7th Gen Blog

As part of the Change It training, students worked through a simulation earlier this week where they were challenged to solve an energy crisis in “Sweet River, USA.” At first, as with any simulation, there were some participants who seemed a bit apprehensive. But eventually everyone really got into it and enjoyed their simulated energy campaigns, lobbying sessions, and the community events held in Sweet River.

I’ve always respected Thomas Friedman. He's smart as a whip, but he's recently become too conservative for my taste. When he says all trade is good trade, and he’d support any free trade agreement without even reading it, he’s gone too far for my tastes. But he’s also a big advocate for alternative energy and a huge critic of the White House inaction on global warming.

Over the weekend, on the Tim Russert show, he went so far as to say that “green” is the new red, white and blue, and the most patriotic thing anyone can do.”

I guess I need to be a fan again. For a price, you can check out his New York Times columns here.

He's also hosting a good documentary on the Discovery channel called Addicted to Oil. It will be rebroadcast on August 14th at 8:00 and 11:00 pm and on August 20th at 7:00 am.

My brother Peter would have turned 50 today. There would have been a huge party around the swimming pool of a rented house near the beach. Loud music, beautiful people, too much to drink.

But he didn’t quite make it to 44. He lived his whole life in half the amount of time most of us do. His life was lived as if it were a movie. Everything was dark or in Technicolor, there was never anything in between. He loved it out here by the ocean. Tanning oil (not sunscreen), a beach chair that ensured his feet never touched the sand, beers in coolers, girls in skimpy bathing suits, and more beautiful people.

I never quite qualified as a beautiful person, this was a badge of external honor. You needed to dress just so, party just right, know the people I never seemed interested in knowing.

My brother Peter would have turned 50 today. I am 51. It’s been 6 years since he was there to orchestrate his own party. I now need to party for him. So tonight I will celebrate his birthday almost as he would have wanted it. There won’t be a lot of loud music and we will have to stand in for the beautiful people. But there will be my three children, my wife and assorted members of her family.

On July 26th Fortune Magazine published a cover story on Wal-Mart under the banner “Wal-Mart Saves the Planet, Well Not Quite…”

Something is going on here that I’m not quite sure we understand.

Whether you believe Wal-Mart is the devil incarnate or are a cheerleader for what they are doing, the truth lies somewhere else.

Call me crazy – but I believe this is a bigger, more significant, pattern changing event. We can’t understand it by looking back – we need to understand it as a new possibility that is rushing toward us. The future in the making.

Think, the end of the cold war, the Berlin wall coming down, our first trip to the moon.

That is not to say it’s all good, but here are 7 things to ponder...