Rebuild Puerto Rico for the 21st Century

The damage to Puerto Rica from Hurricane Maria is tragic and catastrophic. The first step of course is to save lives and get food, water and medical attention to all citizens. Once the humanitarian stage is fully taking place then the thinking turns to rebuilding the island, since the devastation to housing and the infrastructure is significant.

As written in my prior two columns in this space, the recent hurricanes have shown the vulnerability of 20th century infrastructure and the thinking behind it to be no longer valid. Rebuilding is the opportunity to work with a new vision of the reality of climate change and renewable energy. Puerto Rico is a perfect place to do this. The island is small, with three plus million population with one sixth the population of Florida and half the population of Houston.

 I am often queried after speeches or in discussions about certain technologies that might be “good” or “bad”.  My position has always been that technology is neither, it just is.  It is how humans use it that is good or bad.  [The obvious exception is technology specifically designed to kill humans such as weapons of […]

  [Note: a significant amount of this column appeared on 9/25 in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. I live in Sarasota FL so there is a Florida emphasis here. ] These two hurricanes have dominated the news cycles for the past few weeks. Initially, there was hyperventilating weather and news coverage. Where will landfall be? When will […]

Starting today and on most Thursdays  I will be posting a very short- usually around 60 seconds- video on a single topic. A minute in your day to consider a single thought you might not otherwise consider. I am known for having said that 10 years ago we left the Information Age and entered the […]

 “Houston, we have a problem”  – James Lovell, Apollo 13 “Work the problem people, work the problem”  Gene Krause, Mission Control Apollo 13   Hurricane Harvey was a huge disaster.  More than 60 people lost their lives.  There is and will be hundreds of billions of dollars in damages and lost business.  My deepest sympathies […]

We are now entering the second half of the Shift Age, a time of incredible transformation. The Shift Age is basically the transit between what was and what is.

Earth Overshoot Day was August 2, the earliest Earth Overshoot Day ever. This is the day when humanity’s consumption of natural resources officially passes the planet’s ability to replenish then in one year.

If humanity lived sustainably on Earth, then Earth Overshoot Day would be at midnight December 31, meaning we would not have consumed more than the finite resources the planet provides for us.  This is why the metaphor of Earth as a spaceship is the highest and best way to think about any aspect of climate change, sustainability, energy use and anything relative to the only place we have to live.

It was about 10 years ago that I started to write about electric cars in this space with this and this column.  It was clear to me then that, ultimately, they would become mainstream and become a significant percentage of cars driven in the developed countries of the world.  In early 2008, I forecast that 2010-2015 would be the dawn of the age of the electric car and of course it was.

During the writing of “This Spaceship Earth”, my co-author Tim Rumage introduced me, a non-sailor, to the concept of what a quartermaster does.  We had been trying to come up with a way to take a snapshot in time of the health of the planet.  As we wrote in the book:

“The Quartermaster supervises, stores, and distributes supplies and provisions.  The Quartermaster is also the one responsible for making sure equipment, materials and systems are available and functioning.  This not about what is preferred or desired, but what is.  Therefore, in the world of the Quartermaster, if a 16 oz. glass has 8 ounces of liquid, the glass is neither half full nor half empty – it simply has 8 ounces of liquid”

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