My children like to quote the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov musing about inspiration: "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka' (I found it) but 'That's funny...' "

Curiosity, wonder and a desire to solve a problem are what drive the scientific imagination.

Hearing that, I wondered what magic words ignite the social entrepreneurial imagination. What drives some people to choose to work for change, begin or join new organizations, shake up structures set in their ways and otherwise make trouble for a settled but faulty world. It seems to me that those words are just as simple, almost as terse, and even more searing. They are: "Oh. That's not good."

Social entrepreneurs see the world the way it is and say that is not the way it could and should be. But that is just the beginning. Many people, even most, see that things are not right, just as many people look at something and wonder what makes it work. But they don't move from thought to action. So what is the extra impulse that urges one to become a scientist and turns a person from someone who tsks and laments to someone who digs in and acts? I would argue that the answer is twofold: an inner demon that drives them to do more coupled with a hope that perhaps they really can.

So the scientist and the social entrepreneur are similar in some ways. But in one huge way they differ. The scientist can research, study, think, tinker and try a thousand experiments by themselves. Though they may achieve a breakthrough sooner with others to help think things through, they do not need them to make their discovery.

Not so with the social entrepreneur. No social entrepreneur ever achieved their goals alone. Their very medium is other people - speaking with them, inspiring them, and being inspired by them in turn.

All of you reading this are social entrepreneurs. You would not bother to be here, at this site, on this blog, engaged in this issue to the depth you are if you had not at one point looked at what the human race is doing to the world and said, "That is not good." So thank you not just for noticing, but for taking that extra step.

Thanks to all of you who have worked with BJEN over the past year and a half. With your help, five synagogues have voted to join our Green Synagogue initiative to date. More are exploring the option. Sustainable actions are also underway in various sectors of the Baltimore Jewish community including the Associated, the JCC and of course Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center and Kayam Farm. The tide is turning, but there is still much to do. And with your help, BJEN will continue to be certain is gets done.

So as daylight hours begin to lengthen, and as we turn from a political era of environmental degradation to one of renewal, healing and growth, I offer you thanks for being wayfarers on this most important of journeys. There is still much to do and I look forward to doing it with you.

Own Alone

The news today tells us that circulation is up in Maryland libraries. Instead of buying books, going to movies, renting videos, or otherwise spending money on alternative leisure time activities, people are returning to the old-fashioned, tried-and-true free resources of their local libraries.

The simple experience of walking into our library offers a glimpse of successful community-sharing we rarely notice and hardly ever celebrate. This is a place we all can come for pleasure, growth, leisure, company. Even more, there is a physical bond that it establishes between us. The books that I check out today might have been in your lap yesterday. The book I hold today may be toted about in your bag next month. I for one bemoan the loss of the Due Date sheet in the back of the book. It told me a bit of the history of the travels of the book, but even more, a bit of the interests of my community. I felt closer to my neighbors back in those days.

But this reminded me of something more I learned this past week that astonished me. In Europe, or so I am told, people do not own their hot water heaters. They only lease them. After all, it was explained to me, people don't really want hot water heaters. They want hot water. Yet to buy a hot water heater, which is the only way to get hot water here in the states, means a ten year investment, locking out the benefits of advances in technology and energy efficiency that develops over those ten years. No one is invested in the upkeep (companies even make money in the repairs) and no one cares where the broken, old heater goes after its useful life. No wonder we have such a waste-rich economy.

In Europe, the company owns the hot water heater, is responsible for its upkeep, is incentivized to have them be the most efficient (or the customer will rent from a competitor), and is responsible for taking them back and properly disposing of them, or better, recycling much of them, at the end of their usable life.

Indeed, why do we need to own things we don't want just to get the stuff they produce? What if we could buy the use of things to get the results we want without the burden of ownership, inefficiency, upkeep and waste?

This is a new way of thinking for most of us, and a new model for building sustainable businesses. We do this in some sectors of the marketplace: we lease cars, we rent homes. But what if we expanded that thinking. On the one hand, there should always be free libraries for all the books and films and things we want to read or see or use but don't need or want to own. But what if, for example, when we wanted to own a book, we could download the text of the book to an electronic book and have the book without having its "stuff". Amazon's Kindle works on this principle. The books you purchase for download come right to your hands via your Kindle, but also sit in your Amazon account for reading from any monitor or computer. And nothing of substance changes hands but zeroes and ones (and a bit of money).

Now I will be the first to tell you all the limitations of Kindle, so I am not urging you to go out and buy it. But they are on the right track. As are the outfits that run Zip-cars, the car-sharing company; bike-share groups; handbag swaps; clothing swaps; free-cycle, neighborhood groups that offer for free usable stuff we no longer want; etc.

This new approach of de-coupling the benefits of something from the (permanent) ownership of something promises to emerge as a key player in our reconstructed economy. It will be more affordable, more sustainable, and more efficient. And it will build stronge, caring, mutually-responsible ties among the various members of the community. We just need to open our minds, change our way of thinking, and reconnect .

Reading my forest

My woods are talking to me, but I do not understand. My backyard is almost an acre of trees, mostly tall, stately tulip poplars. These amazing trees shoot straight up for over 100 feet before opening their canopy. I am told they yield a prized sap, not to everyone's liking but the choice of some bakers. Their wood is soft like pine, and ideal for furniture and paneling.

We also have a sprinkling of beech and dogwood, and a few maples here and there. But mostly tulip poplars. I understand they tend to cluster without crowding out other specimens. That is what we have.

I bought a book recently called Reading the Forested Landscape by Tom Wessels. It offers eight lessons in reading the natural history of your wooded areas (he focuses on an area of New England), explaining how to see in the stumps, the undergrowth, the trunks, etc. influences, both human and natural, that caused your woods to look the way they do. Like when my trees talk to me, I read this book and do not readily understand. But I did learn this: that
there is something called a mast year. Evidently, many common trees produce nuts at a modest rate year after year, just enough to keep in practice (and to feed the woodland animals) but not enough to expend lots of energy.

Then, on some sort of signal imperceptible to us, depending on the year and the weather, all the oak, or maple, or (I am assuming) the tulip poplar deliver a bumper crop of nuts. This assures an abundant amount to feed all the creatures that rely on them, as well as a rich complement to seed the local area. If the area has been disturbed recently and is in the recovery mode, the tree that masts that year gets to set down its claim. It will become the defining tree in the area. I am imagining that is what happened in my forest. This area was a farm in the last century. There don't seem to be any trees nearby older than 50 years or so. I once saw a photograph of this area in the 1950s and it was desolate - not a tree in sight. So, perhaps when the plowing stopped, and the reforestation began, the nearby poplars masted and laid a claim to my yard.

And somewhere in my forest, there is a tree that is moaning. When the wind is mild and the trees sway ever so much, if you are very quiet you can hear the soft moaning, creaking, of a tree in the back. It sounds just like you would imagine a bit of old wood to sound like when it bends just a bit too far for comfort. Imagine an old tree leaning over to empty the dryer, and that is what this sounds like. We first heard it three years ago and, fearful of a dead tree falling in on our roof, we had a tree guy come out to listen. Of course, the tree didn't make noise when he was here. So we did nothing. The sound hasn't gotten louder, indeed it seems a bit softer. I certainly don't know what that means.

Truth be told, while my woods are only an acre or so, I have not walked every bit of them. But I do wonder what other messages they have for me so will work harder this winter and spring to listen harder and get to know them better. And hopefully, with time, begin to understand.

environmental lessons from economic collapse

Everyone agrees that our economic crisis is in large measure anthropogenic, that is, due to human behavior, living larger than we could afford, taking more than we could return, wanting more than is either reasonable or fair to expect. That is, we loaned more than was just so we could reap more than we sowed; borrowed more than we could replenish with what we can earn; divvied up, spread out, and pawned off the responsibility so that no one truly could be blamed, or could even have been moved to care.

Now we are paying the price.

And the price is very steep. It was forced on us by these regrettable circumstances. But I can't help imagining for a moment, what if, way before the crisis, independent of any impending crisis, say two years ago, we had taken $350 billion dollars and spread it around to invent 98% efficient solar energy conversion panels, electric cars and the infrastructure to support them, fixed all our bridges, roads, schools; built amazing inter- and intra-city public transit; increased teacher salaries; improved our social services to our nation's most needy. How much good - economic, environmental and social - would that have done?

Nope. Too expensive. So instead we lost billions in the stock market, and are spending billions more to bail out a profligate market with uncertain returns.

Now, translate all these lessons into the environmental problem. It too is anthropogenic, human-made. Here too we are living larger than we can afford, taking more than we can return, dipping into the principle when we should be living off the interest, forgetting that the atmosphere and sea are finite and not endlessly able to absorb our waste.

Scholars, analysts, prophets tell us we do not make radical changes unless faced with crises. But here is the bright side. Perhaps in this one instance, we can use the lessons of the financial crisis to motivate us to respond to an impending yet still avoidable environmental crisis. For the truth is, we will one day soon recover from this economic crisis, hopefully even in the next year or two. But we cannot and will not speedily recover from the crash of the environment, not in our lifetime, or the lifetime of our children, not even in this century.

These dual crises we face are not only similar in their structure, but gratefully and blessedly also in their solutions. By using green technology to fuel economic health; producing goods in a cyclical, no waste, cradle-to-cradle style; living wisely - consuming only what we can appropriately replenish - we can build an enduring, sustainable economy and environment; tending more to service - being with, educating, doing for and tending to each other - can build an economy pegged to human welfare and not collection of stuff.

Erich Fromm and Abraham Joshua Heschel among thousands of others have taught it: our culture needs to change from a predominant mode of stuff and "having" to a predominate mode of relationship and "being." That is good for what is called the triple bottom-line: people, planet, and profit. One integrated solution for one just, healthy, good world.