2013: The Year of…Déjà vu?

"You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself."  ~Nelson Mandela

2013, the New Year.  What a great time for our society to be motivated, to “change ourselves for the better” and lose weight, exercise more, eat better, quit coffee, and…and…and…

The first weeks of 2013 have been filled with articles about looking back and looking forward in business, the most read stories of 2012 (“iPhone 5 Less Toxic than Samsung Galaxy!”  or Historic drought and Hurricane Sandy sweep away (some) climate denial! or WalMart Accused of Greenwashing!) and ahem…predictions for the upcoming year (Obama develops national climate change strategy! or Global Sale of Sustainable Goods and Services Reaches $2Trillion!).  You can even “Relive the year on Twitter”.  This is a miniscule sampling of the significant and not-so-significant events of the year, and I realize I’m leaving out a lot of important things such as the Occupy movement, same-sex marriage, health care, Keystone XL…I could go on and on but this is a blog not a novel. 

Obviously the news stories I’ve been reading are all centered on environmental issues and not whether Snooki got Botox (Really?  That’s what our society cares about?!).  So I wonder, what will 2013 bring us?  Will this be the year of positive traction for extending our time as a species on this great planet?  Or will it be the year of Déjà vu?

I wait anxiously for a sign, an indication we are moving in the right direction, from the front lines of government.  One headline caught my attention, the “Green Deal” from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, a national program for energy efficiency improvements (wait, AND climate change?  Oh, that’s the UK DoE, not US.  Darn.) How cool would that be if the U.S. offered such a program? The Green Deal sounds similar to PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) financing, which provides local government financing for energy-efficiency improvements or renewable energy systems and is tied to the property not the borrower (read: builders don’t have to recoup the cost of the system because the buyer pays for it over the life of the loan).  PACE has had its ups and downs, but today is available in 28 states plus Washington D.C.  It seems like a straightforward and cost-effective way to encourage improved energy efficiency and investments in small-scale generation systems. 

There are some other faint glimmers of hope.  President Obama named climate change as one of the top 3 priorities for his second term; groups like Climate Summit 2013 and the Climate Reality Project are working hard to hold the administration to put their money where their mouths are.  Last summer, Annie Leonard and the crew at The Story of Stuff Project released a new video, The Story of Change, encouraging citizens to work together and take action to redefine the system.  I’m thrilled to get to meet and work with her personally in April, when she will join us for the UnCommon Sense workshop and graduation as our commencement speaker. 

My hope for the coming year is that we as individuals will stand up together as the 74% of Americans who support tougher laws on toxic chemicals, the 83% of Americans who want clean energy laws, the 85% of Americans who want to get corporations out of government, and make change happen.  I hope we will use quality of life and gross national happiness as measures of success rather than corporate profit; that we will demand human rights and economic equality, and create an economy based on the needs of needs of people and the planet, and our survival as a species.

Will my overqualified and underemployed/unemployed friends and colleagues find work?  Will my non-profit, doing good work for the businesses in the region and the health of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, yet struggling to stay afloat, be able to sustain our own survival?  I hope so. 

Here’s to the New Year, one that I hope will be filled with courage, inspiration, unhindered boldness and radical progress.  Prost.