“…all we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in the human population or the world economy….it is time for the environmental community—indeed everyone—to step outside the system and develop a deeper critique of what is going on.”

James Gustave Speth1, The Bridge at the Edge of the World

Given the critical state that our environment is in it is appropriate to ask ourselves as environmental leaders what we have done and are dong personally and organizationally to avert the crisis or at least lessen its impact. The questions below are a start at the deeper critique that Speth suggests. V SP welcomes other suggestions on how to begin this critique. We invite all environmental leaders (defined as the director and president of an organization, or journalist) to tell their story by answering the following questions and we will place the responses here in the order they are received. Please just answer the questions as best as you can, if you don’t know the answer just say so, and keep the answers short. If something changes the response can be later modified.

1. Do you believe that the earth’s ecological systems and as result civilization itself face a crisis and if so have you publicly acknowledged this fact?

2. We first learned about global warming in the 1980’s and it became very clear that this was happening in the early nineties. What year did you begin to speak out strongly about global warming? Please cite documentation.

3. Thousands of environmental leaders from all over the world attended the crucial Copenhagen Conference in 2009. Did you or someone from your organization attend? If not why not?

4. Environmental organizations have been promoting alternative energy. Have you personally installed photo voltaic or solar hot water? Has your organization installed a system on its building?

5. Have you demonstrated your personal commitment to the environment by publicly taking the VSP pledge to live more sustainably? If yes, how are you doing on it? If not why not?

6. Have you calculated your ecological footprint and if so what were the results?

7. What is your definition of sustainable?

8. What do you think is a likely sustainable population range for the state of Vermont?

9. What are some of the boldest, most creative, and most powerful actions you and your organization have done to promote sustainable living?

10. Speth says that we need to make systematic changes. What systematic changes do you think need to be made?

11. How do you inform yourself about what is going on with the environment?

12. Anything else you would like to say?
    

1Speth is the former dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale, is now a resident of Strafford, teaches as Vt. Law School, and is an advisor to the Vt. Natural Resources Council.

George Plumb, Executive Director, Vermonters for Sustainable Population - August 30, 2010

Yes and yes.

A letter-to-the-editor of the Times Argus on the Earth Day of April 20, 1996.

No. Neither VSP nor I could afford it. And, in all honesty, even if I could afford it being seventy-three and rather quiet in nature I probably wouldn’t have gone unless I had a friend or group to go with.

Yes, the AllSun Tracker system sold by All Earth Renewables. I work out of my home and do not have a separate office.

I have enthusiastically taken the pledge and am doing quite well on all the items. I still need to do a home energy audit. I feel guilty about brush hogging our fields every couple of years but I think it is better to keep them open for future agricultural use than it is to let them grow over to forests.

I live pretty frugally but was somewhat surprised to learn that even so if everyone on earth lived the way I do it would take over three earths to sustain us all. Ughhhh!!

To me sustainable means not consuming the finite non-renewable resources more than we absolutely have to, consuming the renewable resources at no faster rate than they can be renewed and biodiversity maintained, producing pollution no greater than what ecosystems can absorb, ands sharing resources so that all people have a reasonable quality of life.

A sustainable population range for Vermont is probably some place between what it was before we started relying on cheap fossil fuels in the late 1800’s and what it is today. Alternative energy sources will be able to make up for some of the loss of fossil fuels but not all. So that puts the Vermont range between 300,000 to 600,000 but it could be more or less depending also on the environmental impacts due to global warming.

Although not having any idea what the public reaction would be:

• I risked losing my job as a mid-level manager state employee when I was moved to protest the construction of the massive Hydro-Quebec dams that the state supported and that have proven to be so destructive to the Canadian environment and the Cree and Inuit native cultures of the area.

• I was the first person to write statewide about population growth as the primary cause of our environmental problems in the early nineties. Despite much trepidation at the time I have never been called a racist which is the only excuse I have heard from others about why they will not acknowledge the truth.

• I was the first person to write about the significant contribution that flying in jet planes makes to global warming and challenged the appropriateness of VPR sponsoring green house gas emitting jet trips to the distant lands of the Earth.

• I organized two 350.org actions, one of which was very challenging to organize.

• I, with support from VSP, researched and wrote the most comprehensive report every published on Vermont’s environment, The Disappearing Vermont? report.

• I wrote an op ed on the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day stating that the environmental situation has gotten much worse since the first Earth Day despite the fact that there has been a huge increase in the number of environmental organizations and college environmental programs since 1970.

• I and VSP initiated and have begun the marketing of the most powerful sustainable/green living pledge that Google produces.

• I and VSP, with the support of the Center for Biological Diversity, initiated the first Vermont public distribution of “Free Save a Species Condoms” held near the Burlington Farmer’s market at which we gave out 500 of the colorfully packaged condoms.

We need to move from a growth economy to a steady state economy.

I read almost every book that comes out about the environment. I belong to several list serves. I observe. I listen.

Whether working for the environment, social justice, or peace, we are all in this together!