The Green Recession Revisited

quotThe view here is that when the US does emerge from this recession in 201011 it will be a greener country with a new vision actually taking root in the realm of alternative and renewable energy It will prove to be true that this recession will change habits stop rampant consumerism increase conservation and provoke investment in renewable and alternative forms of energy It is ironic that this Great Recession will actually accelerate the country into a greener future faster than if it had not happenedquotIt has been well documented that during the recession the amount of miles driven in cars in America actually dropped for the first time in decades In addition the number of people using public transportation reached numbers not seen since the middle part of the last century when the true love affair America had with the automobile began Increased gas prices unemployment and general economic hardship made people really think about the cost of transport for the first timeIt has recently been reported that in recent years since the beginning of the great recession America has actually led the world in cutting greenhouse gases This has been due to three general trends First the recession and desire to spend less as gasoline prices stayed high Second a growing awareness of the necessity of alternative energy primarily solar and wind in an age of climate change Third the dramatic changes and collapsing prices in the natural gas sector of energyIn a very good article about this in the New York Times Eduardo Porter writes that American emissions of CO2 have dropped 13 since the beginning of the recession in 2007 Even more significantly he points out that the United States uses 9 less energy for each 1 of GDP than it did five years ago and that total energy use has fallen about 5 in the same time frame A no pain no gain scenario to be sureBack in 2007 the general view of scientists and energy experts amp8211 and of this futurist as well was that overall energy consumption in the United States could be cut by 2025 through conservation retrofitting insulating and applying basic knowledge of energy use and waste Well we have cut use by 5 so far Given the recent realities of natural gas replacing coal and continued intelligent conservation and energy use the United States will be energy independent before the end of the decade This is something the country has spoken about for many decades and now this green recession has brought us close to that goalIn that column I wrote four years ago I listed four words that would define and shape the use of energy during the great recession contraction cleansing reorganization and transformation It is worth it to take a quick look back at these four wordsContraction is obvious as economic activity contracts in a recession In fact that is the definition of a recession A deep fall in output and consumption obviously cuts energy useCleansing is the ridding of the casino capitalism that existed in the first seven years of this century The dramatic overuse of debt to fuel growth and consumption is now scar tissue on most of us We now look back at this behavior and see is for what it was completely unsustainable in every sense of the wordReorganization is larger than just in the energy sector As I wrote in a column two years ago the best way to understand the recession of 20072010 was that it was a reorganizational recession between two ages It was actually the rough transition between the Information Age and the Shift Age Any full social cultural and economic reorganization will affect the energy sectorTransformation As long time and loyal readers of this column know on 010110 I coined the name Transformation Decade for the 20102020 decade The simple dictionary definition of transformation is quot a change in nature shape character or formquot Well as Porter clearly points out in his article the entire US energy sector is in that process of transformation This of course is a much larger concept for the United States and all of humanity than simply energy but energy is one of the largest areas to be transformedAs we now move fully out of the recession and into the slow growth recovery at least in the United States we can look back on the brutal economic contraction as a painful birth to a new energy landscape One that is just a beginning but a beginning neverthelessDavid Houle is a futurist strategist and speaker He has always been slightly ahead of the curve Houle spent more than 20 years in media and entertainment Most recently David is a featured contributor to Oprahcom Check is out here wwwoprahcomdavidhoule David can be contacted at DavidDavidHoulecomRead all Davidamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Evolution ShiftCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of 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The Green Recession Revisited

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David Houle

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