Leslie Blevins
Lawrence, KS (USA)
Role(s):
Founder/Owner/Principal
Advanced Alternative Energy Corp.
Find More Startups
Startup
Location:
Lawrence
Industry:
Energy
Year Founded:
1998
Number Employees:
1-10 people
Description:
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY IS FAST BECOMING AN "ALTERNATIVE" NO LONGER
ADVANCED ALTERNATIVE ENERGY CORPORATION ((URL removed)) IS SEEKING SEED CAPITAL TO BEGIN US COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS IN MAKING AND MARKETING OF ADVANCED ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SYSTEMS AND EQUIPMENT INTENDED FOR THE US MARKET.
Perilous Times Call for Transformational Thinking, Intent, and Action
by Clint Wilder, Clean Edge
October 6, 2008
For three late September days in a traffic-clogged New York City, the famous and the powerful gather at the Clinton Global Initiative annual conference to share charismatic thoughts and large-scale commitments to address issues in global health care, education, poverty alleviation and energy and climate change. Attending the conference this year as a facilitator in the energy/climate change track, I heard inspiring words throughout each day from the likes of Bill Gates, William McDonough, Lester Brown, Tony Blair, T. Boone Pickens, Michael Bloomberg, Bono, Wesley Clark, Van Jones, and no less than three of the past four Nobel Peace Prize winners: Al Gore, Muhammad Yunus, and Wangari Maathai.
But it was a line from Rocky Mountain Institute founder and energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins that, to me, best reflected the spirit of this conference — and conveyed a key message for anyone involved in meeting the world's energy challenges in these most troubled and perilous of times. Describing Ford Motor's 2006 hiring of CEO Alan Mulally, who had spearheaded Boeing's decision to focus on energy- efficient aircraft with the Dreamliner and other projects, Lovins said Mulally had come to Ford with "transformational intent."
The Clinton conference, of course, took place against the backdrop of Wall Street's financial crisis playing out just a few miles downtown. We are in a time of staggering superlatives — a US $700 billion bailout package, a 777-point stock market drop, and a 19-square mile ice sheet (the size of Manhattan) breaking loose in northern Canada one month ago. In every facet of life — population, health, education, energy, environment, and now, financial markets, we face big, big challenges. But size alone will not create the solutions. We need transformational intent.
The intent of Muhammad Yunus, the microcredit pioneer and founder of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, was changing the thinking around how to assist those at the base of the economic pyramid in one of the world's most impoverished countries. "We have to get out of the mentality that the rich people will do the business, and the poor people will get the charity," he said. "Don't call me a philanthropist. I'm a businessman." For more than 30 years, Grameen has extended micro-loans to more than 7 million people, more than 95 percent of them women. It has helped transform rural economies not only in Bangladesh, but through microfinance institutions supported by the Grameen Foundation in 25 other countries, including the United States.
When it comes to energy, as Albert Einstein said, the serious problems we face today won't be solved by the same minds that created them. Offshore drilling won't solve our energy challenges, nor will Senator John McCain's proposed 45 new U.S. nuclear plants by 2030. "More of the same, only bigger" will not get it done. If we're going to address climate change in any meaningful way, shift the geopolitical dynamics of imported oil, and rebuild our beleaguered economy based on clean energy, we need dramatically new ways of doing things.