I voted early, as I left Colorado on election day to travel with Jeff Hohensee to San Diego for a day's consulting with a client. This was, of course, the day America held its breath. Our colleague Gil Friend, of Natural Logic, who was working with us, kept us up to the minute with the vote-tracking websites--but the truth was that all day, nobody knew.

The returns started to emerge as we sat down to supper with the client. The first returns split between Vermont for Obama and Kentucky for McCain. As dinner unfolded, the returns continued in. The outcome remained close.

We wound up supper, and Jeff and I repaired to the bar at the Embassy Suites with a student from Presidio to watch the rest. Mindful of Carl Rove's comment that it would go for McCain in the wee hours of the night, I was quite convinced that despite the positive nature that seemed to be emerging, the election would still be stolen. So the simultaneous closing of the West Coast polls and CNN calling the election for Obama came as an utter stunner.

Sitting in this now hugely raucous bar, I found tears rolling down my face. I simply hadn't realized how much I cared. Then the realization grew just how much of an historic moment this was.

We celebrated a bit and then I went upstairs to write to my students at Presidio.

In my hotel room that night, something that had lain dormant in me for a very long time welled up and I wept again . . . for a long time. I remembered working in the 50s on fair housing issues, in the 60s for civil rights, remembered working with those who were on the Quebec to Guantanamo peace march in 1963. I remembered my father who mentored Martin King, I remembered working in the 70s for farm worker rights with Cesar Chavez, and I remembered all those who have died for that night.

And so I wrote to my students: "Let us not blow it." I told them that we had awakened to a whole new day. In some ways nothing had changed, but in other ways, everything had changed, and so it is each morning. Will Semmes wrote to ask what I thought, and I replied: "It will neither be as bad as those who fear think nor as good as those who rejoice hope . . . Per usual. But regardless of what any of us think, it is an historic moment."

When the numbers come in, I suspect that it will have been the young people who created this extraordinary moment. Could be wrong, but that night looked like a universal rejection of the Rovian ugliness of last century's politics. It will be the future of the young people, even more than it is ours. They will need mentoring. When all that they want does not come as quickly as they want, they will need consoling, but most of all they need this chance.

"Dunno," I wrote. "There is a lot that will come clear in the days to come. I do know, tho, that there is a lot of work to do. And I owe Elliot Hoffman two bottles of very good whiskey."

June found me in New York City to help bestow on my long time friend, Dr. John Todd, the inaugural Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award. John's work deserves recognition for so many reasons: He and his wife his wife, Nancy Jack, founded the New Alchemy Institute (one of the first sustainability centers.) They created the concept of buildings that house, feed, and warm you as they treat their own waste--the basis for the Rocky Mountain Institute Building, and many others. John created the eco-machine, a standard for ecological treatment of sewage and ways to clean water. He won this award for a proposal to use similar approaches to transform devastated coal lands in Appalachia. His work was clearly the outstanding submission to the jury, on which I served, and the vote was unanimous. It was utterly wonderful to join John and Nancy, and dozens of other old friends at the gala celebration, then next day discuss this work with Amy Goodman (another hero of mine) on her show, Democracy Now.

On the same trip I was thrilled to attend a reception honoring Nancy DuPree, considered by many to be the grand dame of Afghanistan. She first traveled to Afghanistan in the 1930s, met her archeologist husband, Louis, and has lived in Afghanistan or Pakistan ever since. The DuPree's books on Afghanistan, along with Jason Elliot's, An Unexpected Light, remain the best guides for that magical place. I remember well driving the road to Bamiyan reading her words that the trip is not for the faint of heart, or to be undertaken without a pair of well-equipped four-wheel drive vehicles. True story.

The meeting turned out to be quite interesting, with such old friends as Dr. Tom Lovejoy, Dr Robert Socolow and Dr. John Holdren part of the stellar cast. Tom is one of the leading scientists tracking the loss of biodiversity from climate change. Rob is one of the authors of the famous wedges analysis of meeting the climate challenge with the diversity of ways to reduce carbon, making the problem considerably more manageable. John is one of the leading climate scientists in the world and a member of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If you want the straight science behind climate change, watch the seven-part You Tube videos of John at the Kennedy School of Government. Carbon traders from London reported on the explosively growing carbon market--already almost $80 billion and rapidly headed for a trillion.

The conference promised to draft memoranda for the new Administration on each of the four conference tracks--Buildings and Appliances; Power Generation; Carbon Finance; and Forestry/Land Use. Bill and I suggested that they use our PCAP work. The final Presidential Climate Action Project report, now available at www.climateactionproject.com, outlines what President-elect Obama can do in the first 100 days after the inauguration to implement climate protection aggressively and profitably.

On the other side, representatives from the pro-nuke industries pushed their own agenda, that American taxpayers shell out at least $7 billion to subsidize so-called clean coal and even nuclear on the allegation that it is a clean technology. They neglected to mention that nuclear is quite carbon intensive when you count the energy it takes to run the whole fuel cycle, and the carbon released by all the concrete needed for nuclear plants. Nuclear, of course, has such other problems as being seriously uneconomical, proliferative of nuclear bombs around the world, and, oh yes, that unsolved issue of nuclear waste.

Not to be outdone, the clean coal boys want you and me and the rest of the American taxpayers to put at least a couple hundred billion if not $500 billion into subsidizing what they euphemistically call clean coal--coal, of course, is not clean, whether you count the mines or the combustion. These guys want you and me to pay for a technology that has never been shown to work on acommercial scale on the allegation that because we have a lot of coal we have to burn it. As I sat in these meetings listening to these well prepared assaults on the American pocketbook, I stuck my hand up and said, "Excuse me, whose money are we speaking about here? If you're talking about my money, i.e., the taxpayers', I suggest we spend it first on the ways to meet our energy needs that are the cheapest, quickest, most benign, and create the most jobs, before falling back on expensive, dangerous, uneconomic technologies. You'll find that we have a lot of alternatives that would be a far better route." Many at the conference agreed and, much to the disgust of the lobbyists, the final document called for efficiency first, then renewables, with a focus on technologies that create green jobs.

The next day, I presented the business case for climate protection, following the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, who declared Scotland's goal of becoming the renewable energy capital Europe.

Then away I went with my friend, Dr. Jim Thompson, Managing Director of CogBooks, with whom Natural Capitalism is creating Solutions at the Speed of Business, the Web-based learning platform to enable small businesses to cut their carbon emissions profitably. The next four days we drove across Scotland, battling down the miles about how to describe to entrepreneurs, for whom cash is king, the benefits of comprehensive energy savings programs--they do require an investment, but the savings over time are far larger than if you engage in cream-skimming of only doing low cost measures. We paused by ancient castles to write up our results, and recorded voice-overs for the manual between lonely fog-horns in a bed and breakfast above the harbor where ferries sail for the Outer Hebrides. Mostly, as I travel the world, I see it from the back window of a cab, or as an airplane sails up into a cloud. Jim taught me a far more delightful way to get our work done, including a day spent on the Isle of Skye, home to my favorite Talisker whiskey. Walking the glowing emerald fields in rare sun, sitting by tiny stone crofts above the crashing sea, I reflected that this might not be such a bad place to retreat to and write. People lived here long before nuclear power, 747 airplanes or I-phones.

But always, the road rolls on. At months' end, I reluctantly left the long light of Scottish evenings, and headed south to London for meetings with the team preparing the London Olympics, and, much to my delight, with the young people running the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). This ambitious group took it on themselves to send out a survey to the Financial Times 500--the biggest companies on earth asking brashly, "What's your carbon footprint?" The first couple years nobody much answered; then suddenly 60 percent of the companies surveyed answered. Some, like Ford Motor Company, wrote whole carbon footprint reports. The next year 66 percent answered, and last year, well over 70 percent of the now FT 1800 companies replied to the survey.

Why on earth would these companies bother? For one thing, the CDP represents institutional investors with $57 trillion in assets. Any company intending to go to the capital market place had better answer the survey. And under Sarbanes Oxley Act, the U.S. corporate ethics law, if as a manager you fail to disclose information to shareholders that could materially affect the value of your stock, you can be personally criminally liable. What's your carbon footprint?

The CDP asked if I would join their advisory board, something that honored me enormously. They were somewhat big-eyed at the realization that because they'd had the guts to step up and do what they have, they are now the dominant player in the carbon marketplace. They wondered if there was anybody bigger than them, and I answered, "I believe you boys are now the big dogs." They thought about that for a little while and then cowboyed up and acknowledged that they've got work to do. So this fall they teamed with Walmart to help Walmart suppliers, first in China and then around the planet, report their carbon footprint. People are always asking what can be done to get China into a climate protection regime--this just might be it. So cheers to the folks at CDP. They are changing the world.

Being in San Francisco I grabbed the chance to join colleagues (and 45,000 attendees) at Oracle Open World. They had asked one of our students to organize the green track for the convention, so I gave the keynote, moderated a panel, and participated in what was billed as "the Great Debate." It was good fun to join Randy Hayes, founder of Rain Forest Action Network and a fellow Dave Brower alum, and Adam Werbach, also a graduate of Dave Brower U and the youngest elected president of the Sierra Club, now head of Saatchi Saatchi Sustainability to take on corporate representatives from BMW, Figi water, Hewlett Packard and, strangely enough, my dear friend, Jim Hartzfeld from Interface. I'd queried the organizers, "Now, just how can I have a fight with Jim? He knows as much as I do about sustainability and has been implementing it for years." They reckoned I could find a way to have a fight with anybody. So the debate was on.

Seemed pretty silly--no one I know doing this work lives anything remotely like a sustainable life. But I gathered a group of good gals who could have a fun conversation regardless, and if all degenerated could surround some whisky and beef.

Turned out it became the party of the convention. The Presidential suite at the Hilton filled to wiggle room only. I'd brought along a bottle of Scotland's finest, on the off chance that nobody else thought to. Can't say we learned anything about sustainability, but heck, having fun's got to be part of it, or I don't wanna be.

My keynote presentation next morning came way too early. The haze lightened significantly by the presence of Dr. David Suzuki, one of the true heroes of the green movement. David spoke magnificently on what he has learned in his years as Canadian broadcast commentator, noted author, film-maker, and visionary in this field. Which made it much easier to slide into my remarks.

There ensued the inevitable meetings, book signings and lots of conversations in the halls. Will Semmes and I watched the Presidential debates, agreeing that McCain had made the better showing. I'd bet Elliot Hoffman a bottle of Scotch that McCain would win. He'd doubled it, so I was following things electoral with more interest than usual. Having been asked by both campaigns to advise them, and having sent both sides a boatload of papers (and not heard from either afterward) I figured either way, it'd be better than what we've got. Given that the issues we work on are neither right nor left, but are essential to building a future that will work, I'd agreed to help whichever candidate emerged.

Next morning brought the chance to chat with Al Gore, who was giving the closing keynote, so I hung around. He showed up with John Gage, a dear friend and now working with Al at Kleiner-Perkins. As Al spoke John and I huddled in the corner (having heard Al before) rapt with the idea of pulling together a group of thought leaders to talk about transforming our current unsustainable form of capitalism.

That thought assumed greater gravity as I flew on to Seattle to help a group of corporate leaders put together a positive scenario for 2050 under the auspices of the World' Business Council on Sustainable Development. As we met, the economy melted down before our eyes, and it became clear to all of us that something fundamentally different is needed. I phoned Jeff Hohensee back at Natural Capitalism Solutions and we agreed that it's time: we've got to quit talking about it and put forth our thesis that sustainability is a competitive advantage strategy in a normal economy, a turn-around strategy in a down economy and a survival strategy in a collapse.

Over a lovely evening with some of the activists in Ohio they promised me, that this time around, they were not going to let the election be stolen. I wished them the best, but remained reasonably sure that my whisky was safe.

My keynote describing the business case for climate protection was followed by speeches from the Prime Minister of Sweden and the Danish Energy Minister. The latter took some offense at my prediction that the Copenhagen Conference of Parties on climate protection to be held December 2009 will fail. I backed my assertion by betting her a bottle of whisky on the outcome. She agreed and our exchange made the front page of the paper next morning.

Sure hope I'm wrong, but the chances that the world's nations will agree to a uniform binding treaty with targets and timetables on anything like the aggressive schedule that is needed seems slim. What is needed is to return atmospheric concentration of CO2 below 350 parts per million parts per million (ppm)-it is currently at 386 and rising. The very scary changes we already see--the rapid melt of the polar icecap, the spread northward of diseases, and the increasingly violent nature of storms world-wide (2008 now appears to have been the most damaging year ever on record in the U.S.)--are precisely the results of climate change that the scientific models predicted wouldn't happen until CO2 concentrations hit at least 450 ppm.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considered 450 ppm to be the "safe" model, while the Stern Report in the United Kingdom considered 550 ppm to be "safe." By "safe," they mean there is a 50-50 chance that we won't encounter catastrophe--not what you or I would consider safe. Scientists like Dr. Jim Hansen and many others now recognize that the level has to be considerable lower. Getting concentrations back to that level will take a monumental effort--far beyond anything the world has ever done.

"If we fail to mitigate climate change, the environmental, social and economic consequences will be stark and severe. There comes a moment when it is clear what you must do. I am determined that Tesco should be a leader in helping creating a low carbon economy. I do not underestimate the task--it is to take an economy where human comfort, activity, and growth are inextricably linked with emitting carbon and transform it into one which can thrive without depending on carbon. This is a monumental challenge--it requires a revolution in technology and a revolution in thinking. We are going to have to rethink the way we live and work."

There is, however, a very strong business case for doing just this, which is why in the U.S. companies and communities have been leading the way, even in the face of the dark political age we've suffered under. For example, 10 years ago, DuPont stated that they were going to cut their emissions 10 percent below their 1990 levels. They have already cut them by 80 percent for a savings of over $2 billion each year--the same as DuPont's 2006 profit margin. This company is profitable because of its commitment to protecting the climate.

In fact, in the face of the greatest economic meltdown since the great depression, I don't think we have any choice. If we wish to protect the economy, we will protect the climate because investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy is the fastest way to grow jobs, cut costs, and create economic vitality and prosperity. There is nothing else we could invest in as a society that could give us as high or as rapid a rate of return.

This conclusion is now being verified by an avalanche of studies, including one commissioned by the Republican Governor of Florida whose Republican-led taskforce on climate change reported that a state cap-and-trade program that cut emissions 33 percent below Florida's 2005's rates would deliver $28 billion in economic savings by 2025. Florida's energy security would be increased by reducing dependence on fossil fuels, while saving 54 billion gallons of petroleum.

A similar study from Arizona found that cutting carbon emission 60 percent below current levels would result in a $5.5 billion savings and the creation of 285,000 jobs.

In California, the Republican Governor signed AB32, mandating a 30 percent reduction below business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. A recent study from the University of California showed that fully implementing AB32 will increase the gross state product by $48 billion and create over 400,000 new jobs.

The 1,500 business leaders at the Copenhagen Summit found all that unobjectionable, but what they were really voracious to know was what I thought America was going to do now that Obama had been elected. I answered that I believe Obama will act to protect the climate. Some observers predict that there will be no significant climate legislation in 2009. I disagree for several reasons. One, companies and communities are calling for it. Over 900 mayors have committed to abide by the Kyoto Protocol. The 32 members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, including Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar, Chrysler, DuPont, Duke Energy, Conoco-Phillips, Dow, various other utilities, GE, General Motors, Rio Tinto Mining Company, Siemans, Xerox, and others are calling for a cap on carbon emissions and a trading system like Chicago Climate Exchange. These are not insignificant companies.

For another, Mr. Obama has said that he will act. On 17 November, Governor Schwarzenegger hosted governors from 13 states, including Florida, and representatives from China, India, Mexico, Indonesia and Brazil to pledge to work together to combat global warming. Mr. Obama addressed the gathering by video, saying that when he took office, the United States will once again engage vigorously in international negotiations and will help lead the world toward global cooperation on climate change. He stated, "Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high; the consequences too serious."

He's got that right, and the Presidential Climate Action Project report, of which Natural Capitalism Solutions wrote the lead chapter on the economic case for climate protection, offers him hundreds of measures that can be implemented agency by agency to protect the climate.

If you want a clue to what Administration action might include, read the publication, "Green Recovery," written by Obama advisor John Podesta. Or read the Obama/ Biden energy plan, which calls for creating five million new jobs by investing $150 billion over the next 10 years in efficiency and renewables, to get 10 percent of electricity from renewables by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025. Al Gore, by the way, is calling for getting 100 percent of our electricity from renewables within 10 years. Obama and Biden call for weatherizing one million homes annually, getting a million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015, implementing an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050, and making the United States a leader on climate change.

How's that for a refreshing atmosphere of change?

And the states are moving ahead, regardless. In the fall of 2008, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the New England states came into effect, requiring large utilities to bid to buy the right to emit carbon. California is creating a separate market for carbon under AB 32 and the Midwestern states have yet a third program underway. This means that companies will either have to operate under three separate sets of regulations or get a national climate regime in place.

But what may really be the game-changer is a little noticed court ruling, Massachusetts v. EPA, issued last spring. It appears that it might actually have some teeth in it.

The ruling states that under statutory mandate, the EPA must determine whether carbon is, in fact, a pollutant and if so, will it harm the American people? The Bush Administration had, of course, declined to make any such determination and said to states like Massachusetts and California that they could not regulate carbon because the feds had elected not to. In May, the Supreme Court held that EPA did have to make that determination. Despite the reign of terror they have been under, the diligent civil servants at EPA decided that if this were their job, they would darn well do it. Last summer they issued a preliminary ruling concluding that, well, yes, carbon is a pollutant and, indeed, yes, it increasing levels of it in the atmosphere represents an endangerment.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce now has teams roaming the country giving speeches to local business groups claiming that doing anything about climate will bankrupt the economy, particularly if the EPA regulations come into force. I sat in one such meeting and was told that if I asked another question I would be forcibly removed from the room. Gosh . . . scare me, why don't you . . .

But it got me to thinking: if EPA is going to regulate any significant emission of carbon, even the most conservative of businesses would prefer to have a national cap-and-trade system rather than let EPA inquire into their carbon emissions on a day-to-day basis. Whichever way round you look at it, I believe we'll probably see a carbon regime emerge here in the United States prior to the run-up to the Copenhagen meeting in December '09.

The question then is, how much will that be a game changer in the International community? The corporate leaders assembled in Copenhagen cheered when I apologized for the last eight years lapse of American leadership, but declared, "We're back!" If, by the way, you wish to read the full paper that I presented in Copenhagen--it is now available on the Natural Capitalism Solutions Web site.

I concluded my remarks by quoting my friend Dr Steve Rayner of Oxford who observed that what we're really facing is something called a "wicked problem"--a multi-faceted problem in which no one facet can be solved in isolation. You can only solve any of them by solving for all of them. It is a race to see which will melt first: the Arctic or the economy? We have to fundamentally transform the economy at the same time that we are solving the climate crisis. Yes, daunting . . .

But it might not be as hard as it initially seems. While meeting with a group of college students recently I observed, "Isn't it interesting that we now live in a socialist nation." One young man bristled and challenged, "What do you mean?" When I answered that the U.S. government had just bought the banks, he asked, aghast, When did that happen?!" To which one of his teachers replied: "Two days ago." Fair enough, he's a marine biologist who spends his time paddling around coral reefs. But it is interesting to reflect on the speed and magnitude of changes going on all around us. As someone recently remarked, the Republicans are doing all the hard work for those who want to transform the economy: Spend $700 billion, no problem. Nationalize the banks, sure. Massive government regulations, you bet.

To help the world reach an agreement at Copenhagen, however, we're got to solve yet another intractable problem. The real reason I think Copenhagen is likely to fail, is that international climate negotiations frame the issue as curtailment, which reads as denying the legitimate development aspirations of half the world's population who live on less than $2 a day. My friend, Dr. Tariq Banuri, member of the Balaton Group and the new head of U.N. Department of Economics and Social Affairs is advancing the notion that we need to reframe the climate debate away from the top-down targets and timetables that aren't going to be met and that wouldn't be adequate if they were, to find a way to enable countries in the rest of the world to develop using the best of the low carbon technologies. In the paper I presented in Copenhagen, I outlined what Tariq is calling for and why this makes economic sense.

We stand at this unique moment in history where continuing with business as usual will drive us into a global depression and, very likely, the collapse of life as we know it. At the same time, we have all of the answers.

Check out a marvelous You Tube video featuring Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google and one of Mr. Obama's economic advisors. It describes how the United States can solve every significant problem facing it for a sum of something like a trillion dollars, based on work done at Google. What tickles Mr. Schmidt is that this investment is less than U.S. energy businesses spend on energy now each year. And if the money is invested in efficiency and renewables, it would return over $200 billion a year to our economy.

So, yes, "WE CAN!" We can unleash the greatest prosperity in the world for all of us--for all of the world's citizens and solve every aspect of this wicked problem. Then, perhaps, I'll have time to go back to rodeoing.

I left Copenhagen, feeling a new sense of hope. We were about an hour out, I'd settled in with a very nice glass of whiskey and some smoked salmon, when I felt a shuddering in the plane. The electronics when off--the TV screen in front of me sparked dead and stayed dead. Almost immediately, the plane started to lose altitude, then banked left.

A stewardess walked by and I said, "Excuse me, what just happened?" She looked puzzled and said, "Nothing." "Uh, no," I insisted, "There is something wrong with the airplane." She still insisted that everything was fine.

But it clearly was not.

About a minute later the Captain called the purser to the cockpit. A few minutes later, the Purser came on the PA stating that there had been a technical problem and the plane was diverting to Trondheim, an airport in Norway.

Hmmm. I ate my smoked salmon, but decided not to drink the whiskey. If we had problems, I wanted to be reasonably sober. I put my shoes back on and waited.

In due course the captain came on and informed us that the right engine had flamed out. Not good. We were on a two-engine aircraft. When a two-engine bird loses one of 'em, the plane can flip if it isn't handled correctly, at which point you scatter.

But we had not flipped. That may have been the shudder I felt, but clearly the Captain and the avionics controlled it. We were still flying, so things were not dire.

But we still had to land.

The 20 minutes over the oily waters of the North Atlantic were long ones. As we neared Trondheim, clouds engulfed us--it was snowing.

Oh good . . . that means that the runway was icy and snowpacked. Since we didn't have the second engine for reverse thrust, life got very interesting. When the captain stood on the brakes, the airplane started sliding. It was a little dicey there for a while, but before the end of the runway we'd come to a blessed stop.

The ground crew did a magnificent job of bussing us all to a nearby hotel, where it turned out there was a convention of firefighters and ambulance people. If we had scattered, we couldn't have picked a better airport to do it at.

So I spent Thanksgiving Day in Norway. It was midnight before they found another airplane to bring in. At which point we found out the four-engine bird, while able to land, was too big to turn around on the Trondheim runway. It needed the entire strip to have a prayer of taking off and when we got to the very end, the strip was too narrow. A tractor spent an hour slipping on the ice trying to yank the plane around. At one in the morning, we got headed back west, the big engines roared and here I am.

The experience gave a whole new sense of the meaning to Thanksgiving. No doubt, the challenges facing us are enormous. But we're still here, still with the opportunity each day to make a difference. I'm especially glad to be here, and even more grateful that you are here, as well.

Thank you for that. Thank you for being with us on this amazing journey, and for the support that you give to us at Natural Capitalism Solutions. It means more to me than you can know.

Thanks for being out there.