by Jane Dwinell and Dana Dwinell-Yardley

Here we are, at the beginning of a new year. Cold Vermont Januarys are great for dreaming, so as we head into 2009, the two of us have been thinking. What will make this a great year for our state? What changes do we want to see in 2009? What are our hopes for Vermont and her people? Here are our wishes for an independent 2009.

Two of my favorite thinkers, Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry, teamed up in today's New York Times to call for a "50-year Farm Bill."

Money quotes:

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billons of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

Any restorations will require, above all else, a substantial increase in the acreages of perennial plants. The most immediately practicable way of doing this is to go back to crop rotations that include hay, pasture and grazing animals.

But a more radical response is necessary if we are to keep eating and preserve our land at the same time. In fact, research in Canada, Australia, China and the United States over the last 30 years suggests that perennialization of the major grain crops like wheat, rice, sorghum and sunflowers can be developed in the foreseeable future. By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can better protect the soil and substantially reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution.

Carbon sequestration would increase, and the husbandry of water and soil nutrients would become much more efficient...

[W]e also need a national agricultural policy that is based upon ecological principles. We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.

I used to think that planning with a 50- or 100-year perspective would automatically bring sustainability. People would realize that 50 or 100 years from now, we won't have the fossil fuel and other non-renewable resources to live the way we do now, so they'd plan for something sustainable. 

The trick is getting to that point. It's all very well to agree on a sustainable policy for 50 or 100 years from now, without laying the groundwork for getting through the next decade. There are lots of ways of measuring sustainability; a sine qua non of a sustainable food system is that people in it don't starve. That's not true for the present US food system. Given uncertainties about future supplies of oil, and the near certainty that oil availability will wind down before we're properly prepared for it, it's vital to have local food production, rather independent of national agricultural systems. A Farm Bill (or Food Bill, as Michael Pollan would prefer to call it) is only sustainable if it includes rapid increases in locally produced food, with clear ways for low-income people to access that food, preferably through growing and selling it.

"We as Americans are waking up to the fact that our houses are too big, our cars are too big, our bellies are too big, our debt is too big, and we're going to have to go on a diet," said Paco Underhill, chief executive of Envirosell Inc., a New York-based consumer behavior research and consulting firm.

Nice to see the Chicago Tribune facing the cold hard facts here. Maybe it's because they are bankrupt as well?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-outlook-retail-0102-jan02...

It amazes me how fast the culture has shifted from "bling" to "thrift" as a response to the now-official economic downturn. Even the mainstream media suddenly offers advice on, say, substituting cheaper fizzy wine for real Champaign in your holiday parties. But as the USA slowly discovers that it is a lot less wealthy than it imagined, the real work on how to live within our means has only begun.

Safe, Clean, Reliable – Not! The “Replace Vermont Yankee” 2009 Town Meeting Initiative
by Dan Dewalt

Find out more at www.replaceVY.org

“Shall the voters of the town of ___________request the Vermont legislature to:    

Safe, Clean, Reliable – Not! The “Replace Vermont Yankee” 2009 Town Meeting Initiative
by Dan Dewalt

Find out more at www.replaceVY.org

“Shall the voters of the town of ___________request the Vermont legislature to:    

In my continuing test of getting around Vermont without use of my own car, I put together the most elaborate day ever last Sunday. With five carpool legs, and a bicycle ride to and from Montpelier at the beginning and end of the day, I got from my house in East Montpelier to Plainfield village to a homestead in Plainfield to a farm in Cabot and back again.

I've had much more complicated travel arrangements when hitchhiking, and people who commute by hitchhiking probably have elaborate logistics every day. For me,  I think this is the first time I'd choreographed the intricate, precisely timed sets of rides ahead of time.

Prediction: This will soon be a focus of the the US Energy Plan. Mining the moon for fuel to enable cold-fusion. The technology is no joke, and could power a "colonial" atmosphere in space with by 2025. Reportedly there is enough H3 on the moon to fuel the Earth with cold-fusion (no radioactive waste) for 1000+ years. This is what they mean when they say that nukes are part of our energy future, and this is why Chu is Obama's new Energy-man.

This email from Bill McKibben and the 350.org group caught my attention. Perhaps the Environmental movements are realizing that our corrupt gargantuan government is the root cause of our environmental problems, and that a real platform for change needs to be based on re-localiztion, State's rights, and secession. Maybe we won't realize this until after Obama disappoints us with his upcoming emphasis on "clean coal," natural gas and nukes, with token increases in support for renewable energy and conservation.

Dear Friends,

Fuel is cheap for the moment. So is TALK, as it always has been. I advocate that we invest this cheap fuel into what should be our top priority: building local renewable food and fuel economies.

And here's a radical thought: immediately dispense with spending energy on "talk" about illusionist social distractions around race, gender, religion, social services and education. We first need to straighten out our food and energy economies in Vermont. We will have to make some sacrifices to do this.