By Robert L. Candiotti

University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has announced its annual Clean Energy Forum will take place on September 8, 2010, the day following the National Clean Energy Summit.

According to UNLV's Urban Sustainability news release, both events will be at Cox Pavilion.

With this year's expansion of UNLV's Clean Energy Forum to 3000-seat Cox Pavilion, it is evident the forum will be a bigger, and more boffo-like, academic extravaganza than the previous ones held inside large classrooms on UNLV's campus.

The UNLV news release announcing the powerful date (one day after the National Clean Energy Summit) and prestigious location (the classy Cox Pavilion) of the Clean Energy Forum notes the theme, "Developing A Game Changing Agenda for a Sustainable Energy Future," will be the focus of William Antholis, Brookings Institution Managing Director, the keynote speaker.

The two back-to-back energy gatherings at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will be inescapably intertwined with two big current events - one catastrophic and one captivating - that are much in the news in Nevada, as well as throughout the nation.

The catastrophic event, of course, is the oil calamity off the coast of Louisiana. The captivating issue is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Sharron Angle competing for Reid's U.S. Senate Nevada seat, culminating with the election this coming November.

The UNLV news release says registration for the summit, on September 7, and the forum, on September 8, will be accessible in July.

By Robert L. Candiotti

Democratic U.S. Senator from Nevada, Harry Reid - facing what could evolve into an historical election campaign against dramatically different Republican Sharron Angle - will logically sponsor the third annual National Clean Energy Summit at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

It has recently been publicized the 2010 National Clean Energy Summit will be held on September 7 at Cox Pavilion on the UNLV campus.

Reid was the director of the 2008 and 2009 National Clean Energy Summit gatherings at UNLV.

There were so many luminaries at the previous summits, such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, T. Boone Pickens, Steven Chu, John Podesta, Michael Bloomberg and General Wesley Clark.

These previous two productions were slick and masterful. The third National Clean Energy Summit - because of the Reid/Angle U.S. Senate vote in November - will likely be more academic, with an elevated appeal to the intelligentsia.

Reid and his associates certainly do know how to put on a show. The summit in 2009 was so theatrical that journalist J. Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun wrote in an August 11, 2009, article - titled "An unspoken summit goal: Reelect Reid" - the "event was about politics."

Coolican wrote the Clean Energy Summit 2.0 in 2009 was "about the 2010 reelection of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid."

And that was one year ago!

Now, the Nevada vote on Democrat Harry Reid versus Republican Sharron Angle is drawing palpably close.

Speaking of close, the voter breakdown is reportedly very close. The election winner - including possibly the late-surging Sharron Angle who was surprisingly victorious in June's Nevada Republican primary election - is said right now to be a toss-up.

The Reid campaign is already very busy attacking Angle for the readily switchable and easily swayed, but, as an attraction for the more cerebral and circumspect voters, it is expected Reid will once again organize from his director's chair a buttery smooth (though how thoroughly based in truth?) National Clean Energy Summit on September 7, 2010, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus.  

By Robert L. Candiotti

Note: A version of this piece - titled "Proper planning requires airport preparation" - was printed as a letter to the editor in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on June 14, 2010.

For at least a year, I had sensed that progress toward Ivanpah Airport had slowed, at best, to a snail's pace.

There was no news about Ivanpah Airport in the Las Vegas newspapers, and I saw no Ivanpah press releases from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Bureau of Land Management.

So, when I read the "Ivanpah Airport in holding pattern" article by Alan Choate in the June 11, 2010, Las Vegas Review-Journal, I was not surprised; but I was disappointed to read that development of Ivanpah Airport "has been suspended indefinitely."

Though I think regularly about the need for a "supplemental" international airport in Ivanpah Valley, close to the Nevada-California border, 30 miles south of Las Vegas, the June 11 Ivanpah story in the Review-Journal jolted my Ivanpah thinking to dispassionately ponder Las Vegas' ability to keep up with global aviation transportation trends.

Just two days prior to reading the Review-Journal Ivanpah article, on June 9, Wall Street Journal included a report that Dubai's Emirates Airline has ordered 32 additional Airbus A380 aircraft in its effort to become a super-jumbo leader among long-haul airlines.

Emirates had previously ordered 58 of the immense jets, which can carry around 500 passengers many thousands of miles nonstop.

Including Emirates, Airbus has now completed contracts with several airlines for more than 200 of the industry altering jets.

Obviously, there is a future for the A380, but that future evidently does not include Las Vegas. The A380, because of its huge size and runway requirements, can never use McCarran International Airport. Without construction of the proposed Ivanpah Airport, the Airbus A380 cannot connect with Las Vegas. Which brings me to the statement by Robert E. Lang of Brookings Institution that "Las Vegas is a world city due to its connectivity to other cities."

In the Review-Journal article, Rosemary Vassiliadis, deputy director of aviation for the Clark County Aviation Department, says, "We know we're beyond 2025" with regard to possible completion of the Ivanpah Airport.

Los Angeles International (LAX) is already accommodating the Airbus A380. The A380 is landing there right now. And the best Las Vegas can do is 2025?

To me, it is clear Los Angeles is committed to global connectivity. What kind of connectivity will Las Vegas be envisioning and working toward?

By Robert L. Candiotti

I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I work at the tiny Nevada-California borderline town of Primm.

My place of employment - for more than five years now - is in a clothing store at Primm's Fashion Outlets mall.

Where I work, almost everyone pays for their purchases with credit cards, and I am supposed to ask for all credit card customers' I.D.

It is continually obvious. These people are from everywhere. They are from all over the U.S., as well as from all around the world. To me, this is valid evidence of Las Vegas', and Southern Nevada's, global connectivity.

I still clearly remember, at a conference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2008 when Robert E. Lang of Brookings Institution said, "Las Vegas is a world city due to its connectivity to other cities."

Connectivity is an integral part of Las Vegas' success. The city's connectivity really only goes back a little more than a half century with the expansion of McCarran International Airport.

On the other side of the world, going back several centuries, Singapore has been a central trading, trans-traveling point of civilization. Today, Singapore is a dramatically successful point of connectivity that is one of the three busiest centers of world-wide airplane travel. The three are London, Singapore and Dubai.

Also, as far as being a sea hub goes, Singapore is the world's busiest port in the area of shipping tonnage.

To sum it up, Singapore is hugely successful in the realms of connectivity.

However, on September 4, 2006, at Singapore's "Strategic Perspectives Conference" at Civil Service College, Peter Ho, Head of Civil Service, said that Singapore cannot assume that its success will automatically continue. Ho noted "we cannot assume that our position at the top is unassailable."

Ho continued, "To stay ahead of the competition, it is not enough to just be excellent in what we do, or to work hard, or to be more efficient." He said that "it is just as important that we are able and willing to think boldly and imaginatively."

I think this thinking also easily applies to Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. True, in the development of connectivity, over the decades Las Vegas has been intelligent, dutiful and creative. But I sense, if not persevering with imagination and daring, Las Vegas and Southern Nevada can be easily left behind.

This is why I continue to think about and write about the proposed Ivanpah Valley Airport. At Singapore's Strategic Perspectives Conference in 2006, Ho said, "Certainly, the world in ten to fifteen years from now will be radically different from today."

I agree. Projecting ahead a decade or so, Las Vegas' future is unclear. Today, Las Vegas must make plans to move boldly in its enhancement of global connectivity.

To me, there is no doubt that Ivanpah Valley Airport needs to be intelligently designed and competently constructed.

Singapore has been working on connectivity for centuries. Las Vegas and Southern Nevada can learn from paying attention to what Singapore has to say about connectivity and the need to constantly make it bold and imaginative.

To read a page focused on the significance and future of Las Vegas' air accessibility, go to "Las Vegas Connectivity" at www.ivanpahvalley.com/id24.html