At the Land Institute this last weekend, David Orr spoke of how Oberlin Ohio’s multi-year sustainability efforts are bearing fruit with the opening of the first all-solar-powered, carbon neutral (perhaps even c-positive) hotel and conference center in the state and perhaps in the entire Great Lakes region.
And as I listened to him, I remembered his earlier words on the need for such transformations in his book on climate change, …Down to the Wire: “When we do settle down to work to stabilize climate, good possibilities will take decades or longer to reach the scale of deployment necessary to reverse the accumulation of carbon and defuse other crises. In the mid to longer term, grounds for optimism will depend on how rapidly and creatively we make fundamental changes …by reshaping the way we provision ourselves with food, energy, water and economic support.”
David reminds us that our underlying infrastructure for all these things is highly vulnerable to deterioration, massive breakdowns and catastrophic events… Restoring it or overhauling it to make it more resilient will be part and parcel of green job creation over the next two decades.
Are our political candidates seriously talking about this, or just mining the old ideas of trying to do artificial resuscitation on old extractive industries? Listen to what they say in the upcoming debates–our lives and livelihoods may depend on who we choose to lead us through the Great Transition of the next quarter century!
Brother Coyote, OEF
