Isn't it odd how two seemingly separate ideas get fused by making one extra connection between them? I've been following civic politics lately as Summerland makes it's way through an official community plan. Ecological changes are obviously on my mind. In a moment of supposed serendipity I visited Robert Paterson's consulting site and followed his link to The Natural Step. The organization has developed an entire framework for communities to move towards sustainability and sums up their challenge like this:
The Challenge
Many of the social and environmental problems associated with the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption of modern society are manifested on the community level. Communities are where we live and work, and therefore where the impacts of our collective decisions about matters that affect our land, air and water become most obvious.
It's not a broad brush anti-development agenda and I really appreciate that because growth does happen. Canmore and Whistler are already on board and those are both resort towns that are growing. I checked the local library for one of the primers on The Natural Step program and was pleased to find that two of three district copies were already in the Summerland branch - there is hope!
I was both delighted and infinitely depressed to find out how far ahead communities are in Sweden. Can you imagine government inspired experiments in "green" and affordable housing? Subsidized alternative energy plants? A focus on making the towns pedestrian and bicycle oriented? I'm still more authority oriented than I would like to be, so to see a federal level government taking this seriously secretly affirms for me that I'm not some random deluded voice in the wilderness (even though I already know I'm not...).
So I wonder what it takes to run for council? ha.
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