Melissa Everett has been a participant-observer in movements to create greener, more livable communities since 1980, working as a journalist, career counselor, researcher on the dynamics of social movements, fundraiser and nonprofit CEO. She is author of three books including the award-winning Making a Living While Making a Difference: Conscious Careers for an Era of Interdependence.. Her PhD is from Erasmus University in the Netherlands with a focus on the dynamics of community change. MGB wanted to know what this lifelong advocate for sustainability had to say about where it’s all going- and how to make sure we end up somewhere we’d like to be.
It’s been said that there’s no such thing as a crisis without an inherent opportunity. Do you think there are opportunities arising in the current crisis, and what might those be?
There are opportunities everywhere, and they’re related to necessity: personal and business opportunities to take charge of our lives, and societal opportunities to break out of a seriously limiting set of assumptions about human nature. Tom Friedman recently published a stunning column in the New York Times suggesting that we have reached a true wall, where both the deeper logic of the economy, and the inherent workings of Mama Nature, are sending a message of “no more.” People are lousy at pattern recognition, but we have to realize that the opportunity is only visible if we look away from our habitual directions – really shift the gaze. If we try to recover the same economy that is self-destructing around us, clearly we lose.
So what’s the new direction?
Economic strategies designed for stable equilibrium, and selective growth of whatever we may really choose to grow (like jobs right now). For example, life-cycle cost analysis for buildings and other investments. Another example is new thinking about scarcity and its implications. Energy and virgin materials are increasingly scarce. Labor is plentiful. So we should seek out economic strategies that expand employment rather than creating false “efficiencies” of resources while making people less necessary. This kind of economic thinking yields fewer huge profits, but more steady returns. One of the troublesome reasons that those long-awaited green collar jobs are taking off slowly, is that there are labor costs as well as the costs of production capacity, and in the Hudson Valley we have many small businesses that have a hard time getting ahead enough to grow their work forces.
How do we build investment in good green collar jobs?
One part is getting the policy framework right. We need electric rates that reward energy-efficiency and renewables more strongly. We need local building codes that incorporate high-performance green features, and code officials who make it easy for the builders to innovate.
One part, I believe, is directly creating the next wave of markets through the development of large-scale public or private projects that will demonstrate not only feasibility, but desirability, of green technologies at a significant scale. There has been a project going for ages called One Million Solar Roofs; we’re nowhere close. But it’s my theory that a hundred solar roofs in one community will help a lot more than thousands of them scattered randomly about. Creating demonstration projects at this kind of concentration is our dream in Kingston along the Broadway Corridor, which we have boldly renamed the Green Trail. We’ve started with fairly easy stuff – organizing cyclists to support bike amenities like racks and a route map (and real routes!), and connecting some of the institutions with help for energy improvements. But the real vision of the trail is to demonstrate sustainable energy, landscaping and transportation alternatives in a concentrated fashion, in a part of the city that needs a breakthrough.
Both those aspects – policy and demonstration projects – take time to gel. They also need commitment and passion. I’m excited about the popularity of the Green Jobs Pledge – created by the grassroots organization Green for All, but endorsed by the US Conference of Mayors. We have a conversation going with city government about making Kingston the first Hudson Valley city to adopt that pledge – which is a commitment to practical planning to build the businesses that make the jobs.
How can people begin and grow sustainability networks in their own communities? Where to start?
Start with an itch that the community is trying to scratch: an unaffordable new piece of technology we seem to need, or a regulation about to whack us. Figure out a lower-impact, more proactive approach. If we might need a new wastewater treatment plant that will cost millions, it could be time to generate interest in a rain garden initiative that will retain water where it falls and avert that cost for awhile. If we’re arguing about expanding a roadway, listen closer and see whether there’s a constituency interested in mass transit or cycling options. Look at where environmental and economic goals can align, and then where there is work to be done that looks like jobs. Review tool kits like the DEC’s Climate Smart Communities Pledge and Tool Kit or the Green Jobs Pledge and voluminous resources available from Green for All. Review case studies. And think about community organizing – but not in the conventional, us/ them way. Think about bringing together diverse groups in the community around a shared, juicy agenda that they could agree on and get energized by. And tap that power of community to deepen your understanding of the work ahead.
If the community is Kingston, let me put in a quick plug for an immediate opportunity to start... Or really to plug in with a remarkable citizen-led effort that is taking form. Saturday April 4, with our friends at the Hudson Valley Smart Growth Alliance, the Kingston Green Trail partners are helping to produce a conference called “Magnetizing Downtowns and Historic Village Centers” at the Seven21 Media Center. We will let in late registrants who found out about the conference by reading this, and it will launch projects that readers can easily get involved with.
Will community get us through times of no money better than money got us through times of very little community?
Conscious community – which has never really gone away – will certainly help a lot, because it supports individual transitions, moves information and inspiration around helpfully, and helps goods and services to go farther, as with car-sharing and neighborhood tool sheds, not to mention the Victory Gardens that our city is now birthing.
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