We’re starting a movement. The Emergent Posse is an online group/movement/community of highly-motivated community activists spread across the nation working to educate and empower communities and community leaders in order to implement real sustainability programs and projects. We’ve hit a paradigm shift: oil isn’t cheap, the planet has a fever, and the economy is in the toilet. I’ve heard smart people calling for BIG government intervention and Europe-styled Socialism. That’s not the answer here in America.

I was caught off guard this weekend when reading an article about how high savings rates in Japan have had a devastating effect on that nation’s economy. According to Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times,

“The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.”

This article ultimately warns Americans of the dangers of saving their hard-earned money. I was taken aback when I fully realized the predicament our nation is in. How can we continue living in a society that rewards consumers for taking unnecessary risks? And yet, how can we revive our economy without consumer-driven growth?

In Detroit, amidst the 2009 North American International Auto Show and almost impending economic doom, American and foreign automakers are racing to deliver the first fully electric automobile to the masses. We’ve been hearing about, and teased about, electric cars for years and all we’ve seen is inaction on the part of all automakers. Today is a different story, however. All car manufacturers in the world, especially General Motors and Chrysler, are facing true difficulty in their ability to stave off insolvency. The NY Times recently covered all the new auto models that will debut over the next few years boasting either fully electric motors, new hybrid systems, and other non-fossil fuel driven modes of propulsion.

As I sit here looking out onto the beautiful blue ocean on the beaches of the Dominican Republic, I think about the millions of Americans like me who traveled thousands of miles this holiday vacation. The rise in airfare hasn’t seemed to make a visibile dent in throngs of tourists taking advantage of the warm Carribean sun. While I diligently purchased a carbon offset for my flight, how much does that really reduce the impact that my trip made? Can we continue sustain this kind of global travel for our own pleasure?

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about a potential federal stimulus package that will rival President Eisenhower’s massive investments in highway infrastructure during the 1950s. The Interstate Highway System (read an interesting viewpoint on the highway system here) from that era launched America into living model that is economically and environmentally unsustainable; we’re finally finding that out now. During the 50s and 60s, middle class Americans fled urban centers and flocked to rural farmland areas to live in single family homes accessible only by automobile.

Remember when you were a little kid, watching t.v. with your parents and asking, “Daddy, what does coal do?” And he goes, “Well son, just watch the advertisement during the next commercial break, paid for by the coal lobbyist group.”

Me neither; maybe it’s because I grew up without t.v., or maybe it’s because these ads NEVER EXISTED BEFORE!

The psychological barrier of 100 dollars has now been broken in the other direction; heading downward. In early July, the price of crude oil flirted with 150 dollars per barrel, and yet a few years ago the idea of 100 dollar per barrel for oil was unfathomable. For me, the reasons behind this decrease are fairly obvious. Most of the western world is in the midst of a giant economic tail spin. The world market at large is going through a correction phase.

The lazy days of summer have done quite a bit to bring attention to America’s energy problems. We’ve had heat waves that require us to turn out our pockets and foot the huge bill for air conditioning; we’ve realized that our annual 4^th of July trip to Lake George is no longer affordable because of gas prices. And we’ve been bombarded from all directions by the presidential candidates about all the myriad ways they hope to take the strain of high energy prices off of us.

Here are some thoughts that came to my mind when reading this article. Most of what I am saying does not have to do with exports but rather popular topics in the news today. The alternative energy/ sustainability movement is unlike anything the United States has seen since WWII. Instead of blue collar jobs we will have “green collar jobs”.

Some of you may have noticed some very negative news articles in the New York Times regarding wind power developments in northern New York State. There are quite a few topics for discussion among these articles, and if you don’t mind, we’re going to break them up into multiple posts to do justice to each issue. For this post I’d like to focus on what I like to call the ‘Green-Rush,’ similar in many ways to the American gold rush and almost identical to another rush much less spoken about but oh so much more applicable, the American rush for oil at the beginning of the last century.