Adapted and expanded from his talk at the Sustainable and Vision panel at the Rolling Thunder event in Santa Barbara.

People need vision. I need vision. Without vision, all our activities can be for naught. Visionaries are not popular because they are not publicized. But visionaries and pioneers exist; we have to actually want to seek them out. In a culture that thinks everything is either okay or about to crash, there’s not much call for vision. When I use the word vision, I’m not speaking of a dreamy ethereal wannabee reality. When I use the term, I mean the fountain from which pioneers drink their inspiration, that sustains their energies so their imaginings, tinkerings and hopeful intimations manifest in this world.

John Todd had a vision of cleaning polluted water systems. He believed in and wanted to use nature (plants, vegetation, fish) to help clean up the toxins. And he’s doing it. His work is now taking him around the world, while his students are also now in demand to go out into the world with the vision of cleaning up water pollution by incorporating natural methods.

Wendell Berry talks about the great divide between Industrial Agriculture and the Agrarian model. He practices the Agrarian model and is rooted in it so that when he speaks and writes, the vision is alive.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer who focuses on the psychological aspects of Globalization. She knows what Globalization has done to the so-called first world and is now seeing the psychological results in third-world peoples. And she’s going directly into the villages to help keep them alive and thriving. She has helped create stronger ties in the villages of Ladakh where the youth have a renewed respect for nature and community rather than falling for the very tempting adolescent glitz of the city where cheap food, drugs, pornography, pollution and an altercation of the traditional family structure has become the norm. She also focuses on farmers’ markets in the first world as a way to support local food production and other local businesses, not only to fight off the devastating effects of Globalization but to bring back community values of support and camaraderie that are very much needed for a wholistic, healthy system.

David Orr is an environmental educator at Oberlin College. For 35 years he has combined his passion for the natural world with education. His students are getting turned onto changing the world. One graduate created The Cleveland Green Building Coalition (check out their website at www.clevelandgbc.org). Three others bought a whole downtown block and raised 20 million dollars to restore it; complete with a green building. David Orr was responsible for creating the famous Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies where photovoltaics are supplying almost 86% of the power, where students harvest crops of summer veggies, where pear and apple orchards are fed with collected roof water runoff and where a John Todd Living Machine treats all the wastewater from the building.

And then there’s Bill Mollison who wanted to leave this crazy world and let it destroy itself; but his escape into the woods only lasted about two weeks. He returned with an enthusiastic vigor as an enlightened madman who has captured the practical imaginations of thousands to learn the art and practice of permaculture. And permaculture is not just about gardening. It is a wholistic design system where humans are part of the scheme, working with nature, rather than in constant opposition to it. And trying to be as sustainable as possible. The designs include the water systems and vegetable and fruit growing that mimics nature rather than the monoculture that we see so prevalent, the buildings, the multifunctionality of animals, the recycling of waste into food for other organisms and on and on. The main point for me regarding sustainability and permaculture is asking questions. Like, how did this happen? When did it happen? Was there harm in creating this design or in the consequences of that design? How do we eliminate,as much as we can, the harmful effects of our design, whether it’s a building, a community, an ecovillage or garden. And as William McDonough likes to say, “We don’t want to just stop being bad. We want to design things that will create abundance.” One of his favorite words in describing the sustainability movement is “fecundity”!

This is just not a movement that bases itself on crying and chanting NO! nor of unnecessary sacrificing. This movement excitedly and enthusiastically declares a YES, a YES to vision, a YES to taking risks, learning from the pioneers, taking on the odds, taking one’s place rooted in the earth and learning the radical ways of a sustainable life.

And what does that look like? First we need to have compassion for ourselves when we are not being sustainable, since we are in recovery from an addictive culture of progress and material consumption that is so strong and pervasive and invisible that all the other addictions may pale before it. We are also in transition.

So what can we do or what does it look like: Drive less, walk and ride more often, buy local food, grow food, learn about using renewable sources for building, eliminate your lawn, become creative with your socalled wastes, raise chickens, worms, grow soil, learn to live with less, not in a sacrificial manner but as a way to enjoy and be more creative with the time you have. Turn the TV off or turn the dial to the many great satellite stations and programs like Free Speech TV, UCTVor WorldLinkTV. Become more silent and listen to your own inner media. Listen to your soul’s purpose, be reflective. Inquire about meaningful careers and livelihoods. According to Ernest Callenbach, only about 5% of US citizens are involved in “right livelihood.” Support organic farmers, local farmers, fair trade coffee, sweatshopfree T-Shirts, fair trade chocolate, local craftspeople. Support alternative media. Listen to live music.

Sustainability also means sustaining ourselves as activists, so we have to be careful as to how much media we take in and what kind. We need to ask ourselves, “Does this media nourish our souls? Does it move us to act in this world with joy and spunk, knowing that we are part of the solution and not part of the pollution.”

Subscribe to Resurgence, Yes, Talking Leaves, Permaculture Activist, The Ecologist, Whole Earth Review, HopeDance... Read books on the simplicity movement. Do a search for the Right Livelihood Awards (www.rightlivelihood.se), and this will turn you on to some of the more current pioneers. Go to bioneers.org for a directory of pioneers in the fields of biology, politics, mediation, medicine, indigenous peoples’ struggles, natural building, green entrepreneurship, ... all solutions to the myriad problems we face today that include Vision.