By Tom & Carol Braford
In the face of things, our prospects for improving social and environmental outcomes over the next 4 years or longer, now that Donald Trump is on his way back to the White House, may seem dismal.
On the other hand, one of his initiatives last time around at least started out with some potential. I am speaking, of course, about Opportunity Zones that linked capital gains tax abatement to new development in Qualified Census Tracts.
As predicted the first time around, it was cherry-picked by investors who targeted the least needy zones with status quo development.
What if a second round, however, were to target those overlooked zones this time? Going a bit further, what if there were also additional tax incentives for real, measurable, viable solutions to climate change and other challenges that could quickly transform St.Louis and lots of other fragmented regions from being top carbon emitters with declining populations and tax bases to become rapidly uniting and growing green metropolises?
Nobel prize winning chemist, Ilya Prigogine, famously said, “When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of contagion can shift the whole system.” The National Academy of Sciences has said that the same laws that govern the contagion of viruses apply to the adoption of both hard science and social innovations.
We are studying a 450-page textbook, The Systems View of Life, which was written by renowned authors, Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi, who are physicists and life science experts. As a result, we have reason to believe that our comprehensive, state of the art, combined social and hard technology Islands of Cohesion Communities of Practice connected together with Post Carbon raised guideway Rapid Freight & Transit systems when launched at a sufficient scale in St. Louis could quickly achieve contagion, become endemic in our region and usher in an age of plenty like the world has never known, as it becomes pandemic on the planet.
Please let us know what role you want to play to help make this happen! Please contact us at braford@sbcglobal.net or online at www.ArizmendiEcovillage.com.