It is generally accepted that America could immediately reduce energy consumption by at least 20% if intelligent conservation efforts were implemented at all levels.  As a country, we established energy use habits decades ago when all forms of energy were relatively cheap.  Lights on in high rise building at night, corridors in hotels and office buildings that are almost painfully bright, lights on in empty rooms and offices, and escalators that move even when no one is on them.

This all came back to me yesterday.  I am in Brazil to deliver a speech to the top executives of a company whose annual management meeting theme is “Leading the Future”.  When I checked into the upscale, business hotel here in Joinville, in the Santa Catarina state, I went through a sequence that reminded me once again how energy wasteful the U.S. is.  The elevator would not operate unless I inserted my room key card into a slot.  As an American I thought this was a good security feature.  Then, when I got off at my floor the hallway was completely dark.  With mild trepidation I stepped out and the lights went on due to a motion sensor.  I proceeded to head down a dark corridor and, every 20 feet or so the lights went on as the sensors tracked my progress to my room.  This of course is a feature widely in use in Europe, …

China was struck by a historically unprecedented snow storm last week.  Just the sheer amount of snow completely paralyzed all types of transportation, ground and air.  Power lines were snapped, cutting power to tens of millions of people.  Power was cut so that a significant portion of China’s railroad system was powerless to move people and supplies.  What made this even worse was the timing, which coincided with the major holiday of the year, the Chinese New Year.  More than 200 million people travel on this holiday.  When a large percentage of these people finally reached the train stations they found them without power and without trains.

There were many images that made me think of Katrina. Pictures of vast amounts of people jammed together in large numbers, shivering in the cold with no place to go made me think of vast amounts of people clinging to high ground or crowded into shelters..  Thousands of people, mostly military actually using snow shovels to clear major highways as there is no large snow removal equipment made me think of small boats with outboard motors rescuing people and animals from flood waters.  Leaders of the country, fearful of rioting and unrest actually found their way to train stations to try to calm the teeming millions with megaphones.

I do not have enough information to determine whether the government reacted with appropriate speed and compassion.  They probably did.  That is where the comparison between this snow storm and Katrina in not appropriate. The incompetence of …

The Bush Administration has always made me think of George Orwell and his novel “1984” from the point of view of language.  While all politicians and all administrations I can remember have been somewhat loose with language and the truth, the current administration has realized the vision of Orwell in that language means nothing and is to be used to manipulate the citizens of the country.

What makes me think of this once again?  The Bush EPA blocking California and 16 other states from enforcing states laws to protect the environment and their citizens. EPA stands for Environmental Protection Agency, yet the Bush EPA has nothing to do with protecting the environment and everything to do with turf battles and giving in to special interests.  As we all know, the Bush administration has shown no respect for the environment and has shown a total absence of leadership in the area of CO2 emissions.  It actually fought and lost a court case where the court ruled that the EPA does have jurisdiction over the issue of green house emissions.  Who does the Bush EPA protect?  Not the environment.

The signing into law of the energy bill last week allowed the Bush EPA to deny California and the other states from enforcing laws that have more stringent regulations regarding CO2 emissions and automotive fleet MPG.  The emissions standards California adopted in 2004, which were never approved by the federal government, would force automakers to cut greenhouse gas emission by 30 percent by 2016.  If …

As a futurist, I look at long term trends and waves of history.  The three waves of history we know have been the Agricultural Age, the Industrial Age and the Information Age.  The first age began some 10,000 years ago when man first began to literally put down roots.  The second age began some 250 years ago with the invention of the steam engine.  The third age began some 30 years ago with communications satellites, computers, the explosive growth of the white collar work force and the birth of the electronic global village envisioned by Marshall McLuhan.

We are now entering a new age, the Shift Age.  In the months ahead I will write in some detail about this age because – shameless plug here – it is a name I have coined and is also the title of my book that will be published in the first quarter of 2008.  For this column however I will focus on just one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Shift Age.  The Shift Age marks humanity’s last, at least on this planet, stage of evolution, the global stage.  Humanity has ultimately and finally entered this global stage and there is no turning back.

In 1974, around the beginning of the Information Age, humanity reached 4 billion in number.  We are now at 6.7 billion which means that our species has grown 66% in the last 33 years, an astonishing fact.  This is one of the two primary drivers of global warming, the shear growth …