Will this webinar be available after the event? I have a time conflict at the time of the webinar.

More voices, many more voices are needed.

A comment for review by the Chapel Hill Planning Board and the Sustainability Committee Meeting,
June 5, 2012

One of the most widely appreciated definitions of sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. From my point of view, it is about saving environmental resources, setting limits on economic and population growth, providing good quality of life for all and developing a sustainable economy at the local level.

Local governments can contribute to sustainability in many different ways. Some of the most popular activities villages, towns and cities can undertake are:
• developing greenways
• saving energy and using renewable energy sources
• providing good public transport
• recycling waste
• educating citizens about sustainability
• supporting diversified, small businesses
• involving local stakeholders in policy and planning and
• reducing CO2 emissions.
These are “popular” activities and readily receive support. I would like to turn your attention to requirements for necessary local change that are decidedly unpopular and related to seemingly endless economic growth and unbridled increases in the human population of Chapel Hill.
Somehow, we have to master the art of thinking globally and acting locally. If we can do this one thing, “think globally”, it becomes evident that riveting attention on more and more growth could be a grave mistake because we are denying how economic and population growth in the community in which we live cannot continue as it has until now. Each village’s resources are being dissipated, each town’s environment degraded and every city’s fitness as place for our children to inhabit is being threatened. To proclaim, as the CHN does on 5/20/12, that “the meat of Chapel Hill 2020 is, of course, growth” fails to acknowledge that the Town of Chapel Hill is already ‘built out’, and also ‘filled in’ with people. If the quality of life we enjoy now is to be maintained for the children, then limits on economic and population growth will have to be set. By so doing, we choose to “act locally” and sustainably.
More economic and population growth are no longer sustainable in many too many places on the surface of Earth because biological constraints and physical limitations are immutably imposed upon ever increasing human consumption, production and population activities of people in many communities where most people reside worldwide. Inasmuch as the Earth is finite with frangible environs, there comes a point at which more growth is unsustainable. There is much work to done locally. But that effort cannot reasonably begin without sensibly limiting economic and population growth.
To quote the same edition of the CHN again, “We face a wide-open opportunity to break with the old ways of doing the town’s business…..” That is a true statement. But the necessary “break with the old ways” of continuous economic and population growth is not what is occurring. There is a call for a break with the old ways, but the required changes in behavior are not what are being proposed as we plan for the future. What is being proposed and continues to occur is more of the same, old business-as-usual overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities, the very distinctly human activities that appear to be growing unsustainably. More business-as-usual could soon become patently unsustainable, both locally and globally. A finite planet with the size, composition and environs of the Earth and a community with the boundaries, limited resources and wondrous climate of villages, towns and cities where we live may not be able to sustain much longer the economic and population growth that is occurring on our watch. Perhaps necessary changes away from unsustainable growth and toward sustainable lifestyles and right-sized corporate enterprises are in the offing.
Think globally while there is still time and act locally before it is too late for human action to make any difference in the clear and presently dangerous course of unfolding human-induced ecological events, both in our planetary home and in our villages, towns and cities.
Let me close with a comment from a June 3, 2012 CHN letter by a town neighbor, Nancy Elkins, “If ‘the meat of Chapel Hill 2020 is, of course, growth’ then we have wasted our time working on Chapel Hill 2020 during the past months. Chapel Hill 2020 must not go forward on this premise without the necessary restraints that a long-term plan must have.”
Thank you.
Steven Earl Salmony