A clever new brand challenges consumerism with a line of ethically sourced products and an ironic message: use less.

How many consumers does it take to wreck a planet? More importantly, how many people will it take to fix it?

It might seem like semantics, but there’s a fundamental difference between people and consumers. As marketers, we tend to think of them as one and the same. We refer to consumer packaged goods, consumer value propositions, and business-to-consumer models. It’s the catch-all term for all those who buy, use, and dispose of stuff. Of course, there’s no escaping the consumer designation. At the end of the day, each of us becomes one of them. Unless.

Unless we make the conscious decision to stop being consumers. This isn’t to suggest that we stop buying and using things but that we simply stop using the term and falling victim to the designation. This semantic shift could lead to a psychological shift, where we stop using this short-sighted and demeaning term to refer to ourselves and others in the collective. Are we consumers or people? If we decide on the latter, perhaps we’ll stop acting like a blind mob with zero accountability and start behaving like conscious individuals. Perhaps.

All of this is a long way of introducing a new consumer people brand known as USELESS.

When we first heard of USELESS, it immediately struck us as brilliant. USELESS is a brand that is well ahead of its time. It’s aspirational. It challenges and speaks up to you. You either get it or you don’t. And while USELESS defies comparison, we’re tempted to call it FCUK with a purpose. It’s that good. And so is its mission and underlying story.

We met with USELESS founder Mark Simmons on a few occasions to discuss the brand and his goals for it. He’s made several appearances at BlobLive LA, where he pitched it to a live audience of fellow entrepreneurs. That’s how we got the below interview. Today, USELESS is a line of branded products, but we see it as much more than that. The brand is a universal message. It’s a reminder that we should not think of ourselves or others as merely consumers. Because we’re people, and we can always strive to use less.

Max Gladwell (MG): What’s the story behind the USELESS brand?

Mark Simmons: Two years ago I was working with Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection trying to work out what to say about climate change that would get people from all walks of life involved to help solve the crisis. I saw that, while many people thought of climate change as a left wing conspiracy, they all felt, regardless of their political views, that we Americans use too much stuff. The thought of “use less” lodged in my mind and a year later when I was trying to develop a brand around reducing use of disposable water bottles and bags it struck me that “useless” would be a perfect name because on the face of it, while it is quite negative, if you scratch just below the surface you see it’s not negative at all, it’s a positive way to message about the desire to use less. And if on the one hand we in the developed world are using too much stuff and that’s contributing to climate change, on the other hand there are people in the developing world who are going without the very basics of life such as clean water and sanitation. In fact, 2.6 billion lack proper sanitation and resulting diseases is the biggest killer of children under five. So there is a natural counter-point to use less, which is to give more. The pieces then all fit into place for me. The brand would be called USELESS and its mission would be to help people USE LESS and GIVE MORE in a cool, thought-provoking way.

MG: What types of products are you selling? Why are they so great?

Simmons: So far we have a small line of products that help people use less and give more, including t-shirts, hoodies, hats, messenger bags, totes, notebooks, and reusable water bottles. They are so great because we’ve sourced amazing products that are highly functional, or utilitarian, are made to last, are made of organic, recycled or recyclable materials, and are all made in the USA. That last ingredient, being made in the USA, has made the whole journey 10 times as difficult. Finding products made from the right materials made in the USA is almost impossible, as manufacturing for this stuff all seems to be overseas. But we wanted all our products to be locally sourced, both to keep our footprint small and so we could support local jobs, and felt it was worth the effort to find the right manufacturing partners here in this country. The messenger and tote bags, for instance, are handmade for us from recycled billboards in a small workshop in Colorado. These products are just the beginning, though. We’re planning on adding new ones over the next few months that meet our strict criteria, including some digital applications for the iPhone and Facebook.

MG: How do you reconcile the contradiction of selling stuff and telling people to use less stuff?

Simmons: We are only selling things that are useful and that people need. But, having said that, we are not anti-consumerism, we just believe we can get people to think about what they consume and the power they have to make a positive difference in the world, whether it’s by reducing their use of natural resources, spreading the USELESS message or helping people who need it most. We also have a “non product” called USELESS Earth that costs $25.00, for which people get absolutely nothing – other than the knowledge that all the proceeds go to fund water and sanitation projects in the developing world. In addition we are starting to produce USELESS stencils cut from recycled steel so people can put our message on their old clothes without having to buy new ones. And then there’s the digital products I mentioned that will help raise revenue and awareness but that will use negligible natural resources.

MG: Is this a for-profit company? What is the revenue model?

Simmons: We are for-profit but are what I guess is called a “triple-bottom line” business in that, in addition to making profit, we aim to do environmental good and social good in equal measure. It used to be the time when there were corporations who were all about maximizing shareholder value and non-profits that were trying to make the world the better place but had no commercial reality. Now I firmly believe you cannot be a corporation (we’re an LLC, in fact) without doing good or a non-profit without understanding how business works. It’s the collaborations between the two that will change the world and I think our business model is one of a new breed that do so. We sell products, whether virtual or real, for a profit but give at least 10% to water and sanitation projects in the developing world and promote a message about responsible consumerism. The money we make will allow us to sustain ourselves and grow without relying on the kindness of strangers, but rather the margin on our products.

By the way, all our giving to water and sanitation is tied to very specific projects down to particular villages in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. People can see exactly where the money goes and what effect it will have. The one we’re currently funding is for a water tank and toilets in the village of Kundorwahun in Eastern Sierra Leone.

MG: Someone at BlobLive recommended USELESS-brand toilet paper. Would you consider everyday CPG products like that? Maybe white labeling Seventh Generation?

Simmons: I think doing post-consumer paper products and other consumer products that meet our standards – of helping people use less, are made in the USA and are well made, is a great idea – if we can find a business model to make it work. Currently, we’re selling products through our website, but plan to start wholesaling in certain stores such as college bookstores where there might be a demand for what we sell. We couldn’t really sell toilet paper online as the economics just don’t make sense, but could help someone like Seventh Generation develop a sub-brand by licensing out the USELESS brand to them, again only if the products meet strict criteria. In fact, the plan has always been to do a bit of a product (RED) by branding products made by other consumer brands.

MG: How do you plan to market USELESS? Who is the target audience?

Simmons: We’re starting to build our presence online through the usual suspects like Facebook, and we are still experimenting with how to do it best. We have a MySpace page but I don’t love MySpace and don’t think we’ll be doing much with it until we have our music strategy worked out. We have a blog of course that feeds directly to Twitter, and I’m trying to post meaningful content that gets across the USELESS philosophy, without being too heavy-handed. And then we’re starting to connect with other like-minded intelligent (did I mention, good-looking?) bloggers like you. Our targets are primarily college students and young adults who appreciate the irreverence of the brand. The brand is not for everyone by any means – older more conservative people seem to hate the name with a passion – but I actually like that, it’s designed to get a reaction.

MG: Where do you see USELESS in five years? What are your long-term goals and objectives for the brand?

Simmons: I think we can be a large niche player in five years time. I’m impressed with what American Apparel has done for instance, and how they manage to combine good products with a social conscience all delivered in a sexy way. I think we can do that but with a broader range of products and less of the sleaze! We’d also like to open USELESS stores to let people experience the brand in the way that Apple lets people live and breathe their products through their stores, and I already mentioned how I think we can partner with other consumer product brands. It’s important to stay true to our principles along the way, something I know is very difficult to do as you grow, but without maintaining that integrity there’s sort of no point.

The 11th way to change the world through social media: a coordinated and simultaneous multi-blog post.

On May 12th, 2008, we published Ten Ways to Change the World Through Social Media as a guest post for Sustainablog. It was our first-ever guest post and came just six weeks after the launch of Max Gladwell.

We had a sense that this would be a significant step. We saw the potential for this content to establish the brand and clearly communicate the Max Gladwell message. This was our mission articulated in a headline.

The post became popular on Digg and generated plenty of discussion. We followed up five months later with 10 More Ways, which also found its way to Digg. The list became part of the Max Gladwell identity.

On May 12th, 2009, we published the third 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media, but we took a much different approach. As we considered the first anniversary of the list, it occurred to us that there might be a better way to share and distribute the content. There might be a better way to get it to more people who would find it valuable. The brainstorm lead to the idea for a simultaneous guest post across multiple blogs. Had this ever been done before? We weren’t sure. So we set a goal of publishing the third list concurrently on 100 blogs in a coordinated fashion. This is how it went.

Shared Content

As soon as the idea crystalized, we started reaching out to our blogging colleagues to garner feedback and get support. The response was almost universally enthusiastic. Our success rate was better than 95%, and we attribute this not just to the appeal of the message but to a predisposition among bloggers to embrace new ideas in this new medium. We tend to be an open-minded bunch.

The story was about changing the world through social media. And yet this exercise amounted to an experiment in changing the world through social media. In this sense, the social media was both a topic and a tactic, which is a founding principle of Max Gladwell.

The key piece of the puzzle was coordinating the simultaneous nature of the post. This would be a guest post authored by Max Gladwell, much like the original on Sustainablog, and though it would be published on multiple blogs, this would not be a re-post. The idea was for it to be viewed as original content by each blog’s immediate audience. Those who faithfully subscribe to that blog’s RSS, e-mail, or Twitter feed and who happen to be visiting at that moment would see it there for the first time. As such, the post might spark 100 simultaneous conversations about ways to change the world through social media.

We also decided to make the content open source. In other words, we proposed that bloggers could customize it and make it their own. We offered that numbers nine and 10 on the list could be wild-card spots, where they could substitute one or two “ways” of their own. Given our goal of 100 blogs, this had the potential to produce a total of 208 ways to change the world through social media. True to the spirit of open source, we also didn’t require any approval process for making changes or additions for any reason. The only restriction was the publication date and time: Tuesday, May 12th at 11:00 am PT / 2:00 pm ET.

Our friends at Triple Pundit opted to tailor the actual headline and in so doing pay us a most generous complement:

Cluetrain 2.0: Rob Reed, the venerable mind behind MaxGladwell.com had an idea today – get 100+ websites to simultaneously publish a post on ten ways in which social media can “change” the world. Longtime readers of this site know my affection for The Cluetrain Manifesto, written 10 years ago which states:

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

Rob’s site is devoted to this principal and to making the best, most intelligent use of social media for positive change – not just in business, but everywhere else.

We’re clearly fans of Cluetrain, as well, so this came a pleasant surprise. Incidentally, our favorite quote is that “a press release has all the dramatic tension of a phone number.”

Several days before the publication date, we supplied bloggers with the HTML content in a text document complete with links and images. For most it was a simple cut, paste, and publish. As Sommer Poquette of Green and Clean Mom remarked, we “made it way too easy to not be on board!” Several blogs set up author accounts, which we’ll use moving forward, while most just noted that this was the first guest post from Max Gladwell.

Below you’ll find links to all those who participated. The total was roughly 80, though not all published simultaneously. Note that the content is still available to be re-posted so we can reach the goal of 100. We’ll update this post with new links as necessary. And if we missed you this first time, please accept our apologies and let us know so we can add your blog to the list.

Twitter Strategy

The 10 Ways post included a specific Twitter strategy. We realized the likelihood of retweets was high given that it would be so widely published. However, we went a step further and attached a unique hashtag, which was noted in the introduction. We asked people to use #10Ways if they wished to take the conversation to Twitter. So not only could we monitor the headline itself, but we had a unique mechanism for (a) aggregating and following the conversation, (b) promoting it as a Twitter trending topic, and (c) getting a sense for the level of engagement. The strategy appears to have been successful.

All told, we estimate there were more than 4,000 Tweets about the post and it could easily be 5,000. Unfortunately, Twitter Search doesn’t go back farther than 1,500, so we have to estimate based on the Tweet rate. We can clearly see that there were more than 900 Tweets using the specific #10Ways hashtag. This speaks to the level of engagement with the content because one had to be aware of it in order to use it.

At its peak, the post claimed two concurrent spots in Twitter’s top-10 trending topics. The #10Ways tag was fourth, while “World Through Social” occupied the fifth spot. It appears Twitter gives a preference to hashtags. Otherwise, these two topics fluctuated in the top 10 for the bulk of the day.

When a single blog post becomes a trending topic on Twitter (this could be a first), it’s much like hitting the front page of Digg with one key distinction: the traffic goes to more than one place. It’s distributed. We suspect that this can provide more aggregate traffic than Digg, especially considering Twitter’s growth, and that the quality of the traffic, measured by page views and time spent per visitor, would also be greater. But this is pure speculation at this point.

Since Twitter’s trending topics is now integrated to the main user interface, it exposes these topics (together with the underlying content in this case) to all of Twitter. There’s a natural curiosity about why #1oWays or “World Through Social” is trending. And when these topics trend, it becomes self-reinforcing if the story is compelling. It exposes the content to a huge new audience, which might also decide to retweet it.

This particular strategy might only be possible under a scenario where the content is distributed across multiple blogs. It requires a collective effort of Tweeting and retweeting for a single headline to trend. When it does, though, it drives awareness across the Twittersphere, which drives traffic to any and all of the blogs involved. It’s quite possible that many of the blogs that posted 10 Ways received higher-than-average page views for that post. This would be counter intuitive because we typically rely on a combination of search and exclusivity to drive traffic. Twitter alone may have disrupted this formula.

And more than a week later, the #10Ways and “World Through Social” Tweets and retweets are still coming.

Distribution Model

We plan to survey all those who participated, both as a blogger and a subject of the post, pursuant to publishing a detailed case study on this social media first. We’re analyzing the data that is currently available and hope to report on everything in July, which will coincide with the next 10 Ways list. But first we’re interested to hear various perspectives and points of view about this experiment.

Is it possible this represents a new content distribution model? If content is well written or produced and if publishers agree to an embargo (date and time), is this method of distribution viable? Does Twitter make it more viable? If so, could it sustain itself with relevant, embedded sponsorships or advertising?

This assumes, of course, that content authors and producers maintain high levels of integrity and transparency. It also assumes that publishers will be willing to post duplicate content, albeit in a coordinated and simultaneous fashion, on a frequent basis. The quality of the content may have to overcome any perceived loss of value in not being unique. Or the Twitter strategy would have to pick up the slack. Then again, publishing duplicate content has historically been the norm.

This model is not all that different from the Associated Press…except for the part about providing the content free of charge. In our distributed scenario, the author of the content (and/or their partners) can monetize it through embedded ads and receive fair compensation for their work in proportion to its quality and performance. Publishers can monetize the page where that content resides, provided the advertising messages aren’t competing. This is obviously something they’d know beforehand and could decide accordingly.

It’s possible that this model could provide a solution to the imminent downfall of journalism and the Fourth Estate. Because it’s not newspapers we’re concerned about. It’s the content they publish and the vital role the press plays in our democracy. Just as we no longer need CDs and music labels, we don’t need newspapers and publishing conglomerates. We can do without the dead trees. But we do need journalists, and journalists have to make a living.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, either in the comments or privately. And if you’re a blogger or publisher of any size who would like to be included on the distribution list for the next 10 Ways post in July, feel free to contact us.

Lastly, in the spirit of #10Ways, feel free to re-post this content (whole or in part) on any relevant blog, pursuant to starting your own conversation about this social media experiment and a new content distribution model.

The 10 Ways Blogs

These are in no particular order (except maybe the first few):

Max Gladwell

Huffington Post

Huffington Post Green

Mashable

TreeHugger

Sustainablog

Greenopia

Grist.org

Planet Green

Pop!Tech

Twilight Earth

The Daily Green

Mother Nature Network

Social Actions

The Good Human

Current Green

GreenUpgrader

Green and Clean Mom

Ecopreneurist

Gaiam

Causecast

Ecosalon

GreenSmith Consulting

Triple Pundit

Chris Baskind

Greendig

Solve Climate

Ecoble

SocialVibe

The Green Girls

Max School Bus

On Site Group

People For Earth

Eco Libris

Social Media Club

Natural Papa

Ideablob

Green Grown and Sexy

Green Living Ideas

Live Earth

Liberty Hill

National Wildlife Federation

NowSourcing

Your Daily Thread

Social Media Mom

Live The Green

Puma Blog

Yahoo! Green

My Green Side

Chrity News

Idealist.org

Opportunity Green

Viva Green!

Modern Eco Homes

Eco Matters Daily

Fashion Loves People

Ecopolitology

Global Patriot

Groovy Green

Eco-Chick

Heavy Bag Media

Muse Green

CauseWired

Business Ethos

NurtureNature!

Eco Child’s Play

Super Cute

Creative Citizen

Holistic Show

Organic Life

Social Media Today

Sustainable Cities Collective

Eco Worldly

SpurSpectives

WebGuild

Elite TV

fav.or.it

Off The Grid

Stimulist

Hedgehogs

eMarketing and New Media

the mcmilker group

Op Ed News

Bloglost 42 Y 195

Argam DerHartunian

Street Knowledge TV

NewsCloud

Update:

Action for a Sustainable America

The confluence of events that lead to the serendipitous success of the #EcoMonday Twitter meme.

The genesis moment for #EcoMonday was April 24th, 2009, at precisely 1:34 pm Pacific Time. We know this because Twitter keeps up-to-the-minute records of everything we Tweet and Retweet. It was a Friday, and a unique series of events would lead to this Tweet.

On the previous Wednesday, Brian Wallace of NowSourcing Skyped us about trying the #HealthyHumpday follow meme for health-related Tweeps (Tweeps  = people who Twitter). Two days later he wrote Beyond #FollowFriday: 24 Daily Twitter Memes, a guest post on Mashable.

“So, how can we create a lasting meme? Simple. Make it happen weekly. Much of this started with the genius of @micah’s #followfriday. But hey, why stop with #followfriday? Here are 24 daily Twitter memes to help you meet new Twitterers and discuss common interests.”

We read the post and found it curious that despite a large green contingent on Twitter there wasn’t a follow meme for the sustainable set.

Concurrently Shea Gunther was dealing with a slow news day at Mother Nature Network (MNN) and decided to post 10 Green Twitterers You Should Follow. This was published at 11:24 am Pacific Time and happened to include Max Gladwell. Two hours and ten minutes later, we sent the original #EcoMonday Tweet.

It was the combination of Brian’s and Shea’s related but disconnected posts that lead us to the following consideration:

There was already #FollowFriday and, evidently, #HealthyHumpday (Wednesday) among others. The problem with #FollowFriday is that it’s far too general. It’s a lot of noise with very little signal, especially when it comes to finding specific types of Tweeps. Even Twitter itself is too broad, which is why we see viable competitors emerging with a more vertical focus. In the meantime, we need various mechanisms to cut through the noise and tune into the feeds that are most important and relevant to us. Round-up articles like Shea’s are quite helpful, but they come and go like any other blog post.

The green Twitter community needed a permanent mechanism. Since there’s not much to look forward to on any given Monday, it made sense that it would be the one day each week that we build and strengthen the green Twitter network by recommending and following one another using the #EcoMonday hashtag. And while the need was clearly there, it almost didn’t happen.

That initial #EcoMonday Tweet on Friday was all but lost in the Twittersphere. It wasn’t Retweeted or acknowledged in any way. It fell on deaf #FollowFriday ears. And it might have been lost forever if Shea didn’t pen a follow-up post for Monday…the Monday that would become the first #EcoMonday.

In the wee hours of the morning on April 27th, Shea followed up his top-10 list with The Great Green Twitter Follow Parade, in which he listed additional green Tweeps to follow and called for everyone to post their Twitter handle in the comments in order to follow one another. “It’s time to connect all the green Tweople!” he wrote.

The post was already generating rapid-fire comments when we sent this Tweet at 10:28 am Pacific Time, roughly six-and-a-half hours after Shea’s post went live: “We suggested starting #ecomonday last week as the #followfriday for green. @sheagunther gives it a boost: http://bit.ly/17EqZ5.”

#EcoMonday was born.

Shea was the first to Retweet it, and several more influential green Tweeps followed. We then added #EcoMonday to the comments of the Follow Parade. All told, that post generated 174 comments, most of which are green Tweeps. A chord had clearly been struck, as #EcoMonday addressed an unmet need in the Twittersphere: to unite and network the green community. In its second and third weeks, #EcoMonday became a top trending topic on Twitter, and more than 1,600 have been referred to date. We know this because that’s how many @EcoMonday is following.

We decided to take this meme a step further by starting the @EcoMonday Twitter account with a specific approach: to follow only those who are referred through the #EcoMonday follow meme. This means that @EcoMonday isn’t playing the quid-pro-quo game of I-follow-you-and-you-follow-me-back. Each Tweep that @EcoMonday follows was referred by a third party. And while it isn’t perfect, @EcoMonday does provide an effective filter mechanism for the green Twittersphere.

In addition to following the #EcoMonday meme, you can simply follow those who @EcoMonday follows in the knowledge that each is a referral. We manage the account and do our best not to follow spam referrals. We’d also like to make the @EcoMonday feed public if that’s possible so others can follow this focused stream of Tweets while enabling the community to @reply unfollow requests for irrelevant and/or spam accounts that manage to get through.

Finally, we set up the Max Gladwell EcoMonday page, where you can monitor the #EcoMonday meme in real time.

A special thanks to @mcmilker for her Ecopreneurist post, which gave #EcoMonday a nice boost.

Happy #EcoMonday to all!

Together with BlobLive, this is open-mic night for social entrepreneurs and green businesses.

This Monday, May 18th, from 6:30 – 9:00 PM Pacific Time, you can attend or tune into BlobLive LA with Max Gladwell. If you’d like to attend, feel free to RSVP via Facebook. If you’d like to watch the live webcast, you can participate via Twitter using the hashtag #bloblive. Doors open at 6:30 PM and live streaming begins at 7:30.

In conjunction with Max Gladwell, BlobLive hosts a monthly themed networking event for green business and social entrepreneurs in Santa Monica. Come share an idea, support an idea, or get inspired by one. New and existing ventures of all shapes and sizes are encouraged.

Are you working on a green or social venture? Are you interested in others who are? Do you have an idea to start one? Come listen, share, or promote your idea. In a supportive and relaxed environment, you can step up, practice your pitch, and share your ideas. BlobLive provides the food and the venue while everyone else in the room (and those watching the event streamed online) offer feedback, advice, and ideas for connections.

Those who attend BlobLives range from those with a dream for a new business, established business owners looking to expand and improve, social entrepreneurs, bloggers, investors, and experienced entrepreneurs who want to help others find their way.

For Max Gladwell Live, presenting priority is extended to ideas, businesses, non-profits, or any other entrepreneurial venture focused on making a difference in the world.

For a better chance to get on stage and share your idea, please pre-submit a brief description (250 words or so) to BlobLive host Erick Brownstein via e-mail: e [at] ebrownstein.com.

We recommend the following format for your pitch:

1. Identify the problem that your business addresses. Where is the pain?
2. Tell us how your business is the solution to that problem (how it relieves the pain) and how it will earn revenue/donations
3. Ask your question: What do you need for your business? Partners? Funding? Marketing advice?

This week, special guest Dr. Dan Nathanson, a professor at UCLA Anderson and founder of Entrepreneurs Institute, will be arriving at 6:30 to offer presenters free coaching sessions to help prepare their pitch. And Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed will be offering feedback on marketing, sustainability, and social media strategies. We look forward to seeing you there.

Location: M.i.’s Westside Comedy Theater, 1323-A 3rd Street Promenade (in the alley between the Promenade and 4th). The best parking is the garage on 4th Street between Santa Monica and Arizona Ave. Exit the structure at the alley, and the entrance to the theater is right there.

Citizen journalism, open government, status updates, community building, information sharing, crowdsourcing, and the election of a President.

Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They’ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They’ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they’ll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.

What’s most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it.

For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good. Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments, hence the following list.

Please note this is not a top-10 list, nor are these listed in any particular order. It’s also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation in the comments. If you’d like to Retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Take Social Actions: The nonprofit organization Social Actions aggregates “opportunities to make a difference from over 50 online platforms” through its unique API. It recently held the Change the Web Challenge contest in order to inspire the most innovative applications for that API. The Social Actions Interactive Map won the $5,000 first prize. The result is a virtual tour of the world through the lens of social action. “People are volunteering, donating, signing petitions, making loans and doing other social actions as we speak — all over the world. To capture the context of the where, this project uses sophisticated techniques to extract location information from full text paragraphs.” You can also join the Social Actions Community, which is powered by Ning…which now boasts more than one million individual social networks.

2. Twitter with a Purpose: This list could be exclusive to Twitter. The micro-blogging sensation was featured on our first two lists (a three-tweet), and it’s certain to be a fixture. From Tweetsgiving, the virtual Thanksgiving feast, to the Twestival, which organized 202 off-line events around the world to benefit charity: water, it’s become the de facto tool for organizing and taking action. Tweet Congress won the SXSW activism award, and celebrity Tweeps Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Rose Tweeted their two million followers about ending malaria. Max Gladwell recently initiated the #EcoMonday follow meme as a way to connect and organize the Green Twittersphere.

3. Visit White House 2.0: Inside of its first 100 days, the Obama administration has managed to set the historic benchmark for government transparency and accountability. The President’s virtual town hall meeting used WhiteHouse.gov to crowdsource questions from his 300 million constituents, complete with voting to determine the ones he’d have to answer. All told, 97,937 people submitted 103,978 questions and cast 1,782,650 votes. The White House continues to raise the bar with its official Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter channels. In so doing President Obama is not just setting the standard for state and local government in the U.S. He’s establishing the world standard. The Obama administration is spreading democracy not by force but through example. Because you don’t have to be an American citizen to be a friend or follower of White House 2.0.

4. Claim your Zumbox: What happens when all mail can be sent and delivered online to any street address in a paperless form? That’s the big question for Zumbox, which has created an online mail system with a digital mailbox for every U.S. street address. And while the answer to that question remains to be seen, it promises to be as liberating as it is disruptive. A key quality for Zumbox is that it’s closed system much like that of Facebook, only instead of true identity it’s true address. This will enable people to better connect with their communities including their neighbors, local businesses, and the mayor’s office. The primary agent of change, though, might not be that this uses street addresses but that it enables direct and potentially viral feedback, which is a virtue that e-mail and the USPS do not offer. The first methods are to request exclusive paperless delivery and to block a sender, but others are certain to evolve such as real-time commenting and ways to share mail with friends, family, and colleagues. Welcome to Mail 2.0. (Disclosure: Zumbox is a client of Rob Reed, the founder of Max Gladwell.)

5. Host a Social Media Event: This is the year of the social media event. No meaningful gathering of people is complete without an interactive online audience, especially when it’s so easy and cost effective to pull off. Essential tools include a broadband connection, laptop, video camera, projector, and screen. Add people and a purpose, such as entrepreneurship. Promote it through social media channels, and you have a social media event. A recent example in the green world is the Evolution of Green, which was hosted by Creative Citizen, a green wiki community. It celebrated the launch of a new Web property, EcoMatters, while also establishing a new Twitter tag. By posing the question, “How can we go from green hype to green habit?” and including the #GreenQ hashtag, it sparked a conversation between attendees and the Twittersphere in real time. Thus was born a new mechanism for getting answers to green questions via Twitter.

6. Travel the World: More than anyone else, Tim O’Reilly knows the potential for social media to change the world. In his opening keynote at this year’s Web 2.0 Expo, he called for a new ethic in which we do more with less and create more value than we capture. This provided the context for SalaamGarage founder Amanda Koster, whose presentation followed O’Reilly’s. The idea is that social media has enabled each of us to have an audience. Whether through Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or a personal blog, each of us can have influence and reach. What’s more, it can be used for good. SalaamGarage coordinates trips for citizen journalists (that means you) to places like India and Vietnam in conjunction with non-government organizations like Seattle-based Peace Trees. The destination is the story, as these humanitarian journalists report on the people they meet and discoveries they make. Their words, images, and video are posted to the social web to gain exposure and because these stories just need to be told.

7. Build It on Drupal: You may not have noticed, but the open-source Drupal content management system (CMS) has quickly become the dominant player on the social web. While we still prefer WordPress as a strict blogging application, Drupal has emerged as the go-to platform for building scalable, community-driven Web sites. It powers Recovery.gov, a key part of President Obama’s commitment to transparency and accountability. PopRule uses it as a social news platform for politics. And Drupal will soon become the platform for Causecast, a site where “media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose.” This is especially significant because Causecast CEO Ryan Scott is transitioning the site off of Ruby on Rails because Drupal has proved more efficient, user friendly, and cost effective. (Disclosure: Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed is co-founder of PopRule.)

8. Green Your iPhone: Looking for an organic diner within biking distance that has a three-star green rating? There’s a app for that. It’s called 3rd Whale, and you can download it for free. (Except that the star rating is actually a whale rating.) Complete with Facebook Connect, this iPhone app locates green products and businesses in 30 major North American cities. It uses the iPhone’s dial function to select a category (food), sub-category (restaurants), and distance (walking, biking, or driving). In Santa Monica, this might give you Swingers diner for its selection of veggie and vegan fare. You could then get directions from your current location using the iPhone’s built-in Google map, rate your experience on the three-whale scale, and write up a quick review. 3rd Whale recently released a new feature that integrates green-living tips, which can show how much energy or waste you’ll save by taking a given action.

9. Unite the World Through Video: Matt’s dancing around the world video inspired many to tears. Today, more than 20 million people have viewed his YouTube masterpiece, where he performs a kooky dance with the citizens of planet earth. The most recent example of this approach is Playing for Change, which connects the world through song. The project started in Santa Monica with a street performance of the classic Stand By Me and expanded to New Orleans, New Mexico, France, Brazil, Italy, Venezuela, South Africa, Spain, and The Netherlands. The project was superbly executed via social media, complete with a YouTube channel, MySpace, Facebook, and Blog. It’s received tremendous mainstream media exposure and also benefits a foundation of the same name.

10. Rate a Company: The conversation about corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes place across the social web on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube, but a central hub for this information and opinion is still to be determined. SocialYell seeks to address this by building an online community around the CSR conversation, where users can submit reviews of companies together with nonprofit organizations and even public figures like Michelle Obama. The major topics are the Environment, Health, Social Equity, Consumer Advocacy, and Charity. The reviews are voted and commented on by the community in a Reddit-like fashion with both up (Yell) and down (shhh) voting. The site is relatively new and still gaining traction, but there’s no question that a resource like this is needed to shine a bright light on CSR and and other related issues.

11. Publish a collective, simultaneous blog post on a universal topic: As Nigel Tufnel might say, this list goes to eleven. Let the #10Ways conversation begin…

Final note: This is Max Gladwell’s third list of “10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media.” The first was posted a year ago today on Sustainablog.org, and the sequel followed five months later. If a single headline can capture the Max Gladwell raison d’etre, this is it.

A San Francisco start-up is combining the principles of activism, capitalism, and social media. They call it Activism 2.0. But it could be much more.

Virgance CEO Steve Newcomb is one of the most successful and savvy entrepreneurs of our generation. At 39, he’s been involved in building nine companies, creating over $3 billion in market value. His most recent exit was Powerset, a semantic search technology that was acquired by Microsoft last year. Newcomb is also chairman of Serious Business, a Facebook application company, and the founder of SF Green, a San Francisco-based event that brings together leaders in activism, business, and government. And while that’s all well and good, Newcomb clearly sees Virgance as his legacy play.

“I believe that in a hundred years, people aren’t going to look back and remember that Powerset was a new search technology, even if it was better than Google,” he says. “They’re going to remember that this was the time when a select few had the courage to begin the process that ultimately enabled us to overcome the biggest issue of our time – sustainability. That’s what Virgance is all about.”

We had a call with Newcomb last week to discuss his vision and approach. It was immediately clear that our values and ideals were aligned. Virgance consists of a talented and dedicated group of social entrepreneurs leveraging social media to achieve social and environmental objectives that are also profitable.

This approach and ideal is quite familiar and consistent with Max Gladwell, so it comes as no surprise that the brands are each rooted in epic tales. Virgance is a Star Wars: Episode I reference that means “the birth of powerful new force in nature that can be used for good or for evil.” And Max Gladwell is inspired by Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Each views the mission of sustainability as a heroic endeavor.

When we considered Virgance’s broader context, though, it occurred to us that they may have crossed into the realm of Web 3.0. It’s just not in the same way we typically define it.

Virgance is equal parts incubator, holding company, and campaign headquarters. The company starts or acquires ventures that meet the following five criteria:

1. It must lead to measurable change as directly as possible
2. It must involve lots of people via social media in making that change
3. It must use carrots not stick
s i.e. finding or creating aligned incentives rather than punitive measures
4. It must scale on a common tech
nological infrastructure
5. It must have a solid business model (healthy gross margins)

This is what happens “when capitalism meets activism,” says Newcomb, because Virgance doesn’t think of its ventures as mere companies but rather ongoing campaigns. “What Idealab was to Web 1.0, Virgance is to Activism 2.0,” he says. In other words, Virgance is starting more than just companies. It’s taking a business approach to launching social movements. And the effective use of social media is central to the viability, scalability, and profitability of each.

As Newcomb told TechCrunch, he sees Virgance as “the next iteration of what President Obama did,” referring to the Obama strategy. Because just as advertising never started a movement, no business plan has ever sparked a revolution.

The Portfolio

By our count, the Virgance portfolio currently consists of five ventures, though Newcomb says they are in a constant state of launching and testing new pilots. So that statement may not be accurate for long.

Carrotmob is social shopping meets conscious consuming meets flashmobs. It was an instant success when the first Carrotmob took place in San Francisco last year. You may remember the first Carrotmob video, where a large group of people showed up to an unassuming convenience store and bought stuff in the foreknowledge that the owner would use a substantial portion of that revenue to green their store.

1BOG (One Block Off the Grid) intends to become the consumer brand in residential solar by enabling communities to leverage their purchasing power in getting the lowest-cost solar panels possible. This can radically tip the economics in our favor, making the decision to go solar a very reasonable investment with a much quicker return.

Lend Me Some Sugar (Lend) is more of a business-to-business play, whereby companies can transform their philanthropic efforts into effective cause marketing programs. The business opportunity can be found in the fact that corporate America isn’t getting the credit it might deserve for its philanthropic work, and few if any companies involve its various stakeholders in the decision-making process, much less enabling them to allocate the funds. Lend campaigns enable this connection. They are run through a Facebook application, which generates revenue from ads. Lend doesn’t take a cut of the donation funds.

GO Media is the company’s most recent and high-profile acquisition. We interviewed GO founder David Anderson in October of last year, and we’ve written several guest posts for Sustainablog.org, which is part of the 15-blog Green Options network. Aside from the obvious advantages of owning such a media property, which claims 2.5 million monthly unique visitors, Newcomb’s mission is nothing short of saving journalism and preserving the Fourth Estate. Having been part of the GO blogger network, we couldn’t help but notice how efficiently it is run compared to traditional media organizations. And Newcomb isn’t coy about their plans to apply this decentralized editorial model to other news verticals. With Newcomb’s help, GO has attracted influential guest bloggers including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who recently announced his candidacy for California governor via Twitter.

Finally, Greenfund is a rather ambitious endeavor that will seek to raise investment capital in small increments through a Facebook application. It’s still in the pre-launch phase.

On the Verge of Web 3.0

The typical understanding of Web 3.0 is all too familiar to Steve Newcomb. It refers to semantic technology, such as the Powerset search engine, where more meaningful and actionable insight can be extracted from information. Given what Virgance is currently working on, together with other recent trends in Web 2.0, though, we’re tempted to add to that definition and include much of what we wrote about in the New and Improved Matrix.

Web 3.0 might also encompass the merging of the digital world with the actual world through Web and mobile technologies. Web 3.0 might include applications that integrate or necessarily include the actual worldwide web—the one in which we live, the tangible web of homes, streets, businesses, and government offices. If Web 2.0 is the Internet as a platform, then Web 3.0 might be the World as a platform. And just as Web 2.0 had pioneers that pre-date the broad acceptance of the trend, those of Web 3.0 might include Meetup, Sense Networks, Zumbox (a Max Gladwell client), and several of the Virgance brands.

Companies like Carrotmob and 1BOK use online social networking to inspire offline action with measurable impacts. These campaigns provide an alternative to so-called slactivism, where taking social or political action amounts to little more than joining a Cause on Facebook, posting YouTube rants, and adding badges to your MySpace. Because moving the needle on social and environmental issues requires that we step out from behind the computer and actually do something. Fortunately, the iPhone and other mobile technologies keep us networked in the real world by utilizing the same applications.

Does this qualify as Web 3.0? Or is it just the evolution of Web 2.0? It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that we’re adding meaningful purpose to Web technologies that are having real-world impacts. A powerful and universal new force has, indeed, been created. And from where we stand, it’s clearly being used for good.

Creative Citizen asks the question that needs to be asked and looks for answers in the Twittersphere.

Green has gone mainstream. It’s fashionable, marketable, and politically expedient. But it’s not reality.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding the green movement, but we’re not seeing a lot of habit. The results just aren’t materializing. Relative to the chatter, there should be much more change. Everyone is green in principle, but very few are green in practice. Why is that?

This is the question being posed by Scott Badenoch and Argam DerHartunian of Creative Citizen, a green wiki community for creative green solutions. And in no way is this question being asked rhetorically.

Scott and Argam want answers, and they intend to get them. They want answers from green thought leaders. They want answers from green celebrities and policy makers. And they want answers from that bottomless well of knowledge and insight that we call the Twittersphere.

On Saturday, May 9th, from 7 – 10 pm PT, Creative Citizen will host The Evolution of Green live event in Santa Monica, California. We’ll be co-hosting in conjunction with Causecast, Mother Nature Network, and Planet Green. It will include a live video webcast, which will be hosted at Creative Citizen (as well as on Max Gladwell), complete with interviews from some of the leaders in LA’s green community.

As with many live events these days, it will also feature its own Twitter stream. This event will be unique in that Twitter will be central to asking this important question, initiating that conversation, generating answers, and voting for the best ones. What’s more, this event will introduce a new universal hashtag designation: #GreenQ

From this point forward, the #GreenQ tag will indicate that your Tweet is a question about sustainability or green living and that you’re looking for answers. It is intended as a one-of-a-kind mechanism for organizing the questions we have about green issues while providing a specific channel (via Twitter) through which to listen, respond, and engage. You’ve got questions? The Twittersphere has answers.

The first #GreenQ question will collectively ask, “How do we shift from green hype to green habit?” In other words, how does green go from principle to practice on a global scale?

The event’s mission is to launch the #GreenQ tag by sourcing answers to this question from both the live audience and the Twitter audience in real time and to encourage retweeting (voting for) the most popular responses.

If you’ll be in the LA area on May 9th and would like to attend in person, please email event [at] creativecitizen.com.

If not, then please join us online to start this important conversation. Submit your answers to the above question (How do we shift from green hype to green habit?) via Twitter starting at 7pm PT on Saturday, May 9th. Watch other answers as they stream in, and retweet your favorites. The most retweeted answer wins. Just remember to always include the hashtag #GreenQ (which is not case sensitive) in your replies and retweets.

Prior to the event, we recommend following EcoMonday and all the Tweeps that EcoMonday follows (per the #ecomonday referral hashtag). And please feel free to suggest others in the comments below (Shea Gunther style), while also indicating whether you’ll be able to attend in person or virtually.

We look forward to seeing or Tweeting you there.

The former Commander in Chief appears uniquely suited to this new role.

While covering the 2009 Fortune Green Brainstorm conference, we were fortunate enough to sit next to Greener World Media Chairman and Executive Editor Joel Makower during President Clinton’s closing keynote. Not surprisingly, the speech was quite compelling. Joel offered to us that someone should bestow on Mr. Clinton the title of Eco Geek in Chief. We tend to agree and feel confident in supporting that nomination.

Mr. Clinton has a serious command of the issues and brings the presidential approach to sustainability. He has the ability to see the big picture and understand all of the competing or complementary forces down to the smallest details while simultaneously balancing them and offering both the most realistic and idealistic solutions.

The transition to a sustainable global economy is certain to be disruptive. The impacts and considerations range from the technological and economical to the social, political, cultural, legal, and ethical. Mr. Clinton understands all of these issues and his solutions reflect that.

Above all, he understands that the environmental problem is fundamentally an economic problem.

The most important thing to me … the most important thing you can do … is to prove that the transformation we are all committed to be undertaking is, or can be made to be, good economics. That will do more than anything else to give the United States a good climate bill. –Bill Clinton, Eco Geek in Chief

Celebrating Earth Day and the honorary date of Max Gladwell’s birth.

First, we want to thank everyone across the Max Gladwell network for their warm wishes. Today is Earth Day, a global celebration of the environmental ethos. Not coincidentally, it is also Max Gladwell’s symbolic (some might say spiritual) birthday.

As most hopefully realize, Max Gladwell is a brand. It’s a persona. It represents an ideal and a worldview. This unique positioning was driven in part by the nature of social media and the need for Max Gladwell to engage on that level. We’ve always maintained full transparency on this, though it’s understandable some could be mistaken. (Truth be told, it lets us know which PR flaks don’t actually read the blog when they address their e-mail pitches to Max.)

When we launched MaxGladwell.com on April 2nd, 2008, we built out a network of profiles across the social web including Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, and many (many) more. These profiles often require specific demographic information as part of the terms of service (not to mention ad targeting). You often don’t have the choice but to enter a date of birth. And while we could have chosen any Earth Day for Max Gladwell’s honorary birthday, the inaugural made sense for a several reasons (none of which include appearing young, of course).

It was a conscious choice to position Max Gladwell at the heart of Generation X, which is often defined as those born between 1961 and 1981. This generation came of age during the rise and peak of what we call Environment 1.0. It would also witness its downfall.

The first version of environmentalism was launched on April 22nd, 1970, when 20 million people celebrated the first Earth Day. The environmental movement transitioned out of beta, if you will.

We lived through the founding and creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the extension of the Clean Air Act. Environmental nonprofits quickly proliferated, taking strong positions against the Man as well as the Machine. The overall sentiment was opposition: anti-business and anti-government but also anti-person. This followed in the spirit of the ’60s counterculture and protests against the Vietnam war. That was how things were done. It was how the youth at the time was trained to deal with things that seemed wrong and out of their control. Except that the problem they saw was not an unjust war or civil rights. It was us. We were the problem.

To wit, see this poster from the first Earth Day:

(Pogo via Walt Kelley and Red Green and Blue)

There was clearly some tremendous guilt and self-loathing going on, which can never be productive. And this carried on for the better part of four decades.

The launch of Environment 2.0 occurred sometime toward the middle of this decade. We give partial credit to Adam Werbach, who gave a speech on December 8th, 2004, where he proclaimed that environmentalism was dead. In hindsight, it was just down for maintenance while the new version was being released.

This corresponded with the time when we began to get a true sense for the problems of energy and global warming. We started to grapple with the carbon problem, and we started looking for solutions. We looked to technology and innovation, whether through hard science or information technology, to address these issues. We looked to the market mechanisms of supply and demand, scarcity and abundance, investment and return. The problem was not people. It was carbon. The problem was that we relied on unsustainable systems and that we were allowing pollution to compromise our vital ecosystems. Sure, humans were responsible for all of it. But we weren’t the problem. In fact, we’re the solution.

Generation X (along with the Baby Boomers) has had to go through the process of upgrading their environmental firmware to this next version. For the Millennial Generation, however, it’s their native environment. They are coming of age in Environment 2.0, where people are the solution. Where the virtues of collaboration, transparency, partnerships, and ingenuity are written into the program and where they are more connected to one another (via social media) than any previous generation.

So while Max Gladwell represents Generation X and all we’ve been through, our sensibilities with respect to media and the environment lean much more Millennial.

This is the story behind Max Gladwell’s (B)Earth Day, and we look forward to celebrating it with you every year. Thanks again for your warm wishes. Please know that we appreciate them and that they were not sent in vain.

Photo credit

Day one of the Fortune Green Brainstorm Conference gets right to the point with energy policy, climate change legislation, and an interview with Bill Ford.

The Fortune Green Brainstorm conference could very well be “the premier green business event of 2009.” This hyper-focused leadership conference includes panelists from FedEx, HP, Ford, Dell, IBM, GE, Wal-Mart and many others in the Fortune 100. The title of “Chief Sustainability Officer” appears throughout the program, and the marquis speakers include Van Jones and President Bill Clinton.

By and large, this elite group isn’t here because they’re passionate environmentalists. They’re here because it’s mandatory. They’re here because green encompasses the fundamental business principles of risk management and competitive advantage. It’s a business necessity, and the largest companies have the most at stake when it comes to these uncharted waters. It reflects the clear and growing market for green. Which means that this audience is not here in response to protests or threats but rather demand–demand from their many stakeholders. And that’s precisely how the market should function.

Appropriately enough, the conference kicked off on the topic of climate change and energy policy. The panel ranged from James Rogers of Duke Energy to Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund. The focus was the cost and price of CO2. The discussion centered on the Waxman-Markey bill, which seeks to reduce greenhouse gases by 20% over the next decade primarily through a cap-and-trade scheme. The devil will be in the details, and the panel debated a few of those. The consensus was that legislation would pass by the first quarter of 2010 (before the end of MG01), and that Obama deserved an ‘A’ for his work thus far. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’ll settle for an inefficient solution in cap-and-trade, and we can hardly afford to adopt anything but the most efficient means for reducing CO2 emissions and taking ownership for greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution.

Most economists agree that a carbon tax would be a much more efficient mechanism. By putting a fixed price on CO2 emissions, regardless of the source, it would seamlessly factor the cost of GHG pollution into everything we buy and consume. And the only excuse for not pursuing a carbon tax is that it’s politically untenable. No one wants to be seen as “raising taxes,” yet that’s exactly what cap-and-trade amounts to. So it basically comes down to semantics.

This same issue is playing out in the automotive world with government-mandated efficiency standards aka CAFE. A recent article in Business Week pointed out that the new policies currently being pursued in Congress offer paradoxical loopholes.

The regulations are so complicated as to defy quick or simple remedies. The new (and not necessarily improved) version of the rules classifies vehicles by size and assigns them a specific mileage target. So now, starting in 2011, a big SUV such as the Chevrolet Tahoe will have to hit a relatively tame 21 mpg, while Toyota’s Avalon sedan will have to hit 25 mpg.

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? But say a big SUV misses its target by one mile per gallon. A carmaker could just make the vehicle a bit larger, allowing it to hit an easier fuel economy target. So General Motors may benefit with its new and efficient Chevrolet Cruze compact, due out in a year, because it’s bigger than the car it replaces.

The whole time we’re reading this article, it’s painfully clear that a carbon tax (on gasoline) is the easy solution, and in the final paragraph, the author acknowledges the elephant in the room.

There is a simpler, more effective solution. European countries have reduced oil use by taxing gasoline heavily. Consumers there tend to buy small cars because fuel costs as much as $8 per gallon. Some members of Congress have talked about raising gas taxes in the U.S. But lawmakers need to get reelected, and new taxes are unpopular. So Washington will probably stick with its imperfect fuel economy rules for a long time.

The greatest moment during Bill Ford’s interview at Fortune Green was when he made the business case for raising gas taxes (a carbon tax). His point was that gyrating fuel prices made it impossible to forecast the types of products consumers would want. We’re often critical of automakers for building gas guzzlers. They’re standard response is, “That’s what people want.” But people only want them because gas costs $2/gallon and they can afford to drive them. As we saw last summer, this can quickly and radically change.

Bottom line, he said, it’s preferable to have a fairly predictable, stable planning horizon rather than even cheap gas for the short-term. In other words, if gas is going to be six bucks a gallon in five years, so be it — at least he can plan for it.

The government is clearly not cut out for this stuff. Whether it’s cap-and-trade or CAFE, these overly complicated and even counter-productive schemes are devised for no other reason than as ways to get around a straightforward tax on CO2 (even though these schemes amount to a tax on CO2). If that’s the case, then we have a simple solution.

If the Bush administration can sell this country on an illegal war based on fabricated intelligence, then certainly these masters of Orwellian doublespeak can come up with something better than a carbon tax. More recently, the Obama administration ended the so-called War on Terror by re-casting it as Overseas Contingency Operations. So we’re confident there’s a better way to approach this.

For the “drill, baby, drill” types we might call it the Patriot Tax, and for the treehuggers we could go with an Eco Tax. Either way, it should be levied as far upstream from the consumer as possible. Again, not because it makes a difference but because it won’t appear like a tax on consumers. When it comes to selling wars and passing good policy, it’s often important to remember that perception is, in fact, reality.