Opening the doors for renewable energy development

I am hoping that the incoming president understands the importance of developing our renewable energy potential in the US. It is critical to protect our economy from oil shocks and from foreign entanglements. And of course it is essential to halt global warming.

There is also a huge opportunity: demand is growing and prices are coming down significantly as we realize economies of scale and move down the learning curve. There are manufactuers, developers, and investors waiting to jump as the climate is right.

Here is a list of a few things that would make a huge difference:

• Mapping out and clearing the way for the development of transmission corridors. There is not the transmission capacity in place where the new renewable power is locaeted (e.g. rural New Mexico).
• Providing new rebates and incentives at the federal level for the installation of systems like those implemented by Germany and California
• Putting money in the research and development of the "smart green grid." This is a grid that can handle the unique power profiles of renewable sources. This means adding storage, sensors and controls to better manage the power.
• Putting money into a low interest energy efficiency loan fund so that individuals, companies and institutions can make the investments in improving their buildings thatmight otherwise be out of reach. Pushing on building codes to include performance standards for energy efficiency (e.g. HERS rating).
• Raise fuel economy standards and require the deployment of electric vehicles and other zero emission vehicles
• Rewrite the laws governing electrical utilities so that they are required to use renewable energy and to allow it to be transmitted over their lines.

Some people I talk to think that private investors can take care of installing all of the transmisison lines that we will need. Others think we need a federal program (could be modeled after either the interstate highway system or the expansion of the railroads) to stimulate and guide it. This needs to be investigated and the correct solution applied so that transmission lines get installed quickly and widely. This will create a boom in renewable energy development, which will in turn attract manufacturing and service jobs related to the solar and wind components that are required. As transportation costs go up, it becomes a better idea to locate manufacturing near installations, especially for large, heavy equipment like that required for solar and wind installations.

The Current Crisis of Attention

The modern world is facing a crisis of attention. The part most people know is that with the rise of the internet the experience of the world has been shrinking dramatically. We can instantaneously find out what is happening half-way around the world. Every person, every organization, and every community is becoming their own "feed" and we can subscribe to ALL of them. To say that there is information overload is an understatement. There is more information available here and now at every moment than anyone could possibly process or pay attention to.

One danger of this crisis is increasing framentation of society into smaller and more isolated niches. This is one way to cope with the overload. It's with deciding to either watch Fox News or subscribe to the Huffington Post and continues to be more and more constrained from there. This fragmentation leads to polarized views of the world which begin to clash more and more as they prove less and less able to be reconciled. This fragmentation makes us all more and more susceptible to the influence of extremists as our own views become unconsciously more extreme. This one way our attention gets focused, and it is obviously not good.

Another attention consolidating strategy is to fear monger. Fear is a very powerful emotion, and certainly grabs our attention, heading right for the amygdala and the brain stem, overriding rational thinking. The Bush administration has been a master of this strategy. 

If fear mongering is not your thing, then another easy strategy is to shock people by creating the equivalent of rubber necking or breaking social conventions (think intentional trainwrecks or Tropic Thunder).  Want to keep it really simple? Use sex or sexy people or things. I don't think I need to explain this one to you.

Putting these together, we can see that most of the ways people have been consolidating attention are through manipulative appeals to our reptile and monkey brains. Now, you and I are not stupid. We know how to think rationally and clearly and keep our reptile and monkey brains in check generally. 

But a problem arises when we look at our collective behavior: we find that in recent years we have more and more been manipulated by these media outlets and powers that have been appealing to our basest instincts. This makes us collective dumber than we may be individually.

What is the alternative? At an obvious level it is to try to figure out how to appeal to the higher natures of the masses in a way that still captures our attention. Easier said than done! I believe the Democrats have tried to do this in the past two elections...and failed. The Republican rhetoric and tactics have held more sway. Obama's campaign is having some more success, but they are not there yet really.

Aside from these massive efforts at gathering attention, I have seen much more local efforts to consolidate attention that I believe point to a better, more inspiring future. I was recently at a musical event run by some 20-somethings. What was interesting to me is that periodically through the evening a few performers circulated through the room doing little mini-performances. There were no breaks between songs, so they had to find a way to gather attention to themselves in more subtle ways: and they succeeded! I don't have their skills, so I won't try to explain how they did it, but I can at least attest to its effectiveness. It was marvelous, subtle and gentle: but powerful at the same time. Their performance was like a gentle wave of attention that flowed over the audience, leaving us refreshed and enriched without feeling manipulated or used.

What a powerful paradigm for what might be possible at even larger scales! 

I had some similar experiences at this year's Burning Man event in Nevada. First I should explain something about the nature of the event for those who haven't been. Once you are through the gate, you cannot use money to buy or sell anything. This creates more of a gift economy where people choose to share their supplies or their art with others. It's the pay it forward model and it generally works.  Some people spend months raising money and preparing their art installations just to share them with others. There is bno central program to Burning Man: it is "open sourced." the organizers just help people find an open niche and everything else flows naturally. There are many interpretations of what the Burning Man means, but one of them is the end of the "rockstar" era and the beginning of the collective creation area. We do not need one or a few individuals to look to anymore: we can create ourselves and share it with each other. It is a more peer to peer arrangement that becomes possible when are willing to give up on the rockstar and go out on our own. We burn "the Man" to represent our break from the rockstar model.

We are not quite there yet. This is another sad byproduct of the current state of our maturing with the internet: before we can really move to a more peer relationship, we will find that control gets even more centralized for a while. (Thomas Malone's The Future of Work talks about some of this, if I remember correctly.) 

(As an aside, I believe a gift economy may be a viable alternative to our curernt manipulative economy. People can choose to offer things from their heart and share them, and receive in return. This is contrast with the system of doing work you hate in order to be able to pay for things you don't really need but that abusive marketing makes you think you need. The parallel are similar to the shifts in attention I am describing and will probably go hand in hand.)

Back to Burning Man: there is so much going on, subtle yet compelling tools of attention gathering are needed and are being developed further year by year. Instead of the audience looking up at the audience, we are all the audience and all the rockstars, and things come at you from all sides. Sometimes various contributions spontaneously begin to merge into one "piece" although this was not planned. It is a function of adaptation and the intention to play with each other and co-create.

So I see this as our challenge: we need to take back control of our minds and we should seek to invent playful, beautiful, fun, non-harmful, non-manipulative ways of focusing our attention at all scales. If we practice this, we are simultaneously creating a wonderful future full of fun, more of what we want and less of what we don't. This requires an approach guided by the principles of experimentation and intuition coupled with our personal aesthetics. We need to give people some better to look at and participate with than the crap the reptile- and monkey-brain people are throwing at us.  Start local and see what happens! You might yourself swept up in a wave of positive co-creation before you know it. :)

Double lives

It seems to me that all over the planet people are forced to live a variety of double lives. The lives vary by country, culture and region, but it seems a fixture of human life to have such lives. We have a range of double lives from  evangelical pastors who use prostitutes to people who have affairs while married to people who use illegal drugs to people who are closet smokers to people that have secret hobbies and those who pinch every penny but also escape to casinos from time to time.

What is the root of this behavior? On the surface, it seems like it would be best to be able to live fully integrated lives. Is it unavoidable? Is it good or bad? 

Every culture has its taboos, those things that are socially unacceptable, as well as those things it praises and holds up as ideals. And it is certainly good to have limits on some behaviors (the most obvious being things like murder). And it also seems like a great idea to have aspirations and ideals that inspire us to be our best selves. Because the reality is that humans are imperfect. Fundamentally we are animals, prone to the influences of our "monkey" and "reptile" brains above our better judgment from time to time. Ideals remind us to keep these more base impulses under control as much as possible. 

But on the other hand, if we turn ideals into notions of rigid right and wrong, where some things are totally forbidden despite evidence that they are strongly imbedded in human nature, it seems like we are setting the stage for failure, double lives and repression that can erupt into massive social dysfunction if held down too long. 

It seems like we could benefit from a gentler relationship to these ideals, that acknowledges them to be just that, and that they are something to strive for and some times miss. In that environment, people would be more inclined to discuss their "shadow side" more openly, and that discussion can be the source of solutions, comfort and a renewed commitment to keep trying. 

And if we find that many people are struggling in the same ways, we can make a conscious choice to either not aim so high because it is causing undue stress, or to restructure the ideals to more intelligently take into consideration our human natures, or to identify certain subsets of people that need special attention. The bad news is that we don't have a good history of this kind of compassion for others and human failings. But I think we can strive to do better. 

First off, I would throw out the notions of "right" and "wrong" as too rigid and prone to creating problems. I might replace it with the idea of "what works for us" to keep a focus on functional behavior without the punative aspects. And perhaps elevate the notions of "aspiration" and "compassion" to allow for the ideal to exist in a flexible way that inspires more people to keep trying rather than give up. A tricky thing in this plan is that there will be a continuum of how easy attaining these aspirations will be for people. If we could look at these things openly rather than covertly, we might be able to determine the relative distributions in the population, craft appropriate strategies and target differing interventions for different people. The goal would be to create an appropriate stretch for each individual.

In this new scheme, I think we would slowly start to see these double lives disappear and integrated people and culture start to emerge that balanced the tensions between ideals and our human frailty more. The dialectic between our cultural norms and our realized humanity would move in a positive reinforcing spiral.

I think the key aspects of making this transition are moving away from the notions of right and wrong, as well as nuance our understanding of reality and fantasy. This is a topic I would like to write about more in the future. We get into trouble when we relate to fantasy as if it were reality, or vice versa. (Just think of those dejected bridezillas after the letdown of coming home from a marriage or honeymoon.) Ideals are a form of fantasy, but we need to be realistic about them. When reality and fantasy are too far removed from each other a stress is created that is too difficult for most people to bear and they "break" one way or another. Socially, we could benefit from being more realistic about our fantasy and being more fantastical about our reality. :)

We need campaign indicators for the public

I completed the Wellstone Action campagin training about a month ago. It was very valuable for someone like me who dislikes the chaos of your typical campaign. I learned about such things as the "win number," the connection between public policy, electoral politics and grassroots organizing,  messaging, and segmenting and targeting (e.g. identifying and going after undecided or disengage voters). Now, I will not say that it is a perfect system, but it was a pretty darn good system. I might even go so far as to call it "scientific." It made sense, and even more than that, I saw that it could be possible to track your progress against your goals. That's all good.

But one thing I have noticed is missing from this year's presidential campaign, despite all the fancy online tools deployed by the Obama campaign, is an sense of whether the plan is working, or if additional intensity is needed.

For example, I am an Obama supporter. I know I will vote for him, but I am undecided about how much additional volunteering to do. Is it needed? 

I will also say that when Obama voted for the FISA bill I lost SIGNIFICANT motivation to volunteer for him. (I was not the only one. For example: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11349.html) That one vote undermined his integrity and what I believe separated him from the horrible politicians we have had in recent years. If he was going to be a "regular" politican, blowing in the political wind, then he would get "regular" support from me (e.g. a vote, but not much more). I expect him to exercise leadership and shape public opinion as needed to do the right thing, not respond to polls. And if he needs to educate me because it was the right vote, then he needs to do that and he hasn't.

 

Anyway, so now I am not very motivated to volunteer or give more money. BUT, I definitely do want him to win. So what I need to know is if the Obama strategy is on track (in terms of hitting their win number), or if things have shifted significantly and there is a real danger. Yes, I know he is (or was) behind in the polls. But I need even more information.

In particular, I need to know, given the level of support that the Obama campaign has placed me in, if I and people like me remain at that level, will he lose? From what I learned at the Wellstone Action training, I think it may be possible to actually determine this.

If the Obama campaign needs me to escalate my level of support, they need to explain their strategy to me, where I fit in, and why I need to escalate. This is doable and I believe the next step in "microtargeting." I know not everyone cares about this, but it needs to be available to people like me, and as I said above, I know I am not the only one like me.

I am regular supporter of certain causes and campaigns, but I am tired of impassioned pleas and continuous urgency about why THIS TIME WE MEAN IT! If you don't help out now all is lost! It's too much for us to bear. We need to campaigns to be honest with us, and in turn we will step up when it is truly needed. But lie to us, try to trick us, or abuse our trust even once and we will drop you like a hot potato. Thanks! Just being honest. :)

Everything is a lie
I've been noticing it in more and more arenas: in America today everything is a lie, and I think it really costs us in more ways than we realize.

What do I mean by "everything is a lie?" Here are some examples:

• Sports: We uphold our atheletes as superheroes of a sort all the while choosing not to dwell on whether their accomplishments are a function of human effort or advances of chemistry, hormones and various other ways to enhance their natural talents. Barry Bonds. The Tour de France "scandals." We are invested in romantic notion of the athlete and cling to it despite mounting evidence. If we were honest with ourselves we would admit that enhancements are part of the game and decriminalize them. But that would ruin the fantasy...
• Celebrity and Fashion: The same goes for our celebrities. We train cameras on them 24 hours a day and expect them to be perfect and beautiful all the time, and then are shocked when they lash out or have mental breakdowns (Brittany Spears, is the prime example). We are either really shocked, or pretend to be shocked when they show their dark side (which we all have). Why do we continue to mesmerize ourselves with staring into this well of impossible beauty? And our fashion models are truly freaks of nature. I mean, how many of us know people who actually look like that? I certainly don't. And when they are not freakish enough, they go for some plastic surgery. And more. And more. Why do we want life to be more than it is?
• Energy Drinks and other unhealthy food: Energy drinks are on the rise, as are the abuse of stimulants like Adderall. People are pumping themselves up more and more and more, driving themselves faster and faster. Like a race car driver, they are entranced with the speed that they can go. Most of them can still make it around the corners, barely, but may crash into the walls too. Why this quest to go faster and faster? And course there is good old corn syrup and salt and fat. Why do we let our kids get addicted to McDonald's "Happy Meals" and what do they have to do with lasting happiness? Boy, sure does taste good, at least until I feel how little energy I have. Well, time for another energy drink I guess!
• Sex and violence: I was in the video store the other day and it started to sink in how much we are relying on sex and violence for our "entertainment" these days. Every other cover had a scantily clad woman in a suggestive pose on it, whether that had anything to do with the plot or not! And I saw the most recent Batman, which received good reviews, and I was appalled at how outrageously violent it was. It forces its audience to stare at the disgusting and profane. Why do we let our daughters watch Bratz and turn themselves into 10 year old skanks? Why are we doing this to ourselves?
• Politicians and leaders: We apply the same standards of celebrity to our politicians. We expect them to be the impossible. And as a result, only a certain type of freak can withstand the rigors of campaigning, and so we end up with more and freaks as leaders and then wonder why they don't enact policies that serve us and people like us. They are truly a different breed of animal, and we have let them loose in the halls of power. Bad idea. We are complicit in their myth of perfect, and dutifully look away or feign shock when their freak side pops up. Fundamentalist Christian minister seeks gay sex! Catholic priests are pedophiles! Attorney general, our night in shining armor come to save us from evil, sleeps with prostitutes! Congressman accepts bribes! Vice president, who also has major ties to defense contractors, helps to start a war and profits massively!

I mean, come on. What do we expect? Couldn't we see this coming? Let's look at the facts.

But that's harder to do these days than one might think. We have so much "news" at our fingertips, but is it news or just the tools of propaganda? You may not want to face that either, but it's the latter. They way things are presented and spun, and double talked, no one knows which way is up anymore. We truly have lost our direction as a civilization.

But not all hope is lost. We can still regain our equilibrium, sense of proportion and reality, and sustainability. Sustainability is a big buzzword now, but how many of us know what it really means in practice. No one. We live during the most unsustainable time ever, and we no longer have any clue how to live in balance. But to our credit, we are learning and trying, but progress is slow and frought with difficulty.

I don't watch much TV, but I saw a special on how all these celebrities are helping to save the earth. It was printed on the screen and people talked about "saving the earth" but NO ONE mentioned a single concrete step they were taking in the 15 minutes I watched. All they did was attend huge outrageous parties with amazing electrical effects. The height of unsustainability, really. How that saves the earth is beyond me.

Face it people, the party cannot go on. It can't. The fever dream of our Adderall+RockStar Energy Drink trip is wearing off and there is no more of the drug available. We're in for a huge crash. And the biggest drug we have been hooked on is oil: perhaps the root of our unsustainable journey. We have literally mined the life energy of millions of millenia for about a 100 year massive party. But it's ending and we don't want to face it. This will mean massive changes.

Perhaps that is why we like the lies so well. To avoid looking at the reality of our situation we bury our head deeper in the fantasy. Like a kid who does want to hear what the parent is saying, we cover our ears, close our eyes and go "Nanananananananana!" We retreat to a created abd recreated world of every increasing perfection and intensity, all the while the "real" world is crumbling around us.

But the good news is that, although the withdrawl is a major, no fun ordeal, once you are off your addiction you will feel much better. I guarantee it. Wake up from your delerium tremens for a moment and lock yourself in your room for a week. This is what we all need to do.

How can we help each other get off our addiction? The detox model may be the right one. We need people to watch over us as we begin to let go of the chemical, psychological and spiritual toxins that permeate our being. There are so many of them and our body has adapted so fully to them that a painful withdrawal is inevitable. But like most things in life, if we stop running from the pain and face it, we will get through it more quickly and return to health. An empty room, water, only enough food necessary to keep us alive...for a week or a month. And a meditation/exercise/spiritual director to periodically suggest exercises that might help with the pain. That's it. Pretty simple. Our bodies and minds are amazingly capable of adaptation. We may be the ultimate weed. But there is a price when we get addicted to anything that drives us faster than the perpetual cycles of nature.

Why do we want life to be more than it is? Well, we may not really want life to be more than it is, but it is quickly becoming an expectation with the rise of the instantaneous global media. It has to to with attention. People are finding that we can harness the attention of the billions around the globe and the power entices us, even if we can only hold the attention for a moment. The key is to present a vision of life as more than any of us really experience it to be. The purpose of getting that attention is as clear as mud. People really don't care as long as they get it and they'll use any dirty trick in the book to get it. (Did I mention I'm a blond who looks like Jessica Alba and I'm writing this blog entry as I touch myself through my panties? Did I mention that if you just buy my LameToGame product that I will be youir girlfriend/slave for life?)

It's like we're all neglected kids who will break the lamp to get daddy's attention, even if it's only negative attention. Why are we so attention starved? It's a function of our overly-individualized, consumerist, deficiency-based culture. We have worked ourselves literally into our ticky-tacky little boxes, separate from each other, and now wonder why we are so lonely and unfulfilled.

What if we actually tried to use this new power of global attention to achieve something beautiful and wonderful and healing? Rather than trying to trick and use each other, why don't we try to help and support each other? Does that sound too "lame" or "uncool?" Well, that' s just your addiction speaking, and it's only goal is to keep you enslaved. If we can throw it off we can create something beautiful together. Wanna try?

Communities vs. Corporations: Organisms and collective action problems

In this post, I will look at corporations and communities through a life sciences lens to see if it can help us understand why things are the way they are.

Part of the reason corporations exert such influence in today's world is because they are a very effective way to solve collective action problems. Corporations are basically organisms whose DNA is focused on the maximization of returns for those who have invested in them. Yes, corporations must manage expections of their customers and other stakeholders, but the bottom line is that they exist to make money for their shareholders. This goal always trumps any other goal they might profess to have. This goal is so deep in the DNA of a corporation, that it will not only seek this goal by navigating its existing environment, but also seeking to make its environment more amenable to that goal (e.g. via lobbying, propaganda). The Supreme Court has cooperated trmendously by investing corporation with the rights of legal personhood in 1886 (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad). I would expect that the powerful corporate interests of the time had a significant role in this decisions, despite the supposed independence of our courts.

This decision basically put corporations on equal footing with real people in pursuing "their" self-interest in our society. If we think of corporations as organisms, this is equivalent to a virus like AIDS convincing its host organism that it is "safe," allowing it to replicate and expand without fear of incurring the wrath of the host's immune system. Corporations can now operate with and through us, literally with immunity.

What is the current state of the evolution of corporations? I would suggest that the tables have turned 180 degrees and humans have now been incorporated into corporations and serve THEM. Like mitochondria which were incorporated into cellular structure long ago to provide cells with energy, we have been absorbed into the life of corporations and fuel them to their own ends. They do not serve us; we serve them.

In the Hidden Connections, Fritjof Capra provides a new way to think about life and what is alive. His definition is:

• Membranes that separates self from non-self. Life is defined by a relationship within the internal systems of the self and between the self and non-self.



• A Metabolic Network - This provides energy to the self through the intake of raw materials which are used to "feed" the self by turning those raw materials into the structures that perpetuate the structure of of the self.
  

Most of you already know that the cells that compose your body are not the cells you were born with: you are composed of a mostly new set of cells that turnover approximately every 7 years. This is the perfect example of the above: by feeding ourselves, our physical structure constantly recreates itself, and thus we are "alive."

Corporations have a structure, a metabolism and a boundary between their self and everything else. Raw materials pass into the corporations, are transformed and sold producing money, allowing the corporation to live and grow.

Without getting into a debate about whether we have been truly incorporated into corporations, it is clear enough that people are an essential component of their metabolism.

Corporations are large and exert tremendous power by virtue of their ablity to act with a single will as outlined in their mission statement and interpreted by the executives and validated by the investors. They are powerful by virtue of their size and wealth. We cannot help but be involved in their metabolic systems. There are many corporations that have annual revenues greater than the GDP of many countries. And in the US, in 1976 the Supreme Court ruling in Buckley vs. Valeo said that money is equivalent to speech. And thus corporations can SPEAK LOUDER than people generally can. (Except the billionaire owner/investors of those corporations, whose interests are obviously pretty well aligned.) This also reinforces their power over the middle and lower "working" classes.

I do not want to suggest that corporations are evil: there is certainly a mutualistic relationship between people and corporations. But what I will say is that we (real people) have been complicit in unleashing the beasts of corporations across the planet. We worry that robots will get too smart and take over the world, but corporations have already done it! They are the real Frankenstein we need to worry about. Not only have we invested them with serious power, we have also turned over to them the tools of propaganda and influnce (also known as marketing) that allow them to shape our reality and convince us this is all for our own good!


Marketing propaganda constantly reminds us that we lack important things (that we are inherently flawed) and need to buy products to be happy. It's like a modern, corporate version of original sin. We must constantly pay tribute to the dieties of Beauty and Status through their various charlatan priest/corporations, and then thank them for the "services" they provide to us. We thus participate in our constant reinslavement. (Perhaps this is what the Rastafarians call Babylon.)



This is not a system that serves the billions of regular, working people around the planet. It does not serve the workers whose benefits and security are being eroded, it does not serve the consumers who are made to feel flawed and needy, and it does not serve their host communities, as environmental and other problems are externalized by the corporations and the burden of addressing them falls to those communities. All in all it's a pretty raw deal.



What's the alternative? Good question. I certainly don't have the full picture, but here are some thoughts.


It is very possible to reassert control over corporations, at least in theory. All corporations are chartered in one of the states. It is possible to revoke the charter of corporations, and this is an options we should take more seriously, starting with the most egregious offenders. Yes, some companies may choose to go "offshore," but if they do business here, and most of the world's consumption is still in the US, we have the power to require that they behave themselves. And if they are so evil that they would rather leave than do business here, then good riddance.



We need to send the message that corporations are our invention, and are here to serve us, the people. We need to remind them of who is boss. But that requires organization of the general citizenry.



In the past, communities were the fundamental building blocks of society. Recently corporations have made major inroads, but a return to a stronger, modern form of community could be our salvation. Unlike corporations, which have a reductionist single issue agenda (make money for investors), communities are intrinsically multiplex in their goals. They exist to serve the people who live in them. Commuities serve whole people. Corporations reduce people to consumers and then exploit them for the profit of investors. Which sounds better to you?



The problem with communities today is that a combination of wealth, consumer orientation, and mobility has combined with American individualism to gradually erode and weaken our communities. This has been well documented by people like Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone.

But we can recreate them. And it all starts with slowing down, letting go of our fear of each other, sharing time together, and seeing what emerges. Relax and enjoy the organic process. That's all there is to it. Not complicated, but hard as hell to actually do. Wanna try?

Why everybody needs access to the futures market

I wrote in one of my early blog entries back in 2005 that I thought everyone should be holding some gold, because I anticipated the disintegration (at least in the short/medium term) of the US economy. Holding gold is a hedge against declines in the US dollar and woes in the stock market.

These woes have materialized, and I think they are not over, and I still think gold will outperform the stock market and cash savings for at least another two years.

As I started to see evidence that we were in for some tough economic times, I started looking around for investments that would do well in a bad economy. Some of these are:

• Buying gold
• Short selling stocks or stock indexes
• Investing in the futures markets

The good news is that it is very possible for a reasonably small investor with just a couple thousand dollars to invest to benefit in a bad economy. Initially I thought the only opportunities would be for the rich, but I was pleased to find that is no longer the case. Through discount brokers, everyone can have access to these investments. This democratization of finance is a very good thing, because of course economies go up and down all the time. And people should not be forced to suffer because of bad decisions made by their government (e.g. extreme deficit spending, encouraging market bubbles, devaluing the currency, allowing inflation). There are ways to anticipate problems in the market and benefit, or at least hold on to what you have worked so hard to achieve.

It pains me to see that so many people are going to suffer around the world as a result of the global stagflation that is occuring. The scope of the problem is huge and there is no way to "save" people from their situations. The cost at this point is going to be very high. (If we could rewind history and do things differently over the past 20 years, I believe the pain could have been avoided at a low cost.) I believe there is little at this point in time at the policy or aid level that can prevent the impeding suffering.

BUT, it might be possible for individuals, communities and maybe even nations to hedge against the impending problems and perhaps come out on the other side a little better off.

Consumer and producers of commodities have done this for a long time via the futures markets. A wheat grower can lock in a reasonable price by hedging for their wheat and sleep easy even if prices fluctuate wildly after that. A company that makes bread can lock in a price to buy that wheat in the same way.

Why don't more people, institutions and countries seek to hedge their bets against their own economies? By being a part of an economy, we are all heavily "invested" in that economy. It's like having all of your savings tied up in the stock of the company you work for: this is generally acknowledge in the post Enron world to be a very bad idea. Don't put all of your eggs in the same basket.

Likewise, it is dangerous to be overly invested or dependent on your economy. There are ways, via the futures market, to hedge these bets (by buying or selling various financial and other futures). This could help to balance out downturns and return the global economy to stability sooner.

Of course as currently structured, futures are risky and people need to be careful not to lose their shirt. That is why perhaps pensions funds, endowments, and perhaps even federal governments should seek to make prudent hedging (not speculating) investments in these futures markets on behalf of their constituents. I'm not talking about crazy leveraged speculation that has occurred in the past, I'm talking about wisely balanced hedging. I'm not sure if there is enough liquidity in the markets to support investors of these sizes, but if this idea caught on liquidity would be added naturally.

Hedging and the futures market are not a new concepts, but perhaps we need to extend how we use them. Instead of governments always trying to put a happy face on and say everything will be fine while the economy tumbles, perhaps we should be more honest about natural economic fluctations and proactively hedge against them to lessen the negative impacts.

People should demand this of their governments. We need these checks and balances in the global economy to help smooth out the booms and bust that only serve to further enrich the rich and cause suffering for the poor.

Common leadership failures

I was a teaching assistant for Dr. Ronald Heifetz at the Kennedy School of Government. He taught a very unique model of leadership. I thought it was mind-blowing at the time and I have been reminded recently that I believe his key lessons are still really the only key lessons to learn. They can be learned at deeper and deeper levels over a lifetime, but they pretty much include everything one needs to know to make the world a better place. They are like koans to meditate on every day. I summarize the key failures to avoid in my own words below.

1. The failure to distinguish leadership from authority: Leadership is the act of producing desirable change. Authority is power conferred in exchange for particular services. Leadership is a distributed activity known as making a difference. Authority is positions, titles and some intangibles that carry weight among those who put themselves under that authority.
   
   Some people only exert authority, simply doing what is expected of them (pandering) or enforcing their will on others (tyranny). These are both problems. Leadership involves challenging people at a rate they can stand. No one likes change, but change is necessary: especially today.
   
   Other people forget or resist holding their authority. Institutions need authority figures to preserve their integrity. When people think they can be everyone's friend of pretend that everyone is equal, you will end up with organizational dysfunction.
   
2. The failure to focus on what is important: It is very difficult to keep your focus on what the purpose of an organization, your own mission, and what the world needs now. We first need to reflect deeply even to have a sense of answers to these questions for ourselves. Then we are distracted by a desire for comfort, personality differences, ingrained habits of action or thinking, busywork and general human drama. It is essential to constantly ask and remind yourself of what is important, and to keep others focused on that as well.
   
3. The failure to look beyond technical band-aids to real, adaptive solutions: Most people think at a technical level looking for "solutions" to "problem", if they think about their situation at all. But these idea of problems and solutions are a human construct which can some times get in the way of doing what is really needed. Need to look below to what would be required to generate real, lasting positive change. Most of the time what is required are shifts in values, habits and beliefs (which most people think of as "the way things are", when in fact they are just "the way I have grown to think of things"). This is difficult and often slow work: especially because one's own beliefs may need shifting! But pretending there are quick fixes or ways to avoid engaging at this deeper level just results in no change. There are no easy answers, and that is a painful pill to swallow.

Look around in your own life. See if these lessons apply. I challenge you to find a problem of leadership that does not fall under one of these 3 categories! Let me know if you think you've found one and we can discuss it.

Community Supported Renewable Energy



I read an interesting article in the Morther Earth News (June/July 2008) about "Community Supported Wind Power." I think this is something we really need to figure out in the US.

Apparently, Denmark and some other Euopean countries have a structure that allows community level associations of citizens to invest in wind power installations. They become the investor/owners in these small systems that are distributed throughout the countryside and help to provide the power they use. An organization in the US is pusing for local power like this: the Public Renewables Partnership, http://www.repartners.org/.

I know from conversations with PNM (the power provider in New Mexico), and with others who have tried to work with PNM, that these kind of installations are not allowed (yet). This is not quite true: very small systems might be allowed under rules that allow individuals and businesses to net meter their power off their solar panels, etc.

But systems of a couple megawatts, which would be great for many towns and municipalities, are not allowed. But they should be!

The future of power is decentralized generation. Because of course consumption is widely decentralized and the inefficiencies of sending power long distances over power lines are significant. We need to generate power near where it is consumed. This is especially true for renewables: unlike the power plants of the past (e.g. coal, nuclear) that have toxic emissions and negatively impact their surroundings, renewables can be co-located with human settlements with no problems at all.

If the future of power is decentralized generation, and that means renewable sources, then we need community supported renewable power!

In the same way it is very appropriate for cities and towns to govern and tax themselves, to have sewer and water districts and provide their necessary infrastructure, it is appropriate for communities to control at least some of their own power.

Making this happen will require a revolution of sorts: there are many entrenched interests that benefit tremendously from centralized power generation. They don't want to see things decentralized and will fight it. But there are more of us than there are of them. We need to educate ourselves and demand another system that serves us better. No one will do it for us.

I am hopeful that the new president will be supportive of changes like these (because people across the nation are fed up with centralized, crony capitalism), and will pass enabling legislation and regulations that force utility companies to open themselves to small distributed generators. I am hopeful, but again we will need to demand these changes. It is up to us. The pendulum is swinging back, empowering people over institutions...thank god!

And on a practical note, I am very motivated to try to make community renewable power a reality, particularly here in New Mexico. Withour 300 days of sun a year, vast open space and extensive wind resources, it's a perfect spot to make it happen. Having worked with and for communities doing real estate development, I am confident that it is doable.

As one example, Santa Fe will be increasing its electrical load by approximately 25% in the next couple years as it begins pumping drinking water up from the Rio Grande. This is a perfect project to pair with a new municipal renewable energy source. Given Santa Fe's commitment to reducing greenhouse gases and its progressive orientation, I am hopefuly that community renewable power can be made real here.