"Everything Flows. Nothing Stands Still." - - Heraclitus - -

Spring highlights our natural cycles of change, renewal, new life, and new work. What we plant now and properly cultivate will determine what we later harvest.    

Our contributors are working hard, planting the seeds of change in their communities and through these pages. Our common goal remains to foster and explore independence, broadly defined. We have a lot of work to do.    

It has never been more apparent that as individuals, communities and a state, we need to become more self-reliant. And now.   

We can choose to embrace change and uncertainty as opportunities for independence and happiness, or we can choose to allow perceived challenges to intimidate, scare, and defeat us.
Becoming independent is a personal and community journey that begins in exploration and is related to our ability – our choice – to thrive and adapt in a rapidly changing natural and economic environment.   

How can Vermont become a model of sustainable independence?  What do we need to do now to prepare for the next season? The next decade? How can we joyfully embrace the idea that we need to completely redesign our communities, economies, governments, and institutions to thrive in the age of energy descent?    

We are attempting to answer these questions at the Vermont Commons “Dreaming Our Destiny” retreat during the first weekend of May at Goddard College.  This collaborative effort will lay out the beginnings of a “Second Vermont Republic” political platform for Vermont. We will draft policy recommendations around agriculture, representative government, commerce, energy, water, education, health care, legal systems, social welfare, defense, and other topics. Look for the fruits of this labor on our website and in future issues of this journal.    

But a more fundamental design question still divides the citizens of our state: Should our systems be based on centralization, or decentralization? How could decentralized, small-scale, sovereign communities and nations co-exist sustainably without constant war and chaos? Or alternatively, how could a global central government and economy somehow “keep the peace” and distribute equitable levels of livelihood and productivity, without being at the cost of community independence, political freedom, and sustainability?   

If we had a limitless, cheap energy supply (which is the myth that our current centralizing systems are based on) we could theoretically fuel a centralized control and management system to distribute that energy and enable livelihoods. And in theory this could be equitably and democratically managed with the right government structure.   

But the reality of energy descent, driven by resource depletion and population explosion, means that the energy foundations of our communities will need to be redesigned, site-specific, and localized.    

The energy and economic needs and resources of the Alaska economy are much different from that of Vermont or Iowa or Florida. So any continental or global approach to policy and investment with a “one size fits all” mentality will fail. Then it will need to be bailed out – and thereby contribute to more resource depletion in an accelerating downward spiral. This same relationship applies to education, health care, social services, etc.   

So it is clear that we need to take responsibility for creating our own personal and community independence. We need to dare to redesign our own local and state systems, based on proven sustainable and democratic models. This responsibility will not be given to us by Barack Obama or anyone else. We must we take it, with exuberance.    

Thank you for supporting and contributing to this journey and,

FREE VERMONT!

Gaelan Brown
Business Manager, Vermont Commons Editorial Board