City Council Talk 11.9.2010

I represent Transition Woodinville locally and Transition Towns globally. Our focus is to build resilient communities in this time of critical change.

As you, Woodinville City Council, move forward in a business as usual reality supporting growth and development Transition Woodinville moves forward in a different reality supporting sustainability and doing more with less. How can we bridge the two?

Transition Towns are aware of
• peak oil advocating for energy descent plans
• climate change advocating for localization and self-reliance
• food scarcity advocating for local farms and gardens
• economic instability advocating for new systems of exchange

Transition Towns orient around Gross National Happiness that was initiated by the King of Bhutan. At Hollywood Hills Association this weekend I introduced TW and learned that Lincoln Potter, whom some of you know, worked for the Bhutan government and knows well the platform of GNH. GNH measures the well-being of its citizens through housing, education, food supply, health care and community life. The other reality is the Gross National Product that measures consumption. One reality circulates positive energy; the other circulates material goods. How can we bridge the two?

The evolving concept of GNH could well be the most significant advancement in economic theory over the last 150 years, according to Frank Dixon, a Harvard Business School graduate who is currently managing director of research at Innovest Strategic Value Advisors. Innovest is the largest international financial services firm catering to ethical investment funds.

"GNH is an endeavor to greatly enhance the sophistication of human systems by emulating the infinitely greater sophistication of nature," says Frank Dixon.

Just what would it mean for economic structures to emulate nature? Dixon and others explain it as follows. At present individual companies and entire countries are compelled to keep growing indefinitely. The only parallel for this in the natural world is cancer cells, which by growing exponentially destroy the host body and themselves.

Today it is widely acknowledged that the human economy cannot keep growing at the cost of its habitat. Yet even after two decades of expanding environmental regulation we are still losing the race to save the planet. This is partly because production systems and consumption patterns are out of sync with the carrying capacity of the planet.

I welcome the opportunity to work with the City of Woodinville to put us on the GNH map as one of the happiest cities in the nation.