The last 50 years of humanity’s mindless consumption of fossil fuels has helped accelerate global warming. The total lack of a cohesive energy policy and program in America has given us $4 a gallon gasoline with $5 and $6 a gallon a practical certainty. There are millions of new riders on our mass transit systems at a time when many of these systems are in crumbling decline due to decades of neglect and total lack of strategic initiatives. Solar and wind power are extremely exciting and coming on line quickly. Globally, and nationally we have backed ourselves into an energy corner.

Nuclear energy is one of the sources that now must be better utilized in the U.S and around the world. Contrary to trailing popular perception, it is a relatively safe energy source. Fewer people have died working at and around nuclear power plants in the last 20 years than have died in coal mining accidents in the last three years. France obtains 50% of its energy from nuclear. Now that we are passing through Peak Oil we have only decades left of petroleum. All energy options must be explored, made safe, and made affordable if we are to avoid the tearing apart of the social, economic and cultural fabric.

When we think of the Middle East we think of petroleum. However, the rulers in that region know that the bonanza they are currently enjoying will be coming to an end by mid century. Even countries in the Middle East are looking …

We have now entered the Shift Age, the global stage of humanity’s evolutionary journey.  What this means is that the U.S. must redefine itself within this new global age.  During the second half of the 20th century, the U.S. was a super power, the super power that lead the Western bloc of nations in contrast to the Soviet Union which was the other super power that lead the Eastern bloc.  Unfortunately, when the Soviet Union crumbled in the early 1990s the U.S. simply accepted victory and did not spend time reflecting what this meant. 

What does it mean to be the sole super power?  What does it mean to be a super power in this new global age?  There was no national discourse at all on this subject. Where once we defined ourselves as the good guys against the bad guys, the country that stood for Capitalism against Communism we did not reflect on the fact that this definition of who we were had changed.  We entered the new millennium without a new sense of what being a global power meant.   Without a clear adversary to help define us, we lost our way. This has, in part, been part of the problem that has led us to have a greatly reduced stature in the world.

This has been a topic of conversation for me with numerous CEOs around the country in recent months.  It will merit further discussion here in the months …