Yesterday I hopped down to LA for the first day of WINDPOWER 2007, the wind energy industry’s annual conference and trade show. It’s not an event that will make a lot of waves in the media (despite high-profile speakers), but I wanted to provide GO readers with an inside look at how the wind industry sees itself and what that means for the rest of us. However, it’s such a huge event that even one day’s coverage demands multiple posts. I apologize for not getting part one up earlier, but here it is.

EcoGeek’s Ransom Riggs sat next to me at the morning press briefing featuring Sen. Tom Daschle, head of conference sponsor AWEA, Randall Swisher, and other energy big-wigs. Ransom's writeup provides a good overview of conclusions coming out of the briefing and the message of the conference in general, so we asked the EcoGeek if we could feature Ransom’s overview in addition to my thoughts and analysis.

Looking down on the showroom from the press room, the wind industry's largest gathering was a sight to behold. Whereas Greenfest Chicago called the ‘green’ world together to speak to tens of thousands of consumers, WINDPOWER 2007 has brought 7,000 wind energy professionals to a showroom about the same size, with the extra space filled by glitzy, expensive (and effective) marketing displays.

Similarly, WINDPOWER replaces Greenfest’s impassioned speeches with multiple themed tracks of seminars and panels for the various types of stakeholders at the event. I hopped around to as many sessions as I could, and every speaker I heard had a particular expert perspective on wind power's potential to help mitigate and solve many of the problems facing our present and future. I'll save the real analytical meat for part 2 of my coverage, but for now, some highlights:

• acclaimed scientists picked apart myths and bogeymen about using and expanding wind energy;
• engineers beamed at new technologies that are ready to make a huge difference in energy production given continued investment growth and economies of scale;
• regulators warned that transmission capacity is emerging as a bottleneck for harnessing the best and most plentiful wind resources, although there remains lots of wind that can be exploited with today’s transmission infrastructure;
• every question about how best to bring wind power to scale (AWEA would like to see 300GW of capacity installed by 2020) had a single answer: stable, supportive long-term government policies that will signal investors that the opportunity profit from wind energy is here to stay.

Until I have time to tackle each of these points and others in greater depth over the next few days, GO and EcoGeek aren’t the only online media outlets providing coverage of the happenings at WINDPOWER 2007. Renewable Energy Access definitely wins the award for most frequent updates from the conference. In keeping with REA’s industry professional focus, most of their updates look like press releases from one of the 400+ exhibitors, but there’s some good, meaty info in their coverage nonetheless. Also, my buddy Summer Bowen of BTC Elements (who kindly chauffered me around at the last event I attended in LA, Phoenix Motorcar’s SUT launch) covered the event for Treehugger (link to come). Lastly, I can’t forget NewEnergyNews. If I’m forgetting any bloggers who are providing their take on the action, or if any of you at home have feelings about wind power or policy you’d like to share, leave a comment below.

When we left off with Part I, Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center was asking “who is going to receive the benefits of exploding investments in green industries? What does this all mean for the future? Where do we go from here?” In part II, I’ll outline Van’s vision for the answers to these questions. In the broadest sense, there are three possible future scenarios:1. Eco-apocalypse: This is the scenario relating to business as usual. If we do nothing, we face accelerating environmental catastrophe. It is the fear of these impacts that motivates most activists now.2. Eco-apartheid: This represents the current trend where the affluent use their considerable resources to find ways to mitigate the impacts of environmental damage on their own lives, while the poor and underprivileged are left without a way out. Depsite the progress that has been made, we find ourselves “already staring down the barrel” of eco-aparteid. So what? Well, allowing our society to go down that path would certainly be immoral, but besides that, it won’t work: eco-aparteid is just a speed bump on the way to eco-apocalypse. In order to work, the green economy has to include the majority of people, not just the majority of affluent people. Letting the rich fix their own problems is a quick fix, but not a sustainable solution. So what is the alternative?

3. Eco-equity: Essentially, eco-equity means we need each other. It’s not about charity, guilt trips, or accusations. The overriding message of this imperative is that our children’s children won’t be here if we don’t figure this thing out. Relying on “a free market evacuation plan” is not a viable solution for society as a whole. A “sink or swim” mentality doesn’t work. See: Katrina.“We must reject sink or swim in an age of floods; stand together, be together, thrive together.”

Equal access and opportunity to the best of the green economy is essential for the challenges we face as a society. What is the best agenda to pursue? A green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Given the complexity of these issues, how can green advocates explain them all in a short period of time? A rhetorical device: “The Fourth Quadrant.” (The rest of this explanation really needs some version of Van’s Powerpoint slide to make sense. Until we can get the actual diagram from Van's people, I took the liberaty of drawing it out on a napkin for you. High tech, I know…)On a basic level, people understand the spectrums of ‘gray’ moving to ‘green’ (environmental problems, moving to solutions), and rich to poor, but rarely do they think about where these two intersect. If you plot these on a crossing axis and draw a box around the four endpoints, it creates four quadrants. The altruism afforded by affluence defines the top left quadrant. It is predominantly this type of person who has the time and resources to care about environmental problems that don’t directly affect their daily lives. They are the most active supporters of polar bears, the rainforest, and other such external problems. Are the people who can afford to wrong to focus on these problems? Of course not. When keystone species in ecosystems disappear, we’re next. This line of reasoning may be selfish, but it’s as good a justification for altruism as any. We need people to take up these causes.How, then, do poor people think about abstract environmental problems? Quite simply, they don’t. The bottom left quadrant of this diagram represents the practical environmental concerns of marginalized communities: industrial pollution and the health problems it causes, rising energy prices, and many more issues. It’s not hard to see why polar bears don’t get a lot of traction in the barrio.But defining and raising awareness about environmental problems is only half the battle. In order to avoid disaster, we have to actively move towards solutions. The top right quadrant is defined by the intersection of affluence and green solutions. This includes people who can afford hybrids, carbon offsets, solar panels on their vacation home, and boutique organic products. These people often see green as an investment opportunity.Are they wrong to take this view? Once again, of course not. It is essential for the people with capital to invest in helping the earth with their disposable income. But what about the fourth quadrant? What is the meaning of the green economy for the poor? Until now, this last quadrant has too often been undefined (at best) and ignored (at worst). These people have been locked out of the material benefits of the pollution-based industrial economy. If we are serious about tackling the social and environmental challenges of our times, green collar jobs for the underprivileged and opportunities for community health improvement are the only way forward.So, how does this work in practical terms? If you put up solar panels, you’re on your way to a professional job with union benefits. This is a ‘green collar’ route out of poverty. When you learn how to double pane glass to weatherproof a home or install bamboo flooring, you’re beginning down a path to a career that is sustainable on both personal and social levels. Jobs like these are the first step on ladder towards ownership, entrepreneurship, and empowerment. This is the true win-win of the emerging green economy—but only if we make it happen. (After explaining the Fourth Quadrant, Van closed with the beginnings of a success story. His work on creating a green job corps model in Oakland has become a model for Nancy Pelosi’s Clean Energy Jobs Bill. How did he pitch it to Pelosi? For this and his closing remarks, I’ll let Van’s words speak for themselves; during this part of the speech, I was typing furiously while the audience clapped)

“People have only told poor youth what not to do, never said ‘stand with me, and be at the center of this movement.’ If you do that, Nancy Pelosi, you will change America.”“We can build a real movement again, across the lines of race and class. All of us have been lonely and isolated and frustrated. No one joined the movement to go it alone. We have the opportunity now to move forward and build a coalition greater than the New Deal, but we need to get the government on the side of the problem solvers in our new economy, not the problem makers. And when that happens, it won’t be because of bitching and moaning.” “We want America to lead the world in clean and green solutions, bring a multiracial country together and leads the world to something beautiful again. And when we do that, we won’t be taking America back, we’ll be taking it forward.

Is this too long for you to read? Or did you read the whole thing straight through and want to see more? Either way, this YouTube video is for you.

Yesterday, I had a chance to leave our booth in Liam and Noelle’s capable hands to head over to the main stage to hear Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center speak about “green collar” jobs as an avenue to social justice. The following is my lightly edited notes from his speech. I would have just taken a video and posted it via YouTube, but Green Festival sustains itself in part through the sales of speaker recordings, so my indirect account is probably the best you who couldn’t join us are going to get. For the most part, I’ll paraphrase or quote Van, and throw a few comments in there when I feel like it.

Van: Those of you in audience have been working hard, for years, decades even, hoping that someday the country would wake up and do something about the dangers that face us. Thanks to everyone who have paved the way for the explosion of the green movement; welcome to your year. Finally, discourse in this country is turning the corner in the direction of sanity. It’s one thing when movement is on the fringe, marginalized by the powers that be, who benefit from the status quo. But, when the movement grows in strength, it is a new and different day, with particular consequences for the movement itself.

Unthinking consumer/industrial society has increasingly been put on trial already, and as it grows, the green movement will face the same challenge. We will accomplish what we know is right, but as movement moves from margin to center, the only question is:

Who are we going to take with us and who to leave behind?

We have both a moral and a political obligation to not to reserve the benefits of a green transition for the affluent who put solar panels on their vacation home; we need to build an economy to lift people out of poverty, and we should be judged on those moral goals.

Communities form Newark to Oakland need jobs and hope, and everything out there (waves hand in direction of GF exhibitions) means new jobs, new services, new products, and new opportunities. We need to stand together and expand this green coalition to include a wider variety of people:

“We can save the polar bears and we can save the black kids too!” But how?

I wasn’t always an environmentalist. I worked in social justice. In my work, I came across a contradiction: if Pookie sells drugs, he goes to jail, but if he comes home and gets a job at a polluting factory, we call that a success story. Should people come back from self-destructive activities add to the destruction of our society and our environment? People need dignified, hopeful, helpful, powerful work, and we can’t accept anything less for our children if we’re going to build a future together. This contradiction set me on a path to find something I could believe in, a single standard or justice that reflects economic, social, and environmental needs simultaneously.

After this introduction, Van had the crowd pumped and ready for… a Powerpoint. I was a bit taken aback, but I think you’ll see it ended up fitting in well.

Van: Whenever I show this, I say this is “the power point that Al Gore would give if he were black.” (Laughter from crowd. We’ll work on getting our readers access to the powerpoint)

The Third Wave of Environmentalism

We are entering what I call the “third wave” of environmentalism. What were the first two waves? Glad you asked. (What a pedagogical trickster Mr. Jones is!)

The first wave, conservation, refers to the roots the current environmental movement has in the principles of conservation, from the Native Americans to Roosevelt. Natives were the original conservationists, fully populating a continent (no matter what people tell you about it being wide open), while leaving forests that would let a squirrel go branch to branch from the east coast to the Mississippi River without touching the ground. After conquering the continent, the National Parks movement return those values of conserving the bounty of nature (what we have come to think of as the past) to the public sphere.

In sparking the second wave of environmentalism—regulating the excesses of industry—Rachel Carson and Silent Spring made An Inconvenient Truth look like like small potatoes. Her work made people realize that environmentalism isn’t just about critters and rivers, but about human beings: the effect of our industrial lifestyle on ourselves and our people. The resulting groundswell led to the Clean Air and Water Acts. Today, environmentalists consider that shot in the arm beautiful moment in American Democracy.

But there was a problem: the “second wave” was a movement of affluence. Too little attention was paid to race, class, income, and power. As a result, the white mainstream environmental movement appeared to the underprivileged to be conspiring with big industry, as the harmful effects of industry got pushed to margins of society.

In the 80s, an environmental justice movement began to respond. It’s message: regulate, but regulate fairly. We can’t ever forget that even best of intentions don’t mean much if we don’t include, reach out, and listen to the voices left behind.

The “third wave” is a fundamentally different phenomenon that the first two. We have reached a point where the imperative is to invest in the solutions of the future, the “new clean and green technologies” that are springing up as innovation responds to new challenges. Environmentalists are no longer just defining problems, but moving society towards solutions.

As in the first two waves, there are both affluent (Rooseveltian conservation) and those who are left behind (Native Americans). So, the question is, what is the meaning of this new wave for poor people and people of color? Is there an opportunity for them to be a part of this, or will the mistakes of the second wave be repeated?

Many underprivileged and people of color don’t even consider this a relevant question; they share the ebbing view that green is still small-time, and don’t feel a reason to act altruistically to get involved, considering the demands of daily survival.

The emerging reality is, green has gone mainstream: green celebrities are their own new trend, and Vanity Fair, Elle, and other mags are all shouting “green is the new black” in their annual “green issues.” You know something’s up when Al Gore is on the cover of Y Magazine. “He’s no Leonardo DiCaprio by any stretch of the imagination.”

But these admirable efforts to make green ‘cool’ already obscure a vital issue. How many people of color are in all those recycled pages? Something is already off with this new wave, even at the pop cultural level.

Companies aren’t stupid. Growth in demand for environmental action has led to an explosion in ‘greenvertising,’ where polluters try to pretend they’re greener than you. Most of these ad campaigns are farcical, but they at least reflect the awareness that there is a rapidly growing demand for green products and services.

These companies see the numbers. The ‘LOHAS’ (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) market is huge: susatainable energy: $76B/year; alternative healthcare: $35B/year, personal development: $10B/year. Overall, these markets are a $230 billion part of US economy.

The Cleantech sector reached #6 on the list of venture capital (VC) investment in 2005. This stunned observers, until 2006 came around and it jumped again to #3, ahead of information technology (IT). Now people are speculating that it’s heading to #1 next year. VC investment in the sector is projected to grow from $40B to $170B in the next few years.

This is great news: people want to be a part of the green solution. The bad news: LOHAS, Cleantech, and “green” in general constitute the most racially segregated parts of the US economy.

The question is, who is going to receive the benefits of those investments? What does this all mean for the future? Where do we go from here?

Stay tuned for Part II of Van Jones on Green Collar Jobs and Our Shared Future. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to post it soon.