In this space I have been clear about where the price of gasoline is going and, more importantly, what Americans and all global citizens need to do regarding energy.  The next twenty years are a critical time, a time of potentially great peril unless we have visionary leadership and full scientific and entrepreneurial mobilization toward first reducing and then replacing our consumption of petroleum based energy.

The reality is that we are now living in a country of $3.00 plus gas in the United States, with $4.00 likely by the end of the year. This has become a catalyst for consumers to take a harder look at driving less, buying cars with a higher MPG rating and generally thinking about conservation.  This means that people are more aware of and sensitive to environmental and conservation messages and advice.  There is a direct cause and effect here.  It is no surprise that Toyota just became the second largest auto company in the United States in terms of sales because they offer and sell more fuel efficient cars than Ford does.  The absolute stupidity of the American car companies’ long term is almost beyond comprehension, but that is for another day.

What I want to focus on is the concept of intentionally misleading consumers with environmentally oriented marketing messages to try to influence consumers who are just trying to do their part, to do the right thing.  Wave the ‘green’ flag in advertising and those gullible consumers will fork over their money.  …

Modern man has moved through three different ages in the last 10,000 years. The Agricultural Age was from around 8,000 BC until the 1700s. The Industrial Age was from the 1700s to the last two decades of the 20th century, when the Information Age began. The great Alvin Toffler referred to these ages as the First Wave, Second Wave and Third Wave. Each wave or age had different economic characteristics. The dominant economic structure in Second Wave societies was a centralized hierarchy. The dominant structure in Third Wave societies are flat networks.

In speeches I give and in the book I am writing, I call the period from 1985-2005 “The Threshold Decades”, because it is the time that is between what was and what is and will be. In 1985, the values and institutions of the developed nations were still Second Wave or Industrial Age; by 2005 they had become Third Wave or Information Age. During this twenty year period we fully moved into the Information Age. Just think of all the things that came along or occurred during this time: cell phones, Cable TV, numerous communications satellites, the Internet, PC market saturation, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the beginning of the Global Economy and high speed broadband to name just a few significant things. Large organizations were down-sized and lost layers of management. Entrepreneurial companies sprang to life and …

Yes, Dachau, the first major concentration camp opened by the Nazis.

As a futurist visiting Dachau, I had a similar viewpoint that I touched upon in the recent post on Berlin: how looking back at awful events can help us today and that the awful events of today, when taken in a historical perspective, are not as bad as we think they might be.  So many people I talk to are depressed and nervous about the direction of the world today.  While I think that there will most definitely be rough and turbulent times ahead, I am optimistic about the future when looking 10, 20 and 30 years out.

As I have written in  ‘Blog Origins’ and am writing in my book, I believe that humanity will have the opportunity to take our collective next step in the decades ahead.  To be able to do so we must fully come to terms with where we have failed in the past so that we can prepare ourselves for the opportunity that lies ahead.

Last week I visited Dachau, which is in a suburb of Munich.  Here are the facts:
-it opened in 1933 and remained a concentration camp until liberation in 1945
-during that 12 year period approximately 206,000 people entered the camp
-the camp was first set up as a place for political enemies of the state after Hitler had a law passed through the legislature allowing him to hold anyone in ‘protective custody’ without the due process of the courts
-from 1945 until 1964 it …