When I joined The Natural Step Monona (TNS Monona) as a volunteer back in the fall of 2008, I was just starting my graduate study: working to understand and document the connections between scientific information, sustainability, and grassroots movements. I wanted to be part of grassroots action to promote sustainable behavior, and saw TNS Monona as an environmental sustainability group with a clearly stated mission to serve the Monona community.

As an environmental studies graduate student, I have observed that good science does not necessarily translate into good policy or good behavior. This gap between scientific findings and public action is bridged by TNS Monona facilitating grassroots actions toward a more sustainable future.

You might wonder, what is so cool about that? I see two “cool” aspects: the grassroots part and the environmental part coming together in changing a community for the better. This excites me.

Understanding what “grassroots” means has been a process. For now, I define grassroots action as the have-nots organizing movement against the haves. A simple example is what happens in the political arena, where people working at the top of the political pyramid, who are a minority in number, hold the most power and make it their business to limit other people’s ability to join them at the top. The grassroots or have-nots are everyone else.

While academics and scientists train to be objective, sometimes they, too, become part of the establishment that the grassroots oppose.

What I find fascinating about the grassroots level is the attitude of the people. Those in the grassroots are eager to do something meaningful to them. When they find a cause worthy of their attention, they unselfishly offer their energy and time to do whatever is necessary to advance that cause.

Now let me share what I find so compelling about the second aspect, the environment. As an example, I will use an environmental challenge that people all over the world are discussing— the importance of addressing climate change—and show how grassroots action can help make sense of it.

The majority of climate change information is generated from scientific research and study. This information is helpful in making us more aware that the climate is changing, and that we are part of the problem. This increased public awareness would not happen without robust and in-depth scientific findings from which to learn.

The problem occurs when scientists use academic and scientific language to suggest ways to explain the problems and solutions. With this example, instead of “climate change,” scientists once used the term “global warming” much more often. “Global warming” is an accurate description of earth’s increasingly warming atmosphere, which holds more moisture and causes more erratic and extreme weather patterns.

But many non-scientists hear the phrase “global warming” and, because they do not truly understand what it means, take the phrase on face value alone. Because this complex problem’s name is misunderstood, after every big snowstorm you will hear people say things like, “See, global warming isn’t real,” helping perpetuate the notion that those who best understand what is happening with the climate—the climate scientists—are wrong, and that action to slow global warming isn’t necessary.

In addition, scientists most often suggest actions that policymakers, not your average person, need to take. These would be things best achieved at municipal, state, national, or even global levels to affect the larger societies within the larger environmental systems. Scientists rarely zoom down to actions that most of us can use in our homes, backyards, workplaces, or with our lifestyles. “Pie in the sky” instructions, such as changing transit systems or land use policies can make sustainable actions seem impractical or intimidating, causing people to put personal changes low on their list of priorities.

Why do scientists help create communication problems? It is because scientists do their best work in the lab or in the field, not in the world of communications or advocacy. Sharing information in a way that non-scientists can use is not rocket science, but it is different from the way that scientific research is circulated. Scientists play a very important role, but we also need “translators;” we need people who can take this information, and—using the right communication tools, common sense, and human energy—connect scientific information to the average person.

The Natural Step Monona fits into this role. TNS Monona members are not scientists, but we have knowledge about sustainability and the “backyard” methods that can help people to be more sustainable in ways that matter to them. We are willing to work to share what we know with residents of Monona and surrounding communities. We have been engaging our neighbors and friends in a series of conversations about how to help each other implement sustainable ideas. In generating these conversations and circulating our stories, we help people have a better understanding of sustainable practices in the real world.

I value the grassroots attitude of unselfish commitment to advancing a worthy cause. During the five years since I joined TNS Monona, I have continually learned about how grassroots groups can make positive change in their communities. Because I value this empowering attitude, I want to ensure that this beneficial organization continues to serve local residents. To that end, I recently joined the TNS Monona Board, and bring my desire to connect TNS Monona with individuals or institutions that could support it, particularly in the fundraising area.

TNS Monona has done wonderful things for Monona and surrounding communities. While I still see TNS Monona as an environmental sustainability group, in the years since I joined, I have learned it is much more. TNS Monona is also a bridge and a translator, weaving the message about environmental, social, and economic sustainability into our lives and community in ways that are meaningful and lasting to each of us. The grassroots are us, and we have much to learn from and share with one another to live our values of becoming ever more sustainable.

Responses from Candidates for Council:

1. How will you support sustainable initiatives in the city’s operations?

Jim Busse: Sustainable initiatives for the City often are initiated at the staff or committee level. A cost/benefit analysis considering both economic and social impact on our community should be done. If the social/economic impact is greater than the costs involved it would make sense to move forward. If not alternatives should be considered. This past term a re-lamping of several city facilities with LED lighting produced a quality product, had a break-even term of three years and a life expectancy that far exceed the break-even time frame. Considerable savings in energy were achieved. It got my support.

Doug Wood: No response from candidate.

Chad Speight: No response from candidate.

2. With the recent audit showing that we have 110 storm water outlets carrying unfiltered pollution – leaves, clippings, gasoline, oil, etc. – from our streets directly into Lake Monona, what should the city do and why?

Jim Busse: The storm sewer needs of Monona are already on the City’s radar. Repairs to infrastructure, detention basins, rain gardens and public education are some of the solutions that will come out of committees and staff reviewing this concern. While storm sewer issues have an impact on the quality of our water systems, Monona must also maintain an active voice in the related associations and county/state agencies that impact the Yahara lakes waterway. Their proposals to reduce phosphorus upstream will impact Lake Monona and the City must stay involved to make sure decisions are equitable.

Doug Wood: No response from candidate.

Chad Speight: No response from candidate.

3. What plans would you support to make Monona buildings more energy efficient and sustainable, and less wasteful of water and other resources?

Jim Busse: Renew Monona is a zero interest loan program that assists homeowners with improvements and energy efficiency during remodeling. Retiring TIF districts are targeted to fund this program. We need to make sure that it happens. For commercial improvements current codes and ordinances require improvements to storm water retention and green space. Encouraging the use of LEED guidelines will improve energy efficiency and sustainability. I would not require LEED Certification as the process adds cost and may discourage use of the guidelines. I’d rather see developers put their funds in sticks and bricks vs. a framed certificate in the lobby.

Doug Wood: No response from candidate.

Chad Speight: No response from candidate.

4. (Optional Question) What do you think your neighbors would say about you as a neighbor?

Jim Busse: No response from candidate.

Doug Wood: No response from candidate.

Chad Speight: No response from candidate.

Responses from Candidates for Mayor:

1. How will you support sustainable initiatives in the city’s operations?

Bob Miller: As mayor, I will continue to promote sustainability by working with city staff focusing on projects such as LED street lighting, storm water retention enhancements, consideration of compressed natural gas for city vehicles and capital improvements that reduce energy consumption. I will continue to support the purchase of fuel efficient vehicles by all city departments. I will help promote our wonderful farmer’s market where I hold informal mayor office hours each Sunday morning. I will also promote city wide sustainability efforts such as 2012’s Year of Water initiative.

2. With the recent audit showing that we have 110 storm water outlets carrying unfiltered pollution – leaves, clippings, gasoline, oil, etc. – from our streets directly into Lake Monona, what should the city do and why?

Bob Miller: I have always been active in efforts to protect and improve the quality of our lakes. I currently serve on the boards of the Clean Lakes Alliance and the Yahara Lakes Association.  I requested the audit of our storm water outlets as the city did not have an official record of these outflows. This serves as the first step in prioritizing our efforts and financial resources. We are using this information to pursue county, state and federal funding to improve our storm water outlets. I also worked with public works staff to increase our street cleaning and leaf pick-up efforts.

3. What plans would you support to make Monona buildings more energy efficient and sustainable, and less wasteful of water and other resources?

Bob Miller: I directly participated in successful energy facility enhancements as the remodeling of city hall with increased insulation and energy efficient windows. We upgraded HVAC systems at city hall, the community center and the library. We did this in part with state energy grants, reducing the expense to Monona taxpayers.  I will continue supporting both Monona’s “25X25 Plan,” a plan to generate 25 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2025 and our membership in the Green Tier Legacy Communities program with its goal to achieve superior environmental performance and improve the quality of life and economic vitality of Monona.

4. (Optional Question) What do you think your neighbors would say about you as a neighbor?

Bob Miller: I try to be a good neighbor not only to those living directly next to me but to the entire neighborhood. I assist with the maintenance and cleanup of Frost Woods Beach. I help organize and volunteer for neighborhood events. I am fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful neighbors who are an important reason why I love living in Monona.

___________________________________________

Candidates were limited to 100 words per response.

Instructions for voting in Monona are available at the City of Monona Elections page: www.mymonona.com/pages/city_government/elections/.

Mayor Bob Miller serves up some good news at the Water Conservation Challenge Celebration, February 6, 2013.

Marena Kehl, the Water Conservation Challenge Coordinator, led the event. The attendees heard from Mayor Bob Miller, Michael Mucha, chief executive of the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District, Dianné Aldrich, the Water Conservation Challenge’s largest sponsor as owner of 4Pillars4Health EcoSpace and representative of Sun-Mar Global Composting Systems, and Dadit Hidayat, Environment and Resources Ph.D. candidate at UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute.

Attendees also enjoyed this video, highlighting many of the Year of Water events, public and private.

One hundred and three households participated in the Water Conservation Challenge. Of those 103 households, three went home with significant prizes. First-place winners of the Water Conservation Challenge and the $500 prize were Bill Bright and Jeanie Verschay. Their household shaved 80 percent off their water consumption in 2012 compared to the previous year. Michelle and Damon Bryant took second place, receiving $250, after reducing their water use in 2012 by 36 percent.

Marie Metry, one of The Natural Step Monona’s oldest members at 96 years, won the third-place prize of $100, after using 35 percent less water. As a winner of one of the monthly prize packages in July, Marie expressed great enthusiasm for the opportunity to participate in competing to save water. “I love contests,” she said. The Natural Step Monona is sad to announce that Marie passed away on Saturday, just days before the celebration event. A moment of silence was observed in her honor. Her prize was delivered to her family.

In addition to the prizes for overall water-saving, prizes were given to those who conserved in unique ways. Winners chose from a variety of prizes. Suzanna Wade’s two entries won the first and third prizes, and she phoned into the celebration from New Orleans to accept her awards: four oil changes from Monona Motors and a one-night stay in an AmericInn Whirlpool suite. Second place winners, Kaye and Paul Ketterer, took home a Fiskars rain barrel, Ken Oasen won a $50 gift card from Crema Café, and Pat Howell won a one-hour Permaculture consultation with Sustainability on Stilts.

The “innovators” did such things as save all their shower water to use whenever toilet flushing was needed (approximate savings of 2220 gallons a year), speak up about using water in a conserving way, collect (in a tank) water from water softener backwash and reverse osmosis water filtration and use it for toilet flushing, and set up a rain barrel in the basement to water house plants.

The City of Monona was the third community in the State of Wisconsin to hold a water conservation contest. According to Michael Mucha, Monona has become a leader in water conservation, setting the stage for other area communities to follow.

Overall, how did we do? Awareness grew and people did conserve, but with a record breaking drought, participants collectively used 8% more water in 2012 than in 2011. Still, 36 households saved water and four used the same amount, showing that water can be saved. Conservation can happen in a year of drought.

Misinformation and lack of knowledge about the value of water, in addition to the easy availability of it coming out of our taps, make overconsumption so painless. But things are changing. “Water is expensive, and the price tag and the value of it is becoming more and more so,” said Mayor Bob Miller at the Celebration. “Our water supply is from underground aquifers… Our local aquifer’s water supply became so low last July that our wells were within four feet of sucking air.”

To try to keep up with increasing use, “drilling on our deeper wells will begin this spring,” said the mayor.

Even though 2012 and the Year of Water have ended, we must continue to conserve water. Mayor Miller is dedicated to projects to reduce stormwater runoff and increase the amount of water in our wells.

Doing your part, alongside your neighbors, will help Monona’s water last for future generations to use, and make Monona a shining example that other communities will emulate.

Beloved Wisconsin conservationist Aldo Leopold once said, “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.” An avid forester, philosopher, educator, writer, and outdoor enthusiast, Leopold’s dedication to living sustainably granted him well-deserved recognition.

Yet, what is living sustainably? What creates the harmony Leopold longed for?

Many people think sustainability is just another word for environmental balance. Although sustainability is deeply rooted in the environment, it is also inseparable from our economy and our society. The economy, society, and sustainability are not merely overlapping parts, but nest, one inside another, as in the accompanying diagram.

The economy would not exist if we did not have a society to make, supply, and distribute goods and services, and society would not exist without the environment to provide our life-support systems, like air, water, land, climate, biodiversity, and more.

“The economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around,” said economist Herman Daly.

The Natural Step (TNS) framework for sustainability is a science-based, robust approach to reducing and sometimes reversing human impacts on our planet. Having a common understanding of sustainability helps guide our activities and decisions towards a future in which people thrive.

TNS uses universal principles that apply to everything in our earth’s complex system. These four sustainability objectives can be summarized this way:

1. Reduce our dependence upon fossil fuels, extracted underground metals, and minerals (things from the earth’s crust).

2. Reduce our dependence on chemicals and other human-made substances.

3. Reduce our dependence on activities that degrade life-sustaining ecosystems.

4. Meet the hierarchy of present and future human needs fairly and efficiently.

The fourth objective, meeting human needs, is the focus of this column.

TNS uses Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef’s definition of human needs. Max-Neef’s work focuses on alternatives to the conventional models of development that have contributed to poverty, debt, and ecological disasters in Third World communities.

Max-Neef holds that we have nine basic human needs: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, leisure, creation, identity, freedom, and participation. Rather than arranged hierarchically, as presented by Abraham Maslow, needs are interrelated and interactive, and are constant throughout time and culture. What changes over time and between cultures is how these needs are satisfied. In other words, today’s satisfiers are not your Irish grandmother’s satisfiers.

According to Max-Neef, “Satisfiers may include, among other things, forms of organization, political structures, social practices, subjective conditions, values and norms, spaces, contexts, modes, types of behavior and attitudes, all of which are in a permanent state of tension between consolidation and change.”

Some needs and their satisfiers are very simple, such as protection (family structure, health systems) and understanding (curiosity, education). But in some cases, we easily confuse needs and satisfiers. For example, food and shelter are not needs, but rather, satisfiers of the need for subsistence.

To understand all the ways we can fulfill needs, it helps to think about the ways in which we experienced needs in life. We experience them by being, having, doing, and interacting. These four add another component to the understanding of needs. We can picture this new dimension by creating a table, with the nine needs and the four ways we experience them charted to show the 36 different groups of satisfiers. (A sample is here)

Satisfiers have different forms. “Synergic-satisfiers” satisfy a need, but also fuel or add to the gratification of other needs at the same time. For example, education satisfies needs for understanding, but also protection, creation, identity, and participation.

People do not always make the best choices of satisfiers. Some things appear to satisfy, but do not. “Pseudo-satisfiers” give a false sense of gratification, as in the example of a car superficially fulfilling the need for identify, or stereotyping seeming to fulfill understanding.

“Inhibitors” satisfy a need but at the cost of reducing the fulfillment of other needs, as in non-educational video games satisfying the need for leisure, while degrading understanding, creation, and identity, or an overprotective family satisfying the need for protection, but inhibiting affection, understanding, participation, identity, and freedom.

“Violators” are applied under the pretext of satisfying a need, but destroy the possibility of other needs being satisfied. A good example is censorship, which is meant to give protection, but actually prevents understanding, participation, creation, identity, and freedom. Violators are mostly related to the need for protection.

The only need that requires material goods to be satisfied is subsistence. Therefore, if individuals and societies make wise choices, quality of life can be enhanced while consumption of our world’s (diminishing) resources is reduced. In other words, people can have more happiness with less stuff.

The ways in which we meet or fail to meet human needs fairly and efficiently greatly affects the first three objectives for sustainability. Max-Neef further says that any fundamental human need that is not met reveals a human poverty, and that “each poverty generates pathologies” that lead to other problems in society.

In 2012, I wrote two columns about human needs that focused on how changes to our political system have created barriers to people meeting their needs for participation and freedom. Sustainability demands that such barriers come down.

Last month, Torbjörn Lahti, co-author of the book The Natural Step for Communities (the book that gave birth to The Natural Step Monona) and teacher of Human Needs workshops, spoke with staff member Jenny Peek about the intersection of sustainability, politics, and human needs. He said, “Everything that’s against participation and fairness is important to tell that we don’t accept this as a part of sustainability.”

Lahti stressed that “participation is a fundamental need.” He continued, “Politics for me on the one hand is to see what we can learn from nature within the framework of natural force and on the other hand, meeting needs.”

“Politics is about finding the best satisfier for society,” said Lahti. As an organization promoting sustainability, Lahti said of The Natural Step Monona, “It is your duty to always suggest solutions, to help to find solutions, of the best satisfiers you can have in society. In a democratic society, of course, you have to work together within the democratic system. You’re doing your duty as an organization to have an opinion from a sustainability perspective.”

www.tnsmonona.org

Come to the Monona Community Center to cheer on the Water Conservation Challenge winners (yourself?) as they are announced. Prizes will be awarded to the conservation winners and the innovation winners. You’ll hear from local water advocates, our “Gallon” sponsors, and our mayor, and even be treated to a couple of songs penned for and about the Water Conservation Challenge. Celebrate the closing of the 2012 Year of Water with song, cookies, learning, and fun.

Where: Monona Community Center

When: Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Time: 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Our good friend Liz Ferguson passed away on New Year’s Day.

Liz and The Natural Step Monona found one another because she joined a summer study circle in 2008. She and another friend from the circle, Carol, were so thrilled with The Natural Step framework that they went on to take facilitator training from us and led their very own circle in Madison. Liz and Carol followed up that “fire soul” effort by presenting on the TNS framework at the Midwest Renewable Energy Association Fair in Custer, Wisconsin.

For our first Capstone Course in spring 2011, Liz was one of fourteen TNS Monona volunteers who went door-to-door with twelve students and their professor and teaching assistant–covering all of Monona’s households!–to deliver our sustainability survey. Over the years, she also helped with grant research and assisted with the fundraising team. Due to her dedication and support for TNS Monona, Liz was our 2011 Volunteer of the Year and received the “Good Dog” award, a trophy which is topped with a dog sporting a green cape, a humorous representation of a superhero of sustainability. We will miss our real and human sustainability hero.

Sincerely,
The Natural Step Monona board and Executive Director

We need a good revolution. The foundation of our nation—that our government derives its powers “from the consent of the governed” —is eroding. Corporations have gained power and “personhood.” Super-wealthy individuals can fund campaigns from the shadows, and have more “free speech” than the rest of us. Ideologues control legislators and restrict their willingness to compromise. And our own Supreme Court has helped much of this happen.

We need a good revolution. Written before the election, this statement and this column are not in response to what did or did not happen on November 6. They are written in response to the harmful changes to our democratic system that have occurred in the last few decades, and especially in the last few years.

In the 2010 Citizens United case, the Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban independent political spending by corporations, labor unions, and other organizations in elections. The majority held that Congress cannot limit independent expenditures in political campaigns, as such expenditures are not donations so much as expressions of preference, giving corporations much of the same rights to political speech as individuals have.

Most Americans agree that this ruling was the wrong one. As we have seen in the first presidential election since that ruling, independent “Super PACs,” which have no limits on campaign donations, are flooding our airwaves, mailboxes, streets, and phone lines with advertising. The super wealthy, like billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, can donate tens of millions of dollars. You and I, though, as individual donors, are limited to $2,500 for the state-by-state party-nominating contests for presidential candidates and to $2,500 for the general election. Millionaires and billionaires have the power to sway the election and curry favor with those they help elect, whereas, the little folks, like you and me, make a much smaller impact and have no power to curry favor.

Our system also allows a single lobbyist and activist like Grover Norquist—a person who holds no public office—to control members of congress. (If you are not familiar with him, he has persuaded 279 legislators to sign a pledge to never, under any circumstances, vote to raise taxes on anyone. That might sound good on one hand, but it ties up the legislators’ ability to compromise and negotiate.) No public official should be allowed to sign a pledge that supersedes his or her pledge to represent the best interests of the United States citizens in his or her district.

We have to change a system in which the Speaker of the House is so afraid of being seen as compromising with the other side that he cannot even speak of it. “I reject the word,” current Speaker John Boehner has said.

Compromise should be a goal of a good revolution. We must change the structure of our system so that the right and left can compromise and do what is best for the country, not what is best for the parties.

And that leads to another problem. We only have two powerful parties in the United States and much of our system helps keep that two-party structure in place. But how much more representative would our government be if we had more than two parties? How much more diffuse would power be among the citizens if Independents, Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, Progressives, Constitutionalists, and other parties were to share the stage with the Republicans and Democrats?

How about we advocate for an election “season” that is actually a season-long affair instead of one lasting more than a year? I am sure most of us would cheer than kind of change right now. What a waste to have such a long, drawn-out process. Other countries do their choosing much more quickly and seem to do quite well. What can we learn from them about changing what we do?

At their cores, what most of my gripes are about is the diminishment of power of the average citizen. It is an issue of human rights, social justice, and sustainability when people’s ability to participate fully in their own governance is infringed upon or muted. We should have elected officials who are beholden to us, not beholden to Super PAC donors, corporations, or the Grover Norquists of the world.

Will America’s citizens have the willingness to make change? Do we have what it takes for a good revolution?

I turn for inspiration to Robert M. La Follette, who struggled repeatedly against a political machine until finally becoming Wisconsin’s governor. He led an era of progressive reform that helped give Wisconsin its reputation for clean governance. Said La Follette, “We are slow to realize that democracy is a life; and involves continual struggle. It is only as those of every generation who love democracy resist with all their might the encroachments of its enemies that the ideals of representative government can even be nearly approximated.”

So, if we love democracy, it is time to fix it. If we want our government to remain one that derives its powers “from the consent of the governed,” the governed had better get to work.