Any thinking person who has a modicum of vision will see the wisdom in my depressing analysis and why we are going to have to change the way we live our lives.  This is the rationale for a Sustainability Plan and why it's application is so vital.

Lura are a competent firm, but as noted in yesterday's piece they will only produce work to the level of the quality of the input they get.  The Sustainability Plan they will present needs to be specific to Huntsville.  The less direction and input they receive the more generic it will be.  Trisha Healy, in a comment to the last article, makes an excellent point about 18 different committees adding their voice to the Whistler plan even before pen made it to paper.  This is sadly lacking to date in Huntsville . . . too few are involved in the planning process.

Input is important but to me what is more important is the need for output . . . reaching out and educating the public.  The thousands who will not show up tomorrow night are the ones that need to be sensitized. 

Thousands of our neighbours who so far have shown no interest  need to be brought on board or there is no hope for anything being possible but no cost, trivial actions. 

That massive education task is what is missing from the planning of the Working Group and what is missing from the schedule of meetings that they and Lura have planned.  While they will vehemently disagree, I submit they have set the bar far too low. They will be lucky to draw hundreds when they need to draw thousands.  Here's how I think it should have been done.

Set a goal to make Huntsville the country's leading community for sustainability.  We have a new connection with Waterloo so I'd start there and take full advantage of it.  Cajole them into making our town a living laboratory . . . the first in North America.  It would be a win for them and a win for us.  It would boost their academic reputation and could provide an economic opportunity for us. What an appropriate and consequential announcement it would make at the G8.

Economically, working together we could start to build a green industry base.  Rather than turn out car hitches we could build wind turbines and solar panels.  Our work force could be motivated to take training in all aspects of green energy, work on R&D and develop export capabilities.  If they can do it in Germany are we any less capable?

Socially,  nursing homes, something our family is only too familiar with.  Rather than the large warehouses we have presently, we could look to the small innovative solutions developed in Denmark.  Affordable housing is sorrowfully lacking in Huntsville and there are numerous options that should be explored.  Local food production, taking full advantage of the organic wave, picking up on creative solutions employed in countries like Brazil could revolutionize how we feed ourselves; how we fight the escalating cost of health care.

Environmentally, there's a long shopping list of energy saving ideas that don't need to be reinvented but need to be sold to the community.  For example, the roofs of every municipal building could be covered with solar panels. The building code could be changed so any new construction has to be at least R2000.  I'm afraid with the vision we are seeing at the moment, the big environmental announcement coming out of the Unity Plan will be blue box recycling in condo buildings.  Heaven help us if that's all that's possible.

Remember the idea of the bridges over the river that got voted down?  That's a perfect example of the council not being knowledgeable and sold on a Sustainability Plan.  Those bridges were supposed to be part of a trail system that would lead from the Waterloo building to the Civic Centre, across to Fairvern, into town through River Mill to connect with the Avery Beach Trail.  Done creatively a wilderness trial could be a true jewel - totally unique and a real tourist attraction.  But even council didn't get it and pejoratively referred to a bridge as merely a shortcut for high school students to get to McDonalds.  If our council don't get it what chance do we have with the electorate?

If you have followed my logic then you know that I think public involvement is probably the most important component for success.   I'll admit that getting people out and educated is going to take a major effort.

So how do I think it could have been accomplished?  Rather than have tomorrow's meeting in Partner's Hall where Mary Jane Fletcher, as the speaker, will be lucky to draw a crowd of 70 or so I would have designed it so the crowd was too big for even the Algonquin Theatre.  I would have set the bar so high a thousand would have turned out and filled the auditorium at Deerhurst.

I can see the Working Group reading this and thinking I'm heavily into the tequila.  But I can guarantee if you could hook up with Waterloo, widely publicize that Huntsville will be a living laboratory and has set a goal of being the leading sustainability community in the country then I think you would have a good shot at getting the likes of Al Gore, David Suzuki, Jeff Rubin and a host of other headliners to draw the crowd I think we need.  After about three or four excellent evenings, heavily promoted, an energized community would be ready for the recommendations and actionable deliverables that would come out of a Sustainability Plan.  A public ready, willing and able to accept change is the only way any plan will have a fighting chance of success.

I'm sorry we won't be at the meeting Wednesday night to ask how they plan to accomplish the mammoth task of marketing their plan to the public.  I've given one idea.  Best of luck with theirs.

David Harris is the editor and publisher of the Huntsville Online.