 Please join me in welcoming Adam Warbach of Yerdel, Joel McHauer of Green Biz, Nikki Silvestri of Green For All, and Vien Trong of the Green Lining Institute to the stage. Good morning everyone. Morning. Come on. Morning Joel. Morning. This is all about sharing. So my colleagues and I at Green Biz spent a lot of time looking at this world of green business from the world's biggest companies to the world's smallest. And one of the measures we think about in terms of looking at what they're doing, because everybody's claiming to have some green story to tell, two simple things. Are they moving the needle on some of the world's biggest environmental issues? If everybody did what they what they're doing or claiming they're doing, would it actually make a difference? And are they changing lives, and how are they improving changing lives? And I want to talk about that, particularly the second of those today, because there's been so much talk around the sharing economy and inclusiveness. And the reality is, is that it's not that inclusive. And so we want to talk about how do we include, how does the sharing economy broaden the access, as we love the word we love to use, to a community that, to be blunt, looks a little bit different than the people in this room. With all due respect to the diversity we have here on stage. And how does this, is there an opportunity for the sharing economy to create a new environmentalism, a new more inclusive environmentalism that includes communities of low income, communities of color, and people who aren't yet part of it, frankly. And so I want to talk about this opportunity. Is there, you know, can the sharing economy give rise to a new environmentalism? And I want to start off this conversation, basically, asking each of you, what if anything is wrong with the old environmentalism? Vian, let's start with you. Sure. It's going to joke like, oh, it's Dale. You know, I think first we have to understand that the old environmentalism isn't quite gone. And we should start a little bit with understanding the waves of environmentalism. First we started with conservation and it was around protecting the lands and the forest. John Muir was exemplified in that. Then we had regulation, which is around protecting us from the corporate and industry pollution and our water and our lands. We're in this new wave of environmentalism that is focusing on how do we marry the economy with people? How do we make sure it's inclusive, not only of people at large, but also the people who are underserved, marginalized historically. So what's wrong with the old environmentalism? I don't think it was wrong. We still need conservation. We still need regulation. But what we also need is to make sure it's thinking about the people as the economy is growing. Sure. I think it'll be helpful in context here to talk a little bit about what you do with the Green Lining Institute is. I'm sure people are familiar with it and what work that you're doing, just at the high level, we'll get more into it a little bit later around expanding this access and opportunity. Very quickly, Green Lining Institute represents the people of color in California. We include in our coalition all the ethnic media outlets, the major ethnic chambers, so Black, Brown and Asian. We represent health organizations, civil rights leaders. We are working to solve red lining. So banks back in the day, they use a red marker around the areas they won't lend into. And that's the area that we're trying to serve. And we're saying instead of redlining it, we're going to bring the resources there. So Adam, you back about 18 years ago were were plucked by David Brower to handpicked. I think the word was by David Brower to run the Sierra Club at the ripe old age of about 12, I think, no, 23. And so you were part of that, that, that old environmentalism. If you will, the Sierra Club is actually, I think the or one of the oldest environmental groups out there. How do you view, you know, where it where we are in terms of what's wrong with the old environmental do we need a new one. Well, what's wrong with the world environmentalism is that we're not achieving our mission. Climate change is what's wrong with the old environmentalism. You know, we woke up to news this week of the Thwaites Glacier and the West Antarctic ice shelf beginning its inevitable demise into the ocean. That one, I sure the ice glacier, the Thwaites is represents two feet of of ocean rise, which is, you know, if you're an environmentalist, your job is to protect the world so that culture can thrive upon it. Then you're not doing a very good job. We are not doing a very good job at that. The critiques I've had of the environmental movement. Although I have to say had our in many ways have been responded to the environmental movement right now is much more focused on climate change. It is much more focused on grassroots organizing is much more focused on community organizing. But in the end, we're not hitting job number one, which is that we are not a bulwark against climate change. Nikki, you've been part of this for a long time working with Van Jones now running green for all. What's your perspective on and working very closely with communities and before that you ran People's Grocery in West Oakland. And so you've been at the front lines working with communities. What do you see? How do they relate to environmentalism now? You know, I think that it's hard for me to conceive of wrong because really what I see are gaps, right? The history of the environmental movement didn't incorporate a ton of history of the people who lived on this land, right? Conservation came at the expense of taking that land away from native peoples who actually were living on the land in harmony. Native Americans didn't just say wilderness, wilderness, go. They actually cut trees, they garden, they did a lot of shaping of the environment. But in a way that was actually in harmony, their economies were also really set. So I feel like a lot of the history of the environmental movement has been to submerge a lot of the solutions that we already have because people of color and low income people aren't represented in those histories. And so one of the fears that I have is that with the sharing economy the same thing will happen, right? There will be a whole set of histories and solutions and assets that will be ignored because mainstream society doesn't actually acknowledge them or know how to recognize them when we see them, right? The African American community. So I feel like with environmentalism the gap right now is that we actually need to acknowledge that we have assets, we have solutions, we have a way to accomplish our goals if we actually look at the whole pool of people that can work on these issues and the whole pool of histories and wisdom that's come to the table. One of the things that struck me about the sharing economy is that almost none of the companies, and yours is exceptional, we'll get to that in a second, really self-identifies as environmental. They certainly don't lead with it and I don't think Yerdel leads with it either. And on the other hand, the environmental community and the clean tech community all embraces the sharing economy as its own. So there's a little bit of a disconnect there. Do you see this? I'll start with you, Adam, because Yerdel, which I'd love you to talk a little bit about and give a pitch on that, you know, you come from the environmental movement, the environmental business, environmental grassroots, and now you are in a grassroots environmental business. Why don't you see that disconnect in terms of being or not being environmental or not talking about it? Sure. Well, so Yerdel is a store, a community where you give and get things for free. We launched now almost two years ago on Black Friday and it's growing about a thousand new people a day, join thousands of items, move every week. The type of things that move are like my son's baseball bat, kitchen stuff like blenders and coffee makers, printers, not printers for your kitchen, but printers. So household goods, the type of things that Americans buy and don't use. Eighty percent of the things that we have in our homes, the sort of durable goods we don't use more often than once a month. Self storage in the United States has gone up by a thousand percent. There's just a lot of stuff. And our job is to basically take about a quarter of that, a quarter of the new things that we all buy and replace them and basically say you don't need to buy it because you can just get it from friends. You can get it from people down the street. You can get it from people across the country by putting together a network to make that happen. The question you asked was, so why doesn't it say the green thing that you should do today is Yerdel something, the green thing you should do is that? Because that's basically not the behavior we're trying to attack. We're trying to attack the behavior that goes to Amazon and says I need a blender and that's the first place you go. You don't think about what might be sitting in a friend's neighborhood or garage. And what's sort of crazy is that today with this amazing production system and technology system, it is cheaper, faster and easier to get something new than it is to go next door and get the same thing that's sitting unused, which is absolutely incredible, taking box site from Australia and sending it all around the world. So why don't we call it green first? Well, basically I think we just need to first provide a service that works. First and foremost, are we saving people money? Are we quick and fast and getting them what they want? Can we beat an Amazon.com in terms of service selection and price? Can we do that? If we do that, then all the other things come along. And when we ask people, do you think this is a green activity? It's like, of course. Yeah, absolutely. This is environments. This is the way that I do my environmental activity. But we don't need to tell them that because that would be sort of silly. Yeah, Long said that green succeeds only to the extent that it equals better. However that's defined. Well, you used to talk about the, and I love this metaphor about the compact fluorescent light bulb for a long time. Well, you had a beautiful essay about failed environmental technologies in the 80s and 90s, and we adopted them because they were the right thing to do. So you have that squiggly bulb that would have this sort of terrible yellow light and would blink out and die and still cost 10 bucks. And we would do it because it was the right thing to do. But we can't be a squiggly bulb. We have to be a better bulb that has great light that costs less money. Yeah, and so many of the things that are better happened to have environmental benefits like that. I always say Steve Jobs did not invent iTunes because the world was running out of polycarbonates to make CDs. It was a better technology that happens to have huge dematerialization and energy water savings. Nicky, we've talked about how the sharing economy works or maybe doesn't work as well in the hood, in West Oakland in particular we talked about. So, T said out a little bit about what you're seeing with say car sharing. And, you know, it does zip car or ride share, any of the ride share groups, Lyft or Uber, anything work in the inner city. Yeah, so I think something that is very clear, a clear way to talk about that is that yesterday morning there was a panel on who is in the sharing economy, who participates in it, who benefits from it. And one of the panelists mentioned the fact that when they looked at users in Airbnb and who performed the best and who performed the poorest, the best performers in Airbnb are white women because they're trustworthy. You know, if you're anywhere concerned about staying with a man, you can stay with a woman. And the poorest performers in Airbnb were black men. And so I think that there are issues of perception, there are issues of class and race and stereotypes and fear and prejudice, all of the things that we all carry. And I think when you're talking about stranger to stranger connections, these things will replicate in these systems on the one hand. On the other hand, when it comes to inner city communities, I mean, just coming from my own background, African Americans, we had to share. You know, we shared back in the day when it comes to just post slavery because the white folks ain't give us nothing. So if this family had one cup of sugar, we had to figure out how to make sure this one cup of sugar got to all 12 families on the block. Because your daddy's share cropping and he's growing this and my daddy's share cropping and he's growing this and so we have to figure out how to exchange. It was share cropping after all. It was. It was share cropping. And so I think that there are ways that communities of color and low income communities have shared that hasn't been the stranger to stranger connection for hundreds of years. And this is the fabric of what most communities are built on. And so I think a curiosity that I have is if I go to the hood and I have a conversation with someone that's I'm not lending no stranger my car because I don't know you and I'm not about to give you a ride somewhere. Well, I don't know where you come from. I don't know your daddy. I don't know nothing about you. Right. And I damn sure ain't inviting you up into my home with my babies if I don't know who you are. Right. There's just there's a I and I don't think that that is trite and I don't think that that is trivial because when you're in survival mode. You experience other people who take from you not because they're bad people but because they don't have because if you're trying to feed your babies you actually will do whatever it takes to feed your babies. So there's just an inherent difference in life experience in lived experience when it comes to what it is to live in survival mode versus what it is to be a person who's middle class who's had the experience of trust and reciprocity over and over and over again that teaches you that stranger peer to peer networks actually work and benefit you. So how does that happen and how do people how do people actually you know in the interstate. Let's just talk about people using their vehicles and their homes and other things for to make a buck and to provide access to their to their neighbors friends family. Is it a different model is a different technology. Is it a different branding. What's needed. That is a big question that I have because the sharing that I do see happening is that if you know someone face to face and if you know their parents if you know their children that the trust is developed because you actually see them touch them talk to them know them right because if I look you in the eye you might not come and take my shit basically. And so that the sharing that's facilitated in the inner city that I see is mostly facilitated by direct person to person relationships. And I think I have a curiosity about the connection between the types of sharing that happen in those communities that I do see that are face to face connections and how a tech platform can sit on top of that to facilitate those kind of direct face to face connections. When it seems like the sharing economy is built on very large networks of strangers who are able to exchange based on ratings systems and that kind of thing. And so there does feel like there is a gap in experiences and a gap in technology there's there's gaps in certain places and I am not sure how to bridge that but I know it can be bridged and what feels important to me is that that gap when it comes to this is the way this community does it and this is the way this community does it that's why environmentalism looks the way that it looks today because things like that aren't harnessed and things like that aren't solved when something new happens. And so then you get the replicated systems of race and class that separate us and the sharing economy at this point is new enough to where if we figure out how to solve this problem early all of us can actually participate. Yeah there's talk about how you see this at the Green Line Institute in terms of what work you're doing in the sharing economy and how you view some of these issues that Nikki's talking about. Yeah I so appreciate the things that Nikki talked about because they are important and they are core to how we actually continue to support the share economy from growing to grow and one of the things that we do we do a lot of policy I do I'm a wonk and sorry that was embarrassing I admit about on stage. You're among friends it's OK. Thank you thank you. One of the things we do is work on policy and we can pass and we were looking at electric vehicles as a great technology zero emission tailpipe out of your tailpipes but it only can be affordable by people who live in affluent communities people who have disposable incomes right because it's new technology is quite expensive. So one of the things that we figured out is how do we actually make it more equitable and accessible. We created a program if we were passing along now in the state of California that will put about 10 million dollars into pilot car shares and van pools for migrant farm workers in the Central Valley and then car shares for low income communities for electric cars for people who cannot afford a car can I get access to a car. This is a way for them to be able to use it without spewing more emission and more pollution into their communities. And so you know as the community is building as the share economy is building as we're dealing with the issues of trust in our communities. This is a way that we can begin pilot programs so that you can meet the other folks in your van pool. You can meet other folks who are in the car share and you can begin to build that trust because I don't think it's either or it's not like I trust somebody and don't trust somebody. It's gradations also of trust. We're hoping to facilitate that. And who does it. Who organizes it. Is it happening at the neighborhood level. Is it a city organizing is the Greenlining Institute organizing those a little bit of everything. We now are in the business of passing the policy first so that we're supporting folks like city car share zip cars or whoever can develop this program. We don't have interest in that. But then afterwards we want to make sure that low income communities and migrant farm workers are really participating in using that. I do want to touch later on the question you raised around how wide businesses are not branding themselves as green but circle. Well I think it's a missed opportunity. And you know I know that sometimes your business model is more focused on community and sharing. But there's a lot of money out there for green businesses these days. And as startups trying to figure out the share economy and how to build and be sustainable. There's a lot of investors looking at green companies and how to support that as well as public investments. And so yesterday California's budget got revised and got released. Part of that budget is eight hundred and fifty million dollars in cap and trade revenues. So another law that my organization helped to pass is requiring that a quarter of that eight hundred and fifty million dollars goes to benefiting disadvantaged communities that are the poorest and most polluted in California. Can you be specific about what that's going to do what the money is going to be used for. That money is going to be used for everything from renewable energies or solar panels to energy efficiency to clean technology the electric vehicle car share programs bringing up electrifying our ports our bus systems creating transit oriented development affordable housing. So things that across the board we need. And if your company is positioning itself as a green company then it is more likely to be able to receive these public dollars. So I think there's a possibility for that to happen. So what are the barriers. What's needed here. Here's this the people who are making this who invented this world and are inventing it every day. What's needed. What do you want to see from them. Is it you talk about technology a little bit. But there's also some something else some ideas that we need to expand. Adam you're in the middle of this. How do you see bridging that. So we need more people. I mean not not. This is the beginning of a movement. But the people aren't here yet. It is just the very edges of a tiny of something. I think you're right. If we actually get it right at the beginning it will grow right. So how do we get. I don't mean the right people but the the inclusive population that we all understand we need. How do we do that. So if we haven't really done it yet. No no no we absolutely haven't. I mean we're at the very beginning of this story. It's not even in the introduction. Not even at the first. So how do we get it right. We were crude. I mean and that's you ask what we need to do. What each person here needs to go do is go find people and get them involved get them involved in the community organization that's concerned about this learn about it figure out more figure out how that can connect figure out how you can find engineers who are interested and excited about doing something different who are anarchistic or who want to change the world and bring them into the space find people start an organization start a company do I mean this is this there is a sort of a interesting Wild West moment right now. And what we need is people who have an interest in the broader social agenda that we're talking about to do the recruiting so it doesn't end up being Wall Street that does the recruiting. We've seen the story happen before in 1999 and 2000 around that time and what ended up happening when it flipped. And I don't think we're at that period. I think we're kind of in the 95 96 period. If we think about the sort of history of a bubble. But if we can flip it by inviting the people in now who care about this issue of social equity then it will grow up right. So I want to press you on this and I start with you're going to want to hear from Nikki and Vian on this is is how what are you doing at your tool to get out of the usual cast of characters who are participating. How are you working with communities of color low income communities to bring them into this world that that it that Nikki is Nikki saying people do share it's a natural inclination to share and to make use of each other stuff. And you know how how do you make sure that your tool is tapping into that. So I mean the first thing we do is we save people money. And I don't mean to be too simple but that that is the first thing that that that actually reaches and makes it. But that's everybody's story. So that's good. But what else. Sorry I don't mean to minimize that because I think that that that is an incredibly democratizing effort. The second question is a question of access and how people can get it. I'm sure a little metaphor. So you know we're we're rapidly moving and changing our system. So right now it takes three day. You have up to three days to pay for a shipping charge. Right. So you win something on your own. You have to pay two dollars to somebody to have it shipped to you across the country. So it's not a small. It's not a huge amount of money. And we're changing that to one day because it'll make it move faster. It's been a huge outcry against that from us because people are saying they live paycheck to paycheck and they cannot afford the two dollar time period. This is not everyone but this is a significant part of our community. What we're doing is addressing issues like that and figuring out how we can actually solve and help people do work through it because if we're not open and accessible for people to actually do the primary function of what we're doing which is save money then it doesn't work. Thank you. When you hear that is that the right model is that what you'd like to see or is there something else that you need to see companies like your little I don't mean to pick on my friend Adam companies like your little doing in terms of reaching out and being more inclusive. I think that if you start with the right assumptions and the right premises then you will build the right model. So one of the things that I think is inherently difficult for people who are on the margins is when mainstream society comes up with a set of assumptions that work for the middle class and that work for the privileged and then try to bring people who are on the margins who don't start with those same assumptions into this. And then there's the kind of backwards working. Right. And I'm not faulting anyone for this because we all work like that. Right. That's just we we live in America. Most of the country's middle class. Most of the country thinks the middle class at least. And I think that the harder thing to do and the thing that we have to learn how to do is to find the weirdos who are in between who sit on one side of one foot over here where you do have that person who has six different kids with six different women and you have the brother who's in prison and you have the sister who was murdered in gang violence and you have that lived experience and know what it's like. But you happen to be sitting here at this conference. Right. I've been looking at all the black folk who are at this conference like so. Why are you here. What's your story. Right. Because I feel like one of the things green for all has been trying to do is find those people who have one foot in one foot out of this of lived experience and dominant culture and trying to figure out what what are what are those assumptions. Right. How do you sit in in between these different worlds. If you're in survival mode all the time. How do you share. What would you're kind of sharing economy look like. If you built a system from scratch. What would it be called. How would it be marketed. Would you call it the swap meet because all this color folks know that if you go down to the swap meet you can get some things for free. Right. Some things you can get some things for cheap. You can pay more for some things. There's there's marketing. There's language. There's branding. There's the way that it's built. There's there's just I feel like there's very different assumptions if you start from a different place and it takes it takes effort. It takes money and I wouldn't want I know that in business models it would be very hard to start from scratch in a different way. And I think that if you are as Adam said if you are thinking about a new company then having focus groups and doing the work to try to figure out these different marginalized communities that may not be participating in large numbers. If you had a focus group or you had premises and assumptions that came just from that. What would it look like. So I'm guessing that there are a number of people maybe quite a number of people sitting out here watching the live stream who are saying yeah I need to do that. I want to do that. How do I do that. What do you tell them. I'm sure I'm sure you're going to hear that question during the break people going to come up and say yeah what do I do. Well I feel like there's there's organizations like green for all those organizations like green lining who have worked in historically marginalized and low income and people of color populations who are at this conference who are in these spaces because we are trying to figure out how to build the bridge. We may not have all the tech language and we may not have all the know how but we have the people and we have the willingness to come and sit at the table and say here's what we're experiencing and here's what we would like to see created. If we come together can we create a solution together. So I think it's and I consider myself one of those weirdos. Right. I am the sharing economy junkie. I have all of the apps and a neat little thing in my phone and I try to figure out how to share and ride share and my parents think I'm strange and all of that. And I have tons of communities that don't participate in this and all I would not know what the hell I'm talking about. So I think I've been told there's going to there's a dude with a sign with giving me time signals but I haven't seen it down here. But I'm guessing we're we're close to the end. There we go. He's either saying peace victory or you've got two minutes. So I want to start with you and ask you each each question. Answer that question really quickly. OK. Three words. And yes on the weirdos. I used to work at Green For All Total Weirdo. I was the youngest of 11 kids and I'm at this conference. Three words on how we can come more inclusive. One customer base. Make sure you're doing outreach to the customer base that you don't think are natural customers. They might be reach out to them. You focus groups figure it out. Two jobs. Make sure you're hiring from the community. We're more likely to work with companies who have people who understand us and represent us and three build allies. Make sure you're working with the business associations ethnic local chambers of commerce allies at Green For All Green Lightning Institute who know the community and talk to us about what solutions might work. That was it. So when we four come back to this stage for share 16 two years. What's the story you'd like to be hearing out there and on this stage from others. What do you hope to see that you're not seeing now. You've built an inclusive company for all of California. Adam I think that the truthfully that the progressive ideology that we're talking about is built into the fabric of this economy. Thank you. I'd like to see the histories of communities that are on the margins that have been sharing included in this and represented in the technologies that are coming out. It's a lot of work to do. There's a lot of hard work in all of that stuff that you've talked about. And but I think we all agree it's incredibly important work and that if this idea of access is really means what it's supposed to mean that this has to be part of the equation. So we'll have that conversation in a couple of years. Please join me in thanking the end Adam.