Regarding Breakthrough Generation, Our Controversy and our Perceived “Tech-Fix” Fixation

But the fact remains that when we put our money into technological innovation in this country, we are able to achieve at a pretty rapid pace…If the money and the motivation were there, I don’t think it’s wrong or ignorant of me to say that we could be taking potentially massive strides in clean energy technology.

I am going to apologize up front if this is too self-referential for some people’s tastes.

Right now, I am two parts confused, one part troubled and (I’ll admit it) one part amused regarding the flak we at Breakthrough Generation have been drawing the past few days on ItsGettingHotInHere and the conversations it has sparked and mood it has set in the office. I don’t think any of us are any less determined to advance a mission we see as essential, but how we do so and what that means has been the cause of some serious discussion.

The smart and passionate people I work with are working through some serious inner turmoil over the direction the movement represented on IGHIH is headed. I have come to question whether this movement is even capable of seriously advancing an agenda of clean energy, global prosperity and just and equitable social change. My new friend and BTG summer fellow Helen Aki posted a serious, thoughtful and questioning post on IGHIH hoping to explain where we are coming from, and where we would like a place on the quilted mosaic of the youth climate/energy movement, and thus far she has been met largely with bitterness and a refusal to recognize even the goodness of our intentions. Yes, we have been criticized for our style, but also for content and beliefs that are projected upon us and that we do not hold.

Are we part of an Environmental Movement? (Or, What to do When Energy Becomes Our Number One Priority)

I have said before that I don’t consider myself an environmentalist. You might be saying, “What is this kid doing at a think tank which is so clearly ecologically concerned if he doesn’t think he is an environmentalist? Wham-bam thank you ma’am, you ARE an environmentalist.” Well, let me explain what I mean. Some of my friends went to Powershift, and I stayed on campus to pursue other interests. I started going to Student for Environmental Action (SEA) meetings on my campus to increase my social connections. It was at SEA that a friend lent me Break Through, which made it clear that climate change is an existential crisis. If it is not stopped, climate change poses a direct threat to our country, our society, our world, and our ability to help everyone on this earth—by improving the lives of those in this country, by creating the conditions for modernization abroad, by helping governments discover their ability and responsibility to lift their citizens out of poverty, by empowering people everywhere.

I see that our civilization’s great strides towards global prosperity are taking a toll on our planet—but it doesn’t have to be this way. In the end, I see that these two problems—the ability to give every person the right to life, quality of life and life choices, and the ability to treat our Earth responsibly are linked. This link is energy: how we use it, where we get it from, how we think about it. The existential crisis of climate change is so exhilarating and momentous because, in solving this crisis, we have the opportunity to create a society that both treats the planet responsibly and allows for universal well-being for all people.

Polar Bears or a Clean Energy Economy: What can make us Great?

The time for the environmental movement to become great has arrived, and we must grab this opportunity by its horns before it passes us by.

Despite what my you may have derived from my previous posts, I think that the environmental movement is a good movement. It has done good work cleaning up smog, fixing the ozone, and cleaning up lakes and rivers. The results, like the movement, have been pretty good. But the time for good is over. The time for the environmental movement to become great has arrived, and we must grab this opportunity by its horns before it passes us by.

I spent a good chunk of my Sunday afternoon reading sections of Good to Great, by Jim Collins. The book studies businesses that made a lasting, sustained transition from a “good” company to a “great” company. Collins wrote about corporations, but what he said can be applied to any organization of people, including environmental NGO’s or the movement itself. Collins dug up articles and conducted interviews with executives from these companies, including businesses like Walgreens and Circuit City, to learn what these companies had done in common during the point of their transition from good to great. He identified a few different practices and factors, including the presence of adversity, honesty about the brutal facts, and identifying what each company had the capacity and potential to become the best at. It’s critical that we similarly apply these to our movement in order for us to be great: