Clean Energy – A Solution to a Problem Most People Don’t Believe Exists

As I do most Sundays, I took a bit of a hike the other day – my normal jog/walk, in this case from my home in Santa Ynez, CA (USA) to neighboring Los Olivos, where I had a beer and caught the last quarter of a football game on TV with a few dozen others. I don’t watch too much football, but after seven miles, a bit of numbing feels legitimate. And I tell you what, the folks in the Los Olivos Café and I became fast friends, as we all screamed out loud watching some terrific action, including one of the most spectacular plays in the history of sport.

On my way up there, however, my heart had not been as light, as my thoughts ran to putting my career in perspective. How is it possible that I was so well-embraced in my “past life” as a marketing consultant for high tech, where now I seem to be challenged to get others to see the importance of my ideas?

Several reasons, I’m sure. In the late 20th Century, my job was generating demand for various forms of information technology.  In essence, my task was selling the Fortune 2000 on the idea that they should be using IT as a strategic business weapon, and then showing them how to do it most effectively, using my clients’ products and services.  But how hard was that? At the risk of appearing immodest, I played an important role in making a lot of this happen — but wasn’t a big part of this simply being in the right place at the right time? My clients applauded my work, but how good did it really need to be, given the auspicious circumstances?

Here, I’m swimming upstream, trying to sell a solution to a problem that most people don’t believe exists at all. When you fill up your gas tank, your car goes another 300 miles.  When you flip a switch, your lights come on.  This is all pretty dependable stuff.  And does it cost the ratepayer or driver an arm and a leg? Not really. There are artificial mechanisms in place to make sure everything is nice and affordable.

Yes, there are long-term health and ecological consequences to what we’re doing here — potentially lethal to all living things.  But this is very unlike most of the problems that motivate us to take action.  First, it affects other people.  I live in California.  We don’t burn a single molecule of coal here (though we buy electricity generated from coal in Nevada and Arizona).  Sure there are hundreds of thousands of people getting sick and dying from the aromatics of coal — but, as a lucky Californian, I’m not one of them.

Neither am I a soldier, risking my life to maintain my country’s access to foreign oil.  

So here we have a problem a) that affects other people, and b) whose most terrible effects will be experienced in the future.  Apparently, lots of people wonder:   Is that really a problem at all? In polls, Americans rank environmental issues close to the bottom in terms of importance, and rally around politicians whose themes include dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and closing the Department of Energy.

I need to come to grips with the fact that my new career as clean energy advocate and business liaison, while it’s richly rewarding, is rather like pushing a rope, climbing a mountain, swimming upstream — call it what you will.   

So an occasional distraction from reality is most certainly in order.   I loved the hike, the football game, and the cold beer.