ASPEN - Are we in an endgame struggle for survival or do we face the greatest opportunities in the history of civilization?

Both.

Granted, the messages remain grim, perhaps even darker than I had expected here under the blue skies at the Aspen Environment Forum. But of all the gatherings I’ve attended this year, I’ve never felt such a tipping point of camaraderie and conviction that unify business, environmentalists, investors and the public.

Perhaps it’s just the crisp air and the informal, collegial atmosphere nurtured by the Aspen Institute’s tradition of convening diverse groups to tackle complicated, timely issues. Maybe it’s the powerful imagery we’ve seen presented by National Geographic photographers such as Jim Richardson who gave us an appreciation for soil, Paul Nicklen who took us to the melting poles, Jim Balog who shared the majesty of ice and Nick Nichols who tortures himself to make the most captivating wildlife pictures in the most remote parts of the world.

But unlike some conferences, there isn’t an air of back-room negotiations or tag-teams of special interests working the coffee bar. Surely, some participants and speakers wear their convictions and contentions on their sleeves, and some are resolute skeptics or doomsayers. But as Amy Coen told me last night, “This just feels different.” She’s president of Population Action International and is here to speak on the human footprint and climate issues related to population. “We all need to learn to listen better and this is a good place to do that.”

Just before the forum, organizers asked me to be one of six speakers to help open the forum with a “big idea.” But how could I give these big thinkers an even bigger idea?

I turned to the biggest thinkers I could find.

First, I went to our 7-year-old daughter for inspiration. Just before I left home to come to Aspen, we listened to Jack and the Beanstalk together. It’s all about magic beans. But in water, climate and energy we know there are no magic beans, no matter how hard we try to find them. Solving these issues requires commitment, innovation and mass collaboration.

Second, I found Pulitzer-winning biologist E.O. Wilson at breakfast Thursday morning and he enthusiastically described his latest book, a venture into fact-inspired fiction that’s a present day version of Orwell’s Animal Farm. “Anthill,” which he just completed and sent to his agent, is a story about an ant colony’s struggle for survival in the expansive world of a picnic area. Story is the realm in which we can explore new worlds and shape powerful drama, he said.

“We’ve done the science,” Professor Wilson added. “The human mind is based on scenarios, so now it’s time to tell the stories.”

Throughout the evolution of human culture - and Professor Wilson knows a lot about evolution - we’ve shared our stories, our histories. So that’s the other part of my Big Idea: We need to tell better stories.

Better stories, no magic beans. Simple, yes? As old as history and fairy tales.

The “Big Idea.”

The forum wraps up today with a panoply of sessions, ranging from “Living with Coal,” which is sure to generate vigorous discussion, to “Journalism and Coverage of the Environment.”

The forum certainly has sparked discussion and debate that will carry on long after we go back to our offices, whether in the headquarters of a major corporation wrestling with the “now what” of sustainability or a research camp upon the Greenland ice. Unfortunately, no one will leave the forum with a magic bean to fix the world’s woes. But we leave inspired by our colleagues and their passions to creating a better world. We all agree that at every tick of the clock there are the expansive, personal stories of drama, tragedy, hope and inspiration unfolding in our own backyards and around the world.

How we tell those stories - and how we respond - will define whether we’re writing our prologue or final chapter.

I’ll post a wrap up of our water session shortly - meanwhile, watch video selections from the forum here

Related links

Water: Aspen Environment Forum - Circle of Blue
PlumTV - interview
PlumTV - Aspen Environment Forum conversation
Grist - Big Ideas at the Aspen Environment Forum

BY KEITH SCHNEIDER
Senior Editor, Circle of Blue
(Also posted on Modeshift)

NEW YORK — The three-day Clinton Global Initiative concluded with a flurry of new commitments including a five-year, $4 billion pledge by Pacific Gas & Electric and Ausra to build solar thermal generating stations that both companies says is cost-competitive with fossil fuel generation. California-based Ausra will build at least 1,000 megawatts of solar power plants and PG&E will purchase at least 1,000 megawatts of solar thermal, and the deal will eliminate over 36 million tons of CO2 emissions in California and neighboring states over the next 20 years. Other projects announced here were these:

FourWinds Capital Management said it will invest $300 million to develop investment programs that focus on tplanting, harvesting, and processing of novel sources of bio-fuels using emerging technologies in tropical regions that offer significant environmental and social benefits in addition to alternative energy sources. The investment company also said it would develop a $1 billion global investment program to assist large cities and rural areas in improving their environmental infrastructure, with a particular focus on waste and water management systems.
Geothermal Power Company of Iceland committed to spending $150 million to help countries in the African Rift Valley develop geothermal energy resources. The project will invest in comprehensive research into the geothermal potential of Djibouti, and if successful, will build a large power plant driven on geothermal power.

Sea Studios Foundation, a Monterey-based documentary film production company, will produce a $16 million integrated media initiative to help audiences understand the connections between seemingly unrelated problems-and solutions-in global health, poverty, climate change, and the environment. Using television, the Internet, and new media, the studio’s “Strange Days on Planet Earth 2020″ series will include periodic primetime television events featuring Edward Norton; an interactive Web site hosted by PBS.org, an iTunes video Podcast series, ongoing “Search for Solutions” contests to foster user-generated content and showcase high-impact opportunities to make a difference, and live screening events involving the public, business leaders, opinion leaders, and policymakers.

The Apollo Alliance, the City of Newark, and the Center for American progress committed to organize Newark’s Green Future Summit in the Spring of 2008. The idea is to identify best practices and mobilize the resources to help Newark catch up with Chicago, Portland, Seattle, New York and other cities that are showcases for prosperity that emerges from developing a clean energy-efficient, green economic development strategy.

These and more than 200 other commitments announced this week were said by President Bill Clinton to touch “at least 100 million people worldwide.” The scope and numbers are stunning, even if half of what was announced here this week is actually executed. Mr. Clinton asserted that nearly 10 million children not in school around the world will enroll for the first time. Some 50 million people will gain access to treatment for neglected tropical diseases. Some 170 million acres of forest will be conserved and restored, area equal in size to Italy and Switzerland combined. And 11 million adults, most of them women, will gain access to industries and durable jobs.

I wasn’t the only observer who found the proceedings disorienting. There really isn’t anything quite like this conference anywhere on the planet. The Aspen Ideas Festival convenes a similar array of prominent thinkers and voices. The World Economic Forum is much larger and, I’m told, more perceptive and far-reaching in its choice of subjects and how far it asks panelists to advance their thinking. The United Nations, which also convened in New York last week, attracts more global leaders. But none of these, nor any other international conference, does as well in attracting such diverse leaders, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu (see pix). And none is motivated so clearly by one person seeking to make the world a better place and successfully making the ask so that not $millions, not $billions, but that something close to $10 billion is committed by individuals, companies, governments, and foundations to execute an incredible array of worthy projects. More was done to help solve the global warming crisis in these three days than the United Nations or the United States has done in half a decade.

Several more big ideas of the 21st century are at work here. The first is that important industrial companies, particularly those in pharmaceuticals, energy, utlitities, and online media see the value of reducing human and global stress to improving their bottom lines. There’s money to be made in solving misery, not only in the development and delivery of new products, but also in fostering collaborations that help companies gain access to new global markets. The second big idea, one that is becoming Mr. Clinton’s signature in this phase of his life, is the value of what he calls “giving back.” He frames this in the context of the difference between I wish and I will.

There were a lot of willing people in New York last week.

“For the first time in history, we see more people living in the cities than in rural areas… and they are forming larger and larger homeless populations within those cities.” That’s Brent Stirton, senior photographer for Getty Images, speaking to us this morning about human migrations and climate-related water redistribution in Peru. We hailed Brent on iSight video fresh off the plane from his assignment near Cusco where he was documenting impacts of climate change and water pollution on the diminishing groups of rural pastorialists who, for generations, have existed off of glacial-sourced water supplies. Brent tells us that many of these people moving to the cities are ill-suited to the urban life, driving serious long-term humanitarian concerns. As we see time and again, the front lines of the global freshwater crisis are inexorably intertwined with persistent cultural, economic and development shifts. We’ll be sharing Brent’s fresh reportage with our audience for “The Future of Water” this afternoon in Paepcke Auditorium at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

It’s not often you get to recite a poem for a former poet laureate. But this is the Aspen Ideas Festival, and anything can happen. At the speakers’ dinner tonight, our intern Aaron Jaffe and I found ourselves in fascinating conversation with poet Billy Collins about art’s role in shaping public opinion. Somehow the topic veered off the mighty track of global social movements toward humorous rhymers such as Ogden Nash, whom Collins admired. Here was my chance. For Collins and another participant, a senior U.S. intelligence official, I recited Nash’s “The Python.” I fib no fibs.

It could have been a key fob or even a set of gourmet mustard, the sweet tangy kind or perhaps spicy horseradish. I had just finished my speech to the Aspen Rotary following a luncheon on top of Aspen Mountain as deep teal thunderclouds wove around distant peaks. In the closing moments of the meeting, the club’s president-elect, Tom Bracewell, presented me with a certificate indicating that the club would make a donation to immunize 20 children against polio. In a millisecond, I found my imagination racing across the world to a dusty scene of young children standing in line with nurses holding their outstretched arms — they’d be getting prophylactic tattoos of sorts, protection against the hideous disease that’s often transmitted by dirty water and poor sanitation. Polio is almost history in much of the world due to Rotary’s worldwide vaccination programs. And soon, I hope, there will be 20 more children who need no longer live in fear of another waterborne virus.

With feeling.
Selfless. Sensual.
People like to have meaning.
These might sound like words from a new-age counselor, not scientists.
But these reflected the thoughts, frustrations and tribulations expressed by panelists during “Science and the Public Sphere: Getting Out the Truth — a Media Roundtable” at the Aspen Ideas Festival this morning. So how do you make science sensual and with feeling? NPR and ABC News journalist Robert Krulwich, who’s darned good at it ,said scientists have to do a better job connecting with the public, helping them find meaning in life.

Shanghai’s experiencing isolated showers. But will the forecast call for pain?

China scholar Li Cheng challenged the audience’s sense of hygenic urgency yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival when he described what might happen if everyone in Shanghai took a shower even once a week.

Atlantic Monthly journalist James Fallows summarizes:

On the environment (a huge theme in discussions of China here): when a rural dweller moves to the big city, his or her demands on the water supply increase thirty-fold. This reminds me of a statistic I heard last year in China: if the average Shanghainese resident took a shower even once a week, the city’s water supply would be used up.

In the separate morning session, A Year in Shanghai, Fallows described some of his behind-the-scenes perspectives gleaned from reporting his recent Atlantic article, “Why China’s Rise is Good for Us.”
Some of the key takeaways:
- Environmental factors will be most limiting to China’s continued growth;
- Most in China don’t seem to realize how bad the situation is. For example, the Yellow River doesn’t reach the ocean;
- Seven percent of the glacial ice mass on the Tibetan Plateau is melting each year. What will happen to every river in Asia with a decline in snowmelt?
- China is undergoing the largest mass human migration in history with more than 150 million people moving from rural to urban areas;
- The new definition of foreign aid is you save yourself.

With the gravity of describing a state secret, the counter clerk at Carl’s Pharmacy on Main Street in Aspen leaned over and whispered to the customer who was buying a bottle of water. “You know, water is the next oil,” she said. The irony wasn’t lost on the customer, a Chevron senior executive, who described his experience to me. (He’s here as a sponsor of the energy series at the Aspen Ideas Festival.) Considering the obvious and not-so-obvious connections between water and energy, the clerk was right on the money, not to mention that the bottle of Fiji water cost $2.45.

I’ve landed in Aspen just in time to hear Dr. Peter Gleick and his Big Idea at the opening ceremonies of the third annual Aspen Ideas Festival. “Maybe less is better,” Gleick declared to the audience gathered this afternoon in the Greenwald Pavilion. The world should be prepared for shifts in economies, scale and living “within fixed limits.” This will be “a different challenge for a lot of us” as growth-based economies are no longer supported by massive population increases and are no longer sustainable. It’s a big idea that we haven’t quite got our arms around yet — one that has massive implications, and one that’s antithetical to a seemingly infinite mode of environmental and economic Manifest Destiny. It comes down to defining and embracing what’s “sustainable” on our little blue dot.

Sallai Meridor, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., was waiting quietly to board his flight to Aspen. I introduced myself and he knowingly smiled when I said I’d be leading a session about water at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “I grew up thinking about water,” he replied, his voice revealing an intimacy with water tracing back to childhood. It’s hard to have a long conversation about Israel without talking about the chronic water shortages of the region, and about the interrelated opportunities for conflict or cooperation. Even though water is fundamental to survival and that most of us in the United States have plenty of clean water to drink, how can we make thinking about water — in the most global, unified sense — as basic as drinking it? We’ll be sharing at least some of the answers here on Friday.