David Gershon is founder and CEO of the Empowerment Institute and author of Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds. The book helps self-organized teams take action to dramatically reduce their carbon footprint. In a recent conversation with Leverage Points editor Vicky Schubert, David described the foundational work behind the book's powerful approach to behavior change.

LP: Your new book, Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds, couldn't be timelier in providing people an action plan for addressing climate change, just when the collective consciousness seems, finally, to be bending in that direction.

DG: When people see Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, they ask "What can I do?" Every network we engage with on climate change is asking this same question. This is an amazing teachable moment.

Low Carbon Diet grew out of my experience over the last fifteen years designing environmental behavior change programs. Many of the changes needed to lower our carbon footprint can be achieved through increasing our energy efficiency with a financial benefit to boot. And people want to do the right thing. The real issue we face is helping people act effectively on this good intention. That is the purpose of the Low Carbon Diet program.

The aspect of the program that helps people get over the hump of taking action is the peer support system. People really love doing this with their friends or neighbors. It builds community around something that is meaningful. And there are few things more meaningful than addressing climate change. What some call civilization's central organizing project. You can be a laggard and say, "I'm going to hold on to the world view I've been accustomed to," or you can grow and develop low carbon lifestyle practices. It's sort of like high tech, right? We entered that world and some people went in easily and some held back. But eventually, because of the way social evolution works, we all eventually get brought along. This is the same thing...

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by Jordi Trullen and Bill Torbert