Blast83

Super sales people become great by stealing.  Stealing the greatest, most profitable ideas and executing on them immediately to change, enhance, our own profit margin in whatever sales game we’ve got going.  Not a difficult concept and it makes a lot of sense – find out who is doing what better and then do it too.  If you get in on it fast enough, the saturation point will be a delayed concern.  And Germany seems to have all the best ideas at the moment.  Simplified solar lending, feed in tariffs, since 2004 Germany has endorsed solar energy as the new way and society’s climbing on board, and Italians and Spanish citizens are coming along, following their lead.  America woke up from Bush inspired dormancy, Berkeley First, the state of Connecticut and according to IREC, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (celebrating 26 years, sends out emails if you want to update yourself firsthand), other states are coming along with market provisions for greater renewable energy endeavors here in the US. Slow progress but thankfully, we’re coming along.  Obama and his ‘cusper’ crew are going to show us the way and if we’re smart, we’ll all move forward, fast, thanks to their visionary leadership.

Back to Germany, because they’ve been taking action and leading the pack.  Elizabeth Rosenthal’s article on the New York Times (she is decidedly green and a great writer) put out a fantastic piece on passive houses.  Passive housing construction really is the ultimate in green development as it uses minimal energy input to maintain perfect indoor temperatures no matter the weather.  (The new renewable energy movement would be the penultimate solution, needing no energy for daily life being and even greater achievement.)  The first physicist to develop the idea of warm houses without energy demand was Wolfgang Feist.  As a German intellectual, he wrote in German, preventing **Americans** from being included in the dialog.  Wolfgang  Hasper of the Passivhaus Institut is publicizing the idea with his website, although written in German, has buttons for  English and French translations of this brilliance.  The idea is an airtight house with mechanical ventilation to create air flow in the home without heating or cooling, breezes or air recirculation resulting in 80% less energy consumption for comfortable living.  Supposedly, the ventilation system is Swedish (where old people use kick sleds to carry their groceries over ice and snow to and from their walk to the markets and the sun shines infrequently in winter yet they have a huge FREE solar engineering school in Borlange).  Go Sweden!

Now let’s talk visionaries.  Nabih Tahan brings passive housing construction to the US from Europe and sets up shop where?  Berkeley.  Go California.  For more information, check out any of these links. Green ideas are a go.  Better to inform yourself on next wave ideas than check out Obama without his shirt (hot).  If the media stays focused, we can all move forward together.

**What do you call a person who speaks three languages?  Trilingual. (A regular Montrealer…)

**What do you call a person who speaks two languages?  Bilingual.

**What do you call a person who speaks one language?  You guessed it.  American.