SmartMarkets: Jamie Workman's New Gig

I learned the other day from Kara Di Francesco that James (Jamie) Workman has a firm, SmartMarkets, that deals in water and energy solutions.

You may remember Workman as the author of Heart of Dryness, a book about the Bushmen and their struggle to live in a parched land and resist the efforts of fellow Africans to take their lands. A few weeks ago Iposted about a video produced by his wife. 

Workman's partner, Montgomery Simus, runs Water Politics, which is a blog and a company based in Las Vegas. Good place in which to be based if you are in the water business.

Simus' firm is developing a proprietary product called the Geopolitical Water Risk Index (GWRI). Wonder if they have heard of the Basins at Risk (BAR) program at Oregon State University?

Workman and Simus have a blog, www.gridunlocked.com.

Here is what it says on the SmartMarkets homepage:

SmartMarkets^SM capitalizes on the convergence of three market drivers -- web-enabled ecommerce, online social networks, and the green movement - to improve water and energy use. Our system can be scaled and customized to all utilities. By opening new markets within "un-natural" monopolies, SmartMarkets inspires and motivates a competitive race to conserve.

It's about SmartMarkets, SmartMeters, and SmartGrids.

Here is the global challenge:

On every continent, major rivers fail to reach the sea. Lake Chad and the Aral Sea have collapsed. Wars are fought over fossil fuels. And billions still lack even the most rudimentary water supplies or electricity connections.

Humanity`s sheer weight is crushing our habitat. In two centuries, the earth`s population has grown ninefold. Half of the planet lives in cities. We are stressing and eroding the natural resource base on which all life depends.

Some 2.3 billion people from New Delhi to Las Vegas have crossed the threshold of scarce water. Due to climate change, in four decades, it is estimated that seven billion humans will face water and energy shortages.

Our demand is expanding. Subsistence families burn wood to heat a gallon of water to cook a thousand calorie stew of vegetables and grain. Affluent families burn dozens of kilowatt hours, flush a thousand gallons through their pipes and gardens, and can`t finish meals that took five thousand gallons to package, ship and produce.

Our supplies are shrinking. Global warming and climate change affects the flow of rivers and threatens the existence of wetlands & water recharge zones. Drought has cut the Tennessee Valley Authority`s hydropower in half. California and Australia are facing historic drought conditions. Brazil and South Africa, which depend on hydroelectric power, endure shortages because there is not enough water to drive the turbines.

What can we do? While our water and energy crisis is global in scope, our best hope lies in shifting the fulcrum of power to leverage solutions that are profoundly local.

In short: six billion of us possess the means to reverse the global crisis. The question is whether we will grasp the most efficient & lucrative opportunity to effect this change in time.

Yes, it's about markets.

To save the Earth, some urge us altruistically to think global, act local; we say: think and act where your actions are rewarded; social value to the world will flow from there.

Some environmentalists strive to suppress selfish and shortsighted mindsets for the good of nature and humanity; we believe basic human nature actually has immense untapped potential to create public benefits from private self-interest through our new integrated system of incentives.

'Private self-interest' is an interesting phrase. Is that akin to 'enlightened self-interest?'

"The world sees greed as the root of ecological evil; we harness it to restore nature’s abundance." --First sentence of the SmartMarket mission statement

Greed may be good, but I'm a dinosuar. I prefer good old-fashioned altruism.

"If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject." -- Ayn Rand

"You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." -- John Wooden

Comments

[David Zetland]

Altruism can do the job, but incentives/self interest works for the selfish 80% :)