Green Shift

Rename, reclaim, revive and reuse were the words of the day as the Green Shift conversation kicked into high gear this afternoon. Thomas Friedman asked the Pop!Tech audience to reframe the green conversation by steering the focus away from the "feel good, do good" mantra into good ole' fashioned red, white and blue patriotism and practicality. He urged the leaders of the debate to turn the issues on their side and reveal the potential for mutually beneficial goal.

It's impossible to discuss a green future without in some way accounting for the voracious energy appetite of China, the burgeoning superpower. Friedman left us a juicy quote to chew on: "Green China is going to be a bigger risk than Red China." What does this mean? Green design will soon be filtered through the scalability of China's low cost model and not because anyone thinks it's the right thing to do. According to Friedman, the market will determine that it is the only thing to do.

As we look for a full transition to the "service economy" of the future, Friedman asserted that the environmentally savvy design and consulting jobs would be the biggest growth area of this century. Market forces are beginning to take green thinking seriously instead of shoving it into its "liberal" and "do good" niche.

Lester Brown, preeminent environmentalist and former leader of WorldWatch Institute, took issue with Friedman's assertion that market forces could be a motor behind the solution. He claimed that, in the past, capitalism proved socialism to be false. Today the environment and an environmental mindset are proving capitalism to be false, an untenable and unacceptable excuse for destruction: "The amount of corn needed to make enough ethanol to fill the 25 gallon tank of one SUV could feed a person for a year."

Stewart Brand viewed the question of a bright green future through the lens of increasing urbanization. It's amazing to see the themes of generative systems and Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants" come together in a discussion of "leapfrogging" and urbanization. Left to its own devices, will increasing urbanization grow and expand like Kevin Kelly's vision of the over-urbanized Earth? Just as Phillip Longman postulated in his book The Empty Cradle, will cities in Europe continue to age and decrease in size as more and more young people flock to super cities in developing countries across Asia and the Middle East ? And what would a super city with tens of millions look like anyway? How can we apply Brian Eno's argument of release versus control? When do we, as citizens, surrender to an emergent system and when do we galvanize for control, action and, above all else, a sense of responsibility for ourselves?

Just when things were beginning to look a little grim, Robert Freling arrived on the scene from SELF, the Solar Electric Light Fund. He is working on electricity as the groundwork for all of the rest of the fundamental development goals. Along with Robert and SELF, the Pop!Tech conference has taken steps to be, not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative. Every bit of carbon dioxide emitted into the air from Pop!Tech participants and their travel has been offset by Pop!Tech and SELF's rural development initiatives. We have left things just a little bit better, maybe even enough to use Kevin Kelly's idea and say that our solution was 1% better than our problem.
So we make our differences where we can because we must.

To quote the opening session of Pop!Tech 2006: "So much begins with simplicity..."