Reading Calacanis’ popular and excellent post on “The Future of Startups,” and more and more announcements like the one Zappos’ CEO, Tony Hsieh, gave to his employees last week, has given me the feeling we still have not yet seen the bottom of this particular barrel.  Thus, I do not envy President-elect Obama.  Though I doubt it is ever easy to lead a large organization or country, to lead the U.S. right now is most likely the hardest job on the planet given the death spiral we are in.

There are so many important issues to address, how does one choose and make sure one’s actions are successful.  Looking at the list of “agenda” items on Change.gov, it is a daunting task.  My guess would be the economy and the war are top of everyone’s list given their far reaching causes and effects. (As a sidenote, I see here, that someone is finally making some sense on the proposed automakers’ bailout.)

Two issues close to my heart and, in my opinion, the most important to our future success as a viable country, are the Environment and Technology.

During this week’s Governor’s Global Climate Summit, Obama sent along an inspiring vidcast of his objectives for this agenda item, the highlights of which include:

• Federal cap and trade system
• Target 1990 emissions levels by 2020, 80% reduction by 2050
• $15b/year investment
• Create 5 million green jobs

Given the response at the conference, these kinds of far-reaching, specific targets are just what we need to make a difference.  His environmental team is also saying the right things, especially by seeing the need to work across traditional government silo’s in order for programs to work.

As for technology, Obama will be the first U.S. president to understand the power of “being digital,” and how it can return power to the people and trust in government.  It is my sincere hope that rather than giving up his Blackberry, he instead pulls our government into the 21st century by making the necessary changes to antiquated rules and regulations, appointing a cabinet-level CTO and driving an appropriately open technology platform upon which we are all able to make our voices heard and be effective in fixing all that is broken together.  The BBC has a nice summary of the issues and great comments from some of the visionaries in the field, like O’Reilly and Battelle.

In order to rise from the ashes, we must make significant progress on these fronts.  They are the source of new jobs, new ideas and a sustainable way for us to exist.  The question is how…

How cool?!  After this latest decision in Texas to approve a massive wind transmission project and over $4.93B of investment by transmission companies, Texas could triple its current wind generation capability by 2013. This new capability would put this one US state ahead of all other US states and even with or ahead of Germany, the technological leader in this industry.

From the Global Wind Energy Council’s Global Wind 2007 report:

In its best year yet, the global wind industry installed over 20,000 MW in 2007. This development was lead by the US, China and Spain, and it brought the world-wide installed capacity to 94,123 MW. This is an increase of 31% compared with the 2006 market, and represents an overall increase in global installed capacity of about 27%.

The top five countries in terms of installed capacity are Germany (22.3 GW), the US (16.8 GW), Spain (15.1 GW), India (8 GW) and China (6.1 GW). In terms of economic value, the global wind market in 2007 was worth about 25bn EUR or 37bn US$ in new generating equipment.

American wind farms will generate around 48 bn kWh of electricity in 2008, just over 1% of US. electricity supply, powering the equivalent of over 4.5 million homes. In 2007, 34 US states were producing electricity with wind power. The states with the most cumulative installed wind power capacity are: Texas (4,356 MW), California (2,439 MW), Minnesota (1,299 MW), Iowa (1,273 MW) and Washington (1,163 MW).

GWEC is predicting the global wind market to grow by over 155% from its current size to reach 240 GW of total installed capacity by the year 2012. This would represent an addition of 146 GW in 5 years, equaling an investment of over 180bn EUR (277 bn US$, both in 2007 value). The electricity produced by wind energy will reach over 500 TWh in 2012 (up from 200 TWh in 2007), accounting for around 3% of global electricity production (up from just over 1% in 2007). The main areas of growth during this period will be North America and Asia, and more specifically the US and China.

Why is it that the so-called “civilized” world always takes the easy way out and in the end winds up shooting itself in the foot?

There’s been so much in the media recently about the rising price of corn, the domino effect that higher cost has been having on our staple foodstuffs like meat, milk, bread, etc. and all because of farmers selling their crops to biofuel manufacturers.  (Though I agree that is having an effect, I would suggest some of that increase in cost is also due to $145 barrels of oil.)  There’s also been a lot of print around countries tearing down the rainforest so farmers can plant sugar cane and sell it to biofuel manufacturers.  Both crops by the way take about as much or more energy to make the biofuel than you will ever get from the biofuel itself.  All in the name of saving the environment, we are actually just killing it faster.

If the energy ratio for biomass were to work out in our benefit, why could we not have looked at plant scourges first, like kudzu, duckweed or algae, and tried to use those as biofuel sources?  These are all things that have little to no effect on the world’s food supply, will grow almost anywhere in their horticultural zones and are actually trying to be eradicated from some ecologies they have overtaken with their amazingly fast growth rates.  Based on the Cornell calculation the energy associated with production of these “crops” could be nil since they are such invasive species, not sure how much of an effect that might have, but it could be worth a test or two…

The Wall Street Journal has recently started a new blog called Environmental Capital. Not only is it on a topic near and dear to my heart, but it could shed light on industries or companies facing major change

“Environmental Capital provides daily news and analysis of the business of the environment. It tracks how growing green concern, particularly over climate change, is roiling established industries and spurring new ones – and how that shift is affecting investors, consumers and the planet.”