Beach Walk 123 OTR – Where do you get your energy?

Beach Walks is on the road today, talking with several retired executives and professionals in the Detroit area.

h3. About Today’s Show

My dad’s coffee club invited us in for a show today. It’s not often that you get a chance to hear candid, direct comments from auto industry execs, lawyers and finance professionals. Beach Walks aims to present diverse people and opinions and to create dialog among those who may disagree. You can see that these guys get a lot of energy from meeting each morning to discuss a wide range of topics.

I was glad to hear support for corporate responsibility in education, and also acknowledgement that the oil industry is shirking its responsibilities. Cars and oil used to be aligned; now high oil prices are helping bring down the auto industry. Both factory workers in Flint and execs in Birmingham are being affected by the failings of the American car industry. Perhaps this shared pain will stimulate a new approach to providing sustainable transportation for us.

For many people, (and it’s people who make up industries and corporations) change is painful and happens only after a crisis. I wish more people were more willing to be proactive instead of reactive. I also wish the politicians in Hawai’i would become leaders in sustainable practices. An island is the perfect place to refine recycling programs, convert trash into oil, and as mentioned, grow sugar cane for fuel. Instead, we have bickering and partisanship, infrastructure decay and a minimal recycling program that appears to mostly just be a fund-raiser for government.

But somehow though no matter what edges humanity pushes itself up against, we are still here. New solutions appear just in the nick of time. The universe steps in to assist. Life goes on and from a wide enough perspective, all is well.

Hawaiian words
Hoʻopōʻaiapuni: recycle

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Comments

  1. It looks like this group has a lot of interesting discussions. So many of us are thinking about how we can lower our dependence on foreign oil.

    Today, we went to go see the film “An Inconvenient Truth” that discusses effects of global warming, which is something else that will impact both sides of the political spectrum. We made this video with our thoughts about it.

    If these types of crises do come about, then hopefully it will be an opportunity for people to find ways of work more effectively together.

  2. The link to the video was filtered out — Click on my name above, and it will take you to our review of “An Inconvenient Truth”

  3. Where is the link to click on the video?

  4. Here is the page with Jen’s movie.

  5. As I sit here watching this discussion, it is all too real for me. My father and all my friends work or have worked for the auto companies. Its not hard to understand what I have been seeing for 35 years now. Its always the same thing. The American Auto Companies always “BLAME” someone else for their problems. I still see this in my dad who is 78 and retired from Fords. Sorry guys, not once did I hear anyone say, “Yes we are part of the problem, now lets find a way to change this.” There wasn’t anything said about increasing the gas mileage of our cars, or alternative powerplants for the cars to show the world we do not need to rely on petroleum products from troubled parts of the World. Suddenly all I see, is Detroit auto commercials hyping great gas mileage. Look at the figures, and then notice that its not city driving they’re talking about, its Highway Mileage. Find a way to increase mileage to 70mpg and don’t sit on that, increase it even more, and then find a new way to run those engines… Do you think that the oil companies wouldn’t welcome a new type of pump in their stations if no one was coming to their gas stations anymore… and don’t forget to keep the price of cars down so that most of America can buy them from you. Since the early 70’s, every 8 years or so the Detroit Auto Companies have always found someone else to blame for their problems. If it wasn’t the Japanese for their cheap cars & “Copycat Techniques”, it was always something else to point their finger at . Now Detroit blames the Asian market for taking away jobs, and here at the coffee shop its the oil companies that are the problem. Wake up Detroit. 40 years from now it may be another finger pointing time for the Detroit Auto Companies… “If it weren’t for all these cars being built in Asia and all those people driving in China we wouldn’t have Global Warming…” Thats why I’m leaving this area. Enough is Enough. Stop the whining! Do something to better your children’s life in the future, instead of watching them leave and not wanting to come back… EVER !!!