Transcripts

"Commentary"-The Eco-Industrial Revolution

SUZANNE PRATT: Tonight's commentator says there's a new type of industrial revolution underway and it could bring really good things to life. Here's Andrew Zolli, futurist and founder of Z-Partners.

ANDREW ZOLLI, FUTURIST AND FOUNDER, Z-PARTNERS: Imagine a solar- powered streetlight that doesn't ever need to be plugged in and provides free wi-fi access to an entire neighborhood or a self-cleaning industrial paint that eats the smog billowing from a factory smokestack or silicon chips that assemble themselves at room temperature, with little industrial waste. These are just a few of the many innovations promised by a new eco- industrial revolution. Sure, industry seems to have gotten behind the environment in a big way, but that's mostly been marketing until now.

Thanks to increasing investment in "eco-tech," more sustainability- enhancing technologies will come to market in the next 10 years than in the past 50. That's why GE, Dupont and others are now pushing Congress for a carbon cap and trade system. They see themselves in the vanguard of a new global export market for ecological products and services. These innovations are also attracting the interest of a new generation of young, pragmatic and wired environmental activists who are eager to ward off impending climate crisis by any means necessary. That includes using markets, not governments, to distribute planet-saving innovations, and an openness to technologies like genetically modified organisms and nuclear power that their forebears strongly resisted. With the activists going nuclear and the suits going green, it's clear that this is a movement with staying power. Let's hope so -- our staying around may just depend on it. I'm Andrew Zolli.