So, what is FIND THE SOLUTION?

What have I been cooking up in my underground laboratory for the past six months? What is Find The Solution? The solution for what? Climate Change? How is that possible? Surely, you say, climate and the environment are complex systems. What’s happening to them is an even more complicated state of affairs. How can there be a single solution that fixes everything? The answer, believe it or not, is simple; we need to rethink our energy policy.

That’s the solution…rethinking our energy policy. By doing so, we can fix not just climate change, but also many of the current crises that the world faces. Crises that include energy dependence, the collapsing economy, limited resources, modern fundamental extremism, political turmoil, bio-diversity loss, and eventually wiping out poverty across the globe, saving millions from death due to malaria, AIDS and other communicable disease and peace and prosperity for all.

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Read Jeffrey Sachs’, COMMON WEALTH or Thomas Friedman’s HOT, FLAT and CROWDED. They’re the experts. They're saying exactly the same thing. I’m merely standing on the shoulders of giants. So, thank you and good night. My work here is done.

What? What’s that you ask? How do we do that?

Fine, I’ll tell you. FIND THE SOLUTION is a 2-Phase plan that involves a National Environmental Summit and the creation of a Global Initiative. I can already see your eyes getting sleepy reading this. And seeing the length of this piece doesn’t help either, I’m sure. But bear with me, there’s a point to it.

First, some background. The environmental movement has done an incredible job of raising awareness and spearheading local, national and global causes in order to bring the world’s attention to both general and specific needs with regards to global warming. Organizations like GreenPeace, the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have done tremendous work in championing the helpless and downtrodden to lift their plights to the world’s consciousness. Al Gore deserves the Nobel Prize he has received along with the UN’s Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in laying out the groundwork of what we face as nations and as a planet. But with literally millions of environmental groups and organizations out there, the fundamental problem of climate change, namely CO2 emissions have yet to be really addressed. Why is that?

With the multitude of organizations and groups raising awareness about the multitude of problems that we face, with regards to climate change, the central point becomes diffused. In other words, though people are aware of the problems, they don’t know which problem to focus on. And the problems, including pollution, melting ice caps, limited resources, overpopulation, biodiversity loss, severe weather changes, food production, water shortages, etc., are big. Now, if we had all the money, time and energy in the world, we could fix every problem. But we don’t. So, what can we do? We can realistically fix only a few things at a time. But, which problems do we fix first? How do we prioritize all of these very dire issues so that we can focus on one issue at a time? What is the greatest problem we need to fix first?

The answer is Global Warming. What causes Global Warming? CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases. I’m hoping at this point that you probably already know about how global warming works, so I'm not going to waste any more of your time with explaining how greenhouse gases affect water molecules in our atmosphere and zzzzzz... But the simple fact is this, CO2 remains the biggest factor in the warming of our planet. It is the driving force in the collapse of our environment and must be dealt with. Because even if we fix the water shortage problem, we still have a collapsing environment. Even if we fix overpopulation, we still have a collapsing environment. Even if we save every species on the planet from the brink of extinction, we still have a collapsing environment. So, by default, Global Warming due to CO2 emissions becomes the biggest problem.

What is the solution to ending CO2 emissions? Easy, stop using carbon-based fuels like oil, coal and natural gas. But is it so easy?

Coal and oil, despite what the news is telling you, are actually quite cheap. A ton of coal costs $90.00 a ton at current market prices. A ton of rice is $780. A gallon of gas is cheaper than a gallon of Poland Springs or a gallon of coffee from Dunkin Donuts. A gallon of oil has the energy equivalent of 700 people. Think about that. Something that takes 700 people to do, a gallon of gas would be able to do in a much more efficient, quicker and cheaper way. Oil and coal have been very good to us in the past. It’s what drives our growth and economy and made us the world leader we are. But like Old Yeller, our trusted friends oil and coal, who got us out of some tricky predicaments and helped us through tough times in the past, have both developed rabies. And we need to go out back and shoot them before they hurt anybody else. It’s painful, but necessary.

And so, what was once easy has become out-dated and dangerous. The sooner we all understand that, the sooner we can start to rethink our energy policy. Plus, the very real truth is that oil is a finite resource. We are eventually going to run out of oil. That’s a fact no one argues. Whether this happens in 10 years or 200 years no one knows with absolute certainty. But when it runs out, we are faced with two very distinct futures. One where we can work together now and fix the issues we face, to live in a world that looks like similar to “Star Trek.” Or do nothing, wait till we run out of oil and live in a world similar to “The Road Warrior.” Take your pick.

Find The Solution starts where the environmental movement has become ineffective. It is, in a sense, a post-environmental movement. Find The Solution is movement that focuses on action and promise. It moves away from the doom-and-gloom and the rhetoric of the yesterday’s environmental movement. Find The Solution ignores the argument of skeptics and acts from a perspective that takes into the account the realities of what is going on with our planet at this very moment.

If the fact that ice caps are melting at a rapid rate is something no one can argue (that it is actually happening), then the argument becomes what is the cause of it? One can logically conclude that if man is not the cause of it, then it is happening naturally. If it is happening naturally, the further logical conclusion is that something very bad is happening naturally. The question then becomes, do we sit and wait for Mother Nature to take its course, or do we do something about it? I opt to do something about it.

Phase 1

We start with a plan. Google has just released their Clean Energy 2030 Policy. This is one of many Renewable Energy Plans out there that include work from the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), The Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP) an even T. Boone Pickens' Plan for wind and natural gas. Google’s Plan is a concise Renewable Energy Plan that is sensible, realistic and achievable. I recommend you read it. It also has clear advantages over other plans in that it comes from Google, a name everyone can trust and has no partisan ties. (For as much good as Gore has done for the environmental movement, he might be doing more damage now by the mere fact that he is who he is and there are a lot of Americans who associate global warming with his politics and therefore relegate climate change as a political issue…it’s not).

With the Google Clean Energy Plan as a blueprint, an Environmental Summit would be instituted (hopefully on Earth Day 2009). This summit would include the country’s greatest thinkers and policy makers with regards to climate change. Policy makers like Schwarzenegger, Bloomberg and Boxer, scientists and climatologists such as James Hansen and Heidi Cullen, environmental groups such as the NRDC, the EDF and the Sierra Club, authors and economists such as Thomas Friedman, William McKibben and Jeffrey Sachs. The list goes on, but in essence, anyone who has a clear voice as to what the issues are and what the solution can be are invited. This summit would have the very profound job of creating a piece of legislation that would be presented to the President and Congress as a law to be enacted. This legislation will answer any and all questions as to who pays for it, what it will do, how it will affect each American, how it will be implemented, etc. This legislation will be complete, current and concise, leaving no room for doubt. At the end of this summit, we will hope to have a piece of legislation that the entire environmental community will have signed off on.

Phase 2

The next step is to then take that piece of legislation and sell it to the American public with the intent of galvanizing everyone to get behind this bill and force our government’s hand to pass it as law. We do this by creating a non-profit organization that spreads the word and raises awareness of the legislation. We will film the proceedings of the summit and document everything that transpired. This documentary will be free to anyone interested in watching it. But in essence, the documentary will be a giant commercial for the legislation. The organization will also have the responsibility of explaining every aspect of the legislation in clear, concise ways so that everyone will have an understanding of what is in the bill, what we are asking our government to do, how it will work, how much time it will take and what it will cost us.

We do that by utilizing the entertainment industry to spread the word. We will call on the film and television industry to mount a media campaign akin to the propaganda films of World War II. These short films, which can be shown in movie theaters, on TV or on the Internet, will have the challenging task of explaining seemingly difficult terms or ideas such as carbon sequestration, cap-and-trade, etc., in a creative, fun way. Films will be funded by the organization, but it will be up to the filmmakers to come up with the ideas to make the mundane, exciting and fun.

We will then call on the music community to give free concerts. These free concerts will do several things. First it will raise awareness of the legislation and what needs to happen to get it passed in Congress. Second, though free, we ask one thing from each audience member. That is, to write a letter to the President or to their Congressperson demanding them to pass this legislation. The information of what to write will be posted on the organization’s website and everyone will be charged to write this letter as their ticket of admission to the concert. This will have a double-sided result in amassing large numbers of letters asking our lawmakers to pass the bill and also, in essence, ‘trick’ our audience members into becoming radicals.

So, as an audience member, they will have the opportunity to see their favorite band for free, all they have to do is write a letter. But the hope is that in writing a letter (the old fashioned way), audience members will ask the right questions of themselves as to why this letter is so important. If their interest is piqued, then they are already on the road to becoming an activist. And it’s easier to become an activist if everyone’s an activist. These concerts and events will have the galvanizing effect of reaching critical mass and start a movement akin to the Civil Rights Movement. Once critical mass is reached, then our government will have no choice but to pass the legislation.

The Internet will also be used as tool for awareness. By creating a comprehensive website, which would have information about the legislation, allow access to the documentary, the short films and other service announcements. It would link to other environmental groups’ sites, in order to provide more information on every topic dealing with the environment. It will also post all information for upcoming events and concerts and how to gain access to them, giving everything needed to write letters and the contact information of representatives to Congress. Social networking sites such as FaceBook, Digg, Twitter and others will be utilized to spread the word of upcoming events and calls to action.

And in that way, we change our course, away from the catastrophic conditions that await us if we do nothing and takes us towards a better, cleaner world. A world away from coal-based energy, a world of green jobs, a world of green innovations and new technologies, a world of economic strengthening, a world of thriving biodiversity, a world of more intelligent uses of our resources, a world where if we do this right, we can use the already in-place machine of social movement to tackle the other great problems that the world faces, problems like crushing poverty, water shortage, cancer, Malaria, AIDS and overpopulation. A world that's well...kinda like Star Trek.