The “50-Year Storm”. It’s what Patrick Swayze’s character (Bodhi) was chasing in the cult-classic film, Point Break. The storm was to produce once-in-a-lifetime waves that no bank-robbing surfer could possibly resist. So when Bodhi escapes the clutches of law enforcement in the film’s final heist-gone-wrong, undercover agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) knows where he’ll find his escaped friend/mentor/criminal target.

In the final scene of the movie, Utah tracks Bodhi to the point of the 50-Year Storm in Victoria, Australia. Seeking justice, Utah intends to arrest Bodhi, but the complicated relationship that he developed during his undercover work comes into play. Bodhi begs Utah for the chance to catch a wave, and as they peer out to the massive walls of water swelling about, they both know he’s asking for death doing what he loves verses a life spent in prison.

In the end, Utah let’s Bodhi catch his wave. It’s poetic. Water cleans us. And the massive swell of the 50-Year Storm washes away the messiness of Utah and Bodhi’s complicated relationship.

Today humanity finds itself in another complicated relationship. And this one has much higher stakes than that of Bodhi and Utah, because it involves how we coexist with the spinning rock that we call home, planet Earth. As we humans sprawl about, we harvest from our home and pollute with a tunnel-vision that mistakes profits for progress. And in our madness we’ve become comfortable with the paradoxical relationship that when we kill our host (Earth), we kill ourselves too.

But what if there was a wave coming about that could help clean the messy relationship that we’ve developed with our home?

Enter Eric Pasi.

Eric is a clean energy pioneer and the CDO of Impact Power Solutions, which is the Midwest’s largest commercial solar development company. With more than a dozen years of industry experience, Eric has become an important voice regarding the challenges that we all will face in a world where climate change remains unchecked. But unlike those that might dwell or wallow within the weight of what seems like an insurmountable problem, Eric is focused on solutions... specifically those that the clean tech sector has to offer. 

I should also note that Eric is a longtime friend, and beyond that, we spent more than a decade together pursuing our love of music, playing more shows than I can remember, and birthing multiple EPs and albums along the way. But in Eric’s latest creation, he takes to the page... authoring the book CleanWave: A guide to success in the green recovery. Today we reunite within the studio (virtually) to talk about his book and why it’s a guide for what happens next...