Vermont Environmental Consortium

February 20, 2007
The Environmental Tipping Point?
by
Daniel Hecht

If you’ve got a bottle of champagne handy, break it over the bow of the new era that’s being launched. Or, to further mix metaphors, to celebrate an important tipping point that appears to have been reached.

The tipping point is a critical change in public awareness of energy and the environment. During the last few weeks, we’ve seen acknowledgement of the importance of global warming and renewable energy from every quarter. Vermont’s Legislature kicked off the 2007 session by taking testimony on global warming and its impacts. Gov. Douglas stressed the same concerns in his inaugural address. So did Pres. George Bush in his State of the Union address.

An Inconvenient Truth, your daily paper, the nightly news, your kid’s classroom, those reusable bags at Shaw’s, Rep. Peter Welch’s carbon-neutral operations: suddenly, it’s everywhere.

True, the news is generally dire – global warming and prospective energy shortages are downright scary. That’s why I was pleased to hear both Senate Pres. Pro Tem Shumlin and Gov. Douglas stress that there’s a silver lining to this cloud – an opportunity.

The opportunity is that those who respond entrepreneurially to these challenges stand to make some good money and to effect real change. And here in Vermont, we’ve got an abundance of individuals, companies, public agencies, and organizations rising to the challenge. During the last ten years or so, while Washington wasn’t looking, there’s been a grass-roots groundswell of market-oriented and community-based environmental action.

It’s happening in your neighborhood: Environmental technology development, green building design, environmental education. Community initiatives on energy, greenhouse gases, sprawl. Renewable energy grown on our farms, new models of economic development, green consumer goods, value-added products made from recovered waste materials -- once at the edge of our awareness, such activities are poised to take a central role in Vermont’s economy.

Of course, the tipping point in awareness may have been reached, but a vastly more stubborn, lopsided tilt has yet to be levered over. We’ll need to change every aspect of the way we live if we want to do so sustainably and securely.

We’ll need to replace public infrastructure with environmentally-friendly alternatives, change our transportation habits, and make our homes energy-efficient. We’ll have to move away from centrally-generated fossil-fuel power generation to distributed, renewable energy systems. Farmers will need to squeeze every bit of value out of their land’s natural resources. Colleges will have to produce graduates with the knowledge needed to cope with environmental and energy problems -- and to get jobs in the burgeoning green enterprise sector.

It’s a tall order -- daunting, really.

Good thing we’ve already begun the process.

That’s what this column is about. Its goal is to let you know about what’s happening in your neighborhood that’s going to improve the outlook. I’ll introduce you to the individuals who are working to effect change, look at promising new technologies, and acquaint you with the resources available to help make the shift to sustainability.

I’ll also talk about new concepts that increasingly shape our business and community landscape, globally and locally: ideas like “natural capitalism,” “life cycle economics,” “complex systems theory,” “GIS-based modeling,” and others. (Ironically, many of these are simply common sense, based on traditional ideas like “waste not, want not” and “a penny saved is a penny earned.”

My perspective comes not from my career as a novelist, but from my role as director of the Vermont Environmental Consortium (VEC), so I should introduce the organization.

It’s is a nonprofit membership organization that promotes market-based solutions to environmental challenges (or, equally, seeks environmentally-sound approaches to economic development). It works to corral and focus the expertise of Vermont’s environmental businesses, public agencies, nonprofits, and educational institutions.

VEC operates on the principal of the Three Musketeers” All for one, one for all. That is, combining the know-how and capacities of all these entities benefits each one of them, and holds huge promise for Vermont’s economy and environment.

To mix metaphors yet again, VEC is the nerve-center of Vermont’s environmental grapevine. We work with green enterprises throughout the state to help them achieve their goals. We connect initiatives over here, in one area of knowledge, to what’s going on over there, in another. Scores of collaborations are springing up in our communities, and they’re the muscle that’ll pivot that next tipping point.

I guarantee that you’ll be astonished at what this green enterprise community is doing.

At VEC, we define “green enterprise” broadly: it’s the whole spectrum of things people do that benefit the environment. Our members include engineers who remediate pollution, inventors working to develop renewable energy technologies, environmental educators, people finding new uses for wasted resources, farmers using sustainable practices, retailers and installers of green technologies, sustainable community development consultants, nonprofit staff working to create sustainable jobs, manufacturers who make products using environmentally-friendly methods and materials, and so on.

“Market based” simply means effecting environmental preservation through business-oriented activities and financial incentives.

People tend to become environmentally active for one of three reasons. Some are motivated primarily by values – the desire to preserve the natural world in its splendor and vitality. Some are motivated by financial incentives – they see that there’s a good market for green services and products. Some are pragmatists who recognize that we can’t survive without breathable air, drinkable water, healthy ecosystems, clean and productive soil, etc., and that we’d better stop destroying these necessities -- quickly.

I’ve always been a “values” type, a tree hugger and proud of it. But over the years I’ve seen an evolution in thinking about how to protect the natural world. For example, when elephants came close to extinction from poaching some years ago, conservationists’ first effort was to hire well-armed patrols to protect them. It made for some gruesome shootouts and didn’t save any elephants.

So then people tried a market-based approach. In 1990, applying top-down pressure, 115 nations joined the CITES treaty to ban ivory sales; on the ground, preservation groups created ways for local people value live elephants more than dead ones. Ecotourism and scientific research provided former poachers with jobs as tour guides, research assistants, trackers, hotel staff, and so on, that paid better than shooting elephants. In Kenya, illegal elephant kills went from 900 per year to only 40 in the 16 years since the ban! Elephants are still gravely at risk, but this incentive-oriented model has already made a significant difference.

Ultimately, the three approaches are interdependent. If you come from the “values” perspective, you’ll find that to clean up pollution or cut energy use you need the help of professionals who provide specialized knowledge, services, and technologies. If you’re a financially-motivated green business person, you can’t sell your goods or services unless there’s a demand – that is, unless society broadly embraces and invests in environmental values and policies. And if you’re a pragmatist, you know we’ve got to harness both motivations and get to work.

This column will cover all three angles – and the places where they converge.

So, today let’s break another bottle of champagne over the Times Argus to celebrate the launch of this column. Next time, we’ll look at some of our neighbors who are doing the good work, making the good news. Stay tuned.

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