufficient funds to third party sponsored projects that mitigate human-induced pollution and climate change, you become a "net zero" emitter of gases. The third party organization selling the credit sponsors projects that offset these gases in a variety of ways: by planting trees, providing green education or mitigating methane from landfills with methane collection wells, for example. You use a calculator that tells you what your CO2 or other gas footprint is, figure out your use, then, according to the organization's offset scales you donate an equal amount of money to that organization - sort of like buying your way out of the draft. Buyers usually get a certificate, a decal and a chance to feel good about doing a right thing.
Green Themes at the Movies and on TV: In the 50's Hollywood relived the war and introduced Disney cartoons; in the 60's it was all about cowboys, game shows and daytime opera; by the 70's it was sitcoms and British spy movies (as in Cold War); the 80's focused back on the war (Vietnam this time), science fiction and Muppets. The trivial 90's were about cars, beaches, boobs, disasters, social sitcoms and home repair. So far, the new century's first decade has been preoccupied with reality shows, game shows, exploration of alternate sexual lifestyles, and infomercials.
Next on the horizon is the "green" TV and movie theme. Soon it will comprise a healthy percentage of our daily diet of TV, webcasts, movie plots and disaster movies, also expect daily news reporting on the subject of the environment with an equal play time to that of sports on the local news. This exposure will drive consensus, create myths and urban legends, and potentially divide nations. It may create divisions among portions of the population much the way smoking in public places has done. If you drive a Hummer or build that energy-sucking house, be prepared to be spray painted by the media. Social pariah-hood for eco-hostile activity is a real possibility in the future.
Lighting from Fluorescents, LED and Solar Technologies: Edison would be proud. The fluorescent light has finally come of age, the color is better, the luminosity stronger, the price lower and the functionality broader. States like California are already talking about forcing a replacement of the incandescent bulb in homes and commercial buildings. Lighting is a big deal for energy consumers. If we replaced one traditional light bulb in every home in the US with a florescent light the carbon savings would be the equivalent of taking about 800,000 cars off the road each year.
Next to fluorescent lights in energy savings are LED lights (those little lights you find on key chains); LEDs are just coming of age. They use very little energy, give off plenty of light when bundled together, can be color adjusted - and last a very, very long time. Some designs make them look like a regular bulb and they can screw into a traditional socket. They still cost a lot, and are not yet easy for the average consumer to get her hands on.
Consumers are taking a great leap forward by bringing more natural light into their homes as well. Why pay for electricity when the sun is free? The use of solar tubes that can sometimes go multiple floors to flood a room with high quality natural light is catching on with consumers and architects. Clusters of fiber optic cables that run from a rooftop mirrored satellite-like dish on a roof can reflect intense light into the interiors of large buildings and down many stories to a basement level.
And the window is making a comeback for multiple energy savings. Triple-paned windows filled with argon and exotic gas allow for further savings and greater comfort by providing more natural light with less thermal loss. Guiltless glass is back especially in light depressed sections of the country.
Political Eco-Activism: After years of low key activity, street marches and banners demanding environmental action are being seen in European countries including Sweden and Germany, where the green political parties have come of age. Unfortunately, the US appears to have been way too busy to notice global warming, population growth and resource decimation. But watch out eco-slackers: the Fourth Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides provacatively grim news about global climate change and its effects on geopolitical stability. The emotionally charged war in Iraq, out of control government spending, and the debate over human-induced climate change global issues are going to get mixed together. The 16-to- 30-year-olds are just not going to sit back and see themselves get screwed out of a decent environment and a chance to someday retire to their own lake cabin. Youth activism will increase, marches, sit-ins, letters to the editor, boycotts of non-eco-friendly producers and spending on environmentally correct products sold by companies serious about saving the planet will become unavoidably obvious to politicians. With something to vote for, young Americans will force policymakers and politicians (and shame their parents) onto this train.
The Kyoto Protocol is ready for a rewrite, but this time input from the US and Australia will figure largely in the next draft. Currently, big polluter signatories agree to lower emissions; those unable or unwilling to do that can buy carbon credits from another country with an excess or surplus carbon capacity because it is not a net polluter -- or, because they are still developing, are not required by the protocol to meet the same standards as some developed countries. The US and Australia have not participated in the treaty's emission controling activity - and when the new version is negotiated, the realities of human development needs will require developed nations to make a greater investment. Expect this stage of change to be emotionally charged.
The environment is going to become a cornerstone in the platform of successfully elected politicians over the next decade, a part of the Democratic and Independent Party dialogue and repositioning policy with the Republicans as they catch on (Ask Arnold about the power of the environment as a voter motivator). Watch the spin with the presidential candidates this year.
IPCC Celebs will Emerge from Congressional Testimonies and Talk Shows: The new celebrities are not just coming from TV or the movies. The new reality show stars will come forward from the cadre of senior scientists comprising the team of intellectuals leading the International Panel for Climate Change. The IPCC membership is made up of 2,500 scientists representing 113 nations. These scientists and policy experts have identified and verified that global warming is a real phenomenon, and partially human-made. After testimony in Congress, this group of individuals is showing up on CSPAN and the nightly news on a regular basis. They'll be found on podcasts and all over the web.
The media will turn to these new celebrities for expert commentary on environmental issues, and for predictions that will be more gripping than the Anna Nicole or American Idol outcomes. We'll get used to seeing the faces of men and women that are giving government officials the bad news. Some of the personalities are unique enough to keep the public's attention and actually scare the dickens out of us.
Green Stores: Although there are only a small number of green retailers at this time, the greening of the retail space is in process both on-line and in the material world. Many cities, with climates as varied as Minneapolis and Phoenix, boast stores that provide homeowners with green products ranging from toilets to countertops, paints and carpeting to photovoltaics and eco-friendly landscaping materials. Green clothiers are cropping up, selling organic materials, natural fibers, and clothing made in shops that pay a fair working wage. WalMart, the world's largest retailer has an environmental program it refers to as 360, and it is looking into all aspects of its environmental policy - including making the world's largest fleet of retail haulers more fuel and emission efficient. On-line retailers are starting to label products as green; companies like Patagonia are working with their suppliers, staff and customers to promote green products and an awareness that the price you pay often comes with hidden costs. Green Stores are taking up the slack that many of the big box stores have not considered important or have not yet figured out how to logistically manage. This year's presidential race will put the environment central as an issue, creating debate that will stimulate green product consumption.
Green Construction: Fifteen nations and more than half of the US states have green building guidelines available for green certification. The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) is over 20,000 members strong -- this organization has developed and is heavily promoting Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for green building guidelines. Corporations, communities and individuals have embraced LEED guidelines for sustainable building at levels not seen since the early days of energy conservation codes during the last oil shortage.
Green commercial buildings are popping up all over the country, green homes are selling faster than their counterparts, and new buildings that going up on campuses across the country are getting greener and touting it. The St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota is building a green science building; Concordia Language Camps has built a LEED-certified lodge; WalMart is putting up green LEED certified stores; condos and homes in California are focused on sustainability and solar energy - even Manhattan boasts a Pelli-designed LEED condo development. Green is in and making a social statement. Expect to see this concept go mainstream, as new building codes demand eco-friendly construction.
Nuclear Energy Production: No longer a dirty word, nuclear power is again on speaking terms with legislatures, consumers and power companies. Newer technology, better security measures, rapidly dwindling natural carbon resources and a greater fear of human extinction from non-nuclear hazards is making it acceptable for politicians to look again at nuclear power as a potential solution for a growing world population. Expect the debate - and protests - to heat up.
Fuels from the Garden and the Wall Socket: Ethanol and bio-diesels from corn, sugar beets, sugar cane and the waste stream of our mass grown farm foods will be the foundation of many of tomorrow's fuel streams. Co-ops throughout the world are gearing up to create new fuel sources. Debate rages on the ethics of taking food crop production land and turning it into fuel cropland, as well as the what is the real net return on energy value. It can take almost as much energy to grow some crops as the energy in fuel they produce after processing. But the fuel burns clean, is abundant as long as the soil and water holds out, and can be homegrown.
Other fuels from the waste by-products of oil used in cooking and recycled from motor oil are under development. Creative minds and new motor engineering will take advantage of these new fuels.
Hybrid cars are still growing in market share, but their higher cost and moderate improvement in mileage may stall them at a relatively small percentage of the cars on the road. The all-electric car may be the solution, not a long distance vehicle at this time but still a reasonable commuter vehicle. Plug it in at home or at the workplace and a recharge will last the day. Transportation will change, if not because of taxes on the gas and carbon hogs, then through credits for the skimmed down versions of the future.
Dust Bowl Time for the Southwest: Yet another damning study about the Southwest becoming a bigger desert than it already is. Efforts to make the desert green with lawns and irrigated agriculture will collapse as the Colorado River dries up, glaciers melt, and a Dust Bowl era results from altered weather patterns. In a Columbia University study lead by Mingfang Ting and Richard Seager and other studies by the IPCC, the Southwest is predicted to be headed toward a persistent drought as early as 2020. The studies focus on drying out worsening with each decade as rainfall itself shifts - America's weather ground zero is the Southwest.
Organized Religion Gets Involved in the Green Movement: Religion's influence on politics will be to demand a more respectful treatment of the Creator's gift to humanity. Organized religions, despite a few desperate naysayers, see that the environment of the world is in trouble because of irresponsible or ignorant practices. The religious right has begun to see that conservation is a conservative value.
As climate changes and news media dramatically covers hunger, thirst, a deteriorating quality of life and violence caused by loss of shelter and access to resources, organized religious groups will become involved in the issue of global warming, resource depletion and population. Religious leaders will seek ways to keep their congregations secure by ministering to environmental need, creating volunteer programs and seeking donations to rescue starving populations. Already, Internet evangelizers are opining that global environmental disasters are the rewards reaped of sinful disregard. The protection of God's gift of the Earth will become the topic of sermons and prayers across the globe.
Human society always responds to changes in conditions. The only question is the same in all ages: will it be enough, and will it come in time? The answer is not inevitable.
For more information on trends visit: www.livegreenlivesmart.org
Peter C. Lytle, Executive Director