Surely leaky pipes aren’t more important than our children. Yet, in America, most plumbers make five times what caregivers do. Author Riane Eisler shows how our economic system, rooted in gender inequality, is failing us. An excerpt from her latest book follows.

An interview with Riane Eisler, author of The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, shows how our current economic systems aren’t solving our problems. If we want to address issues like poverty and environmental devastation, Eisler says, we must realize that the answer isn’t in money; rather, it lies in the “contributions of people and nature.”

An excerpt from The Real Wealth of Nations follows the interview.

Continue reading “Why Do We Pay Our Plumbers More Than Our Caregivers?”

Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest, discusses what he sees as the largest social movement in human history, and why that movement is so invisible to the media — and itself.

Paul Hawken has spent over a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From multimillion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise a movement that has no name, no leader, no location, and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the bottom up. Hawken’s new book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, explores the diversity of the movement, its ideas, strategies and hidden history.

Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist and author. He has been involved in the startup of several businesses, including Erewhon natural foods and Smith & Hawken, the garden and catalog retailer. His six books have been published in more than 50 countries and have sold more than 2 million copies. They include Growing a Business (also a PBS series), The Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism and Blessed Unrest.

Continue reading “Paul Hawken: How to Stop Our Political and Economic Systems From Stealing Our Future”

Lisa Margonelli traveled thousands of miles from her local gas station to oil fields half a world away to try and understand how Americans can buy 10,000 gallons a second without giving it much thought.

Lisa Margonelli traveled thousands of miles from her local gas station to oil fields half a world away. Along the way she stopped at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the New York Mercantile Exchange’s crude oil market, oil fields from Venezuela to Texas, to Chad, and even an Iranian oil platform. I jokingly call her book, Fast Fuel Nation. She calls it Oil on the Brain.

I spoke with Lisa about her book, the economy of gas stations, and how oil money can hurt a developing country like Chad.

Continue reading “America Has Oil on the Brain”

The disease could actually lower the average life expectancy of Americans for the first time in more than a century. According to the CDC, one in three children born in the United States five years ago are expected to become diabetic in their lifetime, and a child found to have Type 2 diabetes at age 10 will see his or her life shortened by 19 years.

”Either we fall apart or we stop this,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. ‘I will go out on a limb,” he said, ”and say, 20 years from now people will look back and say: ‘What were they thinking? They’re in the middle of an epidemic and kids are watching 20,000 hours of commercials for junk food.’ ”

According to the Office of Minority Health and the American Diabetes Association, the threat of diabetes is related to ethnicity and economic class. African Americans are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as non-Hispanic whites. One in every four African-American women over 55 has diabetes. And African Americans are 2.1 times more likely as non-Hispanic whites to die from diabetes.

Similar trends are true for Hispanics who, on average, are 1.7 times as likely to have diabetes as whites, and for American Indians and Alaska Natives, who are 2.2 times as likely as non-Hispanic whites of similar age to have diabetes.

Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes, which accounts for about 90 percent of all diabetics, is pretty clearly a disease of diet and lifestyle. And that’s the good news. According to Neal Barnard, M.D. and founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a change in diet can not only prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes, but can reverse the disease and even get some Type 2 diabetics off insulin.

NEAL BARNARD, M.D., is the author of several books:Eat Right, Live Longer; Food for Life; and his latest, Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes Without Drugs.

Continue reading “How To Solve the Diabetes Epidemic”

Terry McAuliffe, former head of the Democratic National Committee and chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, on the Democratic vision of America and why we have yet to achieve it.

McAuliffe claims he does what he does so the average American can enjoy a chance at the American dream. A self-described Irish storyteller, he’s written a lively book about his political career, the kind an average American can enjoy.

The book, “What a Party,” is a fun read. But I also wonder what Terry McAuliffe has learned in the trenches about why that vision of an America that serves the people has been so difficult to achieve? Why has it been so hard to win elections with that laudable objective? And why so hard to implement when in power? Think universal healthcare.

After years of fundraising for Democrats, McAuliffe chaired the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, then served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005. For the first time the DNC raised more than the RNC — over $535 million.

Continue reading “American Democracy From the Eyes of a Democratic Fundraiser”