Life's joys and tragedies

veggies for dinner

One of my favorite things in life is to discover a new startup company that has the potential to make it in this competitive economy of ours. Even more satisfying is the startup that doesn't only have as its objective making money but helping transform our society from its current imperfect iteration to something new, special, transformative.

Think of the beauty of a truly sustainable society, one whose extractive activities when weighed against its renewable inputs net nets out at zero. Ecotopia!

Today, in the old Flood Building on Market Street in San Francisco, I had the pleasure of meeting the founder and the staff of sustainlane.com, one of the most hopeful developments on the web in my memory. James Elsen and his colleagues are committed to using modern technology to build a social movement that just might, in the end, help save our sorry species' ass on this planet.

Because, make no mistake about it: we are heading toward ecological disasters of unimaginable proportions. The first big one has already happened -- Hurricane Katrina. We can hide if we wish but we cannot avoid the truth, which is that this was the greatest "natural" disaster in our nation's history.

The scale of damage is so far beyond anyone's ability to describe that the only way you can hope to grasp what happened down there on the Gulf Coast is to go and see for yourself.

Sadly, Katrina is just the first of the Monster Storms that will be visiting our shores now we have unleashed a warming of the oceans. Thankfully, Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Academy Award; hopefully more people will rent it and consider its implications, because we need each and every person to get involved if there is any hope at all of avoiding an eco-collapse that will wipe out 90% of the globe's human population.

It is inspiring to know that there are those, like sustainlane.com, on the frontlines of our collective battle to save life on earth. You are either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.

Let's do this altogether.

***

Tonight, my 12-year-old athlete played like the hero of mine he is. His basketball team made the playoffs, and although he played only a few minutes in the first half, his teammates clung to a small lead, 8-7. At some point on the third period, his coaches put him in, and he played all the rest of the way in a game that ended up tied 21-21. In the process, he drove to the basket and made a key lay-up, and dragged down a ton of rebounds, plus a few steals, blocks, and assists. He was the designated passer on every inbound pass down the stretch and he successfully executed them all.

In overtime, he and his mates prevailed for a thrilling 25-24 victory, in easily the best basketball game at any level I have ever seen.

I suppose you have to be a parent, and to have a son who plays sports, to fully appreciate how this feels. Suffice it to say that I am extremely disappointed that I will miss their championship game Friday, as I'll be in New York.

But today, I witnessed the competitive spirit in my son that gives me a deep-seated pride, as a man and a father. It is hard to explain, and may be at first glance inconsistent with my environmentalism, as expressed above. But, no, we need males and females both, at their best, to do this thing -- save our planet and ourselves.

True heroism comes in many forms, but it always is dedicated to the greater good, whether a JV basketball team or a global environmental movement. In the end, our goal should be that we all can be heroes.

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