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My Kluster friends have one of their own at the White House today. As part of their amazing technology, they set up a forum to gather feedback from klusterers on the topics of : (1) economy/stimulus, (2) environment, (3) entrepreneurship.

And while I had to first sound off about my frustrations with the sexism and discrimination I've been subjected to, as it relates to my (growing more desperate by the day) search for employment, I was quite happily, for a brief period, "in the zone." Coming up with good ideas is something that comes naturally to me. Maybe one of these days I'll obtain employment with an actual employer who actually pays me more than fractions of pennies to do so.

Environmentally-Friendly Idea: EPCOT Center for the Midwest

Epcot stands for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow" (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT)

People who live on or near the coasts and people who live in the *Great Basin or on the *Plains or in the *Midwest are very different. I remember how astounded I was when I transplanted to Utah from Florida to finish high school. People not only didn't recycle, they also didn't care that there wasn't a recycling facility available in their communities. One garbage bin by the curbs; all of the garbage into a landfill. Much of this garbage (plastics, metal, glass and other recyclables) purchased, at the local WalMart.

A lot of people who live in rural areas don't understand things like biological ecosystems, and how fragile they are. They view "environmentalists" as some kind of threat, or "crazy hippies" or something of the sort. They don't understand the detrimental effects of chemicals leeching into groundwater, and pollution from factories. All they seem to care about is how those factories provide "jobs".

They also do a lot of farming in the mid-west. Why not incentivize a different type of "factory," one that can expose how good choices and recycling and earth-friendly materials in building can actually preserve the agricultural capacity of land? An EPCOT. It would be a great place to take children on field trips and teach them how it's important to preserve sustainability for future generations.

Although, like the original EPCOT, this might be a venture best funded by private investment, it would be a good idea to provide tax incentives to companies willing to do the research, be honest about the results, and share them with people. Teach them about how in big, densely populated cities they don't always have the option to put trash in landfills, and so they recycle materials.

Environmentally-Friendly Idea: Reverse-engineer the roads; give tax credits to people who don't own a vehicle

If we really want to reduce the amount of pollution and global warming, we need to do something drastic. Let's not bail out the automobile industry; let's figure out how to "make transportation a sustainable industry."

This starts with ceasing (or at the very least REDUCING) the incentives to own a vehicle, especially the tax incentives and "write offs" that people who do a lot of driving get. I was utterly **astounded to learn how messed up the tax system is. People can actually write off their vehicle expenses. This DOES NOT help the environment. It doesn't help the government, either!

The second part of this would be to invest in modern, clean transportation alternatives: light rails and trains, even car-sharing programs. Convert six-lane highways into four-lane highways and replace two of the lanes with a lightrail. Watch how slooooooow the traffic is on congested roads while the light-rail speeds by.

I think people would be much more likely to give up owning a car if they had a (greater) tax incentive to do so, and especially if they had more alternatives to transportation. The would be the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they did in Los Angeles all those years ago, when they ripped out all of the cable cars and installed roads so people would want to buy cars.

Let's reverse-engineer the roads, and outfit them with more efficient, environmentally-friendly people-movers.

*Motorcycles and bicycles are okay. Motorcycles historically get very good MPG. Companies that use roadways to transport goods need to pay their share of costs of maintaining those roads for transporting goods.

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*if you're from the Great Basin, Plains, or Midwest, please don't be offended. I can only write about what I know, where I've been, what I've seen, how I think, etc. WalMart + smalltown USA may be good for your family's budget in the short-term, but all those disposable products spell BAD news in the long term.

**this is why I chose to not go into tax accounting; under Republican systems, tax accounting is playing a game with a far too fragile opponent: the environment.