Lifestyle Blog | The Barefoot Spirit

Should We Allow Cheap Gas to Kill Alternative Energy Vehicles – Again?

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 19:30:24 +0000

Regardless of how long it lasts, it seems like everyone is thrilled with the current reduction in price of gasoline. But how does that savings stand up to the increasing cost of climate change? One or two super storms could easily wipe out any savings and ultimately increase our taxes for disaster relief. Are we just taking money out of one pocket to put in the other?

Gasoline automobile manufacturers are already heralding the demise of alternative energy vehicles by saying “This is not the time for alternatives.” Sales of gas guzzlers are up again. Are we really that short sighted?

If we truly do price alternatives out of the market, what have we done? Are we making a full-on commitment to go with carbon fueled vehicles until we run out of “cheap” fuel? The President of the United States says we cannot burn up all the hydrocarbon energy that is in the ground without taking the global temperature up 2 degrees Centigrade. The vast majority of the world’s climatologists agree that an increase over 2 degrees Centigrade will result in a runaway greenhouse effect.

In the past few years we have seen fracking take off all over the U.S. Aside from the questions of safety and long-term pollution, there is a greater issue. It’s flooding the market with cheap hydrocarbon fuels. The good news for the U.S. is that it is much less dependent on imports from unstable, dictatorial, or downright adversarial countries. The bad news is that carbon fuel itself is threatening our future no matter how cheap or domestically available it is. In other words, there’s a much bigger issue at stake.

Who wants to face their grandchildren when they ask, “Gee, Grandma, didn’t you realize what carbon fuels where doing to the environment that I now have to live in?” What will we answer? “Gosh, Honey, it was so cheap back then, and we didn’t think it would happen so fast!’’

If cheap carbon fuel puts alternatives out of business, what kind of vehicles will the emerging markets buy? And won’t that just accelerate the process with more exhaust from an ever-increasing number of hydrocarbon burning vehicles? Don’t they have a right to enjoy our standard of living too, even if it accelerates global climate change?

We often hear the argument, “But where are those electric cars getting their power from if not predominately fossil fueled power plants anyway?” That may be true in the short run, but won’t it be easier to produce sustainable electricity than to change all those fossil fuel vehicles?

So, it all comes down to saving alternative energy vehicles by making them more attractive than carbon burners that consume cheap gas. When gas was expensive, alternative energy vehicles had an advantage. If you didn’t invest to save the environment, you might do it to save a few bucks. But in this particular moment in time, gas is cheap, so why spend our good money to protect the environment?

Don’t get us wrong, we are also thrilled with the lower cost of fuel but are very concerned with the implications to the market for the alternatives. We think alternative energy vehicle technology, like other technologies that have improved our lives such as the railroads and the interstate highway system, should be subsidized to at least be price comparative to fossil fuel vehicles. We need this technology to flourish to reduce carbon emissions.

Now that gas is cheaper, isn’t it time to use those savings to keep alternatives alive and well so they will be the choice of the emerging world and a potential savior for our environment?

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Happy Holidays!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 20 Dec 2014 19:30:48 +0000

Well it’s that time of year again when we reach out to friends and family to let them know that they are important to us. It’s even better when we can spend some time with them. We love this time of year because it reminds us that family and friendship is what it’s all about.

During the year, it’s easy to get wrapped up in work, carried away by “making progress,” and becoming so focused that we forget to say, “Hey, you’re important to me” to the people that matter most. But no matter what your faith, the holidays force us to put on the brakes and spend special time with those we love. In fact it’s an institution that is hard to ignore. If it’s not the familiar holiday music, it’s the decorations everywhere. They’re all signaling us that it’s time to get back to basics, it’s time to touch base, and it’s time to be a real human being again. And do it quickly before this year is history!

Thank goodness for this annual reminder! Sure, it always seems like it arrives way too fast and we’re always unprepared. As the clock counts down, we may even feel pressured to visit friends, buy presents for family, and call everyone we can’t see. But wait! Let’s get back to what’s really going on here. We’re being reminded by these holidays to show appreciation for who’s really important to us in our lives.

And if we haven’t connected as much as we would like to during the year, we are reminded that this is our last chance before the year is over. In the process, we are also reminded how busy we have become that we may have inadvertently relegated some important relationships to a lower priority than our work, career or projects. In fact, if it wasn’t for the holidays we may even lose track of some of those important relationships. We ourselves certainly fit into that profile more than we would like to.

But this is what we are all working for; this is what we all have at the end of the day and the end of the year, family and friends. So try not to see it as a chore and don’t feel under pressure. Be grateful that you have some folks that you care for and who care for you. Be grateful that you can spend some time and show them that you truly appreciate the relationship you have with them, even if you don’t express that during the year. As far as business is concerned, it’s OK to hang it up for a while. You have permission to take some time to give and receive appreciation!

We want to take this opportunity to give appreciation to each and every one of our readers, all of the students of entrepreneurship who have listened to us, all of the professors and academicians who have hosted us, and all the organizations that have brought us in to keynote their events over the past year. We wish you all the happiest of holidays and the very best for you and yours for the New Year. And yes, you are important to us!

Happy Holidays!

Michael and Bonnie

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Thanksgiving – A Time to be Thankful for a Culture that Supports Entrepreneurship

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 15 Nov 2014 19:30:39 +0000

We have so much to be thankful for in the United States, and Thanksgiving Day is the perfect time to express our gratitude. The economy appears to be improving, employment seems to be on the upsurge and home values have been on the rise. But there is something else, something that promises to sustain our economy, something unique about us as Americans, for which we all should be thankful. It’s our culture that encourages and supports new businesses to get off the ground and survive.

These new businesses create new jobs, improve our standard of living and extend our very lives. The products and services they provide can be seen all over the world. Other cultures want to know what is it about those Americans that keeps them innovating and improving our world. The answer is it’s our culture of entrepreneurship!

Television shows like Shark Tank and movies like The Social Network celebrate entrepreneurial success. Publications like Entrepreneur, Inc., Fast Company and Forbes keep us on top of the latest real-life challenges and victories of entrepreneurs. Just in the past decade we have seen an explosion in secondary education as school after school focuses on entrepreneurship. Start-up hubs, launch pads and innovation centers are blossoming in every city throughout our great country.

Young people growing up in our society admire entrepreneurship and recognize it as a valid alternative to employment. Many are encouraged to think out of the box and to start their own ventures. Contrast that with the skeptical attitude exhibited in other parts of the world where people are actively discouraged from starting their own businesses.

In those societies, entrepreneurs are seen as people who couldn’t hold down a good job, people who had to seek an alternative means of support, people who took needless risks, and people who failed. They are seen as giving up “all that security” to pursue a sketchy proposition. Failure is seen in many countries as a scar for life, as a situation from which there is no recovery. These people are disrespected and perceived as an embarrassment to their friends and family.

For us, people who take risks are seen as courageous. They mitigate their challenges with imagination, innovation, hard work and tenacity. For us, failure is just a pit stop upon the road to success. When setbacks occur, we cheer entrepreneurs on while other cultures may say, “You are making a big mistake!” We encourage them to pick up the pieces, keep on trying, and when they do succeed, we say, “We knew you could do it!”

Thanksgiving Day is a classic American holiday where we as a nation take the time to reflect on all the things we have to be thankful for. Our culture of support for the entrepreneurial spirit that makes our quality of life possible is also classically American. This year let’s take a moment to appreciate this culture and recommit ourselves to fully support aspiring, struggling, and successful entrepreneurs. It is our support and belief in their success that keeps them going to the benefit of us all. It is their success that creates new jobs, products and services, and helps to keep our country strong. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Halloween – Different Strokes For Different Folks

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 01 Nov 2014 18:30:44 +0000

As we travel throughout the world, it’s interesting to see how different cultures celebrate Halloween. In the U.S. it’s mostly ghosts and goblins, vampires and gore with trick or treat, costumes and parties. In certain Latin American cultures, they have a holiday that occurs the days after Halloween that is more personal and respectful, honoring family and friends who have passed away, even setting a special place for them at the dinner table. The name Halloween refers to “All Hallows Eve,” the night before All Saints Day. Día De Los Murtos (on Nov. 1^st and 2^nd) celebrates the former lives of personal family and friends first, and then celebrating the public saints of the church.

But for us personally, Halloween has an even greater significance. We had hardly known each other for more than an hour when we discovered, much to our surprise, that Bonnie’s mother and Michael’s father were born on the same day of the year: Halloween! Now that’s scary! What are the odds?

Interestingly, they both had similar traits. Both were hard-working, supportive, and practical, and both sported a wry sense of humor.

Bonnie’s mother, Mabel, was a “Rosie the Riveter” when she was 25 during World War II. She welded the Liberty Ships together that provided the backbone of the war effort in the Pacific. She was a salt-of-the-earth type that everybody called “mom.” She was an organic blueberry farmer in the foothills of Oregon’s Mt. Hood. Mabel was big hearted and wise. She had the ability to read people quickly. Her advice was usually on target, and we quickly learned the advantages of following it.

When she contracted emphysema from those years of inhaling acetylene as a welder, we asked her time and again to come and live with us in a dryer climate. We even showed her pictures of her own room at our place, but she wouldn’t budge. Finally, we told her we really needed her help to get Barefoot Wines going – then she was on the next plane. She wanted only to know she was needed. And what a help she was! She planted an organic vegetable garden; she folded T-shirts and packaged signs for our distributers; and she pitched in on all the chores! She even came up with the name Barefoot Bubbly for our sparkling wine!

Michael’s father, John, was an attorney who worked his way up to become the Mayor of Oakland. He was a big supporter of containerized shipping when it was only a concept, and worked with the Mayor of Fukuoka, Japan to pioneer container trade between the two similar port cities. Coincidently, the first container ships were made from mothballed Liberty Ships, the same kind Mable built during the war. This time they took all the rigging above deck off two ships, cut one in half, cut the prow and the stern off the other, inserted the midsection between the two halves and – voila! A long, flat ship ready for containers!

John was the only son of Irish immigrant parents who moved to San Francisco at the turn of the 20^th century. His father was a cop who walked the Mission District, then an Irish ghetto. John put a great value on education and saw to it that his own children got good ones. With regard to customer service, he’d say, “Make up your mind. Do you want to make a statement or do you want to make a deposit?” With regard to good ideas he’d say, “Good ideas are like belly buttons – everybody’s got one. You’ve got to push it to get it going, then you have to run to keep up with it, and nobody has time for two!”

On Halloween we honor our two tenacious and spicy parents whose examples guided us to create a brand that has employed many fine people, supported hundreds of great causes, and provided a hearty laugh or two! Happy Halloween! M&B

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Setting Priorities is Essential to Goal Achievement

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 27 Sep 2014 18:30:20 +0000

With the advent of computers, we began to see icons for everything. All these cute little logos were the same size. Most were for programs and applications, but one was inevitably for settings. Even though the settings button was much more important than any of the other buttons because it could really cause havoc to your computer, it was the same size as the others.

We started to see functions as icons you could click on that would call up your contacts, your email, or your favorite app; but with a similar click to a certain icon of the same size, you can change the way your whole computer works. An entire generation was born into this desktop mentality that “all-the-boxes-are-the same-size.” Has this influenced us in other areas of critical thinking?

In the past, students in English classes had to “diagram” sentences. This was a graphic mapping process which identified the grammatical parts of the sentence like the subject (the actor), the verb (the action), and the predicate noun (the person, place, or thing acted upon). This exercise forced students to think in a cause-effect manner to construct sentences that would be less likely to be misunderstood. It also taught students that the structure of the sentence was essential to effective communication. The structure could determine, like the settings button on the desktop, how the message would be received.

Today we seem take structure for granted and leave it to the programmers and operating system engineers. It’s all done for us, so why bother? But has the convenience of having all this “thinking” done for us, with all the formats already designed, and all the processes already set up, robbed us of an exercise that we used to rely on just to communicate and solve problems? Maybe we need to take another look at how to set priorities.

So the question is, what is more important than what? And how do you prioritize your goals? Sure, given the very top priority we all face, which is the limited amount of time, we could safely say that all goals are based on the time it takes to achieve them, and start there. The basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter – and the requirements to achieve them – further add to the consensus. But after that we begin to get more abstract and personalized in our goals and priorities.

In order to set priorities you must know what has to happen first and why. You must also know what the effect will be on the rest of your goals if what must happen first doesn’t happen. We used to make this point by asking the question, “What’s most important: apples and oranges, peaches and cream, or your pants are on fire?” The correct answer, of course, is peaches and cream, because you’ll need the cream to put your pants out!

But seriously, setting any priority requires a set of standards that you value and apply to the situation. Standards can help you rank your priorities and get the right ones to the top of the list. They can keep you from getting pushed off course by less important interruptions and distractions. With a structure built on standards, you can focus and concentrate on what is most important – and achieve it.

The program engineers, who are doing most of your thinking, have standards and priorities. Shouldn’t you? All the boxes are not the same size. The one called “Standards” is the “settings” button for your priorities.

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Hotels Should Provide Discounts for Water Savers

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 20 Sep 2014 18:30:50 +0000

We do a lot of traveling for our speaking engagements, and lately, no matter what hotel we stay in, we get a notice in the bathroom that says something like, “Please help us conserve water by hanging up the towels you wish to reuse. If you would like them replaced, leave them on the floor.” Then there’s usually another notice in the bedroom that says we can save even more water by keeping the same sheets for the length of our stay, or we can get them changed daily if we want.

These are great opportunities for guests to do their part to reduce the need for water by basically doing what they do at home anyway, use the same towel and sheets for several days instead of getting clean sheets and towels every day. Some hotels say simply that sheets will be changed only if you ask, making the assumption that you don’t mind not having clean sheets every day.

In the restaurants, we are seeing more signs that say drinking water will only be provided upon request. This is an attempt to save the water not only in the glass, but the water necessary to clean the glasses.

We are avid conservationists and laud those guests that make the choice to stick with the same linens for several days and customers who don’t order water if they don’t intend to drink it. But we believe even more folks would make the right choice if the cost of the room was reduced by at least a percentage of the savings to the hotel. After all, it’s not just water that being saved, its labor, power, and maintenance. All these savings now benefit only the hotel. So in effect, when you opt to save water, the hotel saves more money due to your decision than a guest that does not.

We think this is not only unfair, but misses a real opportunity to make a bigger difference in water conservation. For instance, if there was a discount on a room if guests opted to use the same towels and linens for the duration of their stay, would more guests take advantage of the discount? We think so. “Water Conservation Rooms” would reward the guest for doing the right thing instead of charging them the same as heavier water users.

Likewise, discounting for not ordering water at restaurants would give customers a consideration especially when they get water they don’t order and don’t touch. Do you think hotels and restaurants should make money on conservationists, or should they share the dollar savings to really promote good conservation habits?

We are firm believers that if you want to get something done, put a buck on it. In the west where we live we are in the midst of a 4-year drought. If it continues, fines will be levied for water wasters. Already there are restrictions being put in place to regulate water usage. These restrictions and fines are like the “stick.” Isn’t it time we also offered a “carrot?” Folks want to save a buck when they do the right thing. They want their purchase to makes dollars and sense!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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How You Can Help Save the Parks

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 18:30:33 +0000

Not everyone wants to save the parks. In California, voters soundly defeated a measure that, for the cost of a few lattes, would have funded the state parks and granted everyone free access. Why? Because many folks don’t use the parks and they think that users should pay. They also have a feeling of entitlement that says, “I paid my taxes and I should be able to use the parks for free.”

This mentality flies in the face of the reality of maintenance. Just like your home or your car, the cost doesn’t stop at the purchase. Maintenance is so costly in fact that the government alone can no longer afford the upkeep. This has resulted in closures and threats of closures across the country. Here in Sonoma County several state parks that were on the closure list remained open because the few folks who do use the parks banded together, and through a system of non-profit advocacy, took over the management.

One of the larger costs to maintain the parks is refuse disposal. And, we believe this is something every park user can do something about. For over a half century, backpackers and hikers have respected the signs that say, “Pack it in – Pack it out!” From what we have seen, it works! The hiking trails are clean! It’s not uncommon for hikers to pick up someone else’s discarded trash and take it out with them. We do it all the time!

But hikers don’t just take it out. In most cases, they take it home and dispose of it there. What is stopping all visitors to all parks from doing the same thing? Given the much shorter distance from the picnic table to the car, it seems like it would be easier than what the hikers have been doing all these years. Some say that leaving their garbage in the park dumpsters makes a job for someone else, but those same folks seem unwilling to pay for that job.

We have had a hundred years of programming that has stopped us from thinking about our garbage the moment we drop it in that dumpster. It’s almost like it isn’t our garbage any more. But it is, and we can do something about it.

Riverside Park and Central Park in New York are great examples of the increasing number of parks across the country that is challenging our old-school attitudes about trash. They have simply reduced garbage containers and are asking the park users to take their own garbage out with them when they leave. Sure, there are issues with the plan, adjustments to be made, and it will take a lot of education, but in the end it will reduce the parks’ maintenance costs.

Just imagine how much we could all save the parks by simply driving out what we drive in. It’s a seemingly small thing but if it catches on the way the “Pack it in – Pack it out” campaign worked, it will have a huge impact. This summer, we challenge you to start a new, more sensitive and responsible trend to cut the cost of park maintenance, making the parks more sustainable. It doesn’t cost you anything but a return trip to your car. And you were going that direction anyway.

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Find the Good News!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:30:02 +0000

We play a game every morning at our house. It’s called “Find the Good News!” When we read the news of the day over breakfast, we find and share only the stories that are helpful, fun, and positive.

We look for stories of success, solutions, and humanitarianism. Admittedly, some days it’s a real challenge. One time we had to actually resort to reading the advertisements because all the news articles were so negative!

In many ways, we are environmental determinists. That means we believe that you are, to a large degree, influenced by your immediate environment and habitual behaviors. And that’s the good news – because you can do something about those influencers. You can clean up your desk or your backyard, you can paint your room or vacuum your car, and you can listen to classical or heavy metal.

These are all choices that have a physical and psychological effect. All of these and more are environmental choices we make actively or passively. To exhibit control, we must take control. Too often we take our surroundings as a given. It is so easy to get into a routine that puts us in a rut. It can affect the way we think, our outlook, and our emotional attitude.

If you believe, as we do, that like attracts like, you have to consider what the effect daily bombardment of bad news must have on one’s day. If you are looking for good things to happen and expect to see solutions to your challenges, you will be more likely to see them. If you are filled with negative stories, you will be more likely to overlook the good things because you won’t expect them to happen. Even when you are looking a solution right in the face, you might not see it because you don’t believe it’s there. How do we get to that point of negativity where we are actually blinded to what’s right in front of us? We believe it’s the news.

The news is a business like any other. It needs to give the customer (you) a compelling reason to buy it. News editors know “If it bleeds, it reads!” They know that our prehistoric brains are prewired for survival. They know we are always on the lookout for anything that can harm us. They know how to work this psychological defensive mechanism by assaulting you with fear and danger on a daily basis. But what does this do for you, first thing in the morning? Are you more positive and cheerful, more trusting and more expectant for great things to unfold during your day, or does it leave you more cynical and defensive, expecting the worse? You know the answer.

This is part of your environment over which you do have control. So what are you going to do about it? Do you want to saturate yourself with negativity right before you step out the door, or do you want to set the tone for the day on a more positive note? Take charge of those precious few initial hours that can affect your whole day. The news that you need to survive will come to you anyway sooner or later, but for now, try to play the “Find the Good News” game. You will be the winner!

This is not religious or woo-woo. This is a practical, proven way to open your eyes and ears to opportunities that you may otherwise overlook. Not only that, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Ireland’s Killarney National Park is a Nature Lover’s Paradise

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 18:30:15 +0000

We’ve always been hikers and love to discover the true natural environment wherever we travel. We can’t wait get away from the cities and man-made “improvements” and venture off into the real world – on foot!

Perhaps that is why we have always been conservationists at heart and why we have a special love for groups that are trying to save what’s left of the natural world. When we built the Barefoot brand, we chose to support conservation groups nationally and internationally from the Surfrider Foundation to the Sierra Club, from the League to Save Tahoe to the Mono Lake Committee, and from state park foundations to local conservation groups. So, when we were asked to keynote the 2014 World Conference on Entrepreneurship in Ireland, we decided to stay and enjoy some touring and hiking in Ireland’s natural landscape.

In the late 1890s, Michael’s Irish grandmother left her native County Kerry in Ireland for America, never to return. She always told him that if he was ever in Ireland to go straight to County Kerry in South West Ireland. She raved about its peaceful natural beauty. So we ventured down to Kerry after the conference and visited Dingle on the West Coast (a real gem) and then off to Killarney National Park in the Killarney Lake District in the center of the County.

With Ireland’s highest mountains, it is a wonderland of unsurpassed beauty. About 20,000 years ago huge glaciers carved out pristine valleys and left a chain of beautiful lakes. Here and there along the shore you’ll spot a Viking fortress or a 15^th century castle. But beyond the few evidences of our history is a timeless beauty. We saw mountainsides covered with wild purple-blossomed rhododendrons, powerful waterfalls cascading down granite cliffs covered with ferns, and the oldest remaining oak forests in Europe.

The park is big enough (28,000 acres) that you can easily leave behind the abstract, man-made world that we live in. Here is a place where the magic of nature still exists. Today we took the 7-mile hike through the Gap of Dunloe. The trail head is at the end of the highest lake reachable by boat (a beautiful two-hour ride across three of the main lakes). As we began our ascent, we saw the glacial basin expanding out below us with its sparkling blue lakes dotting a carpet of dense green forests. The air is brisk and clean with the fragrance of the ever-present wild flowers. The sky is forever changing from clouds to bright blue with beams of golden sunlight lighting up different sections of the rock faces, meadows, and lakes.

You almost have to pinch yourself to make sure you are not dreaming. But you’re not… this is the real world, not the cities where we spend most of our time. Living in a man-made world it’s easy to forget that places like this actually exist. That’s why we make it a point to go out and discover them as often as we can. We want to remind ourselves why we are committed to preserving our global natural heritage.

Its places like Killarney National Park in Ireland that can make a believer out of the most cynical urbanite and give young people reasons to say what we heard a young Asian tourist exclaim on the trail, “I’m glad I chose to do this today! It makes me happy!” We hope you all have a chance to visit one of our many natural heritage spots this summer and discover what it can do for you!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Earth Day – Put a Buck on It!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 19:00:31 +0000

Automobiles didn’t replace horse-drawn carts because the world suddenly ran out of hay. And alternative clean air vehicles won’t replace fossil-fueled vehicles because we suddenly run out of oil. In fact, due to technology, more oil and gas supplies continue to be discovered and exploited when just a decade ago we thought the end of fossil fuel was in sight.

Even though we are beginning to see the negative effects of man-made climate change, we continue to fill up at the pump! Why? Because we still think it’s cheaper than owning an alternative energy vehicle! We are waiting for the day when clean air vehicles and power generation are cheaper than fossil fuels. Shouldn’t we be looking at the total costs of a tank of gas? Shouldn’t we be measuring miles per dollar instead of miles per gallon?

Super storms, deadly winters, droughts, and generally unseasonable weather are already here. The costs are adding up, and we are paying to repair the damages and higher food prices. Shouldn’t all this be added to the dollars per mile? Just because it comes out of a different pocket, aren’t we all paying for it anyway? So is it really “cheaper” to continue with fossil fuels?

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released its report. Among other warnings, it stated carbon dioxide levels are rising almost twice as fast as they did in the last decades of the 20^th century. Otto Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the committee who wrote the report said, “If we lose another decade, it becomes extremely costly to achieve climate stabilization.”

Sure, we all should be considering the real cost of climate change, but as human nature would have it, we are more concerned with the immediate cost of getting to work, the store, and the vacation. Never mind the down-stream financial consequences (let alone the survival of man as we know it). We somehow think the day of reckoning is still way off in the future. So we continue to wait for a cheaper solution.

How far away is that solution anyway? How much longer do we have to wait until we reach the economic tipping point where alternatives to destructive methods of making power and getting around are more economically desirable?

According to the UN climate report, some alternatives are already cheaper! The cost of wind and solar have dropped dramatically as a result of mass production, government subsidy and tax advantages. It now competes directly with coal, the major culprit in climate change. Hopefully developing countries like China will make the right financial choice for the long run and (finally!) for the short run as well.

What about getting around? Progressive governments have already slapped increased mileage and emission standards on fossil fuel vehicles. However, we are very heartened by last month’s announcement by Elon Musk. He is the founder of electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, and investing billions in the world’s largest battery manufacturing plant which will dramatically reduce the cost of batteries and significantly extend the range of electric vehicles. Bravo!

We all vote with our dollars but we all still look for the most efficient short-term use of those dollars. We are finally at the tipping point where we can begin to satisfy our short-term needs and reduce our long-term costs. Alternatives are getting cheaper all the way around! So now the earth, and everything and everyone on it, has a better chance of having a good future. Use your dollars to vote for a happy Earth Day, everyone!

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