When I was a small child families used to cram into the station wagon and head out for a double feature at the drive in for an evening's entertainment. Especially at any theater that provided a 'carload' or family rate - this was bargain entertainment - two movies, maybe a cooler full of sodas or juice, and one big bag of popcorn probably didn't even set you back $10. My parents used to take us to Disney movies - usually the first film was an older one and then the main attraction was the current Disney hit. I saw a lot of Kurt Russell movies as a small child that way, and one in particular is very memorable. I think it was my 5th birthday that we went to the drive in rather than a sit down dinner and then an indoor film. My parents always took the whole family out for my birthday since it was a holiday (New Year's Eve). Hardly drive in season, but right after Christmas one imagines in a family of 9 funds might have been running short before payday. That 5th birthday was also the last one before my cousin started joining me every year and sleeping over at our house for New Year's, so she was spared the crowded station wagon on a freezing late December night.
My first Kurt Russell movie was an older film, a black and white one, if memory serves, that was running before the main attraction. It was called "Follow Me Boys" and starred Fred MacMurray as a scoutmaster. Innocent times those were. Anyway, we had a Rambler station wagon at the time and because it was my birthday I got to ride in the middle and not the way back and I chose the seat next to the passenger side door. I hated getting squished in the middle. It was cold though and I think we were all complaining about how cold it was so my mom went to the snack bar to get us all hot cocoas. While she was gone my older sister moved the old speakers they used to have to attach to your car window from the backseat window - mine - to the front seat, so she could hear better. My mom returned soon with a cardboard box full of paper cups brimming with hot cocoa. She handed one cup to my sister up front and then began to hand the box to me so we could pass out the remaining cups among the four of us who were in the middle seat (my younger sister was already asleep in the way back). But, my window was rolled up a little because we'd had the speaker hanging from it, and as my mom passed the box through it didn't clear the opening. I remember a sensation similar to what I'd felt a year earlier when I'd been scalded down my back when I ran into my mom carrying a large coffee urn out of the kitchen, only this time it was in my lap. I expect I must have screamed, but I don't remember that at all, I just remember looking down at my lap and it was soaked through with hot cocoa. My mother yanked open the car door and my father jumped out of the driver's seat. Now, my mom was a little person, five foot two at the apex of her growing days, but long before my dad got around to our side of the car she had yanked me up into the air with just one arm, got her other arm underneath me and she began to sprint toward the public restroom next to the snack bar. In the annals of Kelly's birthdays - this one does not finish first on the disaster scale - but it is in the top five. What happened next should have been a blur to a child so young and who was probably already in shock, but it panned out in very slow motion for me as she pulled me into the crowded restroom, yanked off my clothes and in front of a number of girls and women I hope I never actually saw again who happened to be waiting in line for the stalls - began to hose me down by running a couple of the sinks at once and shoveling water all over me. I'm not sure if I blacked out from pain or an abortive suicide by embarrassment, but my next memory is of me laid out along the way back bench wrapped loosely in damp paper towels and my older sisters' school sweater, staring up at the ceiling of the car as my father backed out recklessly and peeled down the lane at the drive in on our way to the hospital, all while at least two of my sisters were crying and asking why we had to leave before the main feature... It was a long time before I would venture back to the drive in theater.
But I do remember being convinced to go to the drive in with a bunch of my high school friends my freshman year. We went to girls' school and there were packets of siblings who all hung out together. I remember being very honored to be asked by none other than Bobbie Biggi, older sister of my friend Debbie, to serve as a last minute replacement in a crew that was headed out one Friday night in the spring of 1977. Bobbie Biggi was a senior, and I was scared to death of her. I didn't realize it at the time, but she had a major case of middle child syndrome, and you needed to cut her a wide swath. But, she asked me and I said okay. My own older sister, also a senior, did not go with us as she always had a boyfriend and didn't usually go on these outings. Bobbie and Debbie picked me up first that night in their 'vintage' Plymouth Belvedere, a huge off white monstrosity that probably got about 5 miles to the gallon. Next we went out to get Michaela Bashford, a junior who had transferred to Mercy High School that year. Then it was over to the Lallys, where we picked up Teresa, a senior, Rose, a junior, and Bernadette, a sophomore. We drove south down Watt Avenue from the Lallys toward Highway 50 and pulled into a grocery store parking lot near La Riviera Drive. Bobbie ordered us all out of the car and went around back and opened the trunk. She took a long look at us and then turned to me and said, "Little Boyd, you get shotgun." Thrilled, I ran around and jumped in. A few minutes later the trunk closed and Teresa Lally got into the back seat of the car. I knew better than to ask where Debbie, Rose Marie, Micki and Bernadette were, and my joy over being granted the honor of sitting in the front seat of Bobbie's car faded as we pulled out of the parking lot and the rear bumper scraped the sidewalk. I knew I was ballast, chosen for my unique ability to offset more of the rear load. Bobbie turned to me as we neared the entrance to the Sacramento Drive In and told me to keep my mouth shut and nod in agreement to anything she said. She towered over me physically, and as my first encounter with her years ago when we dropped my older sister off at their house had been to see her on her family's front lawn with her mouth taped shut over the particular brand of backtalk she'd given her mother at dinner, I assumed she was every bit the bad ass I feared her to be. I nodded silent assent. It was not my intent to ride home in the trunk.
As we pulled up to the pay window Bobbie held out six dollars to the clerk, two for each of us in the car. Teresa in the backseat sunk down as far as she could.
"Your car's riding pretty low in back, sister." The clerk commented, as I attempted not to swallow my own tongue, which seemed suddenly very dry and too large for my mouth.
"It's a crap car. Suspension's shot. And my dad keeps his tool box in the trunk." Bobbie snapped, staring the guy directly in the eyes.
"Well, I'm going to need you to open it up so I can be sure you're not trying to sneak anyone into the movie." He said as he began to step out of his little cage.
Bobbie slammed her hand against the dash board and turned the car off, yanking her key out of the ignition. I imagined two Lallys, a Bashford and the younger Biggi closing their eyes and trying to appear invisible. But, Bobbie held the car key out the window toward the clerk and hissed at him.
"My freaking father doesn't trust me with the key to his trunk and his expensive tools. All I have is the ignition key. Want to give it a try?"
"Hey, no key - no admission." He handed her back the six dollars. "You don't get in until I see what's in your trunk."
"Fine!" Bobbie was really pissed. "I will drive all the freaking way home and get you the key. Asshole."
Bobbie drove us out of the parking lot and around the side of the huge chain link fence along the perimeter of the six screen drive in complex. She pulled off to the side along a row of warehouses and got out. She opened the trunk with the key from her jeans pocket and let everyone out. They were instructed to scale the fence and meet us inside in five minutes. Everyone looked happy to be alive and breathing fresh air and none of them complained. Bobbie told Teresa to get up front with me and I slid toward the middle of the bench seat, reluctantly. It was my first encounter with Stockholm Syndrome. Bobbie drove the car back into the line for the drive in and in a few minutes we were back up at the same window.
"That was fast," the clerk, a guy in his 30s who had grey in his hair and lots of pock marks on his face, said to Bobbie as he eyed the horizon on the vehicle from front to back. "Where do you live, in a warehouse?"
"So funny I forgot to laugh." Bobbie retorted, handing him the trunk key.
"Trunk seems to be riding a lot higher too." He commented as he took the key and headed toward the back of the vehicle. It was taking all of my concentration not to pee out of sheer panic and fear. Teresa Lally's arm was totally clammy rubbing up against mine too. Her eyes were wide and focused on the area beyond the hood of the car.
"Yeah, I told you my dad doesn't trust me with his tools, asshole. He took them. Now there's nothing back there to offset tubby here." She said, cocking her thumb towards me.
The guy opened the trunk and took a good, long look. When he came back around her told Bobbie he was issuing three tickets for our six dollars and that when he had security come and check our car against our tickets later, there'd better only be three people in it. Bobbie complained that we were meeting friends inside whose parents had brought them and he said they'd better have tickets or we were all going to be thrown out and would probably go to jail. I couldn't breathe and the oldest Lally sister looked ready to faint, but Bobbie flipped him the bird and peeled out toward screen number 2.
When she parked the car, in the middle of the middle row of lot number 2, she turned to me, handed me a flashlight she retrieved from under the driver's seat and told me to go get four tickets, pronto, unless I wanted to walk home now because ticket number 3 was going to her sister. I stared down at the flashlight as Teresa eagerly let me out of the car. I had no idea what to do, but I realized within seconds that necessity is not the mother of invention, fear of having your ass kicked by Bobbie Biggi is the mother of invention. I walked off down the row and spotted a car parked away from the others, with a couple making out in its front seat. I took in a deep breath, hoisted the flashlight in through the driver's open window and told them I was going to need to see both of their tickets, and maybe their IDs. They nervously handed over their receipt and while the boy started fumbling in his wallet, I told him that would be okay, but this was a family drive in and we were getting complaints. I found my next victims a few rows over and had my four tickets in less than three minutes.
I have no idea what movie we saw that night. I do remember that the six dollars plus the extra eight for popcorn and three drinks to share, came from me and the trunk dwellers, and Teresa Lally forked over two dollars for gas money. We had a good time though, all in all, and we all still hung out together a lot of the time - maybe not so much at the drive in though.
I remember distinctly when I'd arrived home that night from the movies my mom was waiting up in her barcalounger next to the front door, as always, and she asked me if I'd had a good time. I nodded, still nauseous from stress, and started up the stairway toward the bedroom I shared with my younger sister. My mother called after me to be mindful that good families like the Biggis and Lallys were used to the very refined and thoughtful way my older sister Maureen behaved around their older children, and I was not to mess up these important connections with the best families in school by falling into the sort of hijinks I was prone to getting into with my high energy level.
As the years passed many people were sad to see the drive in theaters begin to disappear, realizing that as they fell into disrepair, were converted to flea markets, or were torn down completely, we were witnessing an era passed into history. I don't count myself among that sentimental lot. On days when I commute down highway 50 and catch sight of the still operating Sacramento six drive ins, a chill sometimes catches me, and then a slow burn.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Clean Energy - Why it Matters to Everyone
A little over two years ago I was attending a conference on clean energy, one of about 15 that year that titled itself a clean energy "Summit". As I was attending on behalf of the company I worked for at the time, an electric utility, I was very invested in the topic. I was surprised about halfway through the group of panel discussions on the second day of the conference when one of the panelists, who worked for a solar energy company - pointed me out in the audience and noted that he was happy to see even utilities now participating in these events. Apparently he had missed day one when a utility executive was on one of the panels - albeit garnering criticism from those around him even as he outlined programs and initiatives very similar to what they were outlining.
At the intermission after being pointed out, I walked up to the solar company executive, a very nice gentleman with whom I have conferred many times on issues and alongside whom I have advocated in unison for some pieces of legislation. I asked him why he'd chosen to point me out and he said he wanted others in the group to better understand that utilities were not their enemies, that even 'we' were finally coming around to face reality. I nodded, but I have to admit that was a backhanded compliment on the heels of a reluctant and half-hearted acknowledgement - it's like when my children say out loud to each other in my presence ' Even mom isn't that stupid".
Quite by accident I have spent almost all of my career working in and around the utility industries, as a regulator, in a legislative committee with oversight over utilities, with private law firms representing municipal and private utilities, and then as a utility executive. In each of my roles I was pigeon-holed in some way. I was a consumer advocate at my regulatory agency. I didn't view utilities as the enemy - they were regulated and they were offering a public necessity. Their profits were capped, their operations overseen, their rates established by the regulatory agency. That said, I was a fervent advocate for consumer interests in the rare instances when anti-trust enforcement had to be particularly broad (mergers) or when market abuse was suspected. It was assumed because of my job that I was a liberal Democrat and was anti-business. So it surprised a lot of people when a pro-business legislative chairman asked me to be his committee consultant during the California Energy crisis in 2000-2001. In that capacity I worked for the legislative body and my job was to ensure voting members had clear analyses of all legislation and understood all implications. It was also my job to hear from vested interests and include their letters and feedback for the committee. We also had to negotiate major pieces of legislation. It was my job to make sure everyone had clear, accurate information to make the choices they were going to make, not to try to influence them, and when working on legislative language - to try to guide the process in a way that resulted in legislation that did no harm and was in the public interest. That is not an easy task when so many people believe so strongly in what they bring to the table. Nobody walks away with a whole loaf. Even the most altruistic person has a self interest and those have to be identified and quantified and you have to leave your ego in some other room in some other building and just get the job done. Half a loaf will feed a lot of people, and to me it would be inexcusable to walk away from the ability to do some good because we couldn't do what I wanted to do. In all of my capacities since that time I haven't ever waivered from that stance. I represent an interest, but I am acutely aware of the public interest and of needs beyond my own. I will advocate always consistent with doing no harm and moving progress forward. Anything more than those things is excisable from a 'must have'. Knowing the implications of what is being sought, what will be gained or lost, is also key.
So, that takes me back via the long route to being pigeon-holed. It is ironic at this stage in my career to be pointed out as an environmental laggard, but someone finally willing to be pulled along with progress. The energy business is a vital business to everything all of us do. It is the fuels we consume for transport, the heat in our homes, the lights at our businesses, and every electronic device we depend upon for information, security and commerce. One hundred twenty-five years ago if you walked through the streets of any major city in America, but especially in the more populated east, you would have seen plumes coming from factories, wires everywhere across the streets from the various phone and new electric companies in every locality. If you went to the theatre at night you would have coughed due to the gas lamp fumes, and strained your eyes to see clearly in the dim setting. Only in Germany at that time would you see gas-fueled vehicles on the road, and just a few of them, as up until then the land speed record for vehicles was held by electric vehicles. By 1900 the electric light had proliferated, cleaning up some of gaslight mess and creating the viability of around the clock work, and a year later mass produced petroleum fueled vehicles were on the road, because they could go faster than electric ones. Fast forward to 2015 and electric vehicles are re-surging, albeit slowly and we're having to slowly change our paradigm by first doing hybrids that take us hundreds of miles farther on a tank of gas and acclimate to plugging in a vehicle and having it run solely on electricity, or on some other carbon neutral fuel. Of course, we fuel our electric generation that fuels those electric vehicles, that fuels our factories and chip makers (free form foundries - of which we have fewer and fewer in the US.. Our data and electronic driven lifestyles are also fueled by electricity. So we're also cleaning up the sources of electricity.
Just as clean energy mattered in the 1880s and 1890s when Thomas Edison managed to beat everyone else to market with his viable incandescent bulb (Nicola Tesla lacked the pragmatic affiliation with commercial interests and so his inventions were slower to get to market, if they made it to market), it matters today. Edison, Tesla and all of the other innovators faced significant opposition from the existing technologies and their commercial partners - and economics was at the core of the arguments not to move forward with electricity. Gas lamps were cheaper. Electricity would never be as cheap as gas. But because the long term economic benefit far outweighed the short term expense (the return was exponentially larger than the risk) electric light went forward. What was able to get to market - bright, efficient, clean light - changed everything, and it also cleaned up the air. Of course, to make it proliferate there was also the need for what we call central station generation of electricity - big power plants. If you wanted electric light in Montana you had to generate power there and get it to your house - so the plants had to be built everywhere. And in cities eventually they stopped having so many phone companies and so many lighting companies and there were fewer lines everywhere hanging over the streets. Cleaner, more efficient energy mattered and it fueled economic growth and is what made the 20th century so different from the 19th. Imagine your life today if its invention and proliferation had been stalled 5, 10, 25 years? And over the course of the evolution of providing electricity, subsidies have existed to get things to market. Sometimes it's private capital - such as supported Tom Edison - and sometimes it's public subsidy - like what jump started the nuclear generation industry, or built all those dams across the country that generate clean hydro electricity. Now the time from lab to market is so much faster you don't even need long term subsidies, especially as technologies mature. People just need to adapt and adopt and the innovation will continue to build.
So why would we want to slow innovation today? We have so many more people on the planet. We have technology that never would have existed had we relied solely on existing, affordable and unclean fuels. The electric light replaced the gaslight beginning in the late 1880s, and yet the natural gas industry proliferates to this day. The petroleum fueled vehicle remains the dominant transportation choice for cars, trucks, buses, ships, heavy equipment, and electricity as a fuel as well as other alternative fuels are growing very, very slowly. The air that people breathed in the early 20th century even in clogged cities once gaslight was largely replaced, was much cleaner than the air they breathed before, although tailpipe emissions from vehicles were beginning to offset this. Even if we replace only one fourth of all vehicles with electric or other carbon neutral fuels over the next 10-20 years imagine the change not just in the air your breathe, but in the lack of run off into our rivers and oceans, the lack of toxins getting into our soil. Having more electric transit will also mean people spend less time in their cars, even if they are fossil-fueled. Cleaning up ships, heavy equipment, that UPS or FedEx truck that runs around your neighborhood and picks up from your office twice a day, trains, buses, cars - even having electric bikes to make it more convenient to be on two versus four wheels - all make a huge difference. And cleaning up the fuels that create electricity will also make a huge difference. As will being open to new ways to generate locally, to store energy, and most of all - to be more efficient and use less than we have been. It's a process and each bit of incremental change has exponential positive impact. We may not be able to zip to the best case right away, but we can take a number of very positive leaps forward - very significant, very impactful progress.
What would be a shame would be to not act. We know how many of us there are on this planet and how many more there will be soon. We know you need commerce to feed nations and the costs and impacts of the choices we make. We know what a wonderful gift this earth, its mountains, rivers, seas, and most of all the air we breathe are. Just like Edison and other innovators were able to move 19th century thinking forward using technology and pragmatic realities about economics - we can do that today. It has nothing to do with political affiliation or industry alliance. We have the technologies, and we continue to improve upon them. We can get from here to there and clean energy is the cornerstone of how we should proceed. It is not an abandonment of what has come before - it is a progression forward, responsibly but profoundly. What we need to accomplish to clean up our electric generation, our transportation, manufacturing and other processes is so much more modest than the revolutionary force that was the electric light and central station generation - and what we can accomplish if we are willing to continue to push forward will have a much more profound effect on the 21st century and beyond. There is room for all at the table if we're all willing to settle for half a loaf and consume only our own share. No one will go hungry, the old will be replaced by the new in time. It won't even seem like the dynamic change it is, but the effect is that there will be a 21st century and beyond. That we will be able to live it here, on this planet. The return far outweighs the risk.
At the intermission after being pointed out, I walked up to the solar company executive, a very nice gentleman with whom I have conferred many times on issues and alongside whom I have advocated in unison for some pieces of legislation. I asked him why he'd chosen to point me out and he said he wanted others in the group to better understand that utilities were not their enemies, that even 'we' were finally coming around to face reality. I nodded, but I have to admit that was a backhanded compliment on the heels of a reluctant and half-hearted acknowledgement - it's like when my children say out loud to each other in my presence ' Even mom isn't that stupid".
Quite by accident I have spent almost all of my career working in and around the utility industries, as a regulator, in a legislative committee with oversight over utilities, with private law firms representing municipal and private utilities, and then as a utility executive. In each of my roles I was pigeon-holed in some way. I was a consumer advocate at my regulatory agency. I didn't view utilities as the enemy - they were regulated and they were offering a public necessity. Their profits were capped, their operations overseen, their rates established by the regulatory agency. That said, I was a fervent advocate for consumer interests in the rare instances when anti-trust enforcement had to be particularly broad (mergers) or when market abuse was suspected. It was assumed because of my job that I was a liberal Democrat and was anti-business. So it surprised a lot of people when a pro-business legislative chairman asked me to be his committee consultant during the California Energy crisis in 2000-2001. In that capacity I worked for the legislative body and my job was to ensure voting members had clear analyses of all legislation and understood all implications. It was also my job to hear from vested interests and include their letters and feedback for the committee. We also had to negotiate major pieces of legislation. It was my job to make sure everyone had clear, accurate information to make the choices they were going to make, not to try to influence them, and when working on legislative language - to try to guide the process in a way that resulted in legislation that did no harm and was in the public interest. That is not an easy task when so many people believe so strongly in what they bring to the table. Nobody walks away with a whole loaf. Even the most altruistic person has a self interest and those have to be identified and quantified and you have to leave your ego in some other room in some other building and just get the job done. Half a loaf will feed a lot of people, and to me it would be inexcusable to walk away from the ability to do some good because we couldn't do what I wanted to do. In all of my capacities since that time I haven't ever waivered from that stance. I represent an interest, but I am acutely aware of the public interest and of needs beyond my own. I will advocate always consistent with doing no harm and moving progress forward. Anything more than those things is excisable from a 'must have'. Knowing the implications of what is being sought, what will be gained or lost, is also key.
So, that takes me back via the long route to being pigeon-holed. It is ironic at this stage in my career to be pointed out as an environmental laggard, but someone finally willing to be pulled along with progress. The energy business is a vital business to everything all of us do. It is the fuels we consume for transport, the heat in our homes, the lights at our businesses, and every electronic device we depend upon for information, security and commerce. One hundred twenty-five years ago if you walked through the streets of any major city in America, but especially in the more populated east, you would have seen plumes coming from factories, wires everywhere across the streets from the various phone and new electric companies in every locality. If you went to the theatre at night you would have coughed due to the gas lamp fumes, and strained your eyes to see clearly in the dim setting. Only in Germany at that time would you see gas-fueled vehicles on the road, and just a few of them, as up until then the land speed record for vehicles was held by electric vehicles. By 1900 the electric light had proliferated, cleaning up some of gaslight mess and creating the viability of around the clock work, and a year later mass produced petroleum fueled vehicles were on the road, because they could go faster than electric ones. Fast forward to 2015 and electric vehicles are re-surging, albeit slowly and we're having to slowly change our paradigm by first doing hybrids that take us hundreds of miles farther on a tank of gas and acclimate to plugging in a vehicle and having it run solely on electricity, or on some other carbon neutral fuel. Of course, we fuel our electric generation that fuels those electric vehicles, that fuels our factories and chip makers (free form foundries - of which we have fewer and fewer in the US.. Our data and electronic driven lifestyles are also fueled by electricity. So we're also cleaning up the sources of electricity.
Just as clean energy mattered in the 1880s and 1890s when Thomas Edison managed to beat everyone else to market with his viable incandescent bulb (Nicola Tesla lacked the pragmatic affiliation with commercial interests and so his inventions were slower to get to market, if they made it to market), it matters today. Edison, Tesla and all of the other innovators faced significant opposition from the existing technologies and their commercial partners - and economics was at the core of the arguments not to move forward with electricity. Gas lamps were cheaper. Electricity would never be as cheap as gas. But because the long term economic benefit far outweighed the short term expense (the return was exponentially larger than the risk) electric light went forward. What was able to get to market - bright, efficient, clean light - changed everything, and it also cleaned up the air. Of course, to make it proliferate there was also the need for what we call central station generation of electricity - big power plants. If you wanted electric light in Montana you had to generate power there and get it to your house - so the plants had to be built everywhere. And in cities eventually they stopped having so many phone companies and so many lighting companies and there were fewer lines everywhere hanging over the streets. Cleaner, more efficient energy mattered and it fueled economic growth and is what made the 20th century so different from the 19th. Imagine your life today if its invention and proliferation had been stalled 5, 10, 25 years? And over the course of the evolution of providing electricity, subsidies have existed to get things to market. Sometimes it's private capital - such as supported Tom Edison - and sometimes it's public subsidy - like what jump started the nuclear generation industry, or built all those dams across the country that generate clean hydro electricity. Now the time from lab to market is so much faster you don't even need long term subsidies, especially as technologies mature. People just need to adapt and adopt and the innovation will continue to build.
So why would we want to slow innovation today? We have so many more people on the planet. We have technology that never would have existed had we relied solely on existing, affordable and unclean fuels. The electric light replaced the gaslight beginning in the late 1880s, and yet the natural gas industry proliferates to this day. The petroleum fueled vehicle remains the dominant transportation choice for cars, trucks, buses, ships, heavy equipment, and electricity as a fuel as well as other alternative fuels are growing very, very slowly. The air that people breathed in the early 20th century even in clogged cities once gaslight was largely replaced, was much cleaner than the air they breathed before, although tailpipe emissions from vehicles were beginning to offset this. Even if we replace only one fourth of all vehicles with electric or other carbon neutral fuels over the next 10-20 years imagine the change not just in the air your breathe, but in the lack of run off into our rivers and oceans, the lack of toxins getting into our soil. Having more electric transit will also mean people spend less time in their cars, even if they are fossil-fueled. Cleaning up ships, heavy equipment, that UPS or FedEx truck that runs around your neighborhood and picks up from your office twice a day, trains, buses, cars - even having electric bikes to make it more convenient to be on two versus four wheels - all make a huge difference. And cleaning up the fuels that create electricity will also make a huge difference. As will being open to new ways to generate locally, to store energy, and most of all - to be more efficient and use less than we have been. It's a process and each bit of incremental change has exponential positive impact. We may not be able to zip to the best case right away, but we can take a number of very positive leaps forward - very significant, very impactful progress.
What would be a shame would be to not act. We know how many of us there are on this planet and how many more there will be soon. We know you need commerce to feed nations and the costs and impacts of the choices we make. We know what a wonderful gift this earth, its mountains, rivers, seas, and most of all the air we breathe are. Just like Edison and other innovators were able to move 19th century thinking forward using technology and pragmatic realities about economics - we can do that today. It has nothing to do with political affiliation or industry alliance. We have the technologies, and we continue to improve upon them. We can get from here to there and clean energy is the cornerstone of how we should proceed. It is not an abandonment of what has come before - it is a progression forward, responsibly but profoundly. What we need to accomplish to clean up our electric generation, our transportation, manufacturing and other processes is so much more modest than the revolutionary force that was the electric light and central station generation - and what we can accomplish if we are willing to continue to push forward will have a much more profound effect on the 21st century and beyond. There is room for all at the table if we're all willing to settle for half a loaf and consume only our own share. No one will go hungry, the old will be replaced by the new in time. It won't even seem like the dynamic change it is, but the effect is that there will be a 21st century and beyond. That we will be able to live it here, on this planet. The return far outweighs the risk.
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