With President Obama’s announcement of $3.4 billion in grants to pay for the first forays into smart grid technology, the media has been busy asking what the next generation smart grid might look like and how we can get there from here. But recently an interesting article in an unlikely source (Southwest Airline’s Spirit Magazine — maybe I shouldn’t ignore all that stuff they leave in the seat pocket) suggests that huge government initiatives and the strategic calculations of big corporations may not be the only drivers of green technology innovation.
Passionate young people with technical savvy and a commitment to the environment are also having an impact on the evolution of green tech. The collective toil of these Gen Y dreamers, the article claims, may end up being just as important as the decisions of the big players. Centering around an extended profile of 21-year-old wind turbine entrepreneur Michael Easton, the piece asserts:
The data show that the climate is definitely changing. The question is what we’re going to do about it, and that’s a question aspiring world-changers take personally. The geeks among them have turned their smarts in unprecedented numbers to “clean energy”… With some of the best young minds on the case—“100,000 people out there trying 100,000 different things in 100,000 different garages,” as global pundit Thomas Friedman put it—a breakthrough of some degree is no miracle; let’s hope it’s inevitable. In short, if people like Easton succeed, the geek shall inherit the earth.
Or, in other words the future of our environment may not just be in the hands of bureaucrats and CEOs, but also of so-called “eco-geeks,” defined by Hank Green founder of ecogeek.org, as “a person who thinks that technology is not a force of evil; he or she cares about the environment and thinks that technology can be one of many factors in helping to save the planet.” That’s a description that I find a comforting contrast to the old dueling stereotypes of techno-phobe environmentalists and geeks so oblivious to nature their pale bodies shrink in terror when they emerge from their darkened offices into the sun, and one that gives me a small measure of hope about America’s ability to innovate its way out of environmental meltdown.
(Image of geek thought bubbles by Randy Son Of Robert, CC 2.0)
