This chapter begins with a personal view of what the journey to achieve sustainability means, the successes and challenges along the way, the personal rewards, and the relationships that evolve. It explores the necessity of including the bottom rung of our socio-economic ladder in any plan for sustainability, building on the author's organizing experience in dealing with Welfare to Work in Rural New Mexico, and community activities aimed at creating a sustainability "model" from the greater Taos Community. The reference point will be a "Uniform Code of Sustainability" drafted with help from Hazel Henderson, Donella Meadows, Paul Hawken and others--the principal feature of which is a statement of "Human" sustainability, outlining the conditions necessary to allow for a meaningful quality of life for all stakeholders.

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

I have always been deeply interested in the spiritual aspect of life, and in the 1970's and 80's devoted years to the practice of yoga and meditation. Over time I came to some conclusions of my own, however, that differed from most of the religious and spiritual doctrines I had studied. For example, I didn't believe in the idea (adopted to an extreme by many "New Age" folks) that you can make your life anything you want. I think that at birth and through our lives we are dealt cards to work with--and I saw that the hands dealt to an awful lot of people were circumstantially pretty lousy. As little control as I believed we had over circumstances, however, I did conclude that the attitude with which we approach life has a great deal to do with how we experience it. I decided quite early that I would try to approach life with a sense of gratitude, no matter what happened to me. Eventually I began to see the spiritual and religious disciplines I put myself through not as ends in themselves, but simply as training to maintain that attitude. Also, in seeking to understand the emotional and circumstantial turmoil of my own life I concluded that my soul was calling forth the experiences I needed for my own spiritual evolution. These principles (belief in a kind of flexible pre-destination, and the power of gratitude to temper all life's experiences) became the bedrock of my own philosophy.

But what could I do with such a philosophy? As I entered the 1990's I realized I had spent years in what I now regarded as self-absorption in my own spiritual growth. And though I would hardly consider such efforts unimportant, I now felt the urgent need to give my philosophy expression through my actions. I needed work that would satisfy my longing for meaning. In 1993 the catastrophic loss of my home, my business, my possessions and a good friend in the Malibu Fire, as well as the breakup of a marriage, opened the door to all sorts of possibilities. I moved to New Mexico, started writing, published a book of photographs, painted a large body of watercolors, and did a musical tour of New Zealand with a friend. But none of these activities seemed to pan out into a meaningful vocation.

Circumstances deteriorated. Legal and financial problems were pressing in on me. Family relationships were stressed to the max. I began praying in earnest for guidance and support--not for any particular end, but that my own destiny would manifest itself (whatever it might be). Then, in 1995 I began doing research for a book I wanted to write, entitled "Graduates from Spiritual Communities." It would be based on interviews with people who had formerly spent ten or more years living with spiritual groups such as the Hari Krishnas, the Sikhs, the Buddhists, and others. My premise was that these folks, and thousands more like them who had re-integrated into the mainstream were carrying progressive and spiritually-based values and ideals which were transforming our culture from the inside.

In the course of some thirty interviews I always asked my subjects' opinions on government--particularly the US government. Even knowing that a lot of these people had come, as I had, out of the counter-culture of the 60's I was surprised at the intensity and consistency of views that I found among them. No one was neutral or ambivalent. Almost without exception they said that the current government neither served their needs nor expressed their ideals or values. And they were not talking about the Clinton Administration. One particularly vehement gentleman referred to our current government structure as a "corporate-driven, fascist plutocracy which pays mere lip service to democracy."

That might have been a little extreme, but if American democracy wasn't working for all these people, what system of government would serve and express the values of a "spiritually-minded" public? This question fired my imagination and led me back into a passionate and intensive review of political and economic history. I read Plutarch's "Lives," the "Federalist Papers," works by John Paine, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Washington, Franklin. I studied mainstream history books, and historical diatribes written from the far left to the far right. I read contemporary works like Paul Hawken's "Ecology of Commerce," Jerry Mander's "Case Against the Global Economy," David Korten's "When Corporations Rule the World", Chellis Glendinning's "My Name is Chellis--I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization," James Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere" and many more.

I was struck that each of these authors, in his or her own way, talked about sustainability: Plutarch's (and to a large extent, Jefferson's) focus was on the stability of the state through virtuous leadership and an egalitarian economy. Paul Hawken's focus was sustainability in business and the environment; Kunstler's was sustainability in the built infrastructure; Korten's was sustainability in the global economic and legal infrastructure; Glendinning's was a convincing condemnation of the whole mess created by the industrialized world.

Then I read with excitement Paul Ray's "Intregal Culture" in which he identified and quantified the very value shift in American Culture which I had predicted in my premise for "Graduates." Not only did Ray's demographic research indicate that such a shift was, in fact, taking place, but he demonstrated statistically that by 1996 a new holistic and "earth-friendly" value system had already been embraced by 24% of the American public: 44,000,000 adults over the age of twenty-five. This was incredible news. But if there were so many of us, I wondered, how come we were so invisible in the mainstream. We were marginalized as tree-huggers, enviros, do-gooders, left-wingers. And except for a few publications like Utne Reader and Yes!, we had little or no voice. Further, I realized that beyond a sort of intuitive attraction to each other, we had no real structure or even a fundamental statement of ideology that could bring us together.

Getting Started

This was when I came up with the idea of drafting a "Uniform Code of Sustainability," and conceived a plan for getting it endorsed and publicized: I would invite the participation of all the contemporary authors I had been reading, and culminate the process with a "Sustainability Summit" which they would all come to for final editing and unanimous endorsement. I envisioned like-minded people embracing the principles and being drawn together into an effective economic and political body. I started calling up one author after another to share my vision. (I was pleased to even find their phone numbers.) To my delight many of them engaged with me in long conversations and agreed to participate. I started with a draft version which I sent out to everyone for their comments. Among those who offered suggestions were Paul Hawken, Hazel Henderson, Dan Millman, and others. David Korten reviewed three different drafts and contributed substantially to the content and form of the document. Long before the Summit I felt we had a pretty good "Code" put together. Unlike most statements of principles, such as The Natural Step or the Ceres Principles (which are based primarily on environmental concerns) the Uniform Code begins with a statement of a framework for human happiness.

A PROPOSED UNIFORM CODE OF SUSTAINABILITY

Vision Statement

We envision a future in which every individual has the opportunity to live a full and satisfying life, in balance with nature, in peace with themselves and their neighbors, and with the security and freedom of a just, inclusive, and sustainable society.

The Components of Human Happiness

Any system, in order to support this vision, must take into account, provide, or allow for the following human needs:

1. Food, clothing, shelter and access to health care
2. Freedom (democratic participation in a just society)
3. Education (comprehensive: both right and left brain)
4. Sense of Purpose (access to meaningful work, creative expression, personal growth)
5. Fulfilling relationships (intimate, family and community)
6. Sense of Humor (entertainment, laughter, celebration, joyfulness)
7. Freedom to explore an individual sense of the sacred
8. Acknowledgment (recognition and validation from peers)

Environmental Principles*

1. Rates of use of renewable resources must not exceed the rates at which the ecosystem is able to regenerate them.
2. Rates of pollution emission into the environment must not exceed the rates of the ecosystem's natural assimilative capacity.
3. Rates of consumption or irretrievable disposal of nonrenewable resources must not exceed the rates at which renewable substitutes are developed and phased into use.
4. The diversity and balance of plant and animal life must be maintained.

Humanitarian, Political and Economic Principles

1. All members of society must be provided with the opportunity of securing the basic components of human happiness described above. The most fundamental opportunities to be provided for children in the form of nutrition, health and education. Opportunities for adults in the form of training, and financial and technical assistance. Society must make provision to take care of those unable to care for themselves.
2. Within the limits of the above principles, the sovereign right to decide what uses of the earth, water, sky and electromagnetic spectrum are most appropriate and beneficial for society should reside with the people, with preference given to those stakeholders who are most directly affected by such decisions.
3. No government, business, community or individual may externalize the costs or consequences of its consumption and growth onto another.
4. The environmental resources of the planet and the accumulated knowledge of mankind are a common heritage which should accrue for the benefit of all. Neither may be monopolized or used in ways contrary to the broader interest of present and future generations.
5. Societies must institute fair and humanitarian methods of limiting population growth to ensure that the needs of their members can be provided for without violating any of the above principles. Of all methods, broad-based education, economic opportunity and free access to birth control are the best.

A Wake-up Call

Much to my disappointment none of the people who participated with me in drafting the document were able to attend the Summit (which took place in May, 1997). But to my delight a number of other people came, among them Ray Anderson of the President's Council on Sustainable Development, 5-term Congressperson and environmental heroine Claudine Schneider, Susan Boyd of Concern, Inc., and Cliff Feigenbaum, publisher of GreenMoney Journal. Within five minutes of the start of the conference, however, as I was explaining that I would like to get everyone's assistance in creating a final draft of the Code for everyone's endorsement, Claudine Schneider interrupted. "Peter," she said, "With all due respect I think this document is fine as it is, and I'm sure everyone else would agree. But I don't really want to spend our time talking about it. I'm interested in action. I think we need to figure out what to do!"

I realized that like many ideologists I had been dealing in realms of theory and speculation--trying to frame over-arching principles that would apply to other people. This is not to say that ideas and principles are not important. They are. But without a grounding point, a pragmatic way of finding application in the real world, theories and ideals can ring hollow. They also lead to what I consider two of the greatest pitfalls that we humans tend to fall into: the inflexible belief that our own ideology is right; and the use of our ideology (whether religious, environmental, social or anything else) as a mask for our own shortcomings.

Even before Claudine's comment I had had other, similar wake-up calls along the way. One day I was able to have a conversation with Paul Hawken who had graciously called to let me know he couldn't attend the summit. After some discussion about the Code he said in slow and thoughtful tones, "Peter, all of these high ideals are great, but I think you really need to do something meaningful in your own community." I was taken aback. But I knew he was right.

GETTING INVOLVED IN MY COMMUNITY

Although I still felt that the Code voiced my ideal vision of the world, after the conference I decided to start getting more involved in the community. I didn't know how the ideas expressed in the Code would manifest, but I felt comfortable that if I measured my own actions against them I would probably be all right. I started attending meetings of my local Neighborhood Association, the Taos County Intergovernmental Council , County Commission, Town Council and any other meetings for social or environmental causes I could get to. I volunteered to serve as a commissioner on the local Acequia (irrigation ditch) Association. I started attending and taking an active role in meetings of the Taos County Council of Neighborhood Associations--all to start getting a better feel for what was really going on in the community.

As I got to know some of the leaders of the community, I began expressing opinions, drawing from the ideals expressed in the Code. I addressed the Taos County Intergovernmental Council (IGC) about the onslaught of Welfare Reform. (NM Governor Johnson had mandated that life-time benefits would be limited to three years, as opposed to the five year limit allowed by Congress. Nobody was paying attention, though the little research I had done indicated that the bottom 5% of Taos' economy was about to fall through the cracks.) When I described to the IGC the "domino effect" that the loss of $5,000,000 per year could have on the entire community, the county manager seemed to be impressed, and a few months later hosted a "Taos County Economic Summit" to address the problem. Unfortunately, the county seemed to lose sight of the original purpose of the event, and held it on a weekday during working hours, and charged $25 per person. It turned into a feel-good, middle-class visioning session with speeches from Senators and big business types--but no welfare recipients showed up.

Opportunities

Later, in December, 1997 I attended a public presentation on sustainability hosted by the Environmental Management Division of Los Alamos National Laboratories (is that an oxymoron?) and joined several of the organizers and speakers for both lunch and dinner. Within a week I received an invitation from them to participate in a "regional sustainability task force." I jumped at the opportunity, in spite of warnings from some of my more radical environmentalist friends that the Lab was just green-washing its image. Over the next year the task force, depending almost entirely on volunteer labor, managed to put together a number of significant events: a conference on water issues for Northern New Mexico; a conference for city and county planners on sustainable municipal design; a conference for builders and architects on sustainable technologies; and one on the re-structuring of New Mexico's electric industry.

Other things were happening, too. The San Cristobal Ranch Foundation, a non-profit which I had founded in 1996 and on which I was serving as President, had been active in organizing and hosting a number of events, including a summer day camp for local children in San Cristobal (about 20 miles north of Taos--and a stone's throw from the Lama Foundation). The Foundation owned the San Cristobal Ranch, an idyllic 115 acre parcel which backs up on three sides to the Carson National Forest. Our intention was to preserve the land as a resource for future generations, and to create there a working model of sustainability which would include energy-efficient buildings, year-round organic gardening, and self-generation of electricity using renewable resources. One of the key educational activities we sponsored was a series of 16 "cloche method" organic gardening workshops throughout Taos County during the summer of 1998. Using cloches (simple 3'x6' wooden frames covered with sheet plastic suspended over hoops of recycled PVC plumbing pipe) we had been able to sustain vegetable growth all winter, surviving temperatures well below zero. I saw this simple technology as having a potentially profound impact on the Taos Community.

Deepening Awareness

More and more I had come to see both "sustainability" and "community" in economic terms. The closer we moved to a locally-based and locally inter-dependent economy, the more cohesive we would be as a community, and the more achievable would be a sustainable future. To do this required examining where the money was flowing in the community--especially where it was flowing out--and where we had a chance of stemming that flow. My own empirical analysis showed several major, curable hemorrhages in our local economy:

1. Energy (the DOE estimates that up to $.80 of every dollar spent on energy immediately leaves the community);
2. Housing (for several years in a row more than 60% of new homes in Taos County had been mobile homes, manufactured mostly out-of-state);
3. Food (most of our food was imported from an average of 1000 miles away). I saw growing our own food as a good place to start on the road to sustainability--especially if it could be done, as had already been demonstrated, year-round at an altitude of 8,000 feet in an arid climate.

Although I was also promoting the concepts of energy-efficiency, local generation of electricity, and local construction of homes, I did not yet have a viable way to get these ideas initiated and on the ground. Then, in December, 1998, an ideal opportunity came my way. The New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD) had realized that their plan for welfare reform wasn't working, and that time was running out. In a little more than 36 months life-time benefits would expire for more than 17,000 families throughout the state, and there was no safety-net in place. HSD Secretary, Bill Johnson, had come up with the idea of creating local councils that would work hand in hand with the Department of Labor, Human Services, Department of Health and other agencies, as well as with local businesses and non-profits to craft and enact custom-made plans that addressed specific local issues and challenges. I found out about the initiative at the last minute from one of my sustainability task force friends who had just been awarded a contract to organize one of 19 councils around the state. HSD did not have a coordinator for Taos and Mora Counties, so I immediately applied and within three days was awarded the contract.

I saw this initiative as a perfect way to bring together everything I had been working on for the past three years: economic development from the ground up, starting with the most disadvantaged sector of the community. I had already concluded that no effort towards sustainability would succeed unless it took into account the pressing educational, training and vocational needs of the poor and disadvantaged. I also felt that if the programs we developed could work in Taos and Mora, two of poorest and most rural counties in the entire country, they might be replicable in other disadvantaged and under-served communities world-wide.

I quickly assembled a council of local business, governmental and non-profit leaders, as well as a few people who had been (or still were) welfare recipients. Here all my avid participation at meetings paid off: I didn't need to look very far for my council membership, for I already knew nearly all of them. In all I enlisted the participation of nearly 50 people from vastly different sectors of the community--and managed to get them all working together in an effort to solve some of our most perplexing local problems. Our council adopted an approach which was not only all-inclusive, but which recognized the pragmatic importance--indeed the absolute necessity--of designing a local fix based on local resources and local innovation. (Taos is not about to see a General Motors plant locating in the community to provide thousands of high-paying jobs--and thank God for that!).

At the first meeting of the council I suggested the following basic methodologies for dealing with specific problems that we would address:

1. Determine conditions upon which an obstacle would become irrelevant. (For example, could a lack of transportation be best addressed by focusing on encouraging work that can be done at home?)
2. Determine under-used existing local resources which can be used to solve the problem.
3. Determine what non-available resources are needed (and a method for procuring them).
4. Determine what broader impacts new resources might have on the existing culture and environment.

I also asked them to consider the following procedures (in priority) for addressing economic development and job-creation:

1. Identify "leaks" in the local economy (how is money leaving the community).
2. Determine ways to assist local existing businesses to expand (especially those addressing "leaks").
3. Determine how to assist new, local businesses to get started (especially those addressing "leaks").
4. Encourage new or existing outside businesses to locate their primary facility in the community.
5. Lastly (if nothing else works), encourage existing outside businesses to locate branch offices or outlets in the community.

The underlying premise, to which everyone agreed, was that economic development must be both environmentally and culturally appropriate for our community. Considering that Taos and Mora Counties are more than 65% Hispanic--most of them from original settling families that had been here for 400 years--and another 10% are Native Americans who have been here well over 1,000 years, "culturally appropriate" is a pretty significant phrase. I used it deferentially with our own culturally -diverse council to let them know there was no way that I (an "Anglo") was going to presume to dictate solutions. This was the council's task. I was only there to bring everyone together, get them focused on the problems and facilitate the process. However, in order to get the conversation started, I supplied a list of questions to be considered by the council. Many of these are quite specific so I will not include them here. However, they point towards a methodology that is akin to "full-cost accounting"--that is, looking at all the factors involved rather than approaching the issue from the narrow perspective of just "creating jobs."

I have to confess that my long-range planning concepts are based on my own belief that the fossil fuel-dependent global economy is going to undergo a major shift within the next five to ten years. Aside from the fact that cost-efficient petroleum reserves are questionable, it seemed clear that the planet's ecosystems simply could not tolerate much more of the strain created by industrial and fossil-fuel pollution. If this was true, what would happen to America's "automobile suburbs" when the cost of gasoline tripled? What would happen to America's high "standard of living" (which was clearly made possible by the exploitation of third world labor and resources) when the cost of intercontinental transportation of manufactured goods exceeded the savings incurred with $.17 per hour labor? What would happen to the people of Taos when it was no longer cost-effective to bring in food and supplies from 1000 miles away? I did not regard these questions as doomsday predictions, but as indicators of new ways to think about our economic and social systems. And I didn't think it too early to start applying this kind of thinking to welfare reform and economic development, especially in an economy like Taos' which wasn't functioning very well anyway.

New Beginnings

When Ray Anderson addressed the people of Taos at the culminating public forum of our Sustainability Summit in 1997, he shared his vision of a "new industrial revolution" based on renewable solar energy and renewable or recycled resources. "Zero fossil fuel dependency" he called it. And Taos, with something over 330 days of sunshine each year, was an ideal site to demonstrate such a revolution. I had long regarded Taos, which is largely industry-free, as a "clean slate" for demonstrating a new type of economy based on local resources, and my work with the welfare council was finally providing me a way to get decision-makers in the community to examine some of these ideas. The old agricultural infrastructure, though relatively un-used for 40 years (except for cattle ranching), was still mostly intact. New technologies like cloche gardening, as well as expanding local and regional demand for specialty products (like organically grown wheat) could make local agriculture viable even in the current fossil-fuel subsidized economy. And, as Ray Anderson pointed out, other resources, such as solar and wind energy, were abundant and largely un-tapped.

The pressing need to solve the local welfare and unemployment dilemma (in 1998 unemployment ranged from 13-20% in the area) offered the community an extraordinary opportunity to design a new economic archetype that would truly be sustainable by being "environmentally and culturally appropriate." And for me, personally, all of these challenges represented a wonderful opportunity. For in them I found ways to engage my ideals and abilities in work that was for me both creative and meaningful. And throughout the entire process I have received validation for the faith I had forged over the years: that intentions and prayers do bring results, though they often reveal themselves in surprising and unexpected ways.

*The environmental principles were suggested by David Korten, drawing on work by Herman Daly.

**Adapted from a presentation by William Becker, Director of the US Department of Energy's Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development

About Peter Alexander

Peter Alexander is President of the San Cristobal Ranch Foundation just north of Taos, New Mexico. At this writing he is also working under a contract with the US Department of Energy, bringing energy efficiency programs to Northern New Mexico. The Ranch Foundation is dedicated to a mission of sustainable economic and community development. For more information about the work of the foundation please write to PO Box 97, San Cristobal, NM 87564.