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 Time for Emerging Leaders to meet Emerging Issues
by Tom Campbell
February 14, 2008
The Emerging Issues Forum, initiated by former Governor Jim Hunt, was never more relevant or insightful than the event held this week. The topic was energy and the environment.
Keynoting the forum, Tom Friedman, author of “The World is Flat,” energized the sellout crowd by comparing our current situation with a perfect storm. He said that the convergence of global warming, global flattening, and global crowding are coming together in such a way to create a global energy and environmental crisis if we do not respond with major innovations, policy changes, and systems changes. As he said, “Green is the new red, white, and blue.”
Friedman certainly has the vision and passion to help us understand both the challenges as well as the opportunities ahead of this nation and the planet. During the impressive presentations of this forum, one important question kept surfacing. Where is the leadership needed to help our nation and our state move successfully into this future?
Whether you agree with his politics or not, Jim Hunt continues to be a visionary leader in North Carolina. Where, we wondered, is the next such leader? In this election season, this is both a reasonable and necessary question to ponder.
One could argue, without pointing fingers at any one individual, that North Carolina is currently paying a price for some poor leadership in certain areas. The growing water crisis proves the point. Current water shortages are not just the result of an unusually dry summer, although that was certainly the case in 2007. The crisis we are now experiencing is a result of the state’s unprecedented growth, several recent hot dry summers and leadership at the local, state, and even federal levels who did not have the vision or fortitude to act.
But the citizens of North Carolina are paying for poor leadership in other ways. This growth is creating congested highways, crowded schools, and the list could continue. These problems didn’t just suddenly surface. Our leaders, indeed none of us, were properly motivated to take action.
Friedman said that many would claim we are in the midst of an energy and environment revolution, but he says it is more like a party. Whoever saw a revolution where no one got hurt, he asks? Perhaps that is the problem. Our leaders have been so worried about protecting all the special interests that they tried to keep anyone from getting hurt.
Sadly, we are now getting hurt by a lack of water, congested roads, crowded and failing schools, health systems breaking down, and people moving out of rural sections of our state. This is a time when we need emerging leaders who will respond to this and other emerging issues. |
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