Green Options

Why do athletes train in conditions that are harder than game conditions? Because it makes them better at what they do. Likewise, environmentalists could learn a thing or two from successful activists in countries where the going is harder. In this sense, China makes a great environmentalist training ground. Here, you’ll find both daunting challenges and inspirational environmental activists.

Protip #5: How to create win-win situations and gain popular support

Pan Wenshi was recently featured by the International Herald Tribune for his success working with locals in a small Chinese village to protect the white-headed langur. But it wasn’t until Pan lent a hand to help locals that he began to realize success. After Pan helped a villager to get clean drinking water, the villager freed a langur from a trap and brought the animal to Pan, who learned from the experience. Now, Pan advocates for new schools and health clinics in the area where the langurs live. In return, he gets local support. “When you help the villagers, they would like to help you back,” says Pan. “Now, when outsiders try to trap langurs the locals stop them from coming in.”

Pan’s success grew when he won an environmental award that allowed him to install biogas collectors. The villagers could now cook without the toil of chopping firewood and the langurs benefited by slowed deforestation. Serving the needs of others has allowed the langur population in Pan’s nature reserve to expand from 96 to over 500. “This [serving the human community] is the most important thing we can do,” says Pan. “If the villagers can’t feed themselves, the langurs don’t stand a chance.”

Big news Planetsavekateers, I’m outta here.

I’m leaving Green Options and Planetsave, though not to join Tom and John in their fight against the thetans.

I would like to say it’s to spend more time with my family, but that just makes me sound like a scandal ridden Bush official.

While I probably will get to spend more time with my family now, I’m leaving the company to work on my green home project and a few other side projects. My tenure at Green Options and Planetsave has been one of the most interesting, exciting, and invigorating times I’ve had. It ranks as one of my favorite startups (out of my current total of four) and I’m walking away with a greatly expanded network of friends and contacts, a ton of great experience in green publishing, and an awesome project to jump to.

What would have been called “The GO Home Project” is coming with me. I am buying the entire project from Green Options and taking it independent. I’m still working on a name for it (send it on if you have a good one) and will be building a site for it once that’s nailed down, but we’ll be starting up right away on sheagunther.org.

The short of it is is that me and my family are moving into two tipis to live for a year before building the coolest greenest house on the planet. We have 52 acres in North Yarmouth, Maine; the leading green architect in the state; a partnership with Smart HomeOwner Magazine, and a whole lot of great energy pushing it forward. Both me and my wife Heather will be blogging about living in the tipis and I will be set up in a smaller third tipi as my office. I’m sure I’ll have many a five minute snowshoe commutes to work this winter. We’re going to do our best to create a guide and recorded history of our life and work so as to inspire others to do choose the same green building path.

It’s been a great past year building Green Options and past few months working on the new Planetsave, but I’m super excited about all the fun stuff I’ll be able to take on now that my time is freed up from GO/PS work.

Here’s a few places you’ll be able to follow along on my adventures…

- SheaGunther.org - This is my home site, where I started blogging before I knew what blogging was (back in 2001) and current home of Musings of an Eco-Entrepreneur, the most kickass in-stasis eco-entrepreneur blog on the web. It’s been dormant since we launched Green Options but I’ll be doing a relaunch with a new theme in the next week or two. We’ll be blogging about living in the tipis and I’ll have a separate page for my links/musings drops . If you grew to like my blogs here on Planetsave, you’ll want to head over there.

- Treehugger- Graham Hill was kind enough to set up me up with a writing spot at Treehugger. I have to work out the exact details with their uber editor Michael but I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been a huge fan of Treehugger since back in the day (back in the day in the green blogosphere means two+ years ago) and have always wanted to write there. They have such a great group of editors, writers, and an amazing reach- about 25X more daily readers than what Green Options is pulling these days.

- Yet to be named website for the Green Home Project. We’ will be documenting the crap out of our experience building the coolest greenest house on the planet on our yet to be named website. Sheagunther.org is a good place to go to keep up while I figure out what this new thing will be called.

- Stumblegods.com- It’s not really officially launched yet, but my buddy Michael (editor and founder of Groovy Green, founder and publisher of Ecorazzi, chief editor guy at Ecotality Life) and I will be sharing our insights about the power of StumbleUpon at our new site Stumble Gods. Our thumbs move masses baby.

- Ecotality Life- I’ve been working as a consultant with the awesome and talented Brooke Lowry over at Ecotality on the relaunch of their blog. We’ll be getting Ecotality Life up in the next week, in the meantime check out the current site. Ecotality Life will be relaunched with a focus on green gadgets and green business and investing and should be a good read.

- Email: sheagunther@gmail.com, Skype: shea_gunther

It’s been rad, I’ll miss a lot of the people at Green Options and Planetsave. I’ve gotta give it up to my main man Jan, the founder of Planetsave (he sold it to Green Options this Spring and works on both GO and PS stuff) and pimp dad advertising sales guru man. HIC! He’ll be assisted by the talented Noelle d’Estries (Michael’s sister) who will bring her savvy news sense (have you seen the Green Report, that’s all her) and keen wit to the table trying to fill the void that my voluminous ego will leave behind.

Keep up the good fight. Keep on saving the world.

Amanda Congdon, the famed (and hawt) web video diva, just picked up a news item from Planetsave for her videocast for ABCNews. The second item she covers in her quirky vidcast is my story on the guy who turned down five billion dollars (yes, FIVE BILLION!) from a French uranium mining company who wanted to tear up his ancestral homeland.

Is it me, or does Amanda seem to linger, just a bit, when my name is on the screen. She’s obviously researched who I am and wants to know more.

Amanda, I’m sorry to say that I’m married, and while you are quite fetching, you didn’t make it on my “List“, so any kind of Entourage like hookup is out of the question. Please stop calling.

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Jeremy Hernandez is the man. He was trapped on a tilting school bus in the recent Minnesota bridge collapse with a bunch of kids and rose to the challenge of the chaos by kicking out the back door and leading them all to safety.

The media loves a good hero story and Jeremy has been getting buffeted by accolades, interview requests, and gifts. He’s been offered free tuition at a car repair tech school (he had [...]