You Can Vote However You Like

Millennials... they get it.



with a nod to T.I.

Clean Energy Capitalism

Engineering and innovation in clean energy technologies will define our generation. Much the same way that the World Wars defined our grandparents generation ('The Greatest Generation") and the way they built up America in the 20th Century. The way in which we approach, handle and solve the problems associated with finding renewable energy sources, and in utilizing them to their fullest extent, will define our generation. Millennials grew up in an age where oil (energy) was always cheap, it was so cheap and abundant (and paid for by our parents) that we never thought too much about it. It was a commodity, like any commodity, milk, bread, etc. We never thought, as we sat and watched Mom or Dad fill up the tank every week that this would come to define us. And yet we have begun to grow into this environment where everyone has started telling us we can't fill up that tank the same way Mom and Dad used to, indefinitely. Its not an option, something has to change, we need to find another way to harvest energy. We will all, at some point, be asked to invest in this sacrifice. Its a little like 'telling us what we don't want to hear" but within the sense of motivation rather than deviation. Unlike the cloud of gloom associated with the staggering rise of the national deficit put on the shoulders of our generation, I believe we can shed and fight the cynicism of that crisis with the optimism in the opportunity that lies within this crisis. If we are cognisant to the idea that the clean energy revolution will come to define the sacrifice and accomplishment of our generation, why not commit to embracing the power it could give us and our country, when we put a tag on it and sell it to the rest of the world. 

Ideas that could seriously change the landscape:

Clean Energy 2030 - Google, on October 1st released its $4.4 trillion clean energy proposal they have named "Clean Energy 2030". It has some bold benchmarks and fascinating statistics you can find more on here. 

Coskata -  Coskata, Inc. is a Warrenville, Illinois based energy company researching the production of cellulosic ethanol from woodchips (or any variety of items found in trash). The estimated cost of production via this technology is under $1 per gallon, as opposed to corn-based ethanol costing approximately $1.40 per gallon. Video that explains it all Here.  More here:

Architecture 2030 The Challenge - The built environment is entirely based on buildings that ignore the environment. Instead of passive solar and insulation we have chosen buildings that require huge inputs of cheap energy. Today, buildings use 76% of all the energy produced at coal plants. By implementing The 2030 Challenge* to reduce building energy use by a minimum of 50%, we negate the need for new coal plants. Buildings are responsiblee for about half (48%) of all energy consumptionn and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the US annually, and they use 76% of all the energy produced by the nation's power plants. If you are serious about energy Independence and climate change, you must tackle the Building Sector. Here is some hope from architect Ed Mazria . 

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers - The world's most renowned venture capitalists (funding most notably - Netscape, Genentech, and Google) have committed over $1 billion to green innovation. By the beginning of autumn, Kleiner had financed 40 different green-tech companies and raised a total of about $1 billion to that end. Some of the firm’s fledging green ventures were evolutionary improvements on current technologies that would soon hit the market, others promised to revolutionize various aspects of the energy economy in solor power and bio fuels. Kleiner, who typically had seen a dozen business plans a year related to new green tech companies, now sees over 100 every month. Kleiner partner, Randy Komisar, said the firm’s green-tech investments didn’t seem terribly risky to him because the energy market was so large and outdated. “I’m so dead certain that we’re solving the next huge problem for the planet,” he said. “I’m not very good at hitting the bull’s-eye. I need a big target. And this is the biggest target I’ve ever seen in my life.” More on green within capitalism here.

Telling Us What We Don't Want to Hear

This has been something that I have thought about quite a bit and used to defend my case for Barack Obama. These 'conservatives' that ran on fiscal responsibility and foreign policy prudence, and have lead us into this insurmountable budget deficit the last 8 years never challenged the American public to do anything, or to sacrifice anything. Coming from a generation that doesn't know what this experience feels like, but hearing stories of the sacrifices of the greatest generation (WWI-II) makes me wonder if we are a nation that could be told what we don't want to hear anymore. The politicians love preaching to the toughness of the American people, but are we really? Joe Biden hinted at this last week saying that it was a patriotic duty to pay taxes, that caused uproar, but it was a hint at the challenge. The challenge we have begun to shoulder under the Bush administration is a budget deficit that has swollen to $10.6 Trillion. If that seems hard to grasp it looks like this:

$10,600,000,000,000.00 

With all that has gone on within the credit markets and the proposed bailout plan from the government, that will ratchet up to approximately $11.3 Trillion.

$11,300,000,000,000.00

Someone needs to tell us what we don't want to hear. Someone, preferably a politician, that holds, or will hold the power to do something about it, needs to tell us we have to start paying for this. Someone has to tell us that if we don't start paying for it and restoring the confidence in our government's financial standing and worthiness of our economy in the view of the rest of the world (i.e. international investors), it will continue to decay. Except it won't decay quickly, it will slowly decline and diminish, like a small leak in a tire, while different economic sectors/industries eat away at each other (retail, energy, housing, auto, health care). Only then, when the Gaps, Home Depots, and Chilis, become a lot harder to find, will we be told that something is wrong and a lifestyle change may be coming. As Allen Greenspan said last week, our nation absolutely cannot afford John McCain's tax policy (continuing Bush tax cuts without any significant cuts in spending) We have to start paying soon. Its hard to understand how anyone could logically come to the conclusion that a country could spend $410 Million a day on a war and somehow think that it could cut taxes, while letting a deficit balloon out of control. Maybe this is a start, Tom Friedman goes further, he knows its no laughing matter.

Dean Kamen - Scientist Role Model

I am more and more fascinated, intruiged and inspired by what I hear from Dean Kamen (I realize I am probably a little late to this bandwagon). He truly is one of the greatest innovators of our time, there is little doubt, but he also has one of the greatest minds as well. You may argue those are one in the same, but what I think makes Dean different is that he not only has the intelligence and insight into solving the major problems and inadequacies of our world, he also has, in his heart, the desire to fix them, and the true understanding of the privilege and gift he has, and how he can use it (with stunning specificity) to make the world better. He takes every opportunity he has to spread that gift, and to tell others, of the minority - the educated/globally aware people of this world, the responsibility they have to give. The responsibility they have to give, what they have been given (access to quality education, jobs, income) back into the greater good of unselfishness. Its something I struggle with constantly, its finding that passion that makes you look at your life, not by what you made in the end, but what you may have given that's greater than you. I think if you can say you gave something that accounted for more than what the amount was on the paycheck, you can stand pretty strong in the strength of that mold of success. I guess my fascination and in turn, jealousy of Dean, comes from his ability to find his passion through solving problems within our world, and in his ability to utilize the integration of the two so effectively. He gets it, I think there are a lot of very intelligent and bright people in this world that don't get that relationship, or the potential they have to give, really without much effort or hardship, maybe if they just knew Dean and his cause a better... 

Dean addressed the commencement audience at Bates College in 2007, ending his intriguing address with this:

"So I would beg every educated person in this world, to remember every day when you get up that you are an incredibly small minority, of all of humanity, and with all the privileges I understand it gives us, I think it gives us an enormous responsibility, to be leaders that do the right things for the right reasons, and to remember you can be doing good, while you're doing well. You'll all go out and get good jobs, but you'll make you're living by what you do, in those jobs, you'll make you're life by what you give."

More on his work/passion:

On the image/role of innovation within our society:

Many know his name as the creator of the segway, which is a fascinating invention no doubt, but in its relation to changing/helping the world, making it more 'flat' in terms of the ability to access basic necessities of everyday life that all of us take for granted, its the more material tip of his sprawling creative ice burg.  He is, in some ways, at the helm of a potential innovation Renaissance. 

100,000 Garages

A great piece from Tom Friedman this weekend. 

Right now, we feel like a country in a very slow decline — in infrastructure, basic research and education — just slow enough to lull us into thinking that we have all the time and money to play around in Tbilisi, Georgia, more than Atlanta, Georgia...

Our competitiveness... is based on having a broadly educated work force, superb research universities, innovation-supportive taxes, immigration and regulatory policies, a productive physical and virtual infrastructure, and a culture that embraces hard work and the creation of new opportunities.

Alas, though, the Republicans just had a convention where abortion got vastly more attention than innovation, calls to buttress Tbilisi, Georgia, swamped any for Atlanta, Georgia, and “drill, baby, drill” was chanted instead of “innovate, baby, innovate.”

I think what is echoed here is the power of a renewed commitment to the middle class of America. To giving them the access and resources to break into to our creative class. We will always have innovation and technology flowing from the Ivy league schools, from big corporations, from the top talent in government agencies. But what if, instead of going on the path of the Manhattan Project, we invested and stimulated the path of the Apple and Microsoft project. The power of 100,000 innovators starting in 100,000 small garages across the country to generate new ideas and new technology to solve new problems and find a new way to fix old problems. The world needs more Dean Kamens, and his ideas

Rage against... Donkeys and Elephants

This NYT piece reports on Rage Against the Machine as they held concerts/protests/riots outside both conventions over the past two weeks. John has more pictures and recon from the scene here. Synopsis as follows:

“I hope you all leave peacefully, but you don’t have to be passive,” Mr. Morello said. “Don’t let anyone put their hands on you.”

Thousands took that advice, and a few took it a step further, refusing orders to disperse at Seventh Street and Second Avenue.

Arrests, a mainstay of the latest Rage shows, quickly ensued.

I have always been a casual Rage Against the Machine fan, and I use the word casual in all sincerity after experiencing the RATM concert experience this year. I managed to find myself in the second row at the Lollapalooza show where they stopped the set 4 times because the crowd was pushing through the front steel and concrete barriers. The security staff was hopeless to control the power and energy of this crowd and could only try to pull the vulnerable patrons from being smashed and trampled by the crowd. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, unlike any emotional or motivational response to music, or to any artform. The pull to this message and cause is understandable, especially with the unpopularity of this administration, but the combination of the message of the music and the intensity in which its delivered to massive crowds is something I can understand so much clearer after not only witnessing it, but truly being engulfed by it. 

Contradiction? Yes. Suprised? No.

The Daily Show does a brilliant job of exposing the truth of those straight talk GOP Strategists, in the end you just want to know which way they want it...I guess its tough to walk the Hillary/Palin tight rope and stay consistent. 

A Clean Slate

This should scare... I don't know...at least 65.8% of America

The McCain team has hastily assembled a team of former Bush White House aides to tutor the vice-presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, on foreign-policy issues, to write her speeches and to begin preparing her for her all-important Oct. 2 debate against Sen. Joe Biden.

After last night I craved for 'hope'

After the MSM reaction to Palin's speech last, which they felt the need to ignore everything they had been uncovering the past 5 days and come to the conclusion that one fiery speech means she's a formidable candidate, I needed a reprieve. I dug into my Obama speech archives, I needed, I hate to say it, but I needed some hope. I needed to read something that washed away the cynicism and slime of division that this party has represented for so long. I needed something that reminded me that we still had a chance to say goodbye to all that a couple months from now. I ended up settling on Mr. Obama's address at Ebenezer Church -The Great Need of the Hour: 

Unity is the great need of the hour - the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country. I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans... But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes - a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts. It's not easy to stand in somebody else's shoes. It's not easy to see past our differences. We've all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks to drive us apart - that puts up walls between us. We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don't think like us or look like us or come from where we do.

There was no broadening of anything last night but division, division of our parties and of our ideas. There was no mention of a unified country to march towards making America great again, it was our plan and their plan, choose one. Thats what their party and their strategy has been for these past few elections, I know, I was a part of it. Obama opened my eyes and my mind to dispel the arrogance and ignorance the republican party had been feeding me for so long. This morning, after watching all of those tired republican dividing attack lines with the same old sleazy smile delivery, it feels so good to have escaped when I did..

My Generation Spoke

I wrote this after the Iowa Caucus (before I entered the blogosphere) and as we look back, we see that night as the launch of the legitimacy and competency of the Obama candidacy. Last night that candidacy was affirmed and celebrated, rightfully so, it was the largest and most sophisticated of any political campaign in the history of our country, and its not over yet...

January 3, 2008

I sat here tonight watching my generation stand up (in whatever small part) to make their voice heard on a national (in some parts global) level. I write to you as a 24 year old lifelong conservative, who much like yourself supported Bush in his early years but grew weary of his faith based motives suffocating our basic faiths in the American system domestically and abroad. I guess the biggest thing that made me smile tonight is that hope for a united America seemed to win for once. I have watched politicians (in my short life of following politics) get up and tell me they will get past partisan politics, but there was something inside of me, deep down, from I don't know where, that told me not to believe it. It told me they couldn't escape the chains and shackles of our modern Political system. Something that told me it could never happen with the type of country we had morphed into. The type of country that could give more daily hits to people.com than thenytimes.com. That is what saddened me about my generation, its what saddened me about the American political system its what I thought I would have to witness the remaining years of my life.

 

But tonight sitting here watching that Senator from my hometown of Chicago, I smiled wide and hard, and I felt that joy release from that uneasy feeling I had deep down inside me... I don't know if you can put a price on that. It was that joy that completely reversed the tables, that made that cynicism I had for my generation turn to optimism. I sit here accepting the notion that the people of my generation may not read, understand, and discuss the headlines of the New York Times more than they do People Magazine (at least for the near future). But I think what happened in Iowa tonight deserves a turn of the head, a raise of the eyebrow, a pause... from us young voters outside of Iowa to those who stood up for a valuable democratic process inside Iowa. It deserves that because it shows us the meaning of a voice in democracy, the power it can have within our nation and within our world. That's what came out of me tonight, my HOPE is that it was mutual.