Happy New Year!

We are the ones we have been waiting for. The opportunities presented by the challenges of our future, I believe, will bring out the best in us. This energy revolution we are part of is ushering in a new world, a reordering of priorities and energies with a movement of sustainability born out of respect for our environment and love for one another.

Below are a few reflections and gems bringing light to why I think 2009 will be historic, not only for our country but for the world. This is the time for an energy revolution. It is being asked for on so many levels.

In-joy,
Bruce

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Walking the Talk…

“Education enables us to understand ourselves and others and our links with the wider natural and social environment, and this understanding serves as a durable basis for building respect.”

Defining the principle keys to Sustainability Education
1. Dialogue
2. Integration
3. Community
4. Reflection
5. Hope

“Sustainability… driven from the bottom up and supported from the top down.”

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Apollo’s Fire

“In 1961, President John F. Kennedy ignited America’s Apollo Project and sparked a revolution in space exploration. Today the New Apollo Energy Project is poised to revolutionize the production of energy and thereby save our planet. The nation that built the world’s most powerful rockets, its most advanced computers, and its most sophisticated life support systems is ready to create the world’s most powerful solar energy systems, its most advanced wind energy turbines, and its most sophisticated hybrid cars. This will result in nothing less than a second American Revolution. Who are the dreamers in California who believe they can use mirrors and liquid metal to wring more electricity from a ray of sunshine than anyone else on earth can?

Who are the innovators who have built a contraption that can turn the energy of a simple wave off the Oregon coast into burnt toast in Idaho? Who are the scientists in Massachusetts who have invented a battery that now runs your hand drill and will soon run your car? Readers will meet them all in this book. They will learn how the new energy economy will grow, the research that is required, and the legislation that must be passed to make the vision a reality.

This is a thoughtful, optimistic book, based on sound facts. No one before has tied together the concepts of economic growth and greenhouse gas reductions with such concrete examples. No one has previously told the real stories of the people who are right now on the front lines of the energy revolution. The co-authors, one a U.S. Congressman who is the primary sponsor of the New Apollo Energy Act, and the other the founder of the Apollo Alliance, have joined their experience, expertise, and passion for a clean energy future to lay out the path to stop global warming and gain energy independence.”

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Google supporting the energy revolution
-Full Story
“Lean and affordable energy is a growing need for our company, so we’re excited about launching “RE

We’re busy assembling our own internal research and development group and hiring a team of engineers and energy experts tasked with building 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. (That’s enough electricity to power a city the size of San Francisco.) Google’s R&D effort will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas.”

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Before the traditional Iroquois convened
their consul meetings, they invoked this
declaration :

In our every deliberation we must
consider the impact of our decisions on
the next seven generations.

“Thereafter, any vote included an equal vote cast by a representative who spoke specifically forthe needs, the survival, and the dignity of those who would live a hundred and fifty years in the future.

For the Iroquois, the generational format of their council defined a long term relationship between government and ecology. The rights of future generations never became an issue of policy because it was, instead, the very context of policy. Conservation was, thus, the very foundation upon which their culture was built.

The medium was the message.

In the process of blueprinting our own American system of government, Thomas Jefferson was said to have drawn much inspiration from the Iroquois version of representational democracy. It makes one wonder about things that might have been. For example, had Jefferson written the rights of future generations into the U.S. bill of rights, would we, who live ten generations after Jefferson, still be dependent upon non-renewable fossil fuels which cause global warming?

Or imagine what life would be like today if, a hundred years ago, we had set in place a public mechanism to test the ecological value of the automobile or, fifty years ago, the social value of the television set. But there was no debate. Unlike the Iroquois, our parents and our great grandparents had no public mechanism that spoke to the long term effects of their inventions.

Nor do we have any mechanism today to examine genetic engineering, or even no-brainers like excessive product packaging. Rather, we remain saddled to technological “progress”, and it renders us deaf to anyone who would speak intuitively for the rights and needs of future generations. One might well wonder how the future would be different if we started electing
politicians possessed of better hearing.”
-Jim Nollman
Full article

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Seventh Generation…
Report on our interdependence and spheres of influence…

Want to win $5,000? Tell Seventh Generation what idea in this report inspired you and how you would use $5,000 to take that idea and make a difference. For information on how to apply, go to: http://www.seventhgeneration.com/corporate-responsibility/2007-spheres-influence-contest
Deadline: December 31, 2008

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Visualize World Peace