How to change the future

Page 3 of 3 -- Green up. Boston and all of New England are an energy Sahara, at the mercy of such places as Texas, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

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So it's a good thing that Mayor Thomas Menino, Governor Mitt Romney, mayors and state legislators, the Green Roundtable, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, and others have warned publicly of the perils posed by global warming. Their collective call for conservation and "green," renewable alternatives could hardly be more timely.

The Romney administration is the first in the United States to include the impact of greenhouse gas in evaluating highway projects. Menino has an imaginative "green economy" initiative aimed at extended building life cycles, greater worker productivity and retention, even encouraging financiers to adapt real estate investment trusts to enable higher up-front outlays for green building features. World-class "green" buildings are sprouting in Boston and Cambridge.

But is it enough? Other states -- New York, Washington, and especially California -- are racing down the energy conservation track faster than Massachusetts. There's no sign of a big Boston area mobilization to tap the area's remarkable university and private lab brain power, its capital and legal skills, to elevate a renewable, green future from idealistic hope to on-the-ground reality.

Or, for that matter, in-the-sky reality. There's opposition on Cape Cod to the proposal for 130 massive wind turbines on Horseshoe Shoal off Nantucket. But the energy yield could be substantial. Think a few years ahead and those windmills' great turbines could be a symbol of collective will for sustainability in a new age.

Another argument for green energy: It promises to spread wealth and benefits in a refreshingly democratic way. Ask who benefits most from the region's highly touted biotechnology/pharmacology sector, and the answer is affluent scientists, physicians, corporate executives, and investors. But a truly green future would serve everyone -- energy security for all classes, career openings for scientists and high-tech workers, and real-life, on-the-ground jobs for building tradesmen at the construction sites. With a little luck, green construction and building retrofit may spell a century of blue collar jobs.

Fancy, high-cost, intellectual Boston needs that balance.

Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson, authors of the book "Citistates" and principals of the Citistates Group, were commissioned by the Boston Foundation to evaluate Greater Boston's 21st century challenges. Their report, "Boston Unbound," is available at www.tbf.org.