Bank of America Launches $20 Billion Environmental Program

This Bank of America headline above screamed out to me when I read the news today.

You know in general that policy has a better chance of succeeding when it becomes tied to leading vested interests.

The More Things Change

For example, alternative energy, full of promise for years but an applied sliver of the overall marketplace and a mixed at best investment vehicle, has now taken the VC industry by storm, embraced wholeheartedly by the biggest names.

Have you heard of the "second silicon valley" (solar VC investment) and what it is doing for California's economy?

Alternative energy investment is now apparently not only considered safer, not only fashionable, but hot in leading investment circles. And I think I know why.

Sit tight.

It's because the traditional vested corporate interests that have had the most to lose in the past from technology breakthroughs are now themselves embracing the technology.

How about oil companies investing in the alternative energies themselves in a more pronounced way.

Even our President, Exhibit A of traditional oil interests, used the State of the Union address over a year ago to tout alternative energy initiatives (yes, they're less than some would like to see, but from what I've read they're in the right direction and if this President can support them it's a real trend I strontgly believe). BP, which suffered highly publicized environmental problems has employed repositioning with their "beyond petroleom" focus. Seen the TV ads?

And look at Detroit auto manufacturers increasing emphasis on alternative powering of vehicles. Sure, we're still in the infancy in many realms. But if you want to make money, you have to be with the "smart money", after the initial busts but before the common investors and certainly before the speculators (can you say crash of 2000).

Important

I am not an expert on investment, professional or otherwise, so I am not recommending to anyone that they spend a penny on anything (or not spend). If that is your focus you can do your own research.

But I am an expert on progressive economic development, including the use of environmental science technology. When I ran for Governor of Maine in 2006 I wrote on it on extensively.

As just one example: http://www.magic-city-news.com/Alex_Hammer_88/Why_I_am_the_Best_Candidate_for_Governor_of_Maine_54275427.shtml

Progress across the disciplines

The central idea behind Politics 2.0 is that, as leading author Ray Kurzweil popularly (and in a detailed manner) explains in the notion of accelerating returns, the actual pace of change is increasing. The result is that adoption rates are continually shortened and changes occur more and more quickly. As a result, being "in the know" becomes more and more and more valuable. If "knowledge is power", and we equate for arguments sake knowledge with information that can be applied to desired ends, than how much more powerful is such an individual than one either unaware or lost in a sea of information that is not actionable.

In every age of transformational change their are momentous winners and losers. In a world of accelerated change, it seems reasonable to expect that the intensity of both winning and losing is likely to become in some senses increasingly pronounced. Although no one knows for certainty the future, I believe that advances are likely to lead to a baseline level of increased gains across the population, but also increased divergences and distance between individuals as well based upon their level of applied knowledge. Even in the world of "work" most jobs are much more information-laden then they were a generation if not a century ago, and those with the highest and most specialized APPLIED information capabilites in today's world can make out like bandits.

And do.

Why Politics 2.0

How is this site relevant? Politics 2.0 is, as we define it, "the convergence of politics and web 2.0". But look at politics (as a slice of the world) today: it increasingly involves technology, media, communications, law and a host of other areas in increasingly sophisticated ways. We're all becoming more overlapped with each other at the same time that we are also becoming more differentiated.

Or look at it another way. The least informed segments among us are very knowledgeable compared to standards of days gone by. Like the analogy of treading water as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.

Politics 2.0, if we're successful at it, is about being able to do more than treat water. To make progress in relative in addition to absolute terms. And that is no small task today.

We'll see how we perform.

Alex Hammer

PS The URL to the Bank of America article is: http://news.com.com/2061-11128_3-6165152.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news

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