Sessions continued after an impromtu insersion of a rousing musical performance by the fabulous guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, who openly describe spending years busking with little success in Mexico before hitting it big when they found themselves in Ireland and developed a delightful genre blending of Led Zeplin with a Flimenco sound.
Next up was New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, guaranteed to be welcomed as a high dignitary by most attendees excepting perhaps Republican-leaning Bob Metcalfe.
"This is not your parents' energy crisis. We are funding both sides of the war on terrorism," asserted Friedman, arguing we overlook the obvious fact that America's funding its own military via its tax dollars and funding terrorists and insurgents through energy purchases from countries who provide them with financial assistance.
Friedman also described the new environmental challenges that occur from the creation of 3 billion new consumers, including 1.3 billion Chinese, aspiring to their own version of the American dream, which could be overwhelming to the extent it includes owning a house, a car, household appliances, a toaster and a PC, the demand for which he said could "burn up, choke up, heat up and smoke up this planet so much faster than even Al Gore predicted."
For these reasons, as he has written and commented previously, Friedman said Green technology businesses are going to be the growth industry of the 21st century. "It has to be, or there's going to be no planet," he said, adding China is rising to that challenge, and that "Green China is an even bigger challenge to us than Red China."
Friedman referenced his thesis on the inverse relationship between the price of oil and the pace of freedom among oil producers, noting that Bahrain was the first Gulf state to discover and deplete it's oil, and also the first in the region to post a free and fair election, reach a free trade agreement with the United Statesand pass a labor reform law, etc.
Stewart Brand called attention to issues of urbanization, with 50% of humanity currently living in hurban areas currently, up from 3% in 1800 and 14% in 1800, and one billion currently are in self-organizing squatter cities. Global population is expected to peak at around 9 billion, he noted, and impoverished urban areas often represent the biggest challenges.
"We are terraforming earth, anyway, we might as well do it right," said Brand, a creator of the LongNow Foundation well known for having established the Whole Earth Catalog and the San Francisco community, the WELL.
Environmental leader Lester Brown, author of the recent book Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress extended Friedman's fee, asking what happens if China reaches the United States in consuming the same on a per person basis as the United States - having already passed U.S. consumption on absolute aggregate levels in everything but oil.
By 2031, China's per capita income could match current U.S. levels - and if that translated to U.S. consumption patterns, China's projected 1.45 billion people at that time would use twice as much paper as the world currently produces. and its 99 million barrels a day of oil demand would on its own exceed our current world production (which is unlikely to increase, since global peak production may be months away). At the moment, however, he said there is a need for moderation between the 800 million who own automobiles and live reasonably well, and 2 billion poorest people in the world.
"What we're really talking about is saving civilization," he said.
Bob Freling, founder and head of the Solar Electric Light Fund, demonstrated with a single kerosene lantern the dangers of that form of lighting for roughly two billion people who are beyond the electric grid, and described the foundation's efforts to provide solar power and radios to remote people in various countries around the world.
Freling and Pop!Tech presenter Andrew Zolli announced the conference would do its environmental bit by making Pop!Tech "carbon negative" - replacing double the amount of carbon estimated to have been used by conference attendees to travel to the conference through transfers from solar electric power generation.
Zolli amused the conference participants with props demonstrating the size of a cubic foot, and larger capacities, then explained how each of us had their estimated carbon use round trip from our homes had been calculated and printed on our name badges. Coming from the Bay area, yours truly's 25,000-plus calculation is alarming, indeed.
The bold, audacious, grand phantasmagoria of eg '07, the entertainment gathering, has just kicked off with the strings of the violinists of the Colburn School here at The Getty Center, perched in its sunshine-bathed peak overlooking the City of Angels.
Pop!Tech 2007 kicked off its annual feast of ideas amid the chill autumn folliage of downeast Maine with the incredible data visualization work of photographer 
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