Opening the Thursday morning session at the TED conference, the TED House Band riffed on Herbie Hancock's most recognized theme. Appropriate choice, as the Jazz master's melodies are among some of the most frequently mashed-up, sampled and otherwise adapted in variation. So much of the spirit and content at TED 2007 is a mashup of hit themes in the use of technology to solve the world's problems.
"I'm scared. I don't think we're going to make it."
John Doer opened his keynote with these attention getting words, inspired by his daughter who said to him, "I'm scared and I'm angry. Dad, your generation created this problem and you better fix it." The topic of this dinner table conversation was, of course, global warming.
John made a very compelling and emotional appeal to the crowd to use the power of business and commerce to address his daughter's mandate. He cited plenty of examples of where this is already happening. E.g., WalMart has made going green a top priority. Their campaign to sell more compact fluorescent light bulbs alone will reduce carbon emissions by 20M tons.
"Consumers don't know what the real costs are," he testified.
If I get the chance, I want to ask him, "John, if consumers did know the real costs, would they behave differently?" It's a question I ask a lot of people. In December I asked a panel of top executives, including Bob Fischer, Chariman of The Gap, and Elliot Hoffman, founder of Just Desserts and the New Voice of Business. Their unanimous answer, like everyone else I ask, was "Absolutely".
This is a subtext of so many conversations at TED. How do we connect consumers to knowledge of the impact of their decisions. And the adjunct I like to insert in the dialog, what if we could do it real-time, at the point of purchase, and avert the behaviors that are driving the problem that scares John Doerr and angers his daughter?
John closed the keynote with a call to action. "Going green is the largest economic opportunity of the 21st Century. Make Going Green your Next Big Thing. Go carbon neutral by going to climatecrisis.org to offset your carbon. Do it like WalMart - go big. Think outside of the box." The TEDster's, I know, are already there. Let's hope we can tap the amazing portfolio of innovations, many of them circulating in the aisles here, like the Open Architecture Network, and mash them up and assemble the economic widgets and transaction models and networking and knowledge to empower consumers to be the world they want for their children.
Resources for going Carbon Neutral:
What would it look like if consumers could know the real costs?
- Wares Wiki - a conceptual social network for using bar codes as index into a wiki of relevant data on consumer products, by Scott Mattoon
- Wiser Business - a conceptual model for building awareness of individual business's environmental and social profile, by Paul Hawken & Co.
- Reveal Labelling - a conceptual consumer products rating and labelling system
