I think that was one of the most positive and beautiful things about Power Shift was that you felt that it was totally possible for us to achieve this transformation. Unlike watching the Inconvient Truth, which left me feeling depressed and helpless, I felt even more empowered after Power Shift than ever before. Lets all make sure that we incorporate this positive, hopeful, encouraging vision into all that we do.

“It calls upon us to innovate, politically and economically, at an unprecedented scale. Our politics must be retooled, not only to achieve immediate policy changes but to create new and lasting political majorities. And instead of constraining our economy, we need to unleash it, driving our engineers, scientists and manufacturers to hone their skills and knowledge, and put these forces to work toward building the next energy economy.”

Please, please, please! Let’s get everybody in this movement to understand this well. At least our leaders should get this point and start messaging in this way. Thanks so much!

We need more than just a frightening vision of the world we wish to avoid. Gore has done us a service in painting that picture. We know we don’t want to let climate change run amok and descend into a global warming apocalypse. But we need more than that.

What we need is a compelling vision of where we want to go, the future we wish to inhabit.

We caught a glimpse of that compelling future at Power Shift. Van Jones has a vision of that future. Green for All has a vision. Many of use have a vision. It’s a vision of a sustainable, just, and prosperous future; an America - and indeed a world - unshackled from the chains of fossil fuel dependence, with an economy both prosperous and truly sustainable, re-invigorated by the creation of a booming green economy, and full of new pathways out of poverty and into the middle class, opportunities for all to live the American dream.

It is this vision that will ultimately form the backbone of the broad-based movement that will - that must - form to rise to the climate challenge and make that vision a reality.

Friedman and Gore are both certainly wrong - we need to be more than just loud protesters and we need to do much more than simply encircle bulldozers. We need to be visionaries, innovators, thought leaders, and pioneers.

As Richard Graves wrote in response to Friedman’s op ed, to build a bright new future, we need to use our brains, not just our bodies.

Richard writes (check out the full post if you haven’t read it):

“Friedman wants us to hit the streets, Gore wants us to encircle bulldozers. Sure, done that. Will, do more. But they value us for our passion, our bodies, our commitment. But they don’t value us for our ideas, our minds. That just makes us feel like exploited dates. The diversity of solutions launched by the Campus Climate Challenge, by our efforts to challenge the rest of society to act by building carbon neutral campuses and a clean energy economy, is awe inspiring.

…

A word of caution, Big NGOs, talking heads, and others will want us to protest, to act, to support their ideas [Jesse: sound like anything you heard this weekend at Power Shift? From certain members of Congress or national green groups perhaps]. But policies like Cap and Auction or even a Big Federal Investment in Clean Energy RnD, while they have tremendous value, leave the job of innovation, launching the projects, ideas, businesses, and community efforts, to others. They want to light the spark of creative imagination, but they don’t always value those who have already lit it and and are showing it to the world.

Hold your head up high, whether you take an internship or a job where you aren’t valued because you are young, learn as much as you can but remember you can build a brilliant future, with the power of your ideas.”

So what’s your vision of a sustainable, just, and prosperous future? Time to start dreaming and visioning. Our futures depend on it.