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No Longer a Day but an Age

Earth Day is coming.  April 22 to be exact.  How I know is my email inbox.  Every day for the past few weeks I get pitches to write about some company’s new eco product.  The words LEED certified, Eco, Green, Recycled, Renewable have become an endless blur in the subject line of in-bound emails.  This is now a spring ritual.

Last year around this time I wrote a column entitled “Earth Century” . In it I mentioned that in the first two years of this blog in 2006 and 2007 I had focused a lot on alternative energy, renewable …

The Bali Conference

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 …

Thanksgiving is, in many ways, the truest of holidays.  It is not connected to a religion or to a national political event.  It is about giving thanks and sharing life’s abundance, manifested by a large meal to be shared by friends and family.  Giving thanks for all the wonderfulness of this planet.

On Thanksgiving day in 2030, I hope my then middle aged son will be sharing this day with loved ones hopefully including me.  I hope that they all will be able to give …

The impact that humanity is having on climate change is directly related to the fact that there are so many of us. Add on top of our shear numbers the fact that we treat the planet harshly and it is clear why we are moving toward a global crisis.

Consider some facts about the growth of human population. Humans have been on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years. It took until 1804 for our numbers to reach 1 billion. It took another 123 years to reach 2 billion in 1927. It only took another …