The Advocates with Richard J. Garfunkel on WVOX – AM Radio 1460- “New Day, New Hour.”
Wednesday, November 28, 2007, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show “The Advocates” on WVOX- 1460 AM on your dial, or you can listen to its live streaming at www.wvox.com. One can call the show at 914-636-0110 to reach us on the radio. My special guest this morning Dr. Lewis J. Perelman, and the topic will revisit the subject raised two weeks ago by Professor Charles Perrow, regarding the natural conflict between the “green” and “blue” agendas.
Dr. Lewis J. Perelman is a Washington-DC policy and management consultant. A native of Mount Vernon, New York, he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from the City College of New York, and went on to study space and planetary physics at Columbia University and Harvard University. He later earned his doctoral degree in administration, planning, and policy from Harvard, where his studies focused on sustainable economic development.
Lewis Perelman has worked for over 30 years—as an analyst, thought leader, teacher, and consultant—on key strategic problems of human ecology: transportation, energy, environmental protection, human capital management, national security, technology innovation, and economic and business development. In 1992 he gained renown for his best-selling book “School’s Out”, which anticipated much of the revolution that the Internet and information technology would end up causing in learning, work, and the keys to business success.
Dr. Perelman currently is planning an online symposium for the Public Entity Risk Institute, scheduled for January, on the subject of “Infrastructure Risk and Renewal”. Reflecting Dr. Perelman's own recent policy work, the symposium will particularly focus on the growing clash between a “green” policy agenda, concerned with environmental protection and efficiency, and a contrasting “blue” policy agenda, concerned with human security and survival.
While the “green” agenda often claims to aim at “sustainability,” Lewis Perelman warns that not everything that pretends to be “sustainable” really is. True sustainability, Perelman argues, requires a prudent mix of both the green and the blue goals—not only protection against long-range threats but also preparedness, agility, flexibility, and the capacity to adapt quickly to new circumstances. In one word, resilience.
One of the first analysts at the U.S. government’s 30-year-old Solar Energy Research Institute, and recently a fellow at the government’s new Homeland Security Institute, Dr. Perelman has a unique perspective to combine the green and the blue agendas into an overall scheme of social resilience. He criticizes both the green agenda of environmental protection and the blue agenda of national security for being commonly obsessed with a self-defeating strategy of centralized command and control, prevention, and resistance to change. Instead, he sees an emerging challenge within both the green and blue domains from an alternative policy paradigm that emphasizes decentralization, distributed responsibility, entrepreneurial initiative, adaptation to change, and overall community resilience.
Also joining us again is retired Army Colonel Jeff Gaynor, our call-in guest from Herndon, Va., who is the chief operating officer of eNTEGRITI. His new business interest and activity revolves around the concept of preparing and hardening our infrastructure so it can be more economically sustained and can be more resilient against potential natural and man-made challenges. While in the military, his service encompassed over 30 years of enlisted and comissioned experience. His assignments included: Communications Monitor, Counterintelligence Agent and Operations Officer; Infantry Advisor to Vietnamese Territorial Forces in An Loc; Brigade Intelligence Officer and Secretary General Staff, 25th Infantry Division; Director of the Secretary of Defense/Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Current Intelligence Presentations Division, Defense Intelligence Agency; 511th Military Intelligence Battalion Commander; Army Programs Officer, General Defense Intelligence Program; and Presidential Communications and Security Officer and Alternate Military Aide to the President during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.
Mr. Gaynor is the recipient of: The Silver Star; Defense Superior Service Medal; Legion of Merit; three awards of the Bronze Star Medal; Combat Infantryman’s, Joint Staff and Presidential Staff Identification adges and two awards of the Department of Defense Exceptional Civilian Service Medal.
Meanwhile the mission of the “Advocates” is to bring to the public differing views on current “public policy “ issues. “Public policy,” therefore, is what we as a nation legally and traditionally follow. Over the years the “public policy” of the United States has changed or has been modified greatly. As an example, “free public education” is the public policy of the United States. Also, over time great struggles have ensued over the control of the direction of “public policy” For example: free trade vs. protectionism, slavery vs. emancipation, state’s rights vs. Federalism, and an all-volunteer armed forces or the “draft.”
Richard J. Garfunkel