By Tom Braford
In past months, we have talked about creating socially balanced community, reconciliation community facilitated by sociocracy and economic balance in community by forming worker-owned co-ops to build out and operate from the site.
With those as a base, how can we balance out the environment and the climate? When we consider that, many still picture a modest cottage in the countryside with a greenhouse and organic garden out back and an electric car under a carport covered with solar collectors.
This might have been an accessible option 50 years ago, if we had invented solar collectors and electric cars back then and had stabilized the population a while before that. But given our current state of overshoot of global resources, everyone who is willing and able needs to be moving in the opposite direction now.
Think highly functional community-based multifamily living that includes pathways to affordability for all. Carol and I just presented our project at the National Cohousing Conference in Madison, Wisconsin last month and visited a couple fabulous communities while there.
This is essential if we are going to save ourselves and all the other species that are now dependent on us for their survival as well. To be even close to the energy efficiency of average multifamily housing, a new single family house would now cost many times more and take decades to cancel out the embedded energy going into its production.
What about transportation costs, even with an electric vehicle? Consider a shared fleet of EVs powered entirely by green electrons. How about community-wide heating and cooling that reduces rather than adds to the city heat island effect?
Why continue to eat 5,000-mile tomatoes when you could have 50-foot tomatoes grown in year-round greenhouses and seasonally enclosable hanging garden courtyards in the center of the community? Think about carbon negative development to cool the planet before all the ice and trees are gone.
Can you imagine living in the first of these Carbon Negative, Reconciliation and Regeneration Communities right here in St. Louis and creating millions more on the planet by the end of the century? It’s easy if you try!
Please reach out to learn more!
Contact: braford@sbcglobal.net
www.ArizmendiEcovillage.com
braford@sbcglobal.net