Complete Society

Need for a new policy paradigm

Watching an episode from Season 4 of West Wing, I’m struck by how almost 10 years ago, the show was foreshadowing the partisanship dysfunction that we find ourselves in today.  They talked about how impossible it was to get anything done with a Democratic President and a Republican Congress that hated him, but even then it wasn’t portrayed anywhere nearly as badly as the situation today.

Today, we’re stuck in a paradigm where it’s all about winning and losing, us versus them, with very little hint of trying to come up with solutions that work for almost everyone, solutions that actually change the system for the better in a meaningful way.  Even if there is some compromise, some sense of positive change, it always seems justified (or driven) by political points.

Is it naïve or fanciful to think we can change this?  To think we can work on improving government policy so that it benefits the most people, collaborate towards systemic win-win solutions?

A commentator I heard on NPR recently suggests that we got what we asked for by electing a Congress that is something like 40+% lawyers.  These people are trained to fight, to win over the other guy.  And legislative politics is set up like a battle, mostly a battle of money, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see the partisanship get worse, to see how Congress and legislatures get less and less real positive change accomplished.

I see a similar thing in the regulatory realm, at the Public Utilities Commission, because there too, the system is structured for fighting.  Activities there are set up like court cases and participating is even called “litigating’.  So again, much of it becomes a battle of lawyers and resources.

Since I’m not a lawyer, and look to solve problems from an engineer’s system-thinking viewpoint, I feel like we can do better, that if we put people in to the right structures and incentives, we could actually sit down together in a constructive conversation.  I can imagine facilitating such conversations with the people I’ve found in the industry (even some lawyers) who genuinely get the idea that their “winning” today on an issue isn’t actually what is best for society in the long-run.

Starting in a small, targeted way, I’d like to get such a conversation going in a specific energy policy topic in California.  It could be any of a number of hot topics from DG, grid reliability or smart grid, to long-term renewables targets, CCA’s or energy efficiency.  We would just need all the players to recognize that the current system of PUC proceedings, CEC workshops, Legislative hearings, etc isn’t working.  Then we’d need a funder, such as the Energy Foundation to see the need and take a risk by funding a group like the Clean Coalition to make such a conversation happen.

March 11, 2012 Posted by Ted | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Feb 7, 2012: Great day in News and Media

Ok, so this post has nothing to do with the general theme of this blog or any of the regular topics. I just need to mark this day somehow with the sheer amount of good news that happened. These days, in “mainstream” media it sometimes feels like all you get is bad news, depressing events, or stuff that makes you fear for where society is going.

But here’s the great “news” day I had courtesy of my Facebook feed:

• Kicked off the day right with an awesome punctuation joke picture: “Stop Clubbing, Baby Seals”
  • This made my day just by itself – combining my love of dance with being a grammar/punctuation geek

• Then I saw that the woman responsible for the Komen Foundation fiasco resigned
  • Whatever her politics or the official party line, just putting the foundation through that mess was enough for them to fire her if she didn’t resign

• After seeing a few writeups of Jeremy Lin’s second career record breaking game, the highlights video was posted
  • Breakout awesome performances like these are inspiring, and all the better that it’s an Asian American making headlines in professional sports.  It was so cool, I watched it twice during the day.

• My FB feed lit up with joy when the 9th Circuit Court panel declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional
  • “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for ‘laws of this sort.’”

• The hits kept coming with John and Leo, my MIT classmates and startup buddies from the old dotcom days, selling one of their startups for the *4th time*.
  • I was part of the first one, but my career went in a totally different direction.  I’m super happy for them and impressed – I bet when they walk in a room now, investors just throw big checks at them.

• Then us “greenies” got a win with the SF Board of Supervisors voting unanimouslyto extend the plastic bag ban in SF to  all retailers
  • We’ve got more reusable bags at home than you can shake a FSC-certified stick at.  It bugs me every time I get a plastic bag in SF, so I’m really excited to see this ban go in to place.

• Finally, back to great news from friends, several of the cool leaders of the David Chiu for Mayor campaign announced the launch of their new political consulting firm – 50+1 Strategies
  • Beyond being happy for cool people, I really appreciate how their mission is to win elections through community organizing power.

Wow!  What a great day, right?

February 7, 2012 Posted by Ted | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Superfreakonomics and the Commonwealth Club

After reading weeks of criticism and debunking of Superfreakonomics by some of the leading figures in climate change conversation, I was disappointed to find that the Commonwealth Club was highlighting the authors with their own book publicity event.

So, some Presidio classmates and I put together a petition and letter to the Club inviting them to take a stand, not on the science of geoengineering, but on the integrity of the book. Essentially, on a topic this important, students in sustainability programs and prominent public forums should hold such authors to a high standard and make sure distortions and misrepresentations don’t pollute the conversation.

Here is the email we sent to the Commonwealth Club today as well as the text of the petition.

Dear Commonwealth Club,

Many in the Presidio Graduate School community were disappointed to hear that the Commonwealth Club would be featuring the authors of Superfreakonomics as part of their book publicity tour. The attached petition and signature comments detail why we feel that the Club should not highlight this book without explicit acknowledgment of its flaws and the widely publicized repudiation by their main scientific sources on climate change.

We believe climate change is the critical issue of our time. As a school dedicated to learning and discussion about sustainability, we welcome diverse opinions, but also take a stand for integrity in the public discourse. Conversation should be based on an honest representation of science and the work of experts.

We know the Commonwealth Club shares our dedication to honest conversation and we invite you to use this opportunity to take a stand for truth on this vitally important topic.

Sincerely,

Forty-four members of the Presidio Graduate School community

PETITION
As students of business and public administration at the Presidio Graduate School, we
passionately believe in the integrity of public discourse and the urgency of the climate change
crisis facing our society.  We have the utmost respect for the Commonwealth Club, its mission,
and its recognition of the crisis with its Climate One initiative.  In that spirit, we strongly urge you
to reconsider your event featuring the authors of Superfreakonomics.

The book’s chapter on climate change can at best be described as “contrarian” and at worst,
dangerous misinformation.  Experts with the highest credentials have thoroughly debunked this
chapter, including a Nobelist stating that there are factual errors “on every page”.  That being
said, we understand that this may be considered acceptable public debate and a discourse that
the Club would like to bring forward.

However, we believe the Club should not endorse a blatant violation of journalistic integrity. 
Beyond a healthy disagreement on how to address climate change, the authors have in fact
misrepresented and distorted the statements and work of the expert sources their position relies
upon.  Most importantly, their main scientific source has publicly repudiated this chapter and its
interpretation of his work.   

This shows that the authors did not intend to constructively add to the public discourse, but
instead deliberately distorted scientific truth to further their own profits.  We assert that the
Commonwealth Club, an organization founded to seek and disseminate truth, should not be a
party to this effort.  By featuring only the authors in this event, the Club is conferring credibility
and validating the integrity of their work.  

Climate change is too important and the expected audience of this book is too large for us to
allow such self-serving distortions to pollute the conversation.

Given that it is likely too late to remove the authors from the agenda of next week’s event, we
recommend that the Commonwealth Club invite and give equal billing to an additional speaker
to challenge the authors.  

We believe that this action is necessary for the Commonwealth Club to remain truly objective
and maintain its strong stand on truth and integrity in the public discourse.

November 3, 2009 Posted by Ted | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Commencement speech by Paul Hawken

This speech is so amazing, I felt I had to publish it and try to get as many people to read it as possible.  There’s so much in here that speaks exactly to why I feel driven to work on sustainability, join the movement embodied in the Presidio MBA program, and change my career so drastically.

Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, neked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there. But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades. This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken.

Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.

The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.

What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description.

Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refugee camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums. You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.

Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisher folk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way. There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.

Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots.

Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty.

But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals.

The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history. The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy.

We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet.

At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering.

Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich. The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable.

We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it.

In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever be quested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

June 2, 2009 Posted by Ted | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Ultimate Vision

(I thought it appropriate to return to blogging with a post on my vision for professional self – originally posted in my Leadership class at the Presidio School of Management)

For my professional vision, picture a snapshot during a game of Ultimate.  Two players are fully horizontal, diving, striving for the disc.  The grass beneath them is lush and bright green.  The sun is beaming down from a clear blue sky, and there’s just enough breeze to ruffle the shirts of the excited fans and teammates on the sideline.

This is a moment in the perfect game I dream of creating for the world.  Ultimate requires great collaboration, excellent teamwork, but also highlights individual brilliance.  Competition is intense, but “Spirit of the Game” is so core that teams often strive to win the “Best Spirit” award as much as the game itself.  Even at the highest levels, the sport is self-refereed with players policing themselves and external observers only brought in if the players can’t resolve their conflicts with each other.

As outdoor athletes, Ultimate players need to be constantly in tune with nature – acknowledge and incorporate the wind, the sun, and the conditions of the earth.  And we can’t trash the playing field without destroying our ability, or losing permission, to play on it again.

My role in this picture is to design the rules and set up the field where the world economy operates like this perfect game.  By understanding the “physics” and relationships involved in sustainable business, I can help create a game where the score is kept on the integrated bottom line and winning is a victory for the global society.

March 5, 2009 Posted by Ted | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Last day of door knocking

Just a quick post on yesterday, Day 3.  It was slightly shorter since we didn’t get going until about noon (we don’t want to bother people Sunday morning and many of them would be away at church).

On the way in, I saw people standing on the grassy median in the road, waving McCain/Palin signs.  Like other people I talked to, my first thought on seeing them was, “What a waste of scarce volunteer resources”.  Why aren’t those people knocking on doors or at least making phone calls?  There’s no way that McCain has too many volunteers in the area.  Research shows that canvassing is at least 4 times more effective than phone calls which have got to be several times more effective than waving signs on the road.

Here’s a fun picture from the Ashburn office:

Favorite conversation of the day:  “It’s like a company re-org.  When your company’s failing, you don’t re-org with the same people who ran the company down”

Funny moment of the day:  Young woman answers the door.  I introduce myself and ask her if Fred and Mary are home (not the real names).  She closes the door to go get them.  Fred comes to the door, opens it, says “We’re watching football”, shuts the door.  I stand for a moment surprised in mid-sentence.  Then as I’m about to leave, a young boy (maybe 8 yrs old) opens the door to say hi.  I hand him some of my literature and ask him if he could give it to Fred.  He says ok and shuts the door.

Overall, the energy of the day was great.  I went out 3 times with different teams, probably totaling around 120 doors.  Each time I came back, the office was teeming with volunteers.  In the neighborhoods, didn’t see a single McCain/Palin canvasser.

This was the last day of door knocking.  Monday is just about dropping off literature and giving that last little nudge to go out and vote.

November 3, 2008 Posted by Ted | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment