7gen Bloc

Yesterday's summit at Seventh Generation, Creating a Game Plan for the Transition to a Sustainable U.S. Economy, was full of the kind of talk I often have with myself: How can we, as a nation, change what we are doing to respond to the massive threats of the coming decades -- the economic crisis, the energy crisis, the water crisis, the food crisis, the security crisis, the leadership crisis, the healthcare crisis, the educational crisis, the climate crisis; you name it, we seem to be facing this all at once.

Better that we are facing it now, when we have a chance to plan a controlled descent, rather than have it reach the point of absolute crisis when we'll be scrambling for solutions that might only hack at the branches of the problem without ever reaching the root. So what's the root? I caught glimpses yesterday, which I tweeted as they were presented. Here are my compiled tweets:

Larry Susskind, MIT:
"Any sustainability solution has to include how we make decisions in democracies."

Will Raap, Gardener's Supply:
"How do we get to net zero on food and energy systems?"
"How do we have policies that incentivize the human scale -- as small as possible?"
"What was Costa Rica rated #1 at last week? Happiest."

Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University:
"Earth is not a resource, it is the source of life."

Thomas Dietz, Michigan State University:
"Ecological Efficiency = Human Well Being/Ecological Impact"
"Well Being Intensity = Ecological Impact/Human Well Being"

Ellen Kahler, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund:
"Solutions must use local economies, systems, individuals, etc."
"Horizontally networked economy, rather than vertically integrated."

Hunter Lovins, Natural Capital Solutions:
"There is now an irrefutable case for business sustainability."
"All institutions must be restorative."
"Do we exist to serve economy or does it exist to serve us?"
"There is no law that says humans will survive."

Richard Heinberg, Institute for Global Communications:
"Peak Oil occurred 7/11/2008."
"Expansion phase of industrial civilization is over."
"High oil prices caused hard recession on its own, normal recovery stalled by rising energy cost."
"Key is resilience -- economies must re-localize."

Bill Becker, Presidential Climate Action Project:
"Corporations & Cities key to reducing greenhouse gasses."
"Youth are key to solving climate crisis; pass on lessons to them."
climateactionproject.com/envision.php

Lawrence Forcier, University of Vermont:
"Any path to sustainability has to focus on local communities."

John Isham, Middlebury College:
"Tomorrow at 12:34:56PM, it will be 12:34:56 7/8/9 (2009). A unique moment in time."

Wes Jackson, The Land Institute:
"Humans act no differently than bacteria when seeking carbon."
"No technological solution to soil depletion."
"Goal is to perrenialize all crops. #1 killer is corn; #2 killer is soybeans."
"We must move agriculture from an extractive industry to a renewable industry."

Elliot Hoffman of New Voice of Business:
"No system can work without a sense of morals and ethics at its core."