MEET IN THE MIDDLE

The Aspen (Ideas Fest) Effect

By Rational Middle, July 9, 2012 10:43 am |
aspenpanel2012

At first, I thought the euphoria I was feeling in Aspen from the launch of the Rational Middle Energy Series at the Aspen Ideas Fest was a result of the altitude. It was only after I had decompressed closer to sea-level, that I realized the continued feeling of giddiness was the result of an amazing reception at one of the world’s most prestigious gatherings of minds (where else can you pass the New York Times’ David Brooks, physicist Brian Greene and Tony Award-winning Julie Taymor in a 40-foot span?).

The premiere of the Rational Middle Energy Series helped opened the Aspen Ideas Fest, and it started the festival out with huge challenge: Can we have an open, civil and honest conversation about the energy future where we discuss the options and work towards a solution? The surprising (not-so-surprising to us) answer given by the fully engaged audience was a resounding, full-throated “YES!”

The panel featured a stellar line-up that truly emulated what a rational conversation about energy should be. Richard Newell, former head of the EIA and Duke professor, took the stage alongside Rocky Mountain Institute’s Alexis Karolides and Shell’s (our sponsor for the film series) Russ Ford. It was a current-day anomaly as top-level academia, pure-thinking environmentalism and a top-level executive from one of the largest energy companies in the world sat together on stage.

The idea was to watch the films of the Rational Middle Energy Series (we viewed “What’s at Stake” and the soon-to-be-released “Great Transition”) and then discuss the issues and ideas from the films. The conversation, led by moderator Chrystia Freeland of Thomson Reuters, was frank and honest and never, despite varying views, got heated or volatile. When the question and answer phase of the packed panel started, the air filled with the hands of festival-goers wanting to make comments and ask questions about energy and a rational approach to a solution. I think the resulting energy and exuberance of our audience took the entire panel by surprise. It was like I was seeing the Rational Middle move the needle (ever so slightly) towards creating a movement of people focused on an energy solution. In fact, the viewing of the films and the panel seemed to be the talk the festival and all over town.

So what was the end result? Did we solve the world’s energy challenges? Not hardly. What was accomplished was an amazing confluence of ideas and melding of ideologies – it was, in essence the rational middle. It was amazing to hear Richard Newell’s clear-eyed view of the current and the potential future energy landscape, Russ Ford’s idea of clean energy and how renewables will play an essential role and Alexis’ Karolides’ take on how energy efficiency was the cleanest energy of them all. It was a great start to an important concept.

In the end, maybe the altitude in Aspen got all of us into a place where we were able to have a constructive conversation about the energy future. Or maybe,just maybe, our launching of the Rational Middle is the beginning of something much bigger where we can stop the destructive, polarized rhetoric and start working on a collective energy solution. Here’s a clip from our panel:

America’s Energy Future: No More Fossil Fuels by 2050?

  • John De Herrera

    There is a new safer, cleaner, and abundant energy reactor that is now in production in the United States:  http://rossifocardifusion.com/   http://rossifocardifusion.com/author/john 

  • stpglblwrmng

    The cheapest energy is the cleanest energy, if you act like an adult and look at the budget of the whole society instead of personal loss and gain. The effects of global warming from fossil fuels are far more costly than the price of scaling up current clean energy technologies.
     Of course it is ‘desirable’ to get off fossil fuels, and as soon as possible, tomorrow preferably, the reason being that every day we burn them, we get closer to a world with all seacoast cities flooded, massive tracts of fertile land too hot for crops, and a loss of the ice caps and the tropical forests and the ocean currents that now regulate our temperature, in other world a barely habitable world with half the species extinct.

    IEA
    report ‘Tracking Clean Energy Progress” says the cost of transition to clean
    energy would be close to neutral, if we do not delay. Sir Nicholas Stern says
    the cost of investing in clean energy quadruples if we wait until after 2020.
    The IMF says that we can transition without hurting economic stability and
    growth.

    greenismoney.wordpress.com

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-von-Hartmann/637731902 Paul von Hartmann

    The cheapest energy is free energy. It comes from the Sun. There is a plant that is more efficient at collecting the solar energy than any other, but we’re not using it, and it isn’t even mentioned in this conversation that I can find.

    Solar energy is also the most efficient to collect, store and the cleanest to use. Plants are the most efficient means of collection and storage, and the most (potentially) available supply. There is only one crop that produces complete nutrition and sustainable biofuels from the same harvest.

    The choice of organic biomass and cellulosic energy feedstocks is obvious, since it doesn’t impose food insecurity to produce energy while sequestering nine tons of carbon per acre per growing season, and producing atmospheric monoterpenes to shield the planet from increasing UV-B radiation.

    See

    http://californiacannabisministry.blogspot.com/2011/03/cannabis-vs-global-broiling.html

    to understand more.

  • therationalmiddle

    Much of the scientific community disagrees with you. (http://www.jamespowell.org/) including this non-gov’t, but Koch funded study just released last month: http://bit.ly/XsNWCn

    Wind turbines kill less birds than cats or other buildings (http://nyti.ms/Y60kPe)

    And even if there were no global warming, does sustainable, long-term energy that is consistently inexpensive and doesn’t require massive industrial processes to supply fuel sound bad? Sustainable renewables are something that, once developed, will be the basis of everything man creates going forward barring a massive leap in fusion technology. Climate change doesn’t mean the world is equally warming all over. It means the climate is, well, changing – or shifting, making a negative impact overall and changing norms we have grown accustomed to. NASA confirms that antarctic ice is growing, but also points out that it’s growing more slowly than arctic ice is being lost. http://1.usa.gov/WgnMTY