A View of the World from the Aspen Ideas Festival

For the last three summers the Aspen Institute has conducted an Ideas Festival in Aspen. About 70 speakers who discuss subjects ranging from Global Warming to Globalization, India and it's place in the world, Health and Obesity and World Famine, the current Political Landscape and Education in America appear at the conference.

Michael Sandel from Harvard, David Brooks and Tom Freidman from the NY Times, Sam Nunn, who many say will be the Vice Presidential candidate for Obama, Michael Chertoff, John Doerr, Vinod Khosla and President Clinton are among the many luminaries appearing this year.

It has become a tradition since the Festival's inception for my husband Stewart and me to host a dinner for the speakers at our home. Below you can find the contents of my welcome speech.

Welcome speech to the speakers of the Aspen Ideas Festival July 3rd, 2008

Stewart and I welcome you all to Little Lake Lodge for a dinner that has become something of a tradition; entertaining the inspired speakers presenting at the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival.

You'll notice the charming little topiary bears adorning your tables. The reason I chose a bear theme this year was to pay homage to the rather large brown bear who usually comes around to greet our guests when we throw this party. If he doesn't show up, at least you'll have your little bear honey jars -- they're your party favors, so don't forget to get them on the way out.

When I welcomed you last year, we were complaining that oil had hit $75 a barrel. Well, yesterday it hit $145. It's odd to have nostalgia for being overcharged instead of being hornswoggled.

In other news ... according to David Katz of the Yale School of Public Heath, diabetes will soon be as common to teenagers as acne. Perhaps cans of Coca-Cola will one day include an insulin patch.

John Holdren from Harvard cheered us up with news that climate change had reached a tipping point, and we might have a mere 10 years left to ward off the dire catastrophic consequences resulting from this man-made scourge.

Sadly, the war in the Middle East continues to drain our country of human and financial capital.
Paul Collier told us today about the world's food shortage and how it is affecting Africa and other nations.

David Brooks explained how the great divide between America's rich and poor has resulted in an intellectual divide that has reduced the likelihood of children from lower income families completing college to 1 in 17.

And the family you are born into is much more important than it was 40 years ago. But David, how can we control that? When you find out, please tell my children, as they have been complaining for years.

The elegant Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, explained Moore's Law to us: it predicts the yearly doubling of the capacity of their microprocessors. Unfortunately, it seems that Moore's Law may also apply to America's woes.

As our two presumptive nominees vie for the White House, we wonder can a mere mortal really solve these problems?

Well, I have an idea: In China, when the air quality is too dangerous for the Olympic athletes in training, they simply shut down industry for three weeks. When their population is using too much gas, they just raise the price 17%. Population is a problem, they demand that families have only one child.

See where I'm going? Perhaps we don't need a president, we need a benevolent dictator.

But that won't work, because our country was built on the freedom of the individual. I learned that at Executive Seminar I first took at the Institute eight years ago.

So how do we solve our problems? We attend these brilliant festivals of ideas here in Aspen and we return to our homes charged with a new spirit of change.

As Vinod Khalsa said yesterday; "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

Emily Lazar the producer of the Stephen Colbert Show told us Stephen sees himself as "barium of the political colon" then I say, the Aspen Institute is the penicillin of society's strep throat.

Thank you Walter, Elliot, Kitty Boone and the rest of the Aspen Institute staff for creating a forum for us to discuss the problems we face, and for giving us the inspiration and ammunition to get help create solutions.

Ladies and gentlemen, have a wonderful evening. Remember tomorrow what Tom Friedman told us tonight: that our country's birthday is July 4th, not 9/11.

Enjoy your dinner -- and if I may paraphrase my dear friend Alice Waters, "nothing helps solve the ills of the world like a full stomach." Eat hearty, everyone!

Comments

[Punkbuster]

Its like wine and cheese parties "benefitting' the homeless. I did my part and took action last week. My favorite artist is James McMurtrey (I am a conservative, he is liberal but sometimes he makes good sense and is the best songerwriter/guitarist on the planet) But I went green and instead of driving to Austin (from North San Antonio) to see him, I simply didnt. The Saudis didnt make money off me, Exxon didnt, Budwieser (and the workers who make the beer) didnt either, James and the band didnt, the venue he played didnt, Michelin didnt since I didnt drive 140 miles on my tires and finally the Kats Deli in Austin didnt make money on me where we eat after the show. I know that we are going to hell in a handbasket but was my descision correct? James proudly votes everytime for the "tax and spend" liberal. Well if we dont buy then there is nothing to tax or at least not enough tax revenue to go around.
Tonight I write this because we didnt go out again. The cycle of all the companies, establishment and brands didnt make money again.

If I (we) consume then others make money with which to survive. If I (we) dont consume the planet is "better" (at least we are told by the zealots) so i was in a quandry. So I stay at home read an Ayn Rand book about the virtues of free markets looking out for #1.

[LizM]

How do we start to solve the problems and meet the critical challenges of the day...that's easy enough! Start by electing to the presidency the person most qualified to develop solutions to the problems, domestically and internationally, and best equipped to implement them. Better luck next time around.

[NABNYC]

The world's elite are like the twisted stalker in The Collector, coldly examining the suffering of others in order to study the world. I wonder how many of the esteemed who gathered came by private jet. I wonder when is the last time any one of them ever did their own laundry or cleaned their own home.

Even though I wasn't invited, I've got some ideas:

1. Every country has local smart organizers who want to help, and who know a lot more than anyone in Aspen. Get them the funding and they will build sanitation to carry the waste, a water system, homes, schools, hospitals, and local businesses. Most of the people in these countries should be farming, growing the food to feed their own nations, and would be doing so if they had not been shut down and thrown off their land by the World Bank and the "great thinkers" behind it.

2. Most people are hungry and many are sick. Bill Gates, Clinton, Warren Buffet: if you really want to help, these people are sick and hungry today. They don't need new computers with Vista so they will become lifetime devotees of one brand. They need food and medical care. Arrange airlifts and get it to them.

3. All countries need new energy. Immediately fund windmills, water, solar development.

4. Set up a world system to collect and destroy guns, pay those who turn them in. End wars.

Those are my ideas. Even though I wasn't invited.

[mouselion]

An "idea' forum, held at an exclusive club by people who think their coming up original, new ideas. Patting themselves on the back for doing it, while eating gourmet food prepared by an over-paid, temperamental chef (just how local was the food prepared?). The irony is that voices calling for a green revolution, and actually doing the hands-on work, have existed for decades. Take, as an example these two organizations just down the road in the same valley as the Aspen Institute:

Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, CO - focuses on a technology design approach to green solutions
http://www.rmi.org/

Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, CO - focuses on a low-tech design approach
http://crmpi.org/

These two organizations have been humbly and steadfastly working towards the ends that mainstream Americans are now realizing are sensible and necessary since the 1970's -- and they are still there, doing the real work, of bringing ideas to action, year after year. These are the people to listen to, not to the ones who have just joined the cause, repeating all that has already been said already (and not backing it up with real actions).

Next year the Ideas Festival needs to concentrate on how to include the everyday people in the world who likely see the Aspen crowd as out-of-touch and unoriginal.

[HunterSThompson]

Usually, Amory Lovins, Founder of Rocky Mountain Instiute will attend the Ideas event.

[rabrophy]

Why not have an "Aspen DO THINGS Festival"?
Seems to me you've got, mostly, a lot of rich people who make a lot of money shuffling around other peoples money, and the pundants who tell them that's cool. I mean, you got Tom Friedman talking about turning corporate greed into corporate "Green" greed. According to Wikpedia he's got an 11000+ sq. ft. house for just him & his wife. How does he save energy, turn down the heat in the servant's quarters?

Why don't you go a few miles down the road to Mesa, CO and try to figure out how the local cash strapped farmers can grow crops in the dry high plains without over irrigating the top soil and drawing up the salt from the subsoil, which is sure to happen in the next 10 years or so and poison the land. And do it cheap! The farmers there got the bankers after them like a pack a' coyote's after a lame sheep! ( My apologies to the coyotes )
That's just on example, but the idea is take off your Gucci's, put on some work boots and stop talking and DO SOMTHING!

[HunterSThompson]

From what I hear, Tom Friedman is a billionaire, or at least his wife is.

[ponderman]

Having a group of "luminaries" gather to discuss ideas is not a bad idea, but it sounds a bit elitist, when
most good ideas come from common folks.

All of these smart asses haven't solved a thing.

[Uselessboy]

We're most of a century or arguably a century and 3/4 beyond the boundaries of the design of our system of government.

Our system doesn't work in these times. We're the oldest modern "democracy" and nobody else has adopted our system.

Having worked as a systems analyst and designer, what I'd do is look at what the planet and the globe needs the US to do, and what the American people need the US to do, and work backwards from there to sketching a few models for how governance ought to function here.

At this point in time, nobody attempting to solve our problems would create anything resembling the Constitution we have.

[knighthowl]

Thank God there were no systems engineers among the Founding Fathers.

[webweaver]

This Ideas Festival is a good thing, but I sure hope that the attendees will take their ideas and their money and put them where their mouths are...

I am not questioning whether they do... I am just expressing my sincerest hope that all of you are out there supporting local groups and local activists in their work.

It's not enough to have ideas... you must have the resources to manifest these ideas into reality.

I wonder how much a barrel of oil will be next year?

[lboucher]

Obama supporters are going crazy, and they're going crazy because their guy, suddenly, doesn't seem to be "their guy" any more. Given his recent changes of position on issues, Obama is coming across as a died in the wool Neo-con convert than a liberal.
Barack Obama has his base in an uproar. With his recent reversals on such key issues as FISA, campaign contributions, and the Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment, many on the left are, seemingly, suffering from the effects of political whiplash as they watch their candidate abandon them on the issues that the deem to be important. The most recent issue change, the war in Iraq and the withdrawal of U.S. forces, is sending the left into a near frenzy as they try to figure out what, exactly, is going on with Obama.