ReadysetDC A CREATIVE URBAN ENTERPRISE

Give Us the Tools to Build the Green Economy (or Help Us Make Them Ourselves)

(Editor’s Note: We would like to welcome our newest contributor Brandon. He will be talking about, among other things, environmental sustainability, and how that relates to us and DC.)

Van Jones, Obama’s White House Council on Environmental Quality, was recently interviewed by the Washington Post. Read the article here.

Jones seems to be saying what I think we’ve suspected all along about the Green Economy – when it comes to innovation and new business in this sector, it will come from individuals and small businesses, or as he says, “…a Google for Clean Energy”. Perhaps without knowing exactly what that statement means in the context of the past 10 years of internet invention, Van is implying that non-Internet businesses aren’t being pro-active enough and need to be more like their Internet counterparts. Van seems to be calling for their replacement, in the same way the Open Source movement has grown to challenge and in many ways dominate the Internet market place.

But he leaves something crucial out of the discussion: What Americans lack is not the “American Spirit” to kick-in and do something, but the tools that would enable new green entrepreneurs to get started, similar to tools that, say, Internet companies have at their disposal.

For a brief intro to this concept, watch the first few seconds of 37Signals founder, Jason Fried’s presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo.

“It’s not really that hard to do” he says, with respect to getting started and making changes in the software business. “You’re really fucking lucky”, he continues, describing how barriers to entry are basically non-existent.

I guess what I’m getting at is that not everyone is a mechanic and we can’t all retrofit our cars to run on clean energy, but there are hundreds of apps out there that will help you build a web site in 15 minutes. I can’t afford to install solar panels on my rental house, but I can have 24/7/365 email and web hosting for relatively nothing.

What I’d like to see is more tools, offerings and incentives being created, either by the government, individuals and businesses, until we really do have the same democratic access of the Internet being applied to the green movement.