Teaching about here
By G. Rendell June 11, 2010 3:08 pmA conversation, yesterday, led me to one realization about how Greenback might modify its undergraduate co-curriculum to better prepare students for participation in a successful and sustainable social economy. We need to make sure their college experience is firmly grounded right here in Backboro.
What I'm thinking is that "sustainable" is a theoretical condition, not an objective criterion. Sustainability can be judged based on a set of objective criteria, it's true, but the criterion set will vary tremendously with location. What's sustainable here in the northeastern USA is not the same as what's sustainable in the southwest, or even the southeast. And it's certainly not the same as what will be sustainable in some other part of the world.
A simple example: in this part of the country, we're blessed with a lot of second-growth forest. I don't know how big a role biomass will play in sustainable heating and electrical generation, but however big the role is, we probably have enough biomass to keep it going for a while. (Certainly, if we don't, our neighbo[u]rs to the north will have plenty to spare.) But my understanding is the the pueblo dwellings in the Four Corners area. sometimes attributed to the Anasazi, seem to have been abandoned primarily because of insufficient available wood for winter heating. This even though the communities in question were much smaller than many of the towns around here.
Local variations like forestation, water supply, temperature, precipitation patterns, soil types, etc. come immediately to mind to anyone involved in agriculture or the natural resource industries. But I suspect that local variations of a different sort will differentiate urban
