Small is Possible

Planting a tree, carbon free commuting, composting, recycling.  All things that are good practices and things that more people should be doing but a single person doing these things will not stop Global Climate Change.  Many say, on the other side, that the only way that we can hold Global Climate Change where it is or from getting to much worse is to have a complete overhaul of governmental action and policy.  Again, this is absolutely something that needs to happen and needs to happen fast.  The debate that I always find myself in when I think of the dispute between which is more important to happen is that,  without governmental change, will there be behavioral change?  Or vise versa, without behavioral change, will there be governmental change?  I believe that the answer is no in both cases.  So how do we get anything done?

Local.  It starts on the community level.  By working with the community you live in, i.e. town, neighborhood or another community you function in, to do thing such as carbon free commuting, buying local organic produce, composting, recycling, investing in small solar, etc., you begin a movement and become an example for those around you.  From your small community you can expand the movement into another community and another and another.  Once you have grown your movement to enough small communities it becomes easier to influence you local government.  Local governments are much easier to persuade than state or federal governments.  As more and more local governments start to listen to the demands of the people for a more sustainable and low carbon energy sources,  it then becomes an easy move to the county level, then the district, state, and finally federal.  We will not see governmental change without a change in the people.  But how do we change the people, by starting with something small and expanding.

In my life the best example of this I have seen was this past summer in Chatham County, N.C.   This is the home of Piedmont Biofuels,  which started as a small cooperative biodiesel production company.  Using biodiesel and the devotion of the people that were and continue to be a part of the coop, the Chatham County has become a place where the environmental movement has become part of the governance and continues to grow.  It all starts somewhere and that somewhere is small.  Small is possible and we can do it.