Listen Up, Chief

If Barack Obama’s “Team of Rivals” is any indication, our president-elect strives to entertain new ideas and opinions differing from his own. As we watched him evolve on the campaign trail, he calmly adapted to radical changes (both domestic and abroad) and learned from his experiences (both triumphs and struggles). We learned that Obama is a listener. Although he’s established an astonishingly proficient team around him, plenty of “people” outside of his cabinet still deserve his ear. These few are looking toward a green future.

Van Jones
Think of Oakland-based social activist Van Jones as a hype man for energy innovation. As blue-collar jobs vanish to outsourcing or financial strains, Jones is spreading the word of “green-collar” employment and teaching young African Americans about the positive roles they can play in the green revolution. Jones is a realist. “I love Barack Obama,” he told Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker. “But I’ll tell you this….One man is not going to save us.” He understands that the disadvantaged communities he wants to motivate have enthusiasm barriers and daily “just getting by” hardships that take direct precedence over long-term fears of global warming.

“The challenge is making this an everybody movement,” Jones told Kolbert, “so your main icons are Joe Six-Pack…becoming Joe the Solar Guy, or that kid on the corner putting down his handgun, picking up a caulk gun.” The goals and opportunities might be hard for some to see. (How do you convince an inner-city high school student that retrofitting city buildings with solar panels is a viable and lucrative profession?) But it’s all in Jones’s enthusiastic presentation, which varies depending on if he’s speaking in a school gymnasium or an office boardroom, procuring support and funds for his Green For All campaign. The idea is that the workers who get in on the ground floor now will have a distinct advantage and opportunity for upward mobility as the industry develops.

Not only can a green revolution revitalize our economy and re-establish the United States as an industry leader, but such innovation can also lift those most in need out of poverty, expand the horizon of possibilities and create hope for the future. What do you think, Obama?

Further reading: The Green Collar Economy

Shai Agassi
To some, Shai Agassi might be considered a radical. His Palo Alto, California-based company, Better Place, is looking to change our transportation system. Completely. (Well, aside from the whole cars rolling on wheels thing.) Agassi isn’t interested in simple changes, like increasing demand for hybrid vehicles or encouraging mass transit. His goal is complete overhaul. Better Place is peddling a business model for a grid of electric cars, clean energy and charging stations. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman explains, in brief, how it works:

“The Better Place electric car charging system involves generating electrons from as much renewable energy–such as wind and solar–as possible and then feeding those clean electrons into a national electric car charging infrastructure. This consists of electricity charging spots with plug-in outlets–the first pilots were opened in Israel this week–plus battery-exchange stations all over the respective country. The whole system is then coordinated by a service control center that integrates and does the billing.

“Under the Better Place model, consumers can either buy or lease an electric car from the French automaker Renault or Japanese companies like Nissan (General Motors snubbed Agassi) and then buy miles on their electric car batteries from Better Place the way you now buy an Apple cellphone and the minutes from AT&T. That way Better Place, or any car company that partners with it, benefits from each mile you drive.”

This isn’t just change. This is a new transportation paradigm, the type of full-scale metropolitan shift like the mid-air highways of Back to the Future II or the pneumatic tubes of Futurama. Except it’s totally real. Currently, Agassi’s plan is being tested in Hawaii, Israel, Australia, San Francisco and Denmark. The advantages, once this system is in place, are that it’s cheaper for consumers (cost per mile is approximately cut in half), gentler on the environment and it battles our support of, to borrow a Friedman term, petro-dictatorship–harmful regimes that benefit from American oil addiction. But the only way a widespread rollout can truly happen–which it will throughout the rest of the world, regardless of American interest–is if Obama builds genuine interest, stands firm on conflict-wrought decisions and strongly leads the way to a new day.

Further reading: Wired

Denmark
Yes, the country in Europe. More than twenty years ago, Denmark made an unprecedented decision: Looking to escape oil dependence, the country abandon talks of nuclear power and instead focused its resources on efficient and renewable energy. The bold solution was to use taxation to influence and change behavior, along with government-mandated alternative energy standards and long-term subsidies. And it’s worked.

In the United States, we’re in a cycle of fluctuating gas prices. Crippling high prices are often followed with “sigh of relief” lows. Although the cycle will endlessly repeat itself, this has kept demand for energy-efficient vehicles minimal. Consumers believe there will always be relief to come. Attitudes toward consumption have not changed because consumers have not been forced to adapt.

Now, do understand, energy taxation is a drastic measure (no one likes to see their taxes increase), but at the same time, it might be a necessary one. After all, look at the results in Denmark: Since 1981, its economy has grown 70 percent, energy consumption has flat-lined (which is good), unemployment is less than 2 percent and the solar- and wind-power industries have blossomed to become international frontrunners–not to mention the country is the top exporter of wind turbines in the world. In Denmark, citizens’ behaviors changed as the “result of political will,” according to Connie Hedegarrd, the country’s minister for climate and energy, in Thomas Friedman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded (also the source for these statistics). What’s important here isn’t necessarily in the details (many will tell you that higher taxes are exactly the opposite of what’s needed to revive our economy) but simply the fact that strong policy can have a dramatic and positive effect–green initiatives to come ASAP.