When I started writing Green Collar America, I did so because I felt that the green technologies and solutions that were going to make our nation and our society more sustainable represented the next great industry that would drive America’s future prosperity. According to a just released report produced by The Breakthrough Institute and The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation we are going to be buying all that technology from Asia.

Every American should read at least the “Overview” page of this report. There are 5 points on that page…here is the first:

Asia’s rising “clean technology tigers” – China, Japan, and South Korea – have already passed the United States in the production of virtually all clean energy technologies, and over the next five years, the government’s of these nations will out-invest the United States three-to-one in these sectors. This public investment gap will allow these Asian nations to attract a significant share of private sector investments in clean energy technology, estimated to total in the trillions of dollars over the next decade. While some U.S. firms will benefit from the establishment of joint ventures overseas, the jobs, tax revenues, and other benefits of clean tech growth will overwhelmingly accrue to Asia’s clean tech tigers.

That 3-to-1 investment disparity is assuming that the US Senate will pass a clean energy bill like the American Clean Energy & Security Act which the House of Representatives passed earlier this year. That is by no means a certainty, and is actually very unlikely based on what’s going on with healthcare. The outspending will be more in the ball park of 10-to-1 in that case - and it is only that close because some of the stimulus bill went to clean tech. However, we’re sending a ton of that stimulus money overseas anyway and not creating Green Collar Jobs at home - because we can’t buy cost competitive clean tech products here.

Even if we do pass such a bill the report argues that it;

includes too few proactive policy initiatives and allocates relatively little funding to support research and development, commercialization and production of clean energy technologies within the United States.

Instead, we are relying on some tax incentives and other market stimulating solutions that - in past times - have jump started innovation and moved America into a leadership position. There are a lot of good things to be said about this bill - as Representative Markey (the primary author) describes in this video

Unfortunately, the race may be over before this approach even gets us running - we have never had competition that was willing to spend half a trillion dollars to kick our ass before.

There is only one answer - we all have to get off our asses and scream at Congress until we drown out the noise from the people who JUST DON’T GET IT. We don’t have time for obstruction - we need to move and we need to move now. Unless you have another idea for a multi-trillion dollar industry that is being birthed right now and can sustain our country and our economy, call your congress person…please.

If you’re like me, you’ve often thought that we humans produce a huge amount of energy when we excerise - or just go about our daily lives. The huge majority of that energy is wasted - but perhaps not anymore. A startup out of Cleveland, Tremont Electric, just released a new kinetic energy capture device that can generate wall socket level energy just by carrying it around with you while you walk.

About the size of a flashlight and weighing in at 9 ounces, the nPower PEG (Personal Energy Generator) takes advantage of magnets and springs to capture and amplify the kinetic energy we generate when we move and turn in into enough power to recharge personal electric devices. In the short-term it seems like a dream come true for serious campers, hikers, lumberjacks - folks who spend extended periods of time outdoors and off the grid. Based on the feedback about how well these things work, it will just be a matter of time before we start seeing them integrated into appliances and products we are already carrying around with us.

The folks at Tremont are already scaling the devices up - way up - and looking at ways they can put them in buoys and use them to generate 50kW per device in lakes and the ocean to create kinetic energy from Wave Energy.

This is an idea that has needed to happen and seeing a product of this type commercialized and ready to roll-out to market is a great example of how American ingenuity will help us make up for lost time in sustainability. Now if someone will just roll-out an entire gym worth of exercise equipment that will make every health club in America carbon neutral - let’s turn all those burned calories green!

Well, WBUR - the Boston NPR station anyway (the best NPR station in the country I might add). I was interviewed for the recent Radio Boston show about the Massachusett’s economy and how ‘green’ is allowing the state and region to emerge from the recession - perhaps earlier than other regions. I should have had this up weeks ago, but they never got back to me about how to embed their media stream in the blog. Click Here to listen to the show.

OK, so although I spent yesterday afternoon thinking about the giant floating plastic continent and feeling overwhelmed, I am feeling much more like my optimistic self today. However, this is not blind optimism that ’science’ is going to figure this out. I am feeling better because I was just visiting the Recycling White Paper section on GreenCollarEconomy.com and noticed that hundreds and hundreds of business people are downloading these documents while looking for best practices for ther companies.

I like to believe that they are doing this for two reasons - first, humans run companies and deep down, even the greediest captain of industry wants to protect the environment; second, they know they are throwing good money after bad by simply throwing out so much trash. Here is a great example. Bayer Healthcare has lowered their garbage disposal bill by over $500,000/year and diverted over 70% of their waste from landfill into the recycling stream - all while making their business more profitable.

We need more businesses to wake up and start looking at sustainability as a strategic opportunity. There are thousands of ways to make ROI-generating investments in sustainability that will make a business stronger in more ways than just the short-term bottom line.

Occasionally when I am working out on my cycling trainer, I bring my laptop downstairs and watch a TED video. If you are not familiar with TED, you should check it out. However, on this particular occasion I watched a video that did not so much inspire as it did daunt and depress. I tweeted several months back about an article I read about the floating plastic garbage dump that has been accumulating in the Pacific Gyre for the last 20 years. It is almost unbeliveable than an area of the pacific twice the size of Texas could have an average of 6X as much plastic in it as it does plankton.

This area of floating and submerged plastic does not biodegrade, it just gets smaller and smaller and ends up in our food supply. As Nicholas Kristoff wrote about in this Sunday’s New York Times, 92% of Americans have the chemicals from these plastics in thier urine. Certainly not only from the Pacific Gyre garbage continent, but we have plenty of other plastic that we consume on a daily basis….by the way, it’s made with synthetic estrogen. This brings me back to the TED video….take a look and let me know if you have any bright ideas. We have to go from capturing and recycling 5% of our plastic to 95% plus and we need to do it in a hurry.

I read a great quote in The Daily Climate

Author and reporter Dianne Dumanoski noted in her recent book, The End of the Long Summer, that the only thing certain about the coming century is “its immense uncertainty.”
“It will take conscious effort to resist taking refuge either in despair – in the conviction that ‘it’s too late’ – or in the alternative, to bask in groundless, sunny optimism that ‘we’ll figure out something, because science always does.’ “

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am about as optimistic person as you will meet. Looking at something like this can take a little wind out of your sails. It is another huge problem to deal with that is going to require billions or trillions of dollars - like we don’t have enough of those right now.