I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few years about issues of sustainability: humanity is living beyond its means in terms of energy consumption and nature preservation. The Washington Post Magazine has a cover story on an eco-village in North Carolina called Earthaven. It aims to be sustainable, although it’s not quite there yet. It is impressive, however, how consciously people live as they try to minimize their energy consumption. Is this for everyone? No, at least not yet (can you imagine American communities living by consensus?). But some of the ideas being tried out there will sooner or later have to be adopted by the mainstream if we truly want to preserve our planet for future generations. As the article notes:
Cities, where most of us live, are where the battle for energy efficiency has to be won. Fleeing to the woods isn’t an option to begin with. There are not enough resources in the world to allow all 6.5 billion (or 8 or 9 or 10 billion) people to live in their own little Earthaven, says John Anderson, an engineer with Rocky Mountain Institute in Boulder, Colo. And because of their density and higher use of public transportation, cities can actually have a low carbon footprint per capita. “One of the least carbon-intensive places on Earth is Manhattan,” Anderson says.
