Dave Stauffer

Commencement address to the

UnCommon Sense Class of 2012

By Dave Stauffer, board – Linx Transportation Co-op, past chair – YBP

Red Lodge, Montana – April 26, 2012

EXCERPTED VERSION (For full version: dave@staufferbury.com or text to 406-425-4197.)

For the past year or so I’ve been reading and thinking about why most Americans don’t live sustainably … and about whether we ever will.

So tonight, I would like to present, for your consideration and critique, “The Top 10 Reasons Most Americans Don’t Live Sustainably.”

10 – Most Americans don’t live sustainably because they are subsidized by people who do. For example, it’s expensive to provide services to a 5,000 square feet home sitting on a 20 acre lot located 10 miles from city center. But it’s likely that household receives more in public services than it pays, while the in-town home on a small lot pays more for public services than it receives.

9 – Most Americans don’t live sustainably because we don’t have free markets. They’re distorted by taxation, regulation, licensing, barriers to start-ups, and other impacts. The petroleum industry is regulated and subsidized from exploration to consumption … so little wonder that alternative energies find tough going in cracking new markets.

8 – We don’t have to pay the true costs of the products we consume … the costs called “externalities.” When we buy a car, we don’t pay the costs of treating asthma that’s caused or aggravated by the auto’s exhausts. When we fill our vehicles’ tanks, we don’t pay for the national defense needed to protect our sources and transportation of oil.

7 – The 7th reason we don’t see more Americans living sustainably is because they don’t see that sustainability is right in tune with our times. Today Americans want less government in their lives, especially government seen as coming from the centralized authority in Washington and state capitals. What they seem not to realize is that today’s unsustainable lifestyles have resulted in many cases from laws, regulation, and dictates from central authorities … for example, the zoning laws and other regulations that have produced and encouraged sprawl.

But that’s not the case in this room, with UnCommon Sense. This program is voluntary, not mandatory. It’s conducted in the private sector, not dictated by government. And our principles are formulated and applied at the local level, respecting unique local conditions, history, and values.

6 – We won’t be mostly sustainable as long as we have privatized profits and socialized costs. Yes, I’m referring to bailouts of big banks, and auto companies, and Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae. But in addition I’m referring to socializing the costs of consumer home mortgages and student loans and other “bailouts” of individuals.  

5 – We prop up industries that would otherwise disappear or be transformed by the dynamics of “creative destruction.” At the beginning of the 20th century, there was no bailout of the horse-and-buggy industry or the blacksmithing profession.

Not so at the beginning of the 21st century, where seemingly everyone – Democratic and Republican, Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street – will pay any amount to prevent the creative destruction of the fossil-fuel burning, piston-driven, internal-combustion automobile – whether we do that with “cash for clunkers” or bailouts of GM and Chrysler.

Similarly, our elected representatives at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue seem willing to spend any amount to keep housing costs free of taxation and free from the pricing of supply and demand. If home prices reflected economic reality, I believe we’d see sustainable residential development almost overnight.

4 – In our Yellowstone-Teton region, we won’t live sustainably until we stop living as if we have unlimited vital resources. We must accept that we live in an arid region … that our water resources can’t sustainably serve agricultural uses, plus new technologies such as fracking, plus demands from new residents, plus potential effects of climate change.  

3 – We mostly don’t live sustainably because we cling blindly to a vague notion called “American exceptionalism.” True, we are exceptional … world’s first democratic republic … world’s leader in creating financial wealth, and more.

But we aren’t exceptional in everything. European countries are ahead of us in sustainable land use and Asian countries are ahead of us in using technology to lift people from poverty to a sustainable middle-class.

Why don’t we make the U.S. exceptional in capturing the things that make other countries exceptional?

2 – We would live more sustainably if we measured “genuine wealth,” also called “gross national happiness.” We can put a monetary value on our gross domestic product, trade deficit, and national debt. But what’s the value of a smile? Of a tree? Of the spectacular views as you drove to Red Lodge this morning?

I’m “happy” to note the release this month of the first-ever “world happiness report.” It tells how the international body called OECD plans to promote standard methods of data collection as more countries attempt to measure the collective happiness of their citizens.

1 – At Number 1 on the ways more of us might choose to live sustainably is the imperative for us “sustainers” to challenge those who don’t share our views to put their choices on a level playing field with ours. This means no distorting favoritism: all costs of externalities and tax breaks must be added in … and all subsidies taken away.

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Despite these and other obstacles to living sustainably, I am not a total pessimist about the future. I’ll close with three reasons for hope:

The first is that living sustainably, contrary to much popular belief, is usually not all that difficult. Think back to the so-called “Carmageddon” of last summer in Los Angeles – the weekend closing of a main freeway. What actually happened? Nothing happened. No gridlock. No road-rage mayhem.

Why did nothing happen? Because so many trips by automobile, research shows possibly more than half, are unnecessary or can be combined with trips for other purposes.

The second reason I have hope is that someday I will die. I’m part of the baby boom, an especially materialistic and consumptive generation. We want what we want when we want it.

AARP is wrong in saying we seniors have “earned a say” in the future of our unsustainable Social Security, Medicare, and other benefits. We’ve earned less than the federal payouts we will receive as a group, but seem unwilling to sacrifice so much as a penny. So perhaps it’s only by dying that we’ll free our children and grandchildren from supporting us.

The third major reason I have hope for sustainable living in the future is you. Most of you here tonight, especially those participating in UnCommon Sense, were raised and educated with a sustainability ethic … and you’re determined to use it to make things better.

Late one night of an earlier UnCommon Sense graduation day, I asked a young twenty-something what he intends to do with his newly earned “degree.” He said, as nonchalantly as if he were saying good-night, “I’m going to change the world.”

Their grievances, though ill-defined and squishy, could be aired and addressed much more effectively if the many thousands of hours cumulatively spent in various urban parks and plazas were instead devoted to advancing the cause of an organization or a political party or candidate.

I’m not discounting the likelihood that many of the Occupy participants may already be doing this. I am questioning whether they’re lessening their own impact by pursuing “occupation” rather than devoting more time to other groups and causes.

Based on what I’ve gleaned from news reports, some occupiers may reply that other organizations and individuals have little to no meaningful impact – that, indeed, the very essence of their Occupy involvement is to express their outrage that “the 99%” have little influence compared with the vast wealth and, thereby, influence of “the 1%.”
I believe they’re wrong. What’s more, I believe it’s neither difficult nor excessively time consuming to succeed in transforming your beliefs from idea to influence. I know this from my involvement in the Yellowstone Business Partnership (YBP).

Making a difference is possible
In the early part of my career in business writing, I formed the belief that businesses are more profitable in the long run when they pay as much attention to building social and natural capital as they do to building financial capital.

Later, I received a letter inviting me to be a charter member of YBP – a new organization intended to address (among other things) the essence of my belief in how businesses could best operate. I joined, and over the next eight years – without the expenditure of vast sums of money or time (neither of which I had) – I headed two YBP committees and served five years as vice chair and then chair.

And I made a difference, because YBP makes a difference. We’re making life a little better in our region with efforts such as our Greater Yellowstone Framework for Sustainable Development and the Linx transportation network. You could argue that the benefits to mankind are far from those realized in conquering smallpox or inventing the Internet. But giant strides in well-being are mostly composed of small steps.

Nun activists an inspiration in how to affect change
Another way that I know the 99% can make a difference is having read a recent article in the New York Times: “Nuns Who Won’t Stop Nudging.” This inspiring piece related the story of the corporate social responsibility committee of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia.

“The group has pressed for changes at some of the nation’s most illustrious companies,” the Times reported. “Long before Occupy Wall Street, the Sisters of St. Francis were quietly staging an occupation of their own. In recent years, this Roman Catholic order of 540 or so nuns has become one of the most surprising groups of corporate activists around.”

You want to see the 99% have an impact on the 1%? The Sisters of St. Francis and their allied groups “have gained access to some of the most illustrious boardrooms in America.” Robert J. Stevens, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, has lent her an ear, as has Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman of BP. Jack Welch, the former chief executive of General Electric, was so impressed by their campaign against G.E.’s involvement in nuclear weapons development that he took a helicopter to their convent to meet with the nuns.”

The nuns gain entre’ to corporate influence through investments of their retirement fund, buying the minimum number of shares required for eligibility to submit resolutions at a company’s annual shareholder meeting.

Their efforts are far from an unbroken skein of victories. “Despite some successes,” the Times notes, “such as a campaign directed at Wal-Mart that the nuns say led the company to stop selling adult video games, the insider-heavy nature of corporate share structures means that the Sisters of St. Francis rarely succeed in real-world terms, even when their ideas prove popular.”

Nonetheless, I’ll wager that the chances of success in making a difference aren’t as great for occupiers throwing eggs at the home of a bank’s CEO as they are for nuns throwing shareholder resolutions at a bank’s annual meeting.

Ray Anderson (1934-2011), widely recognized as “the greenest CEO in America.” (Photo from InterfaceGlobal.com.)

The world suffered twin losses of brilliant corporate CEOs recently, with the much publicized death of Apple’s Steve Jobs and the less noted passing of Interface’s Ray Anderson.

Ray Who? Anderson was founder and chair of Interface, Inc. – the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet – a company that 17 years ago was set by Anderson on a path to pursue 100 percent sustainable operations and an environmental “footprint” of zero. He is also well remembered within YBP as the keynote speaker at our first annual conference in 2004.

The closely spaced losses of these two business giants got me wondering about their lasting impacts on the world.

On the one hand, I agree with economist Stefan Karlsson, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, that “Steve Jobs deserved his wealth, as he created even more than he got for himself,” and also with blogger Greg Habstritt, who observes that Jobs “left [our world] a better place, and allowed us to focus on the things that matter most – innovation, simplicity, and connecting with those we care about.”

On the other hand, I’ll wager (with no risk, as none of us will be around to witness it) that in 100 years – perhaps less – Anderson will be ranked right alongside, or even ahead of, Jobs in lists of CEOs who’ve had the most beneficial and lasting impacts on our planet and its inhabitants.

I believe this because, where Jobs’s wealth creation lays mostly within the financial realm, Anderson likely exceeds Jobs and all other corporate executives to win the “triple crown” of wealth creation: environmental, social, and financial.

What’s more, Anderson may already stand as business history’s most influential leader in prompting companies worldwide to pay lots more attention to their triple bottom lines of boosting environmental, social, and financial capital. Anderson made things uncomfortable for almost every CEO in the US by proving, through spectacular real-world financial results, that monetary profits are not necessarily harmed by pursuing corporate environmental and social goals.

On the contrary, Anderson proved that pursuing these goals enhances financial performance, as he discussed in a 2009 podcast about Interface’s record in pursuing sustainability and zero environmental impact. The initiatives, he said, have “given our people … a higher purpose. … You cannot beat it for attracting the best people. … It is the most motivating thing I have ever seen in my 53 years in the business world.”

After only partially completing the first of eight phases of Interface’s sustainability efforts, Anderson added, “we have saved 400-and-something million dollars in the process. I mean real money. … Sustainability for Interface has become a self-funding process.” More amazingly, this was achieved despite two nearly catastrophic economic downturns: the current “great” recession and the earlier combination of Y2K, the dot-com collapse, and the terror of 9/11.

In the wreckage of those events, Anderson said, “the business case for sustainability became very clear to us. … Our costs went down, not up, dispelling that myth that there’s this tradeoff between the environment and the economy. … Our products were the best they have ever been, because sustainable design had opened up a wellspring of innovation. Our people were thinking of product development ideas they never would have dreamed of without the sustainable design impetus. … We won customer loyalty in ways that no advertising, no clever marketing campaign, at any cost, could have generated.”

Steve Jobs is rightly lauded for the many revolutionary products he brought into the world, and he will rightly be recognized centuries into the future.

And Ray Anderson, quite rightly, will be equally celebrated.

Top 10 Scenic Drives Wins National Marketing Award

Top 10 Scenic Drives Program Coordinator Anna Holden received the award

The 2011 Scenic Byway Awards winners were announced at a presentation dinner on the final night of the Conference – Wednesday, August 24. One of Yellowstone Business Partnerships programs – The Top 10 Scenic Drives in the Northern Rockies – won the National Marketing award by successfully bringing the participating drives together under a unified branding and messaging platform that presented the area as a single destination for travelers.  The cooperative marketing approach continues to promote sustainable tourism through a memorable logo, useful website and a map.
“We hope that recognizing exceptional projects and leaders will help to inspire new efforts to preserve, protect, interpret and promote the intrinsic qualities along all of America’s scenic drives and especially the 150 distinctive routes designated by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation as part of the America’s Byways® collection,” said Michelle Johnson, Director of America’s Byways Resource Center.  Sponsored by the America’s Byways Resource Center, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the prestigious Scenic Byway Awards recognize eight projects of excellence and one outstanding byway leader from byway nominations across the country.

Gerard Baker, Keynote Speaker

Gerard Baker exhorted attendees to "Listen. Just Listen. Listen for the spirits that are still there."

The Conference keynote speaker – Gerard Baker, Former Assistant Director, American Indian Relations, National Park Service – spoke at Monday’s luncheon with a message that encouraged byways to invite Native Americans, especially the elders and the youth, to share their stories. “We are missing the rich story of the tribes,” he said. Gerard advised that byway leaders should “learn as much as you can about the Indians on the byway.”
The highly regarded National Park Service leader advocated studying history—all history of an area and its peoples—and stopping along the byway to listen. “Listen. Just listen,” Gerard said. “Listen for the spirits that are still there.”

Minnesota Twins Branding Session

Minnesota Twins Branding Session

An invigorating branding session inspired the audience at Tuesday’s lunch, presented by the Minnesota Twins Baseball Club.  Patrick Klinger, Vice President – Marketing for the Minnesota Twins Baseball Club, and Charlie Callahan, Vice President – Executive Creative Director at Periscope Advertising Agency, shared the marketing challenges and successes of the Minnesota Twins brand and emphasized the import role of branding.  The America’s Byways brand connects the 150 individual byways in the collection in similar ways as Major League Baseball connects its 30 distinct teams. The America’s Byways brand offers tremendous opportunity for building public awareness, enhancing credibility, generating itinerary interest and drawing visitors in much the same way that the Major League Baseball works for the Minnesota Twins. A lesson learned at the luncheon was that a brand presence is essential.

Geotourism Beyond the Map
Geotourism beyond the map was an intriguing session presented by Janet Kennedy, the Lakes to Locks Passage Executive Director – a designated New York State Byway – and Laurie Evans Frantz, New Mexico Scenic Byways Program Director, representing Four Corners Tourism. The Lakes to Locks is an All-American Road and they partnered with the National Geographic Society to capture the history and heritage of New York’s interconnected waterways and deliver an authentic byway experience through a self-sustaining interactive website: www.lakestolocksgeotourism.com. The website was developed by Whitefish, MT web marketer, John Frantzen.
Citing results from a recent U.S. Travel Association survey, the presenters confirmed that over half of the American traveling public thinks it’s harder to find unspoiled places than it used to be, and three out of four travelers don’t want their visits to harm the environment.  At least 55 – 65 million U.S. travelers can be classified as ‘geotravelers’.
Lakes to Locks Byway sustainability furthers the organization’s mission and vision, utilizes byway interpretive themes & storylines, features the byway’s waypoint communities, directs the traveler to the byway heritage centers and fosters civic engagement and ownership of the byway. Both byway tourism organizations promote their affiliation of America’s Byways brand with National Geographic.  The Four Corners region Map Guide will be available for sale for $11.95 in 2012 and a parallel interactive website is also being developed.

National Scenic Byways Program Future
Gary Jensen, Team Leader – Federal Highway Administration, described the current Congressional transportation funding re-authorization situation, which affects the National Scenic Byways Program. It is unclear at this point in time how Congress will respond, however, Gary identified emerging common themes that byway leaders should note: safety, environmental sustainability, program consolidation or elimination, performance measures, state flexibility in appropriating funds, and economic development.

FHWA’s Livability Initiative addresses these themes, according to Gary. “It’s promoting collaboration and multimodal planning. It answers questions like ‘how do you want people to live and work in your community’?” The FHWA Livability in Transportation Guidebook (www.fhwa.dot.gov/livability/case_studies/guidebook/) is an excellent resource for understanding the initiative’s principles and planning recommendations.

Gary noted that one possibility on the horizon is that the National Scenic Byways Program will be consolidated with the Livability Program. He described how byways and livability goals align, such as in providing accessibility, responding to community values and vision, and pursuing collaboration. Nevertheless, everything remains uncertain until Congress moves forward with new legislation.

Amid the daily economic gloom, it is obviously good to hear about some industries upbeat on their prospects. And why wouldn’t it be good news when we desperately need to wean ourselves from a dependency on foreign sources of resources like oil, or we need to counter the Chinese embargo on rare earth exports?

For those of you who read the High Country News of July 25^th, 2011, a different picture comes to the surface. In the article “The Global West”, Jonathan Thompson describes a Natural Resource Extraction industry (oil, gas, coal soda ash, rare earths etc.) whose major players know no boundaries such as the ones of nation states. They are truly global in perspective and operations. And since the West of the US is, like the Australian outback, very sparsely populated, it attracts many of the major players, be they American, Canadian, Australian, Korean or Japanese.

Most exports of our natural resources go to Canada and Mexico. Exports to other countries like China and India, however, are growing. With their appetite for energy to feed their growing economies, Asian countries will need to secure the resources necessary to support them. More often than not, regulations are weak to prevent environmental damage.

Although an increase in business in our region is very welcome, we need to make sure it is done without affecting our quality of life and other economic activities, such as agriculture, ranching, and tourism. Are our state governments listening?

Some studies find that increasing obesity is an externality of sprawling residential development. (Photo: eLibrary.)

When we drive to work, school, or a store, we aren’t stopped by a toll booth that collects cash to pay for the damage that harmful emissions produced by our trip.

But that doesn’t mean there are no costs. Instead, it means that the costs are paid by society. Costs for respiratory afflictions. Costs for degraded visibility and view sheds. Costs for building more roads intended to relieve traffic congestion.

Externalities are “side effects” or a “spillover.” They are the consequences of a transaction or activity that are experienced by those who are not directly involved in the transaction or activity. An externality of burning fossil fuels is carbon emissions. Externalities of smoking include breathing second-hand smoke.

Externalities can be good as well as bad. A good, or positive, externality of smoking for some people is seeing it as sexy; think about men watching Lauren Bacall light up in films of the 1940s.

It would seem fair to simply internalize externalities – that is, build their costs into the price of products that generate the harmful effects. But that’s seldom been done – other than with, for example, cigarettes. And in that case the motivation has been largely to increase government revenues rather than to extract costs from offenders.

The principal obstacle to apportioning externalities is the difficulty in quantifying them. Some recent studies, for example, have indicated that the increasing prevalence of obesity in the U.S. results in part from sprawling residential development. But what amount in dollars represents that part? To which specific products or services should costs be added to fairly reflect their costs to society? Added by what mechanism – sales tax? Excise tax? Corporate tax? In what way would this be done to penalize sprawl but not more compact, efficient development?

Even when all parties can agree on the existence and impacts of a negative externality, rectifying can be highly contentious. Consider the international battle over reducing carbon emissions. Should the developed countries, which got away with polluting before its negative externalities were known, be forced to make the most significant reductions? Or be forced to pay developing countries for abating emissions as their economies benefit from current industrialization?

The extent to which externalities harm or help is also subject to individual taste. The sounds of city traffic at night can be a negative externality for some people, a positive one for others, and of no consequence for still others. And many externalities, good or bad, accrue incrementally. One more new shopping center isn’t going to generate additional automobile traffic to an extent that noticeably degrades air quality. But that project plus other developments may do that.

The inverse of this collective harm can also be true of a collective benefit – that is, establishing a positive externality for the many can significantly harm the few. Society enjoys quantifiable gains with laws requiring use of seat belts, but personal freedom of choice may be infringed.

In light of these and other complications of externalities, can we do anything at all to more fairly distribute the costs and benefits of their impacts?

I think so. We have enough evidence to act upon today. In doing so, we should recognize that new externalities – both positive and negative – will emerge and require future adjustments to today’s best practices. The thing we cannot do is let future unknowns prevent us from acting upon what we do know today.

Would we be better off, financially and psychically, if this was not the American Dream? (Photo from RISMedia news release.)

The “American Dream” regularly gets quite a workout in the American press. Consider, for example, these articles, which are only three of the 11 I found by Googling that were issued on a single day in early June:

• “This is not meant to pass judgment on a long-standing tradition and part of the American Dream as we used to know it: a large, spacious home featuring huge foyer, high ceilings, many bedrooms and bathrooms, giant dining room and eat-in kitchen, multi-car garage, and more.” – Huffington Post
• “Despite the ups and downs of the housing market, home owners and non-owners alike consider owning a home essential to the American Dream. That’s the key finding of a recent survey of people likely to vote in 2012 that was conducted on behalf of the National Association of Home Builders.” – News release from RISMedia, “the leader in real estate information systems.”
• “For decades, much of what has driven the American dream has been the idea of going out and buying that brand-new car.” – ABC News

When introduced by historian James Truslow Adams (ironically, in the depths of the Great Depression), the dream meant every American’s opportunity for the pursuit of happiness and success. Over time, however, it came to be more narrowly defined, with most of its recent characterizations claiming it means nothing more than owning one’s home or – the sense in which I use the term in this post – “owning a single-family [detached] home on a big lot.”

Why should the definition of the American dream matter to those of us in the Yellowstone-Teton region? In my view, because it says something about the built environment in which we live – our homes and the places where we shop, work, and pursue recreation and entertainment. In our region, we are largely surrounded by a pleasing and energizing built environment, more so than Americans living just about anywhere else in the US.

Nationally, post-housing-bubble evidence suggests that the American dream has acquired nightmarish attributes for many people, such that it will be within reach of far fewer Americans over the next 20 to 40 years than it was over the past 20 to 40 years. Homeownership rates have steadily fallen, from a peak of 69 percent in 2004 to 67 percent at mid-2010. In a June 2009 survey commissioned by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, one-third of all respondents said they don’t believe that they’ll ever be able to own a home.

Can’t such data be ascribed to the housing and economic downturns, with resumption of upward trends to be expected as the economy recovers? Yes, according to government officials and reports by the mass media. But their optimism concerning homeownership – particularly dream homes of the large, sprawling, suburban sort – is almost certainly misplaced. “We’re going through a fundamental shift,” according to Urban Land Institute senior fellow John McIlwain.

We may be faced as a nation with lasting changes that won’t go away when the economy improves.

Yet something good may arise from this dynamic: a dream that may be less often realized in material ways but more often achieved in other ways. The aforementioned coiner of the term “American dream,” James Truslow Adams, once described it in part as the opportunity for “a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.”

I read a deliberately implied notion of community in the words “our citizens,” a notion that’s the opposite of a self-centered, materialistic society in which every individual of means engages in the serial purchase and sale of ever-larger homes on ever-larger lots. Adams would concur, I believe, because on another occasion he said the American dream “has always meant more than the accumulation of material goods.”

And it is in this regard that I believe those of us fortunate enough to live in our region have a leg up on Americans living elsewhere. Because community has always been one of our strongest traits. Community was essential in the often-hostile environment endured by those who preceded us. They were mostly lacking in material wealth. But they prospered in psychic and spiritual health – as we do today.

So I would suggest we may be entering an age of an enhanced American dream, one in which we may profit less from rising home prices, but more from reconnecting with neighbors, neighborhoods, and communities. Wouldn’t that make real a more fulfilling American dream?

Chief Joseph led his people on the route that has become known as the Nez Perce National Historic Trial. NPS photo.

term of six years on the YBP board of directors, which means, as well, that I end three years as YBP chair.

I am not a fan of anyone’s reflections on a job that he or she is about to leave. They are almost always of interest to only one person: the writer. And maybe a spouse or mother.

So I had no parting shots to convey. Until last week, when I fortuitously came across a newspaper article, at the end of my YBP board service, that reminded me of another article (and the scientific report on which it was based) that had appeared when I was first elected to the board. These articles, I believe, suggest entirely appropriate “bookends” for my years in YBP leadership.

From the 2011 article:

Nearly 134 years aftere they followed on their flight remains mostly intact. … The Nez Perce National Historic Trail [is] an enormous area snaking through portions of Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

And from the 2004 articles:

Scientists … [tracked] a young male [wolverine] on a six-week journey that covered … three states, two national parks, four national forests, tribal lands, a U.S. Sheep Experiment Station, and private lands … including the Gros Ventre, Wind River, and Salt River Ranges of Wyoming and the Centennial Range along the Idaho – Montana border.

These articles speak to the frequent irrelevance of today’s political boundaries. And they tell me that the brilliance displayed in the founding of YBP was, above all else, in recognizing no boundaries. Our founders understood that the 27 counties in three states of the Yellowstone-Teton region had more in common with each other – in shared culture, history, natural resources, environment, biodiversity, values, traditions, and economies – than we hold in common with most of the other counties in our respective states.

YBP’s commitment to “boundarylessness” has been costly. Hundreds, if not thousands, of government and private sources of funding – for which YBP’s programs might otherwise qualify – are established, measured, and rewarded on the basis of political boundaries, from state lines to county borders to city limits.

But in my opinion, the world is slowly catching up to our way of thinking. “Regionalism” is on the rise across the country. Officials of government agencies and private organizations are increasingly recognizing that the boundaryless challenges of pollution, climate change, crime, poverty, mobility, health care, and so forth will be effectively addressed only by boundaryless solutions.

When that realization becomes pervasive, our region and our country will gain from an ancient and intuitive perspective: No boundaries.

The ultimate expression of Amercian individualism?

Are you a fan of conservative commentator George Will? For decades I’ve enjoyed Will’s take on topics ranging from political campaigns to baseball (he’s a minority owner of the Baltimore Orioles).

So his Newsweek column of February 27 hit like a slap in the face. Here was Will, before always a paragon of calm, well reasoned positions, huffing out an irrational screed, breathlessly proclaiming that American advocates of high-speed rail (HSR) are seeking to force every US citizen from his or her automobile in the interest of imposing a socialist lifestyle nationwide. A sample:

“ … the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism. To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends.”

Whoa, hoss! This is paranoia on a scale surpassing that of anyone who’s ever warned of the imminent invasion of black helicopters.

In my experience, having lived car-lessly for 23 years in Washington, DC – and availing myself of a mobility choice among walking, biking, taxi, bus, subway, airplane, and rental car – the opposite of Will’s charge is more nearly true. In my current home town of Red Lodge, Montana, my range of transportation choices is sedan or SUV.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed in response to Will’s diatribe:

• Eric Jaffe of the Infrastructurist observed that “neither [major political party] will endorse the most sensible method of financing transportation changes: increasing the gas tax.”
• Brian Merchant, writing at treehugger.com, wonders, “If investing [in] high speed rail is indeed an attempt to herd everyone onto one mode of transportation, … what do you call what we’re doing now? We currently grant the oil industry around $60 billion in annual subsidies, … in their business of delivering gas to the nation’s pumps.”
• In the Washington Post, Ezra Klein notes the bleeding obvious: “… my car is good for some things and bad for others. … There’s no either-or here.”
• And Sarah Goodyear of Grist reports that in 2001 Will enthusiastically endorsed HSR as proposed by the GW Bush Administration, but, “Now that it’s a Democratic administration advocating for rail, Will sees it … as a tool to control an unsuspecting populace.”

But George Will comes through inadvertently with the final word. In his column of the week following the rail diatribe, Will, addressing an unrelated subject, said that “sensible Americans … must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness.” Exactly.

Christina enjoying one of the natural wonders of the region - powder!

My first encounter with the Yellowstone Business Partnership was at the Teton Science School’s new campus in Jackson, WY back in 2006.  Jan Brown, YBP’s Executive Director, was getting a group of regional professionals all jazzed up on the concept of creating sustainability guidelines for development in the Greater Yellowstone Region (GYR).  Jan talked about a vision of the Greater Yellowstone region becoming a completely sustainable geographic area.  Especially as energy prices rise, the prosperity of regional communities, businesses and households will depend in part on their ability to source food, fuel and other necessities as close to home as possible.  This vision has stayed with me since that day and I believe that it can be accomplished.

In writing this blog post, I asked myself; “What would a sustainable GYR really look like?” I imagine it’s a place where, once you arrived, you’d know you were “there.”  The development patterns are different than anywhere else.  There is more open space with clearly defined city and town boundaries.   The communities within GYR support each other by buying and selling goods made from resources within the region.  There is a revival of small and medium-sized farms and greenhouses so we can eat food harvested locally.  Our buildings are efficient and made of more environmentally-friendly materials.  We have mass transportation options such as rail and bus systems  Another transportation alternative is  shared-ownership hybrid vehicles that we can pick up and drop off at different locations.  Local and regional pathways connect the entire region so we can ride our bikes anywhere we want.  Our cities become destinations for sustainable entrepreneurs and manufacturers.  Our schools are some of the best in the country and there is steep competition among teachers wanting to work in them.  The entire Greater Yellowstone Region would become the world’s premiere eco-tourism destination.  People from all over the world would make it a must-see on the bucket list.  And because we wouldn’t have to rely only on tourism for our economy, businesses and residents would be more prosperous than ever.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?

The intriguing thing about this vision is that it CAN be achieved.  There is no technology or measure I mentioned above that doesn’t already exist, or has been demonstrated to be achievable, elsewhere.  The greatest challenge lies in rallying the region around this vision and then mobilizing people and businesses to take the many small steps to get there.  This is where the Yellowstone Business Partnership and the UnCommon Sense program come into play.

I think of YBP as a chamber of commerce for the entire region, but with a focus on sustainability.  They provide the inspiration and vision for businesses and regional residents so that as we implement these small steps, we’re able to be motivated by the bigger picture.

UnCommon Sense gave our business the tools to start taking those small steps.  Just two years after graduating from the program, Grand Targhee Resort reduced its waste stream 16%, cut electricity use 20% below the five-year average, saved over $50,000 in yearly energy and product costs, gained approximately $350,000 in PR-value and reduced its carbon footprint by 10%. In addition, the Resort made several very meaningful business relationships throughout the Region that we continue to grow and utilize.

Joining this program is worth every dollar invested and I’m confident that your business would feel the same way after going through the program.  Besides, we all have to do our part to create a sustainable vision for the future so we can not only become more competitive but gain a significant advantage in the global economy.  It’s what our region’s people and ecosystem deserve!

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Join YBP’s sixth UnCommon Sense class and partner with regional businesses to become more sustainable in all aspects of your operations. UnCommon Sense is YBP’s business sustainability leadership program, with a proven track record for helping businesses save money, engage and energize employees, and enhance and communicate their “green credentials”.  A series of workshops over two years in conjunction with back-home implementation enables businesses to achieve measurable goals.  UnCommon Sense is a great way for your business to tackle the often overwhelming topic of sustainability, and offers group and one-on-one support tailored to your specific business needs.

Application period is open through Tuesday, March 15th. Only 20 businesses will be accepted into our next class, starting with an April 28 -30, 2011 workshop. To apply for UnCommon Sense or for more information please contact Heather Higinbotham at (406) 600-6617 or heatherh@yellowstonebusiness.org, or visit the YBP website.