Open Source Ecology Forums

Endelevu

Thanks for starting the community!

My wife is Norwegian and I am American, we decided to move to Sweden after the real estate crash in the US. Sweden provides us with a good base of operations in terms of being close to continental Europe and our family in Norway. The kids go to an International school and we are likely to be here a few more years until we can embark on the next adventure in our lives.

Professionally my background is mainly as a trader either in real estate or various financial instruments. In other words, most of my career I have benefited financially from moving assets back and forth and pocketing the difference. However, during that career I have not created any real wealth rather just helped to further the indebtedness of fellow members of my community and nation. Its people like me who are responsible for the 150 Trillion dollars in derivatives floating out there and the upcoming financial crashes that will harm everyday people much more so than those responsible for it.

My wife is an expert in designing factories and production lines to be efficient. At one point in her career she worked for the Electric Vehicle manufacturer Th!nk in Norway. Th!nk was bought out by Ford for about $40 million US, another 100 million was invested...at the same time the auto companies were fighting the Zero Emissions laws in California and New York. The AutoAttorney's won, and Th!nk was sold to a Swiss holding company for $1 dollar. That story basically sums up environmental leadership in large scale corporate America, imho.

Originally, from Washington state, my mentor's were public school teachers who would take me to places such as the Olympic Rain Forest, protests in Bremerton against the Trident Submarines, and building detente at a grass roots level by building bridges between American children and those of The Soviet Union. One of my mentor's died of cancer that is likely traceable to being a Hanford down-winder. One year, a group my mentor's were a part of made jam from berries downwind from Hanford and sent it to the Governor. That jar of berries was fairly radioactive.

Now, at 40, in a position to do what I want to do rather than what must be done to support my family. Well, really, its what I have to do because the way the world is headed it would be irresponsible for me as a parent to leave the world in this condition for my kids. So, in September I am starting a Masters in Environmental Management and Policy with a focus on developing and implementing the concept of sustainable charter cities. I guess its time to start being a kid again, by living up to the values shared with me by my mentors.

Here's a one minute video pertaining what I want to spend the rest of my life working with, for better or worse, success of fail. http://youtu.be/yjCPY9OuABU

Cheers,

Shane

caseyhubb

Good luck! I'm from Seattle, great to hear from former locals.

JanErik

Cool... Nice video as well!

It's great that you have decided to leave the "dark side" of pointless and destructive but profitable financial speculation and start working for a better world instead!

I'm an IT-consultant from Norway. I grew up in Ammerud, Oslo wich is just a couple of kilometers from Stanseveien where Th!nk (previously city bee I belive) used to be in the old days. I remember as a kid (about 14 years) I went down there and offered my services in 3d-visualization (I had a 3d-studio licence back in 1992).

Now I hope the open source ecology projects attracts enough people to start work on a new open source CAD/CAM platform to rival the commercial ones (Catia/SolidWorks/AutodeskInventor etc).

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Open Source Ecology Forums