E-M:/ Local Future: A Path to Sustainability

[Aaron Wissner <aaronwissner@yahoo.com>]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enviro-Mich message from Aaron Wissner <aaronwissner@yahoo.com>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I just wanted to give you the insiders scoop on how the Local Future 
efforts are going thus far.

...

Note: This is a rather long note about Local Future, its progress, and 
the path to sustainability that the organization envisions.  You are 
invited to read, and to share this if you wish, but there is (of course) 
no requirement to read.  Time, as I have recently learned since having 
my first child, is something that is often in very short supply.  :-)  
Best regards to you.

...

Officially, it has been less than three months since the first Local 
Future event, the "What a Way to Go" film in Middleville that reporter 
Neil King Jr. attended while here for his interview with me.  His 1,100 
word report on peak oil, and my place in it, made the front page of the 
Wall Street Journal.  Neil has since written about a half dozen articles 
in the Wall Street Journal that are clearly informed by his trip to 
Michigan.  This has helped move Michigan up a notch or two in the peak 
oil awareness and sustainability education arenas.

In Middleville, we held two additional Saturday events, "End of 
Suburbia" in February and "Power of Community" in March.  Not only were 
both well attended, but all three of the Saturday events received 
favorable local press and good word of mouth.  Local Future is starting 
to become known as a benevolent organization that is working for the 
welfare of the community.  This is essential in reaching out to a 
community divided by religion and politics.

We also started having weekly education events, simply by playing a DVD 
with an interesting talk, or inviting in a speaker, such as with Kurt 
Cobb's visit earlier this month.  These weekly events, while challenging 
to get consistent press on, have helped to bring together local people 
and has, to one degree or another, helped to support or motivate a local 
effort for the Middleville Green Days, which is being organized by Sue 
Merrill.  I believe Sue already had the ideas and the Local Future 
events simply provided the added incentive and confidence that Green 
Days was the right thing to do.  This Green Days effort is grassroots in 
nature, exactly the type of thing that the Local Future educational and 
discussion events hope to motivate and inspire.

Concurrently with the pilot efforts in Middleville, I've been working 
with a group of very interested volunteers on getting "The International 
Conference on Peak Oil and Climate Change: Paths to Sustainability" 
launched.  I picked the city of Grand Rapids due to its nearness, but 
also because the local U.S. Representative, Vern Ehlers, is part of the 
Congressional Peak Oil Caucus and was willing to meet and endorse the 
idea of the conference.  His staff assisted in finding a properly sized 
venue, which is Calvin College's Fine Arts Center.  After meeting with 
their events coordinator, I decided to go ahead with the conference, 
despite the personal financial risk it puts me in.  My reasoning is that 
life is short and this may be my only chance to do something this 
important, and it is worth putting my money where my mouth is.

Back to the volunteers, based on their excellent work and encouragement, 
we have the SustainabilityConference.org web site, the excellent 
graphics, the poster design, the trifold, several networks to get out 
the word, a great proposed schedule for breakout "Paths to 
Sustainability" and more.  By using the graphics and trifold, we managed 
to find another person who is burning to see the conference a success, 
and she is joining the planning committee, bringing new connections, new 
ideas, perspective, and energy to the table.

So far, we have over fifty registrants who have already paid their way, 
we have over twenty speakers, and we have a dozen or two people 
interested in presenting at the breakout sessions.  Plus, there are 
several people who have taken it on their own initiative to start 
promoting the conference, including putting up the posters, emailing 
their networks and friends, and even an effort in Traverse City to host 
a forum as a prelude to the conference.  These contributions are what 
will make the conference a great success.  And yet, of course, there is 
always much, much more to do.  We probably need another twenty 
volunteers working on the conference committee alone.  My wife Kimberly, 
a project manager, worked on the conference project schedule this week, 
and there are probably a hundred tasks that still need to be done, the 
most important being getting out the word, so all that would want to 
attend know what is going on.

As a side note, the conference itself is being designed so that it can 
be replicated or modified by any person or group of people who want to 
host their own sustainability conference.  We already are looking at 
doing a second conference and have a major business interested in 
helping to see this happen.  The dream would be to have similar 
conferences in every nation, and in every state, using primarily local 
speakers, and focusing on building community and a vision for a path to 
sustainability for that locale.

Back to the local community efforts, we are working to get the Grand 
Rapids Michigan education events started.  A student at the local 
community college is working within the college to organize events.  
They will be screening "What a Way to Go" in April, and with any luck, 
this will help us to connect with more like-minded people; those 
concerned with the future for both ourselves, our families, and our 
communities.  In addition, it looks like the groundwork is being laid in 
both Holland and Hastings for similar efforts, with or without the Local 
Future moniker.

There is also the online effort, putting videos and articles online to 
help others learn and understand about peak oil, sustainability, and 
other related concepts.  I currently have on video a dozen or two 
hi-quality talks that are ready to be published.  The only thing putting 
them on hold is the time to properly edit them so they can be 
published.  This is a somewhat technical task.  I expect that at some 
point someone will volunteer to take part of this task on.  Local 
Future, after all, is a strictly volunteer effort, and the volunteers 
and supporter are going to be the primary factor in the speed of its growth.

Local Future is designed to bring together all people interested in 
moving towards a brighter future.  Given all of the problems in the 
world today, we can see that the path we, as a world culture, are 
walking is one that leads nowhere good.  Getting to something better 
will only be possible by coming together under a shared vision of the 
future.  This vision, more likely than not, will be achievable by 
understanding the nature of unsustainability in our world, and in also 
formalizing the system of principles and values that will provide the 
vehicle to get us to that future.  Luckily, these values are nothing 
new, and it is primarily a matter of inviting people to recognize that 
they share dreams and values in common, and then reminding ourselves 
that only by concerted effort can we achieve these dreams.

Sustainability, as a concept, is so poorly understood by most, that to 
talk of it without definition is almost fruitless.  To be sustainable 
means that a given practice can continue forever without negative 
impacts now or in the future.  One could imagine a community of people 
living together in a way that does not diminish their environment or 
ecosystem but also provides for their individual and community needs.  
Such a community, if sustainable, could continue for hundreds or 
thousands of years, in harmony and balance with its surroundings.  When 
looked at from the outside, a sustainable community would appear to be 
part of the natural systems of the world.  That is because a sustainable 
community IS a natural system.

Local Future envisions paths to sustainability.  As we start on our 
journey's along these paths, our goal is to move closer to this vision 
of sustainability.  In reality, even the shortest of these paths may 
takes decades or centuries to follow.  Our goal is to move along a path, 
towards sustainability, and to invite those around us on the journey as 
well.  This journey is a transition away from the unsustainable global 
culture which reduces our unhealthy and dangerous dependence on imported 
food, energy, products and services, and allows the development of new 
local cultures that provide for all these needs and more.  In reality, 
with the coming decline in world energy supply, we can either be forced 
into a new lifestyle by the laws of nature as they collide with our 
unsustainable ways, or we can transition to sustainability by our own 
choice, and in our own manner.  I prefer the latter.

Thank you for reading.  I hope that this note, wordy as it may be, gives 
you a bit of insight into the thinking behind Local Future.  I am happy 
to know that I am not alone on this quest for sustainability, and I want 
you to know that you are not alone either.  We are together, each of us 
a small part of Earth, and each of us desiring a brighter, happier, and 
better world in the future.

Best regards,

Aaron

P.S.  If the above resonates with you, I really hope you will 
participate in the conference.  Here is the web site:  
http://sustainabilityconference.org    Or perhaps you will gather with 
others for an upcoming event:  http://localfuture.org    All the best to 
you.  :-)

--
Aaron Wissner
aaronwissner@yahoo.com

Local Future Network
http://localfuture.org

Value System: Gas Prices, Money, Peak Oil and The Future
http://valuesystem.livejournal.com

New Culture Videos
http://www.youtube.com/newculture


==============================================================
ENVIRO-MICH:  Internet List and Forum for Michigan Environmental
and Conservation Issues and Michigan-based Citizen Action.   Archives at
http://www.great-lakes.net/lists/enviro-mich/

Postings to:  enviro-mich@great-lakes.net      For info, send email to
majordomo@great-lakes.net  with a one-line message body of  "info enviro-mich"
==============================================================