While this comment may be out of context of the larger convsation, it highlights an interesting point that signals the beginning of the end of political conservatism – by which i mean a systematic aversion to change.

In most of history, a slow pace of change enforced the status quo, which was, generally speaking, a known entity.  Now that the global eco-system (ecology and economy) is changing, the risk of doing nothing becomes unacceptable.  Don’t believe me?  Consider the difference in the quality of life between the citizen of two low-lying principalities: Holland and Louisiana.   The Dutch actively address and maintain their defense from the sea, while the US Army Corps of Engineers and a complex political deadlock doomed the citizens of the Gulf Coast to a much less comfortable fate.

Many key aspects of the current system are sinking like the proverbial Titanic.  Many of us will be forced to jump off the ship and start swimming for an island.  The choice of when to jump, which direction to swim and one’s native ability to swim will determine the fate of individuals and many small groups.

So, political conservatives, will, in fact, be faced with a choice: go down with the ship or start swimming.

This is not a criticism, per se, but rather an objective assessment of changing pscyho-poltical dynamics.  I think conservatism will survive in many forms.  Social conservatism will remain for the forseeable future, while a new conservatism will emerge — from those strong swimmers — that starts to look a lot more like a conscious sustainability

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And they point out that our Olds are not getting addressed very often in the News — issues like overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and decreasing energy supply, among others.  They go on to point out that these are the issues that have led to the collapse of several previously great societies, like the Anazazi, May, Norse and more — a point they adopted from Jared Diamond’s book Collapse.

I can summarize it any better than they could:

His list and the list of things that aren’t in the News are disturbingly similar. The truly disturbing part is that while the civilizations Mr. Diamond described were peak civilizations rivaling any now in existence, they were all relatively contained in their own geographic region. Their collapse was a loss to humanity, but there were plenty of people around to rebuild and continue the species. Now we find a civilization that has become global and that is facing the same kinds of problems the led to the demise of all the great civilizations from the past. These are not new problems, but the situation for humanity is more tenuous. When this civilization collapses who will survive and where will they go?

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This optimism is going to be in full force this week at the Angel Capital Summit.   As I wrote in my Colorado Biz column on angel investing this month,

Some businesses are responding [to the credit crisis] by getting small, reducing risk, laying off staff and hoarding cash. Others are anticipating a better future and ignoring today’s awful financial news in favor of the promise of tomorrow. Technophiles are promising productivity gains from new tools while “free-range” thinkers have gone completely off the reservation, and are designing new currency systems.

So it’s character-building time. A real entrepreneur has the courage and the drive to leap across the proverbial chasm and create a new fortune.  The shifts are happening to allow once-in-a-lifetime wealth creation as the old system dies and a new one is born.

Join us in Denver on Friday to learn how and where the money will flow, which businesses will thrive, and how to spot the previously unseen differentiating factors, a process we are calling evolutionary risk management.

It’s time to choose wheter you are going down with the economic Titanic or hop on a lifeboat and start rowing.

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I certainly don’t mean neo-conservatism (oy gevalt), nor conservative politics, which is more about slowing the pace of change (and must ultimately fail in an era of climate change and Peak Everything).  So the intellectual examination becomes a play on language, an examination on the nuance of conservation, a practical conservatism that has more to do with limiting waste and valuing the entirety of something, not just the immediate practical utility that defines grab-n-go consumerism.

I’m already weary of “green” sustainability.  I think we need to be very careful about not replacing petro-chemical-based consumerism with “green”consumerism.  In fact, I believe — as I began writing about Boulder’s Eco-Paradox this summer — that we’ve got to stop buying stuff, and not just because we’re out of money.  It’s time for a new prevailing ethic that considers the long term value of goods and services, not simply its price at the pump.

Sounds kind of conservative, really.  I think some of these values go back to my New England roots.  And although he was not a conservative in his day, much of Thoreau’s thought underpins a style of conservatism that seems to me to be related to the emerging sustainability movement.

At the same time, liberal thinking — accepting that we must find new ways to relate to our world — is an important approach if you accept the production-consumption meme of the past 50 years and the radical financial leverage (and related issues) of the past 20 as the baseline for comparison.  But it can also be argued that liberal thinking includes some intellectual slop and moral relativism that has helped midwife our current crisis.

As much as the innovative minds of our time will be transfixed on how to do things more effectively and efficiently while restoring natural resources, not just using them less quickly, and applying complex technology to things that might be solved by reducing, not adding, I think that there are some elements of conservatism that ought to be reconsidered.

Here’s an interesting piece at “CrunchyCon” (a curious conservative blog) talking about how food system though leader and darling of the sustainability movement, Michael Pollan, is really a “Burkean Conservative,” that lays out a position largely aligned with what I’m talking about.

And I’ve grown quite fond of regular discussions along these lines with Bill Shutkin, who in many ways transports a neo-Walden ideal with him from Cambridge to Boulder as the new Chair of Sustainable Development at University of Colorado.

So amidst all the half-finished metaphors, split infinitives and contradictory logic herein, this point is this: a new meme is forming, and for us to only look forward to a shiny bright green future without considering saving the conservative baby from the neo-con bathwater will perpetuate some of the mistakes we are still learning that we just made.

Today this is all still more of a supposition and inquiry than a strong position.  But in this radical transformation we’re all experiencing, I wanted to share the evolution of my own thought, and contribute somehow to the new synthesis; the chapter we are writing now.

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Trustworthy sources are telling us about multiple 8- and 9-figure funds being raised for clean tech and sustainability investing, as well as rumors of keen interest in that space from private equity.  The rumor of Kleiner Perkins posting a one-man team at NREL to help spin out investable clean tech companies is confirmed as well — we met him this week.  Vague inquiries are coming from as far away as Tel Aviv and Sau Paolo.

Or, as my partner Kevin Johansen is saying these days, “recession my ass!”

Leading Boulder Web2.0 companies are even hosting a job fair to bring more technical talent into town, although there are also rumors of layoffs at weaker firms.  It’s going to be a mixed bag in that space, and the wheat will quickly be separated from the chaff.

If you want to escape the doom and gloom for a day, and join a more prosperous and optimistic future, look no further than the Angel Capital Summit, November 21, in Denver. Highlights include:

• Anita Burke’s presentation on how to run a business in a world of Peak Everything (including capital, it seems).
• 40 of Colorado’s strongest entrepreneurial growth-oriented businesses presenting investment opportunities.
• A TOWN HALL discussion called Disrupting the Recession, where a diverse group of thought leaders will talk directly with conference attendees about how we can all come together to build an Entrepreneurial Renaissance in Colorado.
• Surprise visit from one of Colorado’s favorite political leaders.

I’d love to know what you think about all this.  The TOWN HALL is still evolving, and your input will help make it better.

Please join us on November 21st in downtown Denver for this community gathering during a unique moment in history.

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One conclusion is that there are at least two major categories of angels — professional, accredited angels who number roughly 5,000 nationally and made just shy of 1,000 investments in 2006; and casual, unaccredited angels, who may number as many as 600,000 nationally, and could account for $20 billion injected into the US entrepreneurial economy.

In short, nobody does a good job tracking this data, because the activity is so distributed.  And while contradictions continue, we have yet to see any more comprehensive report.

Care to learn more?

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