Ecomunicipality.com

From the Nov. 7 issue of Isthmus, a weekly news magazine from Madison, WI:

Chuck Erickson thinks it's about time Dane County got serious in its efforts to become more sustainable. "We're trying to have a more coordinated approach," says Erickson, a county supervisor. Being green "should become part of the culture."

Together with Supv. Robin Schmidt, Erickson has proposed several amendments to the 2009 budget. One would establish a committee to oversee sustainability projects. Another would allocate $500,000 in the capital budget to create a "Green Energy/Green Jobs Project Fund."

This fund would subsidize sustainable projects by county departments. "In a lot of cases, [green building] is more expensive," says Erickson. "We make a higher purchase upfront to achieve a sustainable goal and maybe in the long run same money on utility costs."

In an earlier post, I discussed the idea of "transition towns"--municipalities, mainly in England at that point, that had committed to re-imagining, re-configuring, and re-building themselves on a model of sustainability and post-carbon living.

Well, the Transition Handbook is now out and available online.  Here is an excerpt from the Introduction:

As I stood at the front of that hall, watching the room full of
laughing, twinkling people, waving their Totnes Pounds, I felt very
moved. There is a power here, I thought, which has remained largely
untapped. Surely when we think about peak oil and climate change we
should feel horrified, afraid, overwhelmed? Yet here was a room full of
people who were positively elated, yet were also looking the twin
challenges of peak oil and climate change square in the face.

Michael Pollan has written that one of the most important contributions average Americans can make to undoing global climate change is to grow a garden.  Certainly, here in the Midwest, even in urban centers in terms of community gardens, there is a whole lot of growing going on.

If he had thought about it longer, or had more room in his NY Times article, Pollan might have gotten around to the concept of xeriscaping, or landscaping to conserve water, reduce pollution and conserve energy.

It's a relatively new concept in landscaping, but the principles it uses are old and well-tested.  Here they are, according to Wikipedia:

1) Waterwise Planning and Design.

Between Peak Oil and global climate change, most clear thinking people in the U.S. realize that we are caught between a rock and a hard place, and that"change" is coming to our current way of life. 

What that change is and how it happens are the parts that are hard to pin down.

Presently, there are many nascent initiatives trying to get a handle on shaping and birthing these changes in basic living so that we can transition to a more sustainable economy.

Between terms like "green", "sustainability", "ecomunicipality" -- there is a similar scramble to create a language that best captures the spirit of the change that is necessary.

A leading contender for that new language is "Transition Towns".  These are towns (municipalities) that have embraced two essential goals in one simple paragraph:  

Sometime after WW II, riding cheap land, cheap oil and the U.S. Government's desire to pave the way for developers' latest and greatest idea, the suburb was born. Take some farm land, carve out lots, ribbon in the roads, then put up houses--mass produce houses--and get government to pay for remaining infrastructure and services.

The result has been an historic change in America's landscape, social history and civic infrastructure. People get a house cheap, they avoid the issues, congestion and noise of inner cities, and, with some driving every day, get to experience the American dream of comfort, security and success.

Only, as with most of America's exceptionalism fantasy, the dream has quietly, steadily revealed itself a nightmare. From the re-segregation of America's neighborhoods and schools, to the over-consumption of fossil fuels, to the loss of integral community in our social fabric, the suburb looks, sounds and smells more like an albatross around America's civic neck than our great innovation.

A "sustainable village," complete with natural sewage treatment, a school of organic agriculture and businesses powered by the sun, wind and renewable organic fuel could find a home in Fitchburg.

But first local organizers need to raise about $25 million for the 250-acre project.

I saw this from the good folks at CivicActions.

Jared Diamond penned an editorial in the NY Times recently. The author, whose field is the study of civilizational collapse, does not see much that is sustainable in the developed world's continuing pattern of consumption of resources.

TO mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the
fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is
even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles
between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at
which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes
like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North
America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the
developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.

Living in this part of Wisconsin, it is evident how far we have strayed from a sustainable way of life. There are cars, trucks, planes, buses--all run on fossil fuels--along with the whole agricultural economy, not to mention the recreational world of snowmobiles and ATVs.  Garbage trucks come home full every day.  We get our power from coal plants and here and there are ethanol production sites, belching steam and ruining watersheds.

Yet, only decades ago, this area was a rich, self-sustaining, locally oriented economy which produced its own food, products and energy. The know-how was among the people, from medicine to mushrooms, tinctures to trains, cabinetry to composting. They didn't need a lot of government, or corporations, or extensive educational facilities. 

They had in-tact, integral communities. They fed themselves, cared for their own, and lived good lives close to the land, values and people they loved.