When my father died not too long ago, he left me some stock in ExxonMobil, which I recently sold. As I wrote to my mother, “I’m happy to report that I’m out of the oil business.”
A few weeks before, a long-long friend who manages a hedge fund wrote me, “Craig! Looks like Israel might attack Iran. Your Exxon’s up big!” I responded, “Yes, imagine my delight, profiting from the prospect of nuclear war.”
No more trips to “the dark side” for me.
I’m so glad I finally got around to Jeremy Rifkin’s masterpiece “The Third Industrial Revolution.” The central concept is this: we’re entering the point in human history where the first and second industrial revolutions and their unintended consequences (i.e., running out of oil and befouling the environment) have forced our civilization to make a great change in course. And it’s good news; in particular, this shift will take us in the direction of clean energy, generated and sold laterally, i.e., peer-to-peer, as millions of us generate our own energy.
Those who may have participated in our recent discussion of the major modes in which mankind can move forward given these constraints (Plans A, B, and C), will recognize this as “Plan B.”
This concept of a lateral economy was inspired by the success of the Internet, where hundreds of millions of individual entities found a kind of power that never existed previously. Apparently, a great number of thinkers today believe that this can represent a seismic shift in the coming few decades. Some even point out that the new economic model doesn’t need to be as predatory as the one it will replace, that the “greed is good” is proving untrue and unworkable, and that sharing and cooperation, which are part of our DNA, can play important roles in how we get along with one another.
If this sounds more like a hippie love-in than the ideas of a Ph.D. with 18 best-selling books to his credit, you may want to check it out for yourself.
My trip back East for the week of February 13 has really taken shape; it’s packed with business meetings, book interviews, and dinners with college buddies and family, starting in Washington DC, and heading north: Baltimore, Philadelphia, northern New Jersey, New York City, Rhinebeck (gorgeous little town 90 miles north of Manhattan), Amherst, and Boston.
I make a concerted effort to “travel green.” Like most of us, I fly less, and conduct more business electronically. But I also try to replace automobiles with trains. The Amtrak people will be happy to know that I think of their service as my rolling office. And a bonus awaits at both ends: Did you even notice how much more appealing train stations are than airports?
All aboard!
It’s certain that 6600-pound Hummers will not occupy an important position in the way we transport our bodies and our “stuff” in the coming years. But where exactly are we going? And who’s going to make a buck in the process?
I hope you’ll be able to join us for our next webinar, 10 AM PST on Friday, Feb. 10th: “The Future of Transportation,” in which I’ll be interviewing Dan Sturges. Dan’s life is dedicated to developing and promoting a complex and dynamic set of solutions built around overhauling the way we move ourselves and our cargo around the surface of the planet. He shares my belief that our current conception of transportation — redundant, heavy, bulky, and fossil-fuel-reliant – is simply unaffordable in every sense of the word. It’s not economically sound to the individual consumer, and it’s exorbitantly expensive to society as a whole, both financially and ecologically.
In this lively discussion, Dan will explain how mass transit, car-sharing, ride-sharing, and micro-rentals can begin to reduce car ownership. He’ll talk about introducing small, light, and inexpensive urban transportation, while encouraging walking and bicycling, and the use of information and communication technology to make these blended solutions convenient and appealing, thus ensuring the consumer-citizen adopts these concepts enthusiastically.
I certainly hope you can make it. Here’s the sign-up form: http://2greenenergy.com/free-webinar/
To simplify where we are as a civilization and where we’re going with respect to energy consumption, economics, and environmentalism, it’s useful to postulate three broad “plans”:
Plan A: We continue on our current course. We ignore the fact that our population will soon be growing from 7 billion to 10 billion, and that an ever-growing percentage of that population is joining the ranks of consumers. Our leaders know that we’re in the process of driving off a cliff; they may lack basic decency, but they’re long on intelligence, and they exploit voter ignorance of this core truth as long as they possibly can. During this time, they and the extraordinarily powerful forces that elected them desperately look for new ways of extracting fossil fuels, while obfuscating the effects on global climate, ocean acidification, social chaos, war, respiratory disease, etc. The elite remain in power until the planet is in ruins.
Plan B: We aggressively adopt what Jeremy Rifkin and others refer to as “The Third Industrial Revolution,” which contemplates continued economic growth by focusing on renewable energy and the many other components of sustainability. (more…)
A friend who favors right-wing ideologies sent me a video in which the Cato Institute ripped up Obama’s State of the Union Address, pointing out certain claims as lies – even challenging the legality of some of the actions he’s taken as president. While I’m not a huge fan of the Cato Institute, they’re no fools, and they certainly make some good points here. Let’s also admit that Obama has been a bitter disappointment, as millions of us realized that he’s just another politician, put in place with huge money (in this case, Big Pharma and Wall Street) to protect and expand these interests. (more…)
What happens when a talented filmmaker sets out to interview top scientists and philosophers, and attempts to answer some very tough questions? What if those questions include subjects as broad as “What’s going wrong with our present day civilization?” and “What can we do to fix it?”
Check out “I AM.” My wife and I were in tears of utter joy, swept away by the brilliance and beauty.
Question: At what rate are we losing the world’s rainforests?
Answer: Can be found at http://2greenenergy.com/cool-guess-answers/8732.
Relevance: According to rain-tree.com:
If nothing is done to curb this trend, the entire Amazon could well be gone within fifty years. Massive deforestation brings with it many ugly consequences-air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the eviction and decimation of indigenous Indian tribes, and the loss of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rainforests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.
We don’t talk too much about eco-tourism here, which is a shame, as it’s an extremely important trend in the travel industry. I just got off the phone with Chuck Miller, who, among other things, runs Tunungua Eco-Resort with some partners.
Check this place out! Located in the lush Boyaca valley of Colombia, a three-hour drive from Bogata, Columbia, the whole place was built in the most environmentally-responsible manner possible, and offers a huge range of activities that reconnect its lucky guests with the incredible natural beauty that surrounds it.
Readers may be interested in the conversation Glenn Doty and I are having on electric vehicles, as comments to my piece: Lateral Power, Distributed Generation, and the Third Industrial Revolution. Here’s another question for Glenn (and anyone else who would like to join in) on the subject.
Glenn: You make some terrific points here, and you have my promise that I’ll try to continue to merit your respect.
Going back to this deal about gasoline, aren’t you at all concerned about the fact that we’re apparently running out of it? Everyone I can find (except the spokespeople for the American Petroleum Institute) seem to concur. As Matt Simmons told me shortly before he passed away, “National security, environmental damage, and lung disease are all reasons that we SHOULD do something about our oil addiction. Peak oil, on the other hand, is the reason that we MUST.”
