Our first interview is with Eric Brown, Communications Director of the Center for a New American Dream, located in Maryland. The Center is dedicated to raising awareness and promoting action with regard to environmentally unsustainable levels of consumption, both personally and internationally. Eric was educated at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served as press secretary/speechwriter to Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, as well as a member of the advance team for the Clinton/Gore campaign in California. He has worked as a political media producer, a television actor and a feature film producer. Eric is responsible for the Center's quarterly newsletter, development of new educational materials, and media outreach.
Lee: Hi Eric. I just took a second look at your website [www.newdream.org]. There's a lot to learn there. You've done a lot of writing in the last couple of years, I guess.
Eric: (Laughs) It's a factory here.
Lee: I even called my co-editor again this morning and told him to go look at it. He's very knowledgeable about these issues. I'm a relative newcomer to environmental activism per se, though I've just finished writing a book on the connection between new kinds of psychotherapy and more macro issues like overpopulation and overconsumption. I'm the proverbial English major still trying to find a common language in which to talk about all these things.
Eric: That's interesting. So are we. We are always trying to speak in terms that people can understand and relate to.
Lee: Well, to give you some structure here, as I mentioned yesterday, this column is called "Simultaneities." The idea is to find people engaged in ongoing projects that attempt to link global and local issues and concerns, and hopefully, have been at it long enough to have some sense of the results of their projects. So, with that very loose structure, just take the lead and tell me what you'd like to tell me about the Center.
Eric: Well, as you know by now, our mission can be summed up by the phrase, "More fun, less stuff." But the non-bumper-sticker version of what we're trying to do is to help people shift and reduce their consumption patterns, to improve their quality of life, and to protect the environment. Two of the themes we're always touching on in terms of how we talk to people and the things we find that people want to understand is that, first, what they do matters. We make this an ability to link our individual consumption patterns, and the things we do as single human beings, to their larger effect on other people, on the planet, and on our communities. The simple fact, of course, is that the choices that we make on a daily basis have an impact. Part two of that is reminding people that they are not alone. That, by working together with other members of the Center, or by thinking of their action in combination with other people making similar changes, they can be effective.
Lee: Right. That's the notion I came to in my interview work for my book: that these habits, which are now clearly bad habits, got formed in a group. They're not going to get reformed outside of a group.
Eric: That's exactly right. So, in order to help people make that connection and close the feedback loop just a little bit, we have recently started a project called Step by Step. It's quite simple in concept. Anyone can go onto the web site and type in their e-mail address to subscribe. It's free. Then every month we send them one thing that they can do. Along with it, we include some small nugget of inspiration, perhaps a poem or a recipe. And then they have something to do. One month it was to exchange a couple of incandescent light bulbs for a CFL. Afterwards, we measured the carbon that had taken out of the atmosphere by adding up the results from all the people who told us that they had changed their light bulbs. Again, this is a very simple concept. But we have to count. We can't just do something and then hope.
Lee: Right. And it helps to feel like you're doing it in tandem.
Eric: Exactly. So by providing measurable feedback to people, they understand that their consumer choices, their lifestyle choices have an impact. And they don't feel so alone.
Lee: When did you start this project?
Eric: We started it last September. Now there are over 7000 people who participate each month. And it's growing, literally by the day. It's international. Our membership is very broad. The organization is only three years old, the number of paying members is already 1200, and we are currently adding about 100 new members a month. About three-quarters of them come in from the website.
Lee: What a great website. I was very impressed.
Eric: We also do a lot of media, so people will call if they saw something in a newspaper or magazine. And once they join, they stay. Our renewal rate is extremely high, over 90%.
Lee: So do you keep a running tally on your project results? Do people keep you informed if they continue to use the energy-efficient light bulbs, for example?
Eric: Exactly.
Lee: And you add that up in terms of your own knowledge.
Eric: Right. We run those numbers. And update them.
Lee: I did manage to get to the air-travel link on your website today. The one that measures the amount of global warming for every flight. I thought that was pretty neat. (Laughs)
Eric: Yes. Unfortunately, airline deregulation was horrible for the environment, because it increased the numbers of takeoffs and landings by producing those hubs at airports.
Lee: Because they got just all that much more competitive?
Eric: Yes. And they ended up defending those hubs as if they were the Maginot Line. The environmental impact? Well, for example, American Airlines runs a lot of flights through Dallas/Fort Worth. To go from New York to Los Angeles, you've got to fly to Dallas; you've got to take off twice. It's become hard to find a nonstop flight of any length at all. It's highly inefficient. You end up flying 8000 miles to get to LA from New York.
Lee: Why do they do it that way?
Eric: Apparently, it works better for the airlines in some way. I'm not entirely certain about the microeconomics of it.
Lee: But it consumes a lot more jet fuel. It's like turning the computer on and off.
Eric: Right. And the other thing is that to go from New York to LA, which is a 3000-mile flight, you've got to fly out of your way. So you end up burning more fuel that way, too.
Lee: Well, maybe it's easier on their personnel.
Eric: Something. Heaven knows. And maybe all the planes come back to one place, where they work on them at night. I mean, there might be some efficiencies, but generally . . .
Lee: This is probably something you run into time and time again, once you start probing. Some internal problem within the organization gets resolved in a way that further degrades the environment.
Eric: Well, let's just say that the costs to the environment are not factored into the bottom line the way they should be.
Lee: They get lost in the shuffle.
Eric: Exactly. Here's another good example: gold mining. Mining gold is one the most damaging things you can do to the environment.
Lee: Really? I didn't even know they were still mining much gold.
Eric: Sure are.
Lee: This is exactly the kind of stuff we need to know. We need to know all of it and (laughs) we need to figure out what to do about it.
Eric: Yeah, and then it's the five-hundred-pound-gorilla. OK, here are some statistics.
Lee: The sad story of gold. (Laughs)
Eric: For every ton of gold the US gold mining industry produces, it disposes of 3 million tons of rock. So gold ore, out of which they extract the gold, actually contains very little gold.
Lee: Right. I sort of knew that.
Eric: To paint a more specific picture, to make an average gold wedding band leaves a pile of rock tailings six feet wide and six feet deep.
Lee: But is that stuff any more useless than it was before they took the gold out of it?
Eric: Well, what they wind up doing is that they dig a big hole, they rip out the gold, and they build a mountain. They just pour it somewhere. The next part is even worse. One of the most popular ways of extracting the gold from the ore is to pour cyanide over it. That's how you extract gold from gold ore.
Lee: Is that the only way?
Eric: No, there's another way, using arsenic, copper, iron, lead and mercury.
Lee: So there are two methods, neither of which is particularly environmentally wonderful.
Eric: Yes. Needless to say, we don't think about that. An example of what can happen recently occurred in Romania. A settling tank holding this cyanide stuff burst, was released into the Danube River, and killed a couple hundred thousand fish, essentially destroying all life for miles and miles.
Lee: Of course, that got a lot of press. [Spoken ironically]
Eric: Yes, it made the front page of the Nothing Times. So, do our consumer decisions affect the environment? Yes! Are there a lot of things that we don't actually necessarily know about? I mean, is it intentional? No!
Lee: Is there a third method of extracting gold from rock that wouldn't produce these results?
Eric: Well, you know what the third method is? You take old gold, melt it down, and make . . .
Lee: You recycle the gold.
Eric: Exactly.
Lee: Yeah, but nobody wants to do that. They want to hoard that stuff.
Eric: But, you know, there's lots of gold. Responsible consumers of gold can have their gold and wear it, too.
Lee: But, again, how do you get this issue to a public policy level? How do you measure its negative environmental impact?
Eric: Obviously, you point at the Danube River and look at all the dead fish.
Lee: But then they say, well, that's their problem, over there.
Eric: But the United States itself does tons of gold mining. Or you can look at our silver mining in Idaho. It's really obvious when you look at some of these highly extractive industries. Coal is another one, cutting the tops of mountains off in West Virginia, and then claiming it's good because they need more flatland for golf courses.
Lee: Has anybody really focused . . . has the EPA focused in on this?
Eric: Yes, the coal thing was a big deal in the last budget. I'm not sure exactly how coal extraction affected the budget, but it was a big fight. It was the EPA, I think, that came down against mountaintop removal, and Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia fought it.
Lee: He did? Robert Byrd, the Democrat?
Eric: Yes. You know, mountain-top removal in West Virginia is . . .
Lee: Equivalent to the establishment.
Eric: Exactly. And to my understanding they are still wrangling on it, but for the time being at least they were able to put a moratorium on certain types of mountaintop removal. You know, they cut off the tops of mountains and then they take all that slag and put it into hollows, the canyons.
Lee: How would you connect some of this stuff to the population? To overpopulation?
Eric: Well, it's very interesting because you can't deal with one issue and not the other, and then say that you've solved the problem. For example, Americans could reduce their consumption by drastic amounts, but if the population continues to grow at unsustainable rates, at more than the replacement rate, then . . .
Lee: It will make up for it.
Eric: It's not going to make up for it.
Lee: Yeah, everything that they do will be erased.
Eric: Absorbed . . .
Lee: By more people.
Eric: . . . by the expanding population.
Lee: Right.
Eric: And so you have to talk about both issues. My favorite population line comes from Bob Engelman, our board chair, who is also with Population Action International. "Every child a wanted, planned child." If we could achieve that, we would not have a population problem.
Lee: But you still might have an overconsumption problem.
Eric: Yes; that doesn't deal with the consumption problem. But from a population standpoint, that comment very elegantly skirts the hot-button issue of birth control.
Lee: But does it? Not if people think that implies you need birth control to achieve that goal.
Eric: Well, it allows those who are opposed to birth control to approach the question of overpopulation from a productive sense of their own values.
Lee: But for a lot of them, that means they're left with the rhythm method or something.
Eric: Or abstinence. Yes, that's true.
Lee: I'm not sure, when you get right down to practical realities, that we can avoid birth control.
Eric: No, I would agree with you. However, population is such a controversial subject.
Lee: I know.
Eric: We did an online conversation on it that Bob Engelman moderated last summer. My goodness! It was…
Lee: I'll bet you got every wired religious person in the county jumping in.
Eric: Fur flew. Because there is just not any consensus on it. Consumption, however, is a different animal. I don't think there are too many people who think that Americans are underconsuming. Nor do they think that the driver of consumption, which is to say commercialism, is not well enough developed. They think that we live in a noisy, fast-paced, overconsumptive society in general. And, more specifically, I think people will also even come to admit that they're probably too deep in debt, that they're working too hard, that they're too stressed out. And that they, when push came to shove, would trade some of that money and those material things for more free time to do the things that really matter to them. So, on this issue we have a really broad consensus.
Lee: Yes. What I'm trying to do in my other column here this month is to draw a connection between growing the population, and growing everything else. Expanding our economy, expanding our consumerism, expanding our families. It all can be subsumed perhaps under a general cultural urge to expand everything.
Eric: Right. I think, though, from an American standpoint—and I'm no population expert—that we are at least moderating our population . . . I'll call them "desires."
Lee: Yes.
Eric: That our society is changing its view toward smaller families. It used to be obviously an unalloyed good that you would have a large family. There was the presumption that you could afford to live like that, and having kids was not seen from a purely financial perspective. But that our society, our quality of life, allowed us the time to spend with our kids. You know, one function—maybe it's an odd irony—of our overworked, overstressed lifestyle is that a lot of families presently don't have time to have any more children. Now, if people were to slow down, work less and enjoy life more, would they then want to have more children? I don't know. I think that in one sense we have adopted a more manageable population in the US. Even though we still have the fastest growing population of any developed country, the rate of growth is certainly slower than it used to be. And I think that this new appreciation of the value of a moderately sized family is going to persist. So, if can learn to manage consumption, we'll find we've got more free time and more money, and have better quality time to spend with our kids.
Lee: Um-hmm. I was also very impressed by your publications, and by the amount of informative material you make available online. What's the difference between your quarterly publication, Enough, and the e-mail two-pager, "In Balance?"
Eric: "In Balance" is geared primarily toward organizations, but also active individuals who want to know what is happening in the sustainability world. What we will do is profile one person who's been a driving force on the issue writ large, from environment to culture to quality of life. We also talk about things that are in the news, campaigns that are going on, as well as job openings and things like that. It is somewhat of an insider sheet. Here's what's happening, here are the areas that, if you are in an organization, you may want to focus on. Or, that if you are an interested individual, you should pay attention to.
Now, Enough is a 60-page two-color newsletter. It usually has three feature articles, and lots of practical tips on ways individuals can change their consumption patterns. We usually also have one environmental news item, summarizing or otherwise better explaining something that's going on in the news. We also print excerpts from our online conversations.
Lee: Just an incredible amount of work. Congratulations! I've only begun to cover what's already available on your web site, but I did manage to read a bit about your campaign with Coca-Cola. Can we do a quick synopsis of what the issue with Coke was? Because that sounds like a really substantial project.
Eric: Sure. Well, Coke has acknowledged the fact that there's a need to drive a market for post-consumer plastics to make up a higher content of Coke bottles. That's good. And they made certain pledges to drive up the percentage of post-consumer plastic in their bottling systems. But they've failed to meet their schedule and timetable. This is something that doesn't necessarily get on most consumers' radar screens. When you pick up that plastic bottle at the store . . .
Lee: Yeah. If I'm a Coke drinker, I'm just thinking something like, "Gee, this is nicer than the metal."
Eric: Yeah, exactly. But they said they were going to do this, and they haven't done it. And lot a groups got together. This is the coalition of groups that is urging consumers, in one way or the other, to let Coke know that they're paying attention. And there are a variety of options that consumers can choose from. One is to send a letter to Coke saying, "Hey guys, get with the program." The other is to be a little more obvious and to mail your plastic bottle back to Coke. So, we got a phone call from Coke saying, "Why did you do this?" And our response was pretty straightforward. "You said you were going to do something. You didn't do it." As an organization, people look to us for leadership and some guidance. People don't necessarily have the time or the resources to devote to researching every last company and what its practices are.
Early on in our organization's existence, we put Monsanto on the record, when they said that they wanted to promote environmental sustainability. But as they continued to develop and lobby for genetically modified crops, as opposed to nongenetically modified ones, and to build these terminator seeds . . .
Lee: What are they?
Eric: Terminator seeds are seeds that don't reproduce, so you have to buy new ones every year, as opposed to saving seeds from the previous year. Obviously, in poor countries this extremely expensive. So, you know, we took a lot of flak for saying, "Let's give Monsanto a chance." But then, when it appeared that they were moving in two directions at once, we called them on it. Now, on the other hand, if Coke, for example, were to drive up its post-consumer recycled content and meet the goals and timetables they originally set, we would be the first ones to applaud them. But if we say nothing when they fail to do so, we lose our ability to help them do the right thing in the future. We have to be honest. If we are not, then we lose our ability to be useful to people.
Lee: Was it Monsanto I heard that did some training with the World Game Institute? Or was it Motorola? I'm not sure which.
Eric: It's certainly possible. But while Monsanto is trying to be a "green actor," and devise production practices that are more environmentally sustainable, and we applaud that, the things that they produce tend to discount or more than offset the environmental benefits of their structural changes.
Lee: And this may not be immediately apparent. You may have to watch them for a while.
Eric: Absolutely. And they are definitely on the watch list for virtually every environmental organization. So, on one hand, they are trying to do things like the World Game, and promote environmentally responsible practices, and on the other they're making these kinds of products.
Lee: My co-editor's general notion about corporations is that they have a tendency to paint themselves a rosy environmental picture and then still keep on doing the same old thing.
Eric: Well, you know, I think Webster's Dictionary has now introduced the word "greenwashing" as a part of the official lexicon. And it's about time.
Lee: I think I read that Coke's Australia operation was able to do this sort of recycling there and do it well and profitably. So it isn't impossible.
Eric: Right.
Lee: It's just that they've reneged on it in the States.
Eric: Right.
Lee: Is there a way that an organization like yours can actually get into that Australian operation and find out how they were able to pull it off?
Eric: Well, one would imagine that the right hand and the left hand should have come together and had a meeting.
Lee: But if they don't, and the reason remains a mystery, then it pretty much keeps us from figuring out why, or how they did it.
Eric: The best thing we can do is educate people and to encourage them to express themselves. There is nothing worse for business than this sort of thing. Coke has already had a bad time this year. They've had to make a huge recall in Belgium, due to dioxin contamination. They don't need any more bad will, or any publicity charging them with some irresponsible practice.
Lee: You would think that would make them even more motivated to go along with the recycling idea. But maybe the economies of scale are different in Australia. Who knows? That's the thing. If we can't find out the difference and how Australia was able to pull it off . . .
Eric: You could also suggest that environmental awareness in Australia might well have driven Coke Australia to speed up the change.
Lee: Even if it meant taking a loss?
Eric: No, the other thing is that in the long run a lot of these recycling efforts will prove to be profitable. To produce a new bottle, you have to use oil.
Lee: Of course, that's what Buckminster Fuller, the guiding spirit behind the World Game, said the long-term result of all such efforts would be.
Eric: Right. And that's what, today, Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute, in their new book, Natural Capitalism, argue.
Lee: That synergy argument.
Eric: Exactly. Why we have to drill for oil, defend it . . . you know.
Lee: But in the meantime, people are going to have to give up some yachts, I think, maybe. And therein lies the rub. (Laughs) I mean, Bob Reich said the same thing in his book, The Work of Nations. So, it's been said.
Eric: But, you know, once Coke figures out how to use the recycled product, then they're not going to have to buy the petroleum anymore to produce these new bottles out of virgin material. And once you can close that loop, you can save yourself a lot of time, hassle, money, and you can do a lot of environmental good as well. It's a kind of culture, a corporate culture that is evolving, it is definitely evolving, but it ain't there yet.
Lee: At this point, it's still an alternative corporate culture.
Eric: Yes. But companies are starting to change. They're getting better.
Lee: If you had to throw out a rough percentage of the corporate culture that this is now happening in . . .
Eric: Well, let's just say that there are probably not that many corporations that don't at least dedicate some aspect of their operation to exploring and developing alternative ways of producing their products that are cheaper and more environmentally sustainable.
Lee: To what extent do you think that's just PR, and to what extent do you think that they're earnestly . . .
Eric: I think that they're dipping their toe in the water.
Lee: And in a sincere way.
Eric: Yes. I've spoken to people from McDonalds and British Petroleum and Patagonia, and some of them are a lot better at it than others. But the environmental officers of these corporations are sincere. They want to do better. Now, they are often struggling against their own organization's entrenched ways of doing things.
Lee: To what extent do you think some of these people are pawns that are being used as fronts for the other people? These are the cynical kinds of questions that my co-editor raises.
Eric: I would be willing to say that each one of these environmental officers felt really happy about going to work every single day. They know what they're up against, even within their own organizations. On the other hand, these people will be their saviors, and the corporations don't necessarily always know that. But the companies that are doing business the old way will fail. The companies that are doing business the new way will succeed, because of the . . .
Lee: The ecological realities in the world.
Eric: Now, the question is, at what point are we going to have to make those changes . . .
Lee: And how painfully . . .
Eric: Before it's too late, or after it's too late (laughs). And how much of the environment will we have to go through before people come to these realizations?
Lee: Right.
Eric: And the other thing is, what's going to really motivate these changes? Our sense is that, you know, you've got the carrot and you've got the stick. The carrot is the consumer world where people are clamoring for "the good," and the stick is the policy arm that is punishing the bad—and these two things kind of go together. I mean, we want people to put a positive consumer pressure on alternative products, like organic food for example, or other products that are made that are environmentally sustainable. And at the same time you really want to help drive these companies to do the right thing by having that same populace be supportive of policies that, again, reward the good and punish the bad.
Lee: Are you talking about the corporate people or the consumers in this case, or both?
Eric: I'm talking about federal, state and local governments putting into place policies that essentially bring the environmental cost of the things we produce into line with their true cost, their financial cost. The fact that we pay so little for gasoline is a great example.
Lee: Do you think that that's happening in any way, shape or form independently of politics? Or do you think that politics is increasingly dependent on big business?
Eric: Obviously, the corporate lobbies are extremely powerful. But consumers have a lot more power than they generally give themselves credit for. As we say, "what you do matters" and "we're all in this together."
Lee: So, in a sense you could broaden your definition of consumerism to include the political process as well. You can lobby directly, or you can influence through what you buy.
Eric: Absolutely. I used to work on Capitol Hill. If we got a thousand letters on a bill that weren't all postcards stamped by some assembly line or lobbying firm, and that seemed to come from constituents we knew had energy and enthusiasm, it moved us.
Lee: Of course, you were probably working for Democrats.
Eric: Well, I was. But there were a couple of down-the-middle votes that affected consumers in different ways.
Lee: Did you get some liberal Republicans . . . are there any more liberal Republicans? (Laughs)
Eric: There are a couple, and they live in New Hampshire and Vermont. (Laughs) And in New York you have the so-called social liberal fiscal conservatives.
Lee: No surprise, I guess, that Hillary Clinton wound up there.
Eric: Right. But the fact is that people don't realize that they have a lot more influence than they give themselves credit for. If a constituent called and wanted to come and meet with the congresswoman, we did everything we could to facilitate that. It wasn't always possible. And lobbyists are really good at getting meetings with members of Congress. But, for example, a school group came up from the district to see the congresswoman. They got in, because it mattered. And I may be pilloried for saying this, but I believe that most members of Congress are well meaning, conscientious, hard-working individuals who want to do the right thing.
Lee: I just lobbied for the first time at the state level, and I heard the same. These are mainly regular people trying to do a good job.
Eric: They want to do the right thing. I worked on the inside for a year and I saw all the stuff that goes on in Washington, and still have an abiding respect for the members, and for the system.
Lee: If not for their outmoded superstitions and bad habits. That's why I think you do at some point have to bring the psychological aspect of our inability to make these otherwise increasingly obvious, necessary changes . . .
Eric: Well, I'm no stone thrower. We are all human beings here.
Lee: Oh, no, I agree. We've all got these strong tendencies to cling to what's most familiar to us, even in the face of otherwise irrefutable evidence that we should let go of it.
Eric: But, you know, it's depressing to me in a sense that it's easy to blame Congress or blame Washington. That whole business about Washington insiders being the problem is really a lot of demagoguery in my perception.
Lee: You mean, outside people trying to gain a following by attacking the insiders.
Eric: Exactly. It's a lot of populist demagoguery. And I think we ought to be encouraging our children and our communities to participate in the political process. And to run for office and to try and make changes. For example, the Democrats have done really well on international family planning, and they've gotten nothing but grief for it. Every year the Republicans attach this so-called Mexico-City language [the "global gag rule"] that prevents funding for international family planning groups that provide birth control information or abortion counseling or that stuff. And then there's a huge floor fight. Nancy Pelosi, a Representative from San Francisco, has been great on this issue. She understands population. She sees it as a women's rights issue as well as a population issue. Not everyone is able to make the link between population, consumption, quality of life and the environment. I mean, that's a long string.
Lee: Right.
Eric: But the Democrats go to the mat every mat every year on this. And I don't think the general public is aware of these battles that go on on their behalf. I assume the population community, at least in Washington, knows what Nancy Pelosi has been doing.
Lee: ZPG National. And the Sierra Club in Washington.
Eric: And Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut. She's been just stellar up there, trying to get funding from a hostile Congress for international family planning. The President made it a dealbreaker time and again. Now they weakened the language this year.
Lee: They got the gag order in. (They agreed to pay our our outstanding United Nations dues in return for coming down hard on centers that counseled abortion around the world.)
Eric: Exactly.
Lee: And I wonder. If we are going to do a two-part interview with you, it would be a great follow-up to this one if your Center's director, Betsy Taylor, would be willing to chat with us. We want to know exactly what happened at that Cairo conference on population, and how a lot of what's going on now in this area relates to women's issues.
Eric: I'm sure she would be more than happy to do that.
Lee: That would be just terrific. Very exciting stuff. I'm so happy to have found you.
Eric: I tell you, it's fun to come to work. We're not daunted. We know what we are up against, but we also know that we are right.
Lee: Yes.
Eric: And when we make a difference in people's lives, we hear about it. The work is important, necessary, and achievable. Now, that may sound like a Pollyana approach . . .
Lee: I don't think so. We know that this work for change is going to be tremendously difficult. And the more you study it, psychologically and ecologically, the more you know why it's going to be difficult. But nothing shakes that essential foundation of truth, as far as I can tell.
Eric: Yes. I don't know anyone out there who wants to have more stuff and less fun.
Lee: And that's such a great approach.
Eric: And obviously, quality of life and personal issues are a motivating fact for so many people. And they don't necessarily think about their connection to the environment.
Lee: But, if people aren't happy, then beating out the Joneses is their substitute for that happiness.
Eric: Right.
Lee: That's where the psychology comes in, because the psychological stuff I've been learning about essentially says that this is never going to make anybody happy, and here's why. Here are the psychological roots, and so forth.
Eric: Right. And we're seeing it. We get extraordinary feedback from people who have make this switch. They have cut back on their work and their consumption, they have decided to stay in a house that meets their needs but doesn't exceed them. They have experienced the benefits in terms of more free time, connection with people, and an understanding that they are playing a real part in protecting the environment. And they would never go back.
Lee: Absolutely. Eric, thanks so much for speaking with us. I hope this is the beginning of a great, mutually rewarding connection.
Eric: I know it will be.