Apparently corporate ad agencies have realized that despite the millions they’ve spent on denial campaigns, people aren’t buying it. So they’ve changed their messaging. I can’t be critical of this, though I certainly am cynical about what it really means. However there is huge money in developing a new global infrastructure for energy. In developed countries like the US and the EU, this means a new grid and energy efficient transportation, not mention renewables. In under-developed countries it gets more interesting. The correct analogy is the spread of mobile phones.

Before affordable mobile phones, people in poor countries had no means of communicating with each other. Telephone lines and switches were primitive and costly and there was no incentive for telecom companies to invest in these poor economies. So, as mobile phones became ubiquitous even in these countries, it became obvious that they don’t require the networked telecom grids. Just build towers which is far cheaper than running fiber to houses and businesses. They are not tied to telecom grids.

The same will happen with energy. Solar, wind, geothermal, etc. can be localized to a building or a village. It does not require a physical link to a power plant hundreds of miles away. This means that we should see rural electrification in places like Africa which will help them pull out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

The awakening of the corporate giants to energy opportunity that is not tied to fossil fuels will be slow. However their futurists know that the current model is unsustainable, not just on supply issues but also because the vast majority of oil comes from regions that are politically unstable (Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, etc.). As the supply shrinks, the use of oil as an economic weapon will increase, creating instability in oil markets worldwide. Without a serious effort to provide alternative sources on both a national and local level worldwide, we will see wars waged over fossil fuels. As it is, a lot of us believe that the jihad being waged now is really about distribution of energy.

Fortunately Seth Godin has taken his usual way of changing perception and applied it to the work model. Work is going to mean assembling your skills, experience and connections and creating a package that others will pay for. For example I’m building (on a wiki platform) a site that contains everything in Rochester’s waterfront neighborhoods: Real estate, parks, shopping, sights, restaurants, services- everything. When I’m done I’m going to invite residents of these neighborhoods to write about their area.

Once this ‘package’ is complete I’m going to sell exclusive access to it to an area real estate firm or broker. They’ll appear on all the pages as a link to learn more about buying or selling a waterfront property in our area. Leads for these properties are worth a lot of money. You’ll be able to find it at WaterfrontRochester.com. I also own WaterfrontFingerLakes.com and several other cities. They’ll get packaged up too.

The Recession and its downsizings have forced all of us to think differently about work. Those who understand this change and jump right in will do very well. Those who cling to the idea that their old jobs will somehow come back will not.

Shopping this way not only saves money and provides entertainment, it alerts you to what’s available locally and when. It’s still early but local asparagus is nearly over. There’s still plenty from New Jersey (The Garden State) which seems pretty local to me but Boo disagrees- she thinks there is a difference. 300 hundred miles of trucking I guess.

This past year we went almost every week, even in the dead of winter. The stalls morph into tents with propane heaters blasting and everyone has a chill somewhere. The local produce is things like cabbage, potatoes, apples-things that store well. You can still get nearly anything else from far off places. At least we’re thinking about the carbon cost when we pick up fruit from South America.

The food business in America amazes me. For low artificially low prices we can get virtually anything, anytime. When I was in Paris a few years ago we arrived early on a Saturday at the apartment we rented in Marais. Though lagged we wanted to wander and the first place we found was a weekly street market. I’d always heard about the quality of French fresh food but this was totally amazing. Perfect rows of glistening shrimp lovingly packed in ice, table after table of beautiful fruit and vegetables with literally dozens of varieties of each type. It was a cook’s paradise though I certainly was not planning on spending time cooking in the food capital of the Western world!

That night we had our first French meal in a restaurant in Place de Vosges, the amazing medieval plaza that fills an entire block. The highlight was incredible asparagus served with a lemony hollandaise. They were very thick and a pale green and melted in your mouth like no vegetable I’d eaten before. When Carol (my ex and still friend) bit into her order the expression on her face was priceless. Perhaps we’ll achieve that degree of subtlety and appreciation for our food in a few hundred years- though it may have taken a planetary crisis to force us down that path.

Franke’s essays are illustrated guides to her process of changing internally and externally- we literally see into the conscious and unconscious thought process as she decides to take real action in dealing with the personal effects of climate change. Not content to simply change lightbulbs and stop drinking bottled water, Franke (with her husband) sells her SUV, rips up her driveway and plants a garden (battling a confused bureaucracy in the process) and writes a moving letter to her unborn grandchildren, a letter bemoaning in advance our pitiful lack of effort to improve a world we’re destroying. This essay, To My Future Grandkids in 2020, goes beyond the humor of the situational earlier essays and paints a poignant picture as Franke attempts to explain our collective failure to change things now when change is required- an explanation written for a generation yet to come.

The essays must be seen to be appreciated. Combining text, illustration and collage, they express the messiness of creativity and the beauty of action. This really is a book to give to your friends and family. Though we’ve never met in person, Franke and I are friends, separated by 80 miles of Lake Ontario water. We’ve been corresponding for several years now and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing these essays appear on her blog. When the book arrived in my mail I realized that they were deeper and more thought-provoking when revisited in this format.