Matthew Savage's Blog

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The late Richard E. Smalley, considered one of the early fathers of nanotechnology, founded the appropriately-named Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology in the heart of Houston at acclaimed Rice University, which is now a global leader in advanced energy and nanotech research.

Before his death in 2005 at age 62, Smalley and his team came up with a list of the 10 greatest challenges facing humanity:

1. Water
2. Energy
   
3. Food
4. Environment
5. Poverty
6. Terrorism and War
7. Disease
8. Education
9. Democracy
10. Population Growth

From The Clean Tech Revolution by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder.

When I was first starting out in a new career, I joined a professional association in my area that had used the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as inspiration to form something called a Success Team. A Success Team is simply 5-7 individuals meeting together consistently over time around a common interest area.

In another life, I was a photographer, so my first experience with Success Teams was in that industry. This association made us each pay $300 to belong to the group, which I thought was rather steep, BUT they did supply a facilitator – who was also a career counselor– for our first meeting, and also formed the group for us. We were instructed on how to conduct the sessions efficiently around a set structure.

The structure is as follows:

1. Each person speaks for 10 minutes about what they are doing and what their goals are. This time is not designed for complaining or venting, but on moving forward in your career.
2. The discussion is opened up to the group for 5 to 10 minutes for feedback, comments and support. Then you move on to the next person.

Note: It is helpful to meet monthly or bi-monthly. This keeps up the momentum. It is good to follow this set structure for the following reasons: time efficiency, focusing the group on one person at a time, and forcing you to get to the heart of the issues quickly.

It is a very simple concept, but I have found it to be a powerful tool for my career in several areas, including:

• Being held accountable for goals and goal-setting.
• Being validated for what you have done and encouraged to push further.
• Sharing knowledge and best practices.
• Networking.
• Brainstorming.
• Developing your own leadership skills and becoming a better team-player.
• Organizing events and getting involved in the community.

Watch out for these three pitfalls in setting up a group:

1. When forming a group, it is hard to find people that are going to be on the same page in terms of skills and goals, but don’t worry about that too much. A lot of this is an exercise for you to go through by setting your own goals and forcing you to be accountable for them.
2. Group members must be enthusiastic and motivated and not skeptical about the idea. It is important that you like them as people as well!
3. Meet consistently and try to not skip meetings. Be serious, because the Success Team is a powerful tool if you use it right that could really benefit you.

I am currently researching how groups can come together locally and create change, build communities and do this on a mass-scale. The main ingredient in this possibility is a strong desire to push your career forward in a dynamic and beneficial way to the world. A perfect Win-Win situation! If you have any ideas, please comment.

My most recent Success Team is a Clean Tech career group in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is pushing me forward professionally, with the added benefit of helping to solve environmental issues.

So many people are hopping on the “green” boat right now. They don’t know how and they don’t know what, they just know it’s all gotta stop. And right now.

I have heard so many people wanting to get into this movement and start a “Green” business. When I asked one person what the business would be about, they responded: “I don’t know, but I know I need to start one!”

Someone else I know was transitioning from Photography into creating a consultancy that helped governments acheive the Kyoto protocols. I looked on the website and it was fully functional, except there was no content!

This was very telling. Where is the content???

I am very skeptical about this sudden desire to go “Green”. It feels very bubble-like, although I know these people are genuinely concerned. That is not to say that everything “Green” is all fluff, but there is lots out there.

I think “Green” should just be replaced by “Community”. That is what is lacking the most. Maybe we needed to wake up to how much damage we are doing to our surroundings, but are any of us really that surprised? We have been over-worked and have not invested properly in family life, nor our local communities. If we prioritized theses things, given an example by the right leaders, we might be able to start from the bottom up. Nobody has taken the leadership reigns in this country to show us values beyond mindless consumerism and the hunt for wealth.

Talk to the guy in the check-out line. Reach out to someone. Start small and build up confidence to lead by example in your local area. Do all you can to audit your ecological footprint [http://www.myfootprint.org/en/], but don’t feel you need to make it a career unless you have some true value to bring to the table.

Check out BetterTogether.org, which was founded by Robert Putnam “calling for a nationwide campaign to redirect a downward spiral of civic apathy. Warning that the national stockpile of “social capital” – our reserve of personal bonds and fellowship – is seriously depleted, the report outlined the framework for sustained, broad-based social change to restore America’s civic virtue.”

This is an amazing video of William McDonough (www.mcdonough.com) from the Bioneers conference in 2000. Another visionary that is willing to challenge the capitalism paradigm is Annie Leonard of the Story of Stuff. These two individuals are really the most interesting speakers on the subject of sustainability that I have heard recently.

So you may be wondering: what can I do to make a difference to the planet? (See below for the 5 THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO).

Well, besides changing your lightbulbs, consciously using less water and energy, buying a hybrid or installing solar power on your roof, there is something called Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) that could prove to be very promising for some areas. The problem is, not many people know about it. The two major sources of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are from cars and buildings. Community Choice would focus on the buildings part.

Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) is a system that was made into law in the states of Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California (AB 117) which allows cities and counties to aggregate the buying power of individual customers within a defined jurisdiction in order to secure alternative energy supply contracts.

Essentially, cities get together and form what’s known as a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) to buy renewable energy mostly from wind, solar, geothermal and biomass and your local utility would still transmit the power and maintain the lines. The best of both worlds, right? Therefore, you would still get your same utility bill, although the power would come from renewable energy instead of coal, natural gas and other non-renewable sources.

Marin County, CA – one of the most liberal and wealthiest counties in the nation – is looking at CCA in depth, calling it Marin Clean Energy (MCE) [www.marincleanenergy.info]. This could be a perfect test bed for CCA and serve as a successful example for other counties and cities in the five eligible states. There are successful models of CCA already in place in various counties and cities across the nation, with about 1 million people receiving their power this way already.

That’s not to say that only the wealthy could afford CCA. The prices for CCA would be comparable to the prices we pay currently, maybe slightly higher at first, but as the cost of natural gas and other non-renewable sources goes up, the fixed price of fuel that renewable energy affords will be stable and much cheaper than most alternatives in the long run. What’s more, it would encourage money to stay more in the local economies and would promote renewable-based businesses.

Marketing gurus know that the “It’s good for planet” ticket only gets you so far. Actually, money is the bottom line for mass adoption of almost any new product, service or structural change. It has to be as good or better than the current option. Luckily, CCA achieves both affordability and eco-friendliness.

The MCE plan could reduce CO2 emissions by 70,000 tons per year by 2010 and 350,000 tons by 2019! Compared to other reduction efforts like encouraging community car-sharing and improvements to public transportation, this would be THE single most important effort for a rapid reduction of GHG emissions in our local communties.

Time is of the essence. Most of our local energy utilities simply cannot meet their renewable energy goals or Renewable Production Standards (RPS) as quickly as we could under CCA. It is up to us to tell everyone we know. We must act now!

5 THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO:

1. GET INFORMED. If you live in Marin or in any of the other proposed CCA areas, find out when there is a presentation in your town or city. Sign up for the mailing list. If there is not an upcoming event, start one!

2. SPREAD THE WORD. Tell everyone that you know about CCA. Get excited and spread the enthusiasm to others!

3. GET INVOLVED. The most important step of all. Write or call your city council members or county supervisor to tell them that you support this initiative. This is the single most important thing you can do because they will vote on your behalf.

4. START ONE. If there is no CCA planned for your community and you are located within one of the five eligible states (Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California), call your city council or mayor and get as many people as you know to do the same to show interest for Community Choice Aggregation.

5. FORM A COMMUNITY ACTION GROUP. Use meetup.com to meet people in your local area with common interests. The keys to forming a group are consistency and small group size. Download our action pack from cleanroots.com for help starting a group and for other ideas to work on in your local community.

California Communities currently considering CCA:

• Marin County, Marin Clean Energy (MCE)
• San Joaquin Valley CCA formed; Contract finalized
• San Francisco CCA business plan complete
• Oakland
• Berkeley
• Emeryville
• Chula Vista drafting CCA business plan
• West Hollywood
• Beverly Hills
• Pleasanton
• San Luis Obispo
• Davis actively considering CCA

More detailed feasibility studies can be found on the Local Government Commission website [http://www.lgc.org/cca/].

Today, the plumber came and turned off our water. There was a leak in the pipes and the plumber couldn’t fix it for three days. “Three days!!!”, I exclaimed.

It is amazing how helpless you are suddenly when there is no ready supply of water.

I quickly filled a few buckets and some other receptacles and then that was that – the water was off. I washed my hands with just a few cups of water. The process went like this: get the hands wet, apply soap, scrub, then add more water until there were no suds left. Brushing teeth was extremely economical. I was able to brush my teeth AND rinse with just one cup of water.

I realized that most of our water usage habits are based on laziness.

I am not as bad these days as I used to be back before Al Gore was a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I used to leave the tap running in many situations, including when I was brushing my teeth. Even though I have much better habits nowadays, having NO water made me think just how far I could push this conservation thing. I became a super-efficient “water hero” who only used exactly what he needed. Actually, in the third world, most everyone consumes water like this, and much less I’m sure.

It was annoying having to use the neighbor’s shower, but having to shape my consumption habits was really no more time-consuming than my regular routines – once I adjusted, that is. We really don’t appreciate how lucky we are to have limitless clean water flowing out of our taps on command and we certainly have no idea about the true value of water until there is none!

So CONSERVE it!!!

In Memory of my sister, Jessica Brigida Stevens.

When my sister died last summer suddenly, I was struck by the most amazing realization. She had lived in Alaska with her family, my brother lives in Sydney, Australia with his family, and the rest of the family lives here in San Francisco. It seemed ridiculous to be so spread out as a family. How could the most important people in your life be the ones that you saw the least?

Asian cultures view the family differently. It is not uncommon to support your parents in China, for example. Actually, many people don’t have a choice. But, in our western culture with everything at our fingertips and supposedly little free time, how did we separate so much from our families and friends?

Everything can change in an instant. I know that when I came into close proximity with death, my priorities changed. My whole outlook changed, actually. I wanted to be close to family and friends. I wanted to get more involved in the community and build something special right where I lived.

“Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime and of our children’s lifetime. The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land.”

-Luna Leopold, hydrologist and professor, UC Berkeley

Global warming is getting all the attention right now and for good reason. Water is an equally important issue, but much less on the radar for the masses, especially in terms of conservation. Think about it the next time you turn on the tap.