As the months of President Pat's reign dwindle down to a precious few, he is still bursting forth with new ideas to help us all be able to say: "I Get It."  In this case, it's going to be in the form of us "Getting It" about the wider world of Rotary.  For example, next week, Mark Roberts will cull three articles from the most recent edition of The Rotarian and Members will be quizzed, with money changing hands appropriately (meaning from Members to Club coffers, no doubt). 
 
In addition, "The ABC's of Rotary," authored by a certain Cliff Dochterman, Moraga Club, Past President of Rotary International, will be circulating amongst a pre-selected cadre, each of whom will, over the next weeks, give a one minute Enlightenment Session on some aspect of Rotary from said tome.  It isn't clear how this one will lead to fineable offenses, but Pat is pretty slick and this reporter has no doubt that he can find a way.
 
MYSTERY ROTARIAN(S)
 
Either Pat forgot, or we've run out of mysterious ones, or there wasn't enough time. 
 
PROGRAM
 
And you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone,
For the times they are a-changin'.
 
                                                Bob Dylan
 
The above lyric from the Pride of Duluth, Minnesota, was not quoted by Bill Roth, today's speaker, but could well have been.  Mr. Roth is trying to get us to leave behind the unsustainable ways we have been feeding ourselves, powering our lives, and obtaining our water and get us to use new ways of doing these things that are the product of systems that can be maintained for the foreseeable future.
 
Mr. Roth is not some wild-eyed radical.  He holds a Master's degree in Economics from the University of Florida and has served as a Senior Vice President of Pacific Gas & Electric Energy Services, COO of Texaco Ovonics Hydrogen Solutions, and CEO of Cleantech America, which is a solar power development company.  He is currently the President of NCCT, a consulting company based in Moraga that focuses on helping companies make the leap to "green" technologies.
 
And "green" technologies are on the way.  No, make that they are here.  And, stresses Mr. Roth, if your company doesn't make that leap to using green sustainable methods and products, you will be left behind.  He sees the next years as a sea change in the way the world does business, feeds itself, powers itself, and delivers water to itself.
 
Mr. Roth showed us why he sees this as a "mega-trend" and why "this is not an American thing, it's a global thing."  Perhaps the single biggest factor that will drive this change - and it has already begun - is the increasing drive toward what he called "pricing clarity."  Put simply, there are a number of goods and services we buy today in which the price we pay does not reflect the actual cost of the good or service.  For example, the shale oil that comes from Canada carries a huge cost in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and other environmental damage that is not reflected at the pump.  "Pricing clarity" factors all of these costs - what might now be thought of as "hidden costs" - into the actual price you pay at the pump, the meter, or the cash register.
 
Pricing Clarity is coming fast.  Indeed, says Mr. Roth, based on past examples if the participants in an industry won't do it themselves, government will insist on it via regulation.  Example: the increasing trend in capping the amount of carbon emissions in a given industry and then having the players in the industry have to buy and sell the credits among themselves.  This sort of thing is a trend that will only increase in the near future.
 
But to stay with fossil fuels for a moment, as it was a major example used by Mr. Roth, the carbon footprint is not the only "externality" that needs to be factored in.  For example, in order to maintain a petroleum-based energy system, we are having to spend something on the order of $1.5 trillion.  That cost is not reflected in the price you pay at the gas pump.  Only if such costs are actually reflected in the price of a good or service can pricing clarity - and with it, a genuine ability to truly compare the costs and benefits of competing goods and services - be achieved. 
 
Mr. Roth sees the Internet as a major driving force in this period of change.  Not only does the Internet mean that information can be made virtually universally available, but it also means that people around the world who care about these issues - and they are all over the world - can communicate and achieve a "critical mass" far more quickly than ever before.  Combined with the drives for sustainability and increasing globalization, the Internet is and will continue to be a driving force for change to these new economic realities.
 
Mr. Roth also sees five other interconnecting factors that will increasingly drive this change and also be the desired end result of it: renewable energy; energy independence; wellness; credit prudence; and social justice.
 
Renewable energy?  Essential to political and economic stability in the world.  Same for energy independence.
 
Wellness?  5,000 babies in the world die every day for lack of clean water.  At the other extreme, one-third of all American adults are obese.  These are not conditions that can last without massive dislocation in the world, including our communities.
 
Credit prudence?  Does this one really need an explanation?
 
Social justice?  Mr. Roth pointed to 9/11.  We may think that those who planned and carried out those attacks were lunatics (and I suspect you would not get an argument from Mr. Roth).  But the point is that as long as the major systems for developing and delivering the essentials of life are so out of balance, and so unsustainable, they will give rise to large populations of the disaffected, which in and of itself makes developing sustainable systems that much more difficult. 
 
Mr. Roth also discussed how Corporate America is viewing these issues at present.  The answer: not with a lot of sophistication.  But he sees hopeful signs that America and its business communities are coming around and will be in the forefront of the changes that are coming, and coming soon. 
 
If you would like to follow up on this topic, check www.cleantechgrowth.com, or email Mr. Roth at roth@cleantechgrowth.com.  You might also want to track down his book, On Empty or Out of Time.

 

Thanks, Mr Roth, for taking the time to share your view of the future with us.