Comments on Politics

This is a compelling framework-the inclusion of specific systems with the societal structure envisioned sets this project apart from the usual proposals for restructuring civil society. The crucial issue seems to be instilling political and business leaders with the courage (and cover) to articulate and plan for a future beyond the next quarter or election cycle. My personal opinion is that, structural myopia aside, by the time our "leaders" have garnered sufficient power to make a difference their own mortality prompts short-term benefit maximization behavior. Dick Cheney's priorities with respect to energy policy being a current public example.

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I am a mid 50's person who left the paper industry some years ago, earned a graduate degree in environmental studies and am now preparing to teach science and biology at the secondary level. My notion is that a "value rich" approach to science and technology by young people will be essential to the transformation of our society to the vision of ESDA. Hope you will keep lurkers like me informed of the project as it goes forward. Thank you, -- owen

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I consider your initiative as an amateur attempt to influence politics. Probably, it is worth of the invested efforts because current politics became extremely strange. The news about US president IQ 91 is frightening. From the normal logical point of view, the current irregularities in the life of human society resulted from several simple things. The availability of the food and medicines, invented and produced by the bright members of society permitted less bright members multiply their genes in the unlimited way. As a result, the average intellectual level of society fall dramatically and world now looks like a big hospital for the mentally handicapped persons. The idiots voted for the idiotic leaders. In the world with disappeared natural selection, something have to be invented to substitute this powerful natural mechanism. The problems have to be solved consequently. For US the most urgent problem of modern time is to eradicate its ugly system of the education which makes idiots even from the students with average mental capacities.

Iouli

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I missed the first article on this topic, but the second one is most interesting to me, and let me tell you why.

I am a retired planner/landscape architect, and what you propose is definitely giving me a case of deja vu. Now we must ask ourselves, if we have talked for decades about reducing car traffic, and making cities smaller and more livable, and so on, why has this not happened? Our student proposals were meant to do much of the things you mention.

In the 35 years since I graduated from my various professional disciplilnes,and entered practice, the major cities in North America (I live in Canada), have become larger, more polluted, and less livable.

So where is the catch? I think that has to be the critical question. Otherwise we will continue to go on dreaming, while life becomes less and less tolerable. What is the critical block to having more and smaller cities, to going for true cost accounting in resource use, and so on.

I think we need to develop the infrastructure that will get us from here to there. And here I perceive one of the blocks: lack of political will at all levels of government. Also there is the usual refrain: it costs too much, we don't have the money.

Over the long term, this project is designed to create political will. If well developed and widely disseminated, a shared vision of a sustainable and desirable America can serve as a national mandate for change.

Some people have said that monetary reform must precede all the others. In other words, the State (Federal level) has to take on debt free money creation. We could do it in Canada, because our central bank is publcly owned, although currently shirking its duties under international pressure. In the US you have a problem because even the Federal Reserve Banks are private institutions. Nevetheless, a monetary system which creates most of the money with a debt (interest) attached makes all changes drastically more expensive.

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Another option is local level currencies, such as ????the Ithaca hour.

So there would seem to be real validity to this argument.

The second item that comes to mind is "why have we not been able to get away from the automobile in cities?" this was definitely talked about already some 40 years ago, maybe some of you were not born yet then, so you may not remember. We talked about small mini buses that would pick up people near their homes, component vehicles that could be joined together in more dense neighbourhoods, and de-coupled in outlying areas, etc.

In my community for example, it is more expensive to go downtown by bus, because buses are expensive. To go anaywhere else than from periphery to the center is an excruciating experience. Part of this is due to the layout of our cities: they are rather spread out.

Once upon a time, the late great Canadian planner Hans Blumenfeld studied Toronto and Hamburg, two cities with the then same population, and circumference, but a vastly different layout. Hans found out that while Toronto was laid out like most North American cities, Hanburg was laid out in a finger pattern, with public transit lines running up the fingers, and the built up environment adjacent (higher density). In the spaces between the fingers, green/agricultural zones came right to the centre of the city. You might find that an interesting background study (It must be some 35 years old). I don't know why, but this philosophy was never adopted by any Canadian city. Maybe it's the power of the momentum of the direction in which we are moving. Perhaps it is also due to the fact that most land is not held by the community, but by private individuals, and hence much more difficult to co-ordinate any such development. Especially these days when we are so hell-bent on doing away with any government action.

Personally, I find some of the aspects of these proposals uncomfortable. Maybe some other people do as well. Some of us like to be able to get in our car, and get away from people -- which in Canada is still thankfully possible, due to the northern nature of this country. Settlement peters out pretty soon north of the 49th.

The prospect of smaller cities is appealing, but again the cost of redesigning the old and creating the new would be prohibitive unless the monetary system, and the government were vastly retooled.

I think this is what has eluded us in the last 4 decades. I believe that without a very serious rethinking of these underpinnings of our society we will just go on hurtling toward ground zero, and the point of no return.

I hope the current generation is more successful in creating this new path than mine was. And yet, I have this feeling that significant change won't happen unless or until we are in dire straights, and even then it depends who is currently holding the reigns of power. If like today, they are governed by personal greed, hope is slim for all.

Has ESDA considered trying to recruit Ralph Nader (and getting him to tone down his attacks in favor of a more constructive approach? He does have a large following. There are also many "environmental" and "social" groups which I didn't see listed as attendees. Any reason? Admittedly the larger a group the less likely there will be progress.

It was quite a challenge gathering together the group that participated in this project, and many good people we invited were unable to attend, or uninterested in attending. Given our ultimate goal of developing a shared vision, what we really need in the next meeting may be represenatives of groups that traditionally don't give much thought to the environment.

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Would it not be fantastic if this information could be imparted to the President in the White House? If it was, do you think he would understand it? Thanks for telling the truth about another important issue.

We have two major short term goals in front of us: develop this vision further while incorporating a broader cross section of society, and disseminate it more widely. Ultimately, we do hope to bring it to the attention of major politicians, including the president.

Marilin

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been looking at your ideal future vision - wondering how you plan to get from here to there? is it through lobbying? can you afford it in the US plutocracy? or is direct action and the establishment of participatory democracy your solution, in which case might be good to say something more about them...? also, how does this vision fit in with the Pentagon's Joint Vision 2020 and plans for US military Full Spectrum Dominance? these strategic plans suggest that sustainability and justice can be ignored if the arms race can be extended into space - and there is an unashamed admission that this dominance is needed to cope with increasing global inequality, to protect US interests (i.e. corporate investors) abroad... would be interesting to know how your vision statement relates to theirs, whether you hope it can displace theirs, if so how... is there a place for a little more internationalism in there too?

Our first goal is to figure out where 'there' is. Unless we have wide agreement concerning a destination, it would take unbelievable good luck to get there. Participatory democracy does seem like a good vehicle for getting where we want to go, and also allows us to change our destination as we move forward.

As to the military, the Army Environmental Policy Institute actually provided some of the funding for the first ESDA conference. We hope representatives of the military will be able to attend the next one.

In the long run, sustainability will not work for one nation alone. We live in an interconnected global system and true sustainability must be a global phenomena. We are simply taking a short run focus on the USA because it is the most visible representative of the dominant paradigm of ever increasing consumption, and a move towards sustainability here will have global impacts.

thanks, zoe (in the UK - frontline target if the US missile defense madness goes ahead!)