Part 2 of 2: Retrospective On Our Renovations

Photo Credit: 2 Miles

June 16th, 2012
Claire McEachern

In a relaxed and calm voice, mixed with hints of jest, Van Jones greeted the assembled crowd by saying, "I may be preaching to the green choir, but I want to brag a little bit…"

From the Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s recent MBA recipients, to the local green industry veterans, such as Energy Trust, the Sustainable Industries Economic Forum (held June 13th, 2012, in Portland, OR) brought together a keenly interested and progressive audience. Every eye and ear was poised, anxiously awaiting a story of success. One could almost hear the mental buzz of global news, tweets, timeline updates, blog posts, and RSS feeds spooning out messages of doom and gloom into our collective sub-conscious.

Let us not forget to mention that Mr. Jones was also there to promote his new book: Rebuilding the Dream.

He began by reminding us how representatives in DC use the term “job killers” for environmentalists. But the statistics from the past several years show a very different reality. According to Brookings Institute, the green economy has created over 2.4 million jobs and includes the fastest growing sectors. This is in despite of a bad economy and a politically “stuck” world.

Curious then, that there still remains division within the United States and around the world on whether or not to fully embrace and integrate the green economy. How does this division persist when even the most skeptical among us have recently been heard to say, “The weather wasn’t quite like this before…”


Fear and Fallacies

The answer hides is the rhetoric spouted by the personification of fear. Fear hands us an ultimatum with a dagger hidden in plain sight. It says to us,

“Who do you love more, your children or your grand children? If your children are the answer, then you must consume everything that you can now and leave your grandchildren with no earthly inheritance. However, if you choose your grandchildren, do nothing and stand still. Your grandchildren will receive a beautiful planet but your children will starve.”

This is the ultimatum that results from, what Mr. Jones calls the “3 Fallacies of the Last Economy”. Drum roll please…

1. We can have an economy based on consumption rather than production. 
2. The economy does not need to be based on thrift and smart savings, but on credit. 
3. An economy, based on ecological destruction versus restoration, can continue indefinitely.  

This is the economy that just collapsed. What we need now is production, thrift, and restoration. In order to move forward we must reject this false choices and focus our efforts in two areas: the clean energy and organic food revolutions.

Yippee – It’s an Election Year! 

4 years ago...

A guy ran for the presidency and proclaimed that climate change is real. In fact, humans help cause it, Cap & Trade is a real solution, and the green economy will create jobs. That was John McCain, and one of the rare things he and Obama agreed on.

So, why didn't we get as much done as we hoped in the past four years? Well, we took a broad and shallow approach. We also didn't get the people, who had enough spine and tenure, to stand up and fight the good fight.

Maybe the biggest takeaway is that we stayed within our own ranks. Rather than listening to the concerns and needs of those across the table, we told them, in our own terms, what they needed. We’ve got to speak their language and understand their culture.

Photo Credit: 2 Miles

Mr. Jones presented the audience with an example of how this strategy can embrace the libertarian ideologies within sustainable solutions to our energy and economic crises:

“Shouldn't every American have the right and liberty to power their own homes [with solar, hydro, and other small scale renewable power sources]? Would we rather be dictated to by the conglomerate energy companies.”

Who else? The red states.

Why? Because they have the sun and the wind. Did you know family farms can receive $20,000 per year for putting a wind farm on their property?

‘Scrilla

Have you heard the recent buzz about austerity policies? The euro crisis? How about their relative, the stuck-in the-mud US Congress, who joined the family in 2010?

We may be seeing the real life proof of the entrepreneurial, free market euphemism, “you’ve got to spend money to make money”.

The former approach results in feeding our children pizza and soda for lunch for the mere cost of $1.57. The latter cultivates local organic food production accessible to the urban core.

The ‘American Dream’ or a Zombie Attack? 

Know this, “You can't just give a poor kid money and expect them to climb out of poverty. [We] need to give them the ladder to climb so that they can earn it.”

Also know this, “There are two kinds of smart people in the world: One kind can take simple things and make them complex to confuse people. The other can take complex things and make them simple to empower people.”

A key takeaway from Mr. Jones’ passionate recitation was that there are two realities in which we can choose to lead our lives from here on out: the American Dream or the American Fantasy. The Fantasy needs to be killed off and we need to focus on pursuing the Dream, which was so eloquently put forth by Dr. Martin Luther King.

It’s not about elitism, but about freedom. It’s not about looting, but about learning and earning. It’s about understanding and communicating our “moral rational frameworks” so that we can find common ground.

We need macro planning and micro development solutions as our economic agenda.

And as solution providers, it is our responsibility to reach out and work with them rather than expecting them walk into a stranger’s den.

<-- Part 1