The More Things Change

This article was originally published a decade ago in 2011.?It still applies to our current landscape, perhaps now more than ever:

But then again, we must be pragmatic and work with the system we have while we orchestrate our tipping point to a clean economy. It may make a great deal of sense to continue with closed-door sessions as municipalities figure out how to transform their energy infrastructure away from the risk associated with extractive energy. Within the liminal space between markets and policy, the “special interests” of clean technology companies are trying to influence the rule makers for our markets, albeit swimming against the current of a century of extractive industry efforts in this arena. I realize that I am privy to discussions on the clean tech side of the equation that I am sure are mirrored by closed-door sessions in extractive industries. So one of the first items that I think we should think about is a “sunlight campaign“ (transparency in processes that involve our democracy’s citizens) that could in turn enhance our ability to monetize the value of fossilizing sunshine. I know that we have been working with what we have, the Investment Tax Credit that thousands of new renewable projects have been attributed to went through on an earmark, demonstration of the blessing-and-curse conundrum of our current system.

The Supreme Court ruling opening the doors for more corporate influence on our elections is truly a double-edged sword. Perhaps clean tech should take some plays from Karl Rove’s playbook in his work with American Crossroads where he is accused of funneling money for “education” through a shell organization to influence-peddling opportunities. Maybe a Super PAC of donations from all of the supporters of clean economic development would move our needle towards that fair playing field. Closed-door discussions about which technologies in the clean tech landscape get how much from our government coffers is the modus operandi for the fits-and-starts approach we seem to have in building any sort of energy and economic platform that de-toxes us off our addiction to extracted energy. But if we keep doing the same thing and expect different results, well, someone much smarter than any of us referred to that as “insane.” Yes, it’s a crazy world right now, but I believe we have a better way of doing things.

Imagine if we could leverage the internet and social media to aggregate capital for renewable energy and energy efficiency infrastructure development. So, instead of using a 20th century version of economic assumptions that rely on the coordination of a hierarchy, with an elite set of decision-makers dictating where large sums of capital would be deployed for individual projects, we instead think about a viral campaign aligning many micro-investments coordinated with sophisticated online tools to distribute this wealth towards multiple communities to retrofit their energy needs. For example, a WSJ article highlighted micro-finance and community lending happening right here in the U.S. as opposed to what many people think of when micro-lending comes up: impoverished people in developing nations taking out small loans for things like the purchase of a cow or a sewing machine. A coordinated strategy that used peer-to-peer networks to both educate and activate the will of the people towards funding platforms like Prosper.com and LendingClub.com to identify and deploy micro-investments to build weatherization and solarization projects could potentially accelerate the transformation of our energy landscape, while at the same time closing the gap on some of the inequity found in our current wealth structure (Robert Reich’s r interview on Fresh Air highlights how detrimental having a society with so much disparity between the haves and have-nots is on social cohesion).

What I mean by that is that as households and small businesses implement energy efficiency and renewable solutions using mechanisms that don’t hurt the pocketbook up front, they will be saving financial resources in the near term and in the mid to long term be well positioned as the price of extracted energy continues to climb. Moreover, by creatively building this type of strategy and implementation, the externalities of our competition from extracted energy solutions are mitigated by a competitive advantage in financing energy efficiency and renewable that helps even the market playing field to some extent. Most interesting though is that the medium itself is the message: We need to begin to de-centralize our economic interdependencies as we head towards a global market landscape that will be at high risk if it continues to rely on an energy source that is in decline.

Fear is the driver in the climate discussion; greed is the driver in extractive arenas. The driver in viral modes of clean economic development is a combination of both these qualities with an additional powerful motivation that resonates with the human spirit, an altruism that seeks to make real a community of citizens building our American Dream together. I’ll let you, the reader, define what that means, but Martin Luther King, Jr. describes it this way: “When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

We know that the world is heading towards a major upheaval, whether we name it as climate disaster, drying up of our most widely used energy base, or a wealth of other looming challenges from overpopulation to water conflicts. But the larger the problem, the greater the opportunity. My hope is that we embrace the tools we have today to imagine a future where we begin to ask the right questions about how we build clean economic infrastructure by aligning the best aspects of our democracy with the most impactful of strategies for accelerating this shift.

In the words of a compassion driven leader, “Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.”