At the dawn of the 21st Century, we sit poised on the brink of a momentous shift. Already the staggering economic opportunities are being identified and invested in emerging green companies. It is no longer enough to create a startup that allows more people to tag, sort, comment upon, or remix the curiously low-quality artifacts of the early digital age. The challenge for those engineering startups or products for the world behind the screen is a cultural and sociological one: How do we use the power of the network to address the biggest challenges we are facing in the 21st century? If your big idea helps people navel-gaze more contemplatively but does not do anything to reduce the meltdown of the Greenland ice shelf, you are not thinking big enough. The next generation of products in the world will be green and will be created by entrepreneurs tapping into this expanding global market of $650 billion.

With climate change hard upon us, a new green movement is taking shape, one that embraces environmentalism’s concerns but rejects its worn-out answers. Technology can be a front of endlessly creative solutions. Business can be a vehicle for change. Prosperity can help us build the kind of world we want. Scientific exploration, innovative design, and cultural evolution are the most powerful tools we have. Entrepreneurial zeal and market forces, guided by sustainable policies, can propel the world into a bright green future.

Clean technology is an area where the rules are yet to be established. There are new opportunities. New companies and clean tech ideas are attracting more interest from technology veterans such as Epstein and mainstream venture capitalists looking for the next big thing.

Four key principles can guide the way:
Renewable energy is plentiful energy. Burning fossil fuels is a filthy habit, and the supply will not last forever. Fortunately, a growing number of renewable alternatives promise clean, inexhaustible power: wind turbines, solar arrays, wave-power flotillas, small hydroelectric generators, geothermal systems, even bioengineered algae that turn waste into hydrogen. The challenge is to scale up these technologies to deliver power in industrial quantities - exactly the kind of challenge brilliant businesspeople love.

High Efficiency creates value. The number one US industrial product is waste. Waste is worse than stupid; it is costly, which is why we are seeing businesspeople in every sector getting a jump on the competition by consuming less water, power, and materials. What is true for industry is true at home, too: Think well-insulated houses full of natural light, cars that sip instead of guzzle, appliances that pay for themselves in energy savings.