SEA INTENTIONS

SEA

what is the SEA?

The Shires Environmental Alliance is a local environmental group working together to heal the planet. We try to help the big picture with our small piece of the puzzle. We intend to be a NGO that organizes people and community for the planet’s benefit. We intend to maintain integrity and dedication to nonviolence, peaceful methods. We intend to be solution orientated.


Our first year goals...

-write up a vision for the Shires in 1 year, 5 years, 20 years, 100 years. For example, in one year, all the restaurants will compost and have biodegradable doggie bags. In 5 years, all the houses will be well insulated. In 10 years, there will be well-used big paths through the community. In 20 years, all the towns energy will be generated from local resources. And so on.
Here we can be at our most effective, recreating the tabla rasa of Manchester in our imaginations, seeing into and thus forming the future. One of the Bible’s proverb’s says “Where there is no vision, the people perish”. Let’s help provide a vision.

- We will host environmental conference, on Nov 15th, inviting Bill McKibben,

- We will advocate for best practices through the community by identifying them, and creating a letter campaign to ask local institutions to adopt them. For example, we’ll ask Casella to deal with e-waste, for in town recycling, and composting.

- We will put big ideas on the table, like the windmills on Equinox being spun again, but this time owed by a citizen cooperative of local residents. ( I heard of this exciting business model at Findhorn lecture!)

- We will put out a restaurant guide, assessing who is green, providing benchmarks.

- We’ll participate in the parades, build the trash deva puppets, establishing a lighthearted presence in the community.

For a SEA mascot, I nominate this great solar flashlight. (www.sunnightsolar.com). It took me years to find a good solar flashlight. The ones you shake don’t really work. But this one works. I once heard it said that “the future is hear, it’s just not well distributed.” This is true. There are lots of solutions. We want to encourage them. Also, these flashlights might make a good fun-raiser. We could buy a case for 15$ a piece and sell them for thirty, with each .

additional ideas...

- SEA encourages Manchester towards a different developmental direction: away from expensive clothes for tourists, towards green commerce and actual community. We aspire to rescue this central town from it’s developmental dead-end, and community erosion due to town center commerce overload. manchester might reinvigorate if it’s central gathering idea wasn’t clothes but was solutions for sustainable world, like fair trade stuff and organic items.

- I think it’ important that we get moving right away with stuff we can actually do. But also to spend a good amount of time envisioning.

- We should host another series of events at the Spiral Press to encourage community building, Alliance expansion, and public inclusion.

- We should get our towns to adopt the earth charter. This can happen soon. We don’t have to wait for the Spring to start moving on this. We can start delivering copies of the Earth Charter to people who are on the town boards so they are familiar with it come spring, and get on next year’ ballot way ahead of time. We can post the Earth Charter in public places throughout the community, with a note about voting for the measure at town meeting.

- we can advocate for a local food system. We can put together a big detailed idea, get a grant written, find the funds, build a winter storage facility, get a farmer-to-school network, develop local food infrastructure. It would take some time to build but we should try and promote local food.


in peace

theo