Friday, April 13, 2007

Letter from the Future, April 14, 2017

A Big Thank You from 2017 to you all on Whidbey Island in 2007,

Today, April 14, 2017, is the tenth anniversary of the first nationwide day of action on Global Warming. There were, as I recall, thousands of local actions – including South Whidbey. And I want to celebrate with all of you – and say, THANK YOU. My borrowed grandson Toby is typing this for me (fingers too stiff these days which is tough for a writer) but it’s all my own words.

If you could see us now, you’d be so amazed – and proud – of what you did after the jolt of four blackouts in the winter of 2006 woke us up. Of course, Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth that played that fall at the Clyde also helped throw a big bucket of cold water on our old dreams of endless growth.

You sure got busy, and we get the benefit. Let me give you a snapshot of island life, 2017. Now some of it may seem like bad news to you, but really, it’s great!

Starting with those blackouts, people dusted off the old disaster plans from Y2K days and got us all in 20-household neighbor to neighbor clusters. We owe a big debt to the churches that adopted the motto “neighborliness is next to godliness” – whew, they were so organized and so giving. At first we called it “emergency preparedness” but there have been so many emergencies that we’re beyond prepared – we’re just taking care of one another every day. We share tools and recipes and elder-care and bicycles and game nights and book clubs. Each neighborhood has a name (mine’s called Winphia after my dear departed cat and my neighbor’s dog) and we compete on sports days. Lots have bands and singing groups. Mine, of course, is the best. But I digress.

In case you are wondering, yes, we managed to save all our agricultural lands. Thanks for all your letter writing, activism, rewriting zoning, land use and building codes - and especially to the Land Trust that helped the long-time farmers harvest some deserved profits from a lifetime of labor while keeping their farmland out of the hands of sprawl developers and shopping malls. Hats off to our County Commissioners too for “getting it” about how climate change was going to make local food production a key to economic vitality.

Lawns, of course, are a rare luxury now what with water shortages. Lots of property owners, instead of watching them turn to weeds, released their former lawns to the community gardens project. We’re calling them “Victory Gardens” again – because it’s a big victory that we are so well fed while hunger and starvation are epidemic elsewhere. Our dairy farms provide our milk and cheese. One has shifted to sheep and now produces the yummiest lamb and Three Sisters is still raising the best beef in the world for us. Well, talk about Yum and you’re talking about the mussels and oysters farmed up and down our coast that are so fresh and tasty. Good thing most of us are gardening for our own summer vegetables or else we’d be totally fat from all the great food.

I also love how we’d already solved the fossil fuel scarcity (talk about rationing!!!) before it hit. Of course we’re all doing solar hot water and most have some solar electric too. I know it’s silly but when I’m feeling low, I sometimes go outside to watch my meter run backwards. I feel a bit smug thinking my roof is sending power back into the grid. But getting our bodies – not just electron – traveling was a challenge. Our car coop now owns a fleet of bio-diesel pick up trucks and cars at Bayview. Hardly anyone has two cars now, and some don’t have any. I for one gave up my car so I depend on our island casual carpooling (cazhooling) schemes to get around. In part it’s simply what back in the day we called hitch-hiking – anyone can go to any roadside, stick out a thumb and a neighbor will pick them up. I always give my kind driver a dollar for gas – and I meet the nicest people. “Thumbs out means thumbs up for conservation” was the motto that got us willing to pick up strangers along the road – who naturally soon became friends. Of course Island Transit goes everywhere now – plus they have a Ride Buddy ride board everyone uses to share rides the gym, to the movies, theater and events, and to the mainland. So we saved money, gas and road congestion (twice the people here now, but half the cars!) Surveys also show that islanders on average know five times as many neighbors as they did in 2007. Hmm, maybe that’s why we haven’t needed to add police officers. I wonder…

Maybe you’re thinking all this sharing and gardening stuff is a big nuisance, but let me tell you, the pictures of Katrina are nothing compared to what we’re seeing now with rising seas. One outcome no one predicted is that when owners of waterfront property couldn’t afford the insurance anymore they wrote off the homes, boarded them up and left! Of course, artists and writers and some young families squatted in these large homes and the police finally gave up evicting them. Voila, affordable housing (okay, it’s illegal, I shouldn’t even be writing about it). As for our coastal cities – some Dutch engineers showed us how to live below sea level and still breathe – Ha! – so all is well and the Clyde is still here.

There’s so much to tell, so little space. I just want to mention one more thing. Repeat after me: “God Bless Whidbey Telecom”! They built a state of the art teleconferencing studio back when there were resources to do it, so we can still talk “face-to-face” with people around the world. We roam far and wide on the web now and post films of life here to show others what we are doing. It is so exciting to see communities across the planet shifting to local self-reliance - taking advantage of their strengths, pulling together and step by step creating amazingly good lives. We swap recipes still – recipes for innovative building, small scale power generation, taxes to fund transitions, and the like. We do see catastrophes on the web as well – like the swarms of refugees from flooded coastal cities – as well as the glittery floating pleasure cities, refuges for the rich. Some people leave Whidbey to help those whose lives are turned upside down. Others leave for the pleasure cities. Oh well. It’s a free country still. Even free-er now that it’s run as self-governing bioregions.

Well, Toby has a date (wink. wink) so I have to sign off. I just want to say two things. Thank you for all your hard work. And about the future ten years from April 14, 2007, I say “C’mon in, the water’s fine!”

Vicki Robin
Winphia Neighborhood
Langley
April 14, 2017