Ms. Frizzle Would Be Proud... and Happy

Some weeks it takes me  several days to read the Sunday New York Times, and so it was this week. I finally read "The Week in Review" this morning. I was delighted by Thomas Friedman's op-ed piece "Yes, They Could. So They Did." about two young Yale grads who approached Friedman at an Energy and Resources Institute conference in New Delhi and took him on a driving tour of the city. A driving tour in their plug-in electric car that also has solar panels on its roof providing ten percent of its mileage. Earlier this year they took their car on a 2,100 mile  "climate solutions road tour" around India, joined by other creative climate-conscious innovators, entrepreneurs, and artists, to "inspire more action and more innovation" especially among young people. 

So where does Ms. Frizzle come into this? It has to do with thinking outside the box, trying zany things. (See my previous blog and her motto, "Take chances, get messy, make mistakes.") Friedman's column ends with the following quote from one of the climate solutions road tour innovators: 

"Why this mad, insane plan to travel across India in a caravan of solar electric cars and jatropha [a local biofuel] trucks with solar music, art, dance and a potent message for climate solutions? Well. . . the world needs crazy ideas to change things, because the conventional way of thinking is not working anymore."

Amen to that!