Generation 2020

Benson’s in. ConocoPhillips is settling in right behind him. The symbolism can’t be missed. Big Oil’s ConocoPhillips is hunkering down in an empty business complex across the highway from SUN corporation – to focus on a big coal issue: carbon sequestration plus hydrogen R&D. ConocoPhillips will also serve as a corporate learning center for its global network of employees.

Take the road from their new headquarters a few minutes to the west and you end up in the Republic of Boulder, which gave Barak Obama one of his biggest caucus wins in the State of Colorado. Head the other direction on the highway and you’re pointed toward Denver and Bruce Benson, former head of the Republican Party in Colorado, now anointed president of the University of Colorado.

Governor Ritter timed the release of a media announcement of SUN’S “mystery” neighbor ConocoPhillips, to coincide with the choice of Bruce Benson as President of CU.

At a cost of $200,000 in taxpayer money, Benson was the only candidate singled out from a review of nine possible choices. The presidential slate was cleared of all other candidates before the committee announced their choice to the public, and the public rightly responded with outrage… to no avail.

Benson represents the fossil fuel era, and its tight hold on the future. His choice as President of CU, symbolizes the lock the past has on the future. Ditto for ConocoPhillips. Carbon sequestration is still an unproven technology and it will take billions of dollars of R&D to test whether it is truly viable or not. Under funded, a solar economy will require billions of actions by ordinary citizens to bring it into reality.

The solar transition could happen a lot faster, of course. But it will take the next generation of leadership to get us there.

The transition to the future , I think, is also represented by our current choice of candidates for U.S. president. For many Boulderites, McCain, Hillary, and Obama represent the past, present and future, in that order. The reason that Obama is attracting such big crowds of first time voters, I think, is because his ideas and his ability to mobilize millions of people to take an uncommon action, symbolizes what will be needed in the future, to overcome the mistakes of the past.

These young voters are Generation 2020. The world we have created is what they will have to mobilize to overcome, tomorrow.