It’s Getting Hot In Here

The 2010 Climate Bill fight is over, but now is the time to see what can learn from what happened.  For one thing, it wasn’t very good in the first place. As David Reberts notes over at Grist, the fact that a bill didn’t pass really isn’t a result of a failure on the part of the youth climate movement to make enough noise as much as it is a result of the elected officials just not understanding the implications and benefits to our economy that a bill could bring.  Even more telling is how Roberts also points out that the bill didn’t pass even though it was severely compromised:

“As it happens, extraordinary measures were taken in every iteration of the climate bill to protect Midwestern coal states: free pollution permits, consumer rebates sufficient to make the working and middle class whole, massive subsidies for CCS development, support for trade-exposed industries, pork for nuclear, on and on. The architects of climate legislation went to almost comic lengths to accommodate the substantive concerns of coal state senators. Coal utilities supported the damn bill!”

Coming out of all this, for the first time in quite some time, I am actually excited in the response the Obama Administration has started to take on climate. It is like some sort of super efficient L.E.D. light bulb clicked over in Washington D.C. this week.  In the past week, the White House held a conference call with youth environmental leaders, declared that solar hot water & photovoltaic panels are going up on the White House and the Department of Interior announced 750 MW of solar installation on public land.  Even more important than all of this is President Obama’s declaration that 2011 is the year that his administration will make significant headway on climate and energy.

Time to Seize Momentum

To truly build a clean energy economy, it is of my opinion that we need to open up the technology for every community and individual to have the opportunity to directly participate in said economy.  A great example of what this could look like is written about in Billy Parish’s recent piece in Huffington Post, describing one of the first community owned solar projects in the country.  The project involved a community in Maryland where residents that didn’t have much solar exposure, got together and formed a company, University Park Community Solar and approached a local church with a large roof and good solar orientation. In exchange for placing solar panels on it’s roof, the church would be guaranteed a long-term low price of electricity.

Continue reading ‘Renewable Energy Democracy: Obama’s Solar Panels and Deployment of Clean Energy Systems’

This past Friday, after overcoming my hesitancy to let Facebook infiltrate another aspect of my life, I gave in and watched “The Social Network.” I’m going to go ahead and say it but, this movie is definitely a defining moment for the millennial generation, our generation.  It is proof that we are about to be stepping into the primes of our existence in the U.S. and worldwide.  The fact that the largest grossing movie this past weekend is based on a dot com idea hatched five years ago in a Harvard dorm room, is proof that our ideas are starting to be the cultural norm.  If you are not ready for that realization, consider this a wake-up call.  Mark Zuckerberg (the creator of Facebook) is 26, making him 20 or 21 when he created Facebook.

Getting into the movie, I realized that there are some clear take home messages we can apply to the Green Economy movement.  The best part about the movie is the divide between the guys who create the Harvard Connection and Facebook creator, Mark Zuckerberg.  In the movie, shortly after Zuckerberg releases his pre-curser to Facebook, called ‘Facemash’ he is approached by two rich and privileged brothers, The Winklevoss twins.  These two have everything going for them, including captains and Olympians in training for the Harvard row team, hold a 3.9 average and belong to the most prestigious & exclusive social club at Harvard.  However, this is where the movie gets interesting and the story of Facebook becomes a defining moment for our generation.

Frank Chi recently touched on this in his Huffington Post piece,

“The Social Network is about social upheaval in the digital age. It’s about the ability of a new media class to deconstruct centuries worth of privilege and access that would’ve won in every other generation but now.

The Winkelvoss twins had an idea. But they didn’t have the intellectual capacity to execute that idea. They fell back on the assumption they can just buy off a “code monkey” with the trappings of the social structure that has defined paths to power since social structures existed.

In the new media age, the communications industry will be defined by people who not only have an idea, but the ability to execute them.

Mark Zuckerberg is a visionary and a coder. The Winklevoss twins? They’re just wannabe middle men. That’s what makes Zuckerberg so dangerous to the established media industry – an industry full of old middle men who don’t have a clue on how to execute the ideas they talk about. … It’s the ability to have an idea, say it, execute it immediately, and change the way we think – big or small.”

Continue reading ‘“The Social Network” and the Green Economy Revolution’