Woodstock Renews the Revolution
by Tao Oliveto
Solar panels already in place on Town Hall, council members in Woodstock, NY,
passed a resolution to become the first American community to become carbon nuetral within a decade (as reported by correspondent, William Kemble on DailyFreeman.com). The resolution, approved unanimously by the Town Board in 2007, will allow a task force to pursue this goals by increasing recycling, implementing green building standards, establishing land-use policies to reduce sprawl, tree-planting for shade, promoting renewable energy sources, such as methane and wind and promoting fuel efficiency with an anti-idling message.
Locals of this forwarding-thinking town will be encouraged - through tax and other incentives - to change light bulbs, drive less, recycle more and improve energy efficiency on homes. Community by community, individuals and groups, it’s a familiar movement that is available to us at this kind of grassroots level.
If it all sounds familiar, take a look back to the revolution of the Sixties. After all, the hippies may have temporarily lost the battle to runaway consumerism, but they got plenty of things right. As Mark Morford points out in his San Francisco Chronicle column,
“All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMO seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the sidelines and from far off the grid…”
Peace and Love (repeat when necessary).
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