Ecology & Security: Beyond "Managing" Nature

Security. What does the word mean? A feeling of safety or certainty, freedom from anxiety or doubt. That's what dictionaries say. And using those those definitions, does anyone feel secure these days? About the only thing that's certain is that we live in insecure times.

      Not long ago, Americans were secure about a few things. Our form of government was the best ever devised, we claimed with total confidence. Our society was the most advanced, we said, our way of life the most desirable and progressive. 

      But most of those certainties are gone now. Our political and social systems, we see, are seriously flawed; worse yet, they seem to breed corruption.

      Most societies can't even meet the most basic human needs – for shelter, food, and health care for all. And our way of life? In truth it could be the single largest factor in the violent disruption of nature all over the planet. We are no longer secure.

      Even the richest among us, the very few for whom capitalism still works, will admit that the price of our domination and wasting of nature may be too high for us to pay. We may be coming to the end of all certainty about our long-term existence on the planet. And this change dwarfs almost every event in human history. We can't avoid living with the consequences of that now. 

      We are certainly no longer secure.

      The whole idea of nature as something independent of human will, with its own rules, may become obsolete. But most of the solutions we hear don't look to the restoration of nature. What they focus on is "global management," new forms of manipulation designed to compensate for the older forms that produced the mess.

      Scientists are working hard to find way of surviving in a "Greenhouse" world. The popular approach is to "take control of the planet." In 1987, a genetically altered bacteria was released into the environment in a California strawberry field. The object was to stop crop losses due to frost damage. Many more such experiments followed. Researchers are busily creating new species, in the hope of turning very living thing on Earth to our advantage.

      For several hundred years we have believed that nature was nothing but a complex mechanism, a machine worse secrets we would one day unlock. And we humans were the "lords of nature," we thought, destined to control this cosmic factory. We extended our search into the very heart of matter, the atom, and smashed it. But we finally saw that we were wrong. Atoms are not solid after all, nature is not a machine, and the universe can't be divided and dissected without the gravest of consequences.

     The desire for endless material advancement, the basis of our addiction to growth, has made it impossible for us -- at least up until now -- to set limits, to stop dominating nature to suit ourselves. But that's what we have to do, each of us and all of us together. We must transform our way of life -- consume less, drive less, buy less. We must turn away from accumulation and toward sustainability.

      We can't shift the burden onto others, particularly onto less developed countries. They didn't create the problem, we did. And we delayed the consequences by raping the "third world" in the guise of progress. 

     The old approaches – clever management, competition, inventions, invasions, engineering – will leave us with nothing but a deadened, artificial world. If we want to save the planet, we have to turn quickly from the mechanical to the creative, from dominating nature and human beings to cooperating with both nature and one another. The time has come to decide: either we continue to adapt nature to suit ourselves, or we change ourselves.

     And even if we do all that we can, it will take decades for the climate to readjust itself. If we restrain growth and individual consumption the process will be slow. And along the way, there will always be temptations -- in the form of biotechnology, for example, and other clever plans. 

     But if we resist, if we defy the people who would "manage nature" into extinction, instead of defying nature itself, we may find a way back to harmony, cooperation and the ecological security we have lost.

These remarks were presented on October 20, 1989, at the opening of Building Ecological Security, a landmark conference held at City Hall in Burlington, VT. 

Burlington: The College and the Land Deal

The following were remarks to the Save Open Space Summit, on Jan. 21, 2015, at City Hall. A week after this talk I became a candidate for mayor, and proposed a partnership in the public interest to save Burlington College and balance development plans with preservation of open space. 
     More recently, the circumstances surrounding the college's land purchase and eventual closure have sparked an investigation that implicates Jane Sanders and appears to be aimed at her husband, Bernie Sanders, who is poised for reelection to the US Senate -- and another presidential run.

   How did we get here? These days I often ask myself that kind of thing, looking back, thinking about the past. But 40 years ago, when I was new to Burlington, I thought mostly about the future, how it could be different and better.

   About that time I joined the faculty of Burlington College. It had another name then. Vermont Institute of Community Involvement, or just VICI. And one of the ideas of founder Steward LaCasce was to get away from "bricks and mortar" -- the big, expensive, campus-based model of higher education -- and, as much as possible, develop a community-based alternative, using existing resources and spaces around town. It was a practical form of involvement and interdependence. 

   Eventually, the College did buy a building. But the idea of staying small and connected to the community persisted.

   At the time, the land we are here to save was owned by Vermont's Roman Catholic Diocese. The church purchased most of it from Burlington Free Press Publisher Henry Stacy in the 1870s. Before that it was farmland, and the city grew around it. A rolling meadow led to a bluff overlooking Lake Champlain, with a beach below, a forest of oak, red maple and pine at the southern edge, and a railroad tunnel under North Avenue. All in all, it is a special, irreplaceable piece of land.

   The church erected an imposing Victorian building, which housed orphans for a century. After World War II, the local diocese bought adjacent land and converted a cottage into a school for delinquents. After the St. Joseph Orphan Asylum and the Don Bosco School for Delinquent Boys closed, it became diocese headquarters and home for projects like Camp Holy Cross.

    So, the "school without walls" and the cloistered catholic campus near the lake. How did they get entangled? The answer begins with secrets, the first about what went on in the church -- and on that property.

   In the end dozens of former residents came forward, and revealed a dark, sordid history of physical and sexual abuse by nuns, priests and staff. Like other parts of the church, the diocese ultimately found itself under attack and in serious financial trouble. By May 2010, it had paid almost $20 million to settle 26 lawsuits. More were to follow. Selling the land was urgent to help cover up to $30 million in legal settlements for the abused.

    Developers expressed some interest, but disagreed about what the property was worth. There were also zoning restrictions, and some claimed the city was overvaluing the land. In any case, it went on the market in April 2010 for $12.5 million. The sale to BC for $10 million was announced on May 24, 2010, only a month later -- ten days after the diocese paid out $17. 65 million.  Based on about 200 housing units, a plan initially considered, a more reasonable price was probably $7 million or less.

   Why did the college pay that much? And what did its leaders expect? Like many decisions by private boards, it's mostly confidential, a shared secret. But we know the deal was promoted and brokered by Antonio Pomerleau, once known as the "godfather of Vermont shopping center development." Owner of Pomerleau Real Estate, a prominent, devoted Catholic who wanted to help the church, and a powerful, persuasive developer who for years chaired the Burlington Police Commission.

    In the early 1980s Pomerleau became an obvious target for Bernie Sanders, a capitalist mogul who wanted to rebuild the waterfront and controlled the Police Department. His $30 million waterfront redevelopment plan was derailed after Sanders' election as mayor. But the relationship changed. By the time College President Jane Sanders announced the purchase, Pomerleau was considered a family friend. In then-President Sanders' words, Pomerleau was the only man who could have made it happen. Someone to trust, who understood relationships. But it didn't hurt that he loaned the school $500,000 to close the deal. Yves Bradley, who subsequently became chair of the College's Board of Trustee, handled the 2010 transaction details for Pomerleau Real Estate.

   According to local sources, the school's leaders believed that, with connected friends like Sanders and Pomerleau, plus a Treasurer like Jonathan Leopold, handling the $10 million debt and $3 million for renovations was a reasonable expectation for a school with 200 students and revenues around $4 million a year. Big donors would come -- but they didn't. The Board also embraced another notion: that enrollment could double in five years, a goal well beyond the national average. It didn't.

    In retrospect, it sounds like magical thinking. Or just bad judgement. But somehow it made sense -- at least until September 2011, when Jane Sanders was forced to resign, mainly for not raising enough money. So began a three-year, silent slide toward insolvency...

Related Feature Story: Campus Paradise Lost 

Making Peace with the Planet Won't Be Easy

It had arrived again, the day that newspapers, TV and magazines had been hyping. April 22, Earth Day, or, as it was known in 1990, "The Dawn of the Environmental Decade." But despite the sunny skies and big promises to "clean up the planet," I was uneasy.

   Should I have been more content? Maybe. After all, the news that we faced a crisis of global, potentially catastrophic proportions was finally reaching the masses. I had been urging people to take individual and collective action since the first Earth Day twenty years before. Yet most of the "save the planet" messages, and even an emerging eco-consciousness, felt unsettling rather than reassuring.

       On the previous Friday, for instance, CBS's Dan Rather had reported that we were making headway in reducing smog over many US cities. Really? In most urban areas residents faced smog levels up to 150 days a year. Rather's report and others seemed misleading. The idea that environmental protection laws passed after the original Earth Day had produced real gains provided a false sense of security.

Ecological Security Logo 

      Newspapers congratulated themselves for using recycled paper. But there was no sign of reducing the amount of mindless pap promoting a "consumer society" that perpetuates waste and pollution. And of course, major corporations touted their newfound commitment to environmental protection while conveniently omitting their toxic crimes.

      Time Warner sponsored The Earth Day Special and promised to do its part. But what about Time magazine? asked my son. He knew that its 30 million glossy copies were produced on non-recyclable paper every week. 

     Too cynical? It was Earth Day, after all. Time to forgive and recycle, right? But I just couldn't buy into the "we can do it" mood. Something simply wouldn't leave my mind. Reality. Things were getting worse, not better. The hype no longer convinced me that "we will do it," at least until we understood was was really wrong.

      Celebrating Earth Day was educational and fun. But I wasn't impressed, and either was the planet.

      Maybe the problem was too much information. For several months I had been part of a local environmental task force. We'd looked into what Burlington, Vermont could do to create more "ecological security." That phrase, used to name a conference I'd organized to bring together the peace and environmental movements, was an attempt to refocus locally at the end of the Cold War. Our insecurity, it suggested, stemmed from diverse threats to the natural world. The Task Force was expected to create a factual record and come up with bold yet feasible remedies.

      We managed to develop a respectable list of first steps, among them proposals for a local ban on the use or sale of all products producing CFCs, the creation of citywide bike lanes, buying development rights to the delicate Intervale area, establishing a collection and storage facility for hazardous wastes, and a community panel to oversee biotechnology operations at the university. Like lists of "simple things you can do" being distributed at the time, such changes were clearly necessary. Still, on reviewing their work, some Task Force members felt defeated.

      Had we succeeded only in developing another laundry list, while failing to identify the underlying problems? Wouldn't other actions by the government and private interests negate the improvements we suggested? No funds for recycling had been included in the new Public Works budget. And despite a stated commitment to explore alternative transportation, the city administration still proposed new roads and the expansion of others. Some even thought it advisable to build a road over the edge of a recently closed landfill. Without limits on development and changes in energy production, even not-so-simple things would have a negligible effect.

      Despite the best intentions, the Ecological Security Task Force had fallen into a trap described by Barry Commoner in his book, Making Peace with the Planet. Environmental degradation was built into the design of the modern means of production, he argued, and therefore traditional "control" approaches to environmental protection are bound to be inadequate. Trapping or even destroying pollutants merely postpones or shifts the problem. The only way to eliminate a pollutant is to stop producing it. Once produced, it's too late.

      What this suggests is the need for a radical set of changes in lifestyle and production practices. Not to minimize the "every person can make a difference" viewpoint, big institutions do have the biggest impacts. At the local level, government, the university, the hospital complex and the commercial sector would all have to take major steps to reduce waste, stop using or producing non-recyclable or toxic materials, and re-use as often as possible. Voluntary action alone wouldn't cut it.

      You'd have to be living in an oil drum not to see the problem. Air pollution, the Greenhouse Effect, ozone depletion, hazardous waste, acid rain, vanishing wildlife, garbage islands, and more. Plus the dangerous drift of society. Natural products replaced by synthetic petrochemical creations; natural agricultural fertilizers by chemical alternatives; trains, trolleys and buses by private, inefficient and polluting cars; reusable goods by throwaways. Shops, vehicles, factories and farms had become seedbeds of pollution.
      And this was before we understood the phrase "climate change" or began to experience "extreme weather." 

      Although its charge stopped at the city line, the Ecological Security Task Force recognized that the problems did not. They could only be addressed through regional and broader cooperation. Looking only at the bottom line, corporations had produced much of the mess. But the public was being asked to handle the clean up. In general, environmental laws passed since the first Earth Day had not dealt effectively with what industry produced.

      When General Electric proudly proclaimed that it would review the environmental impacts of its products and spend $200 million on protection, it was important to keep in mind its rarely mentioned 47 contaminated toxic waste sites, past radiation experiments, toxic releases and status as one of the world's major nuclear contractors.

      The challenges are enormous. But what can make a difference is an active, even angry citizenry. And this was another reason for my Earth Day blues. Despite all the study and talk, I could not see the groundswell of popular outrage that was needed for a successful movement. Sure, recycling was catching on and the state was "environmentally conscious." But being conscious isn't enough. There must be real demands, ones that force all levels of government to use their purchasing and regulatory powers to eliminate polluting technologies and products, and also rapidly develop alternatives. In particular, the planet and its inhabitants cannot afford the squandering of resources, both material and human, that more than $1 trillion a year in world military spending represents.

       We also need alliances that force businesses and governments to prevent pollution at the source. And it won't get easier as we go along. Steps like halting the production of toxic chemicals or the use of nuclear energy won't be embraced with nearly the enthusiasm of a general "save the planet" campaign. Every time people press for an ecological goal, the response is bound to be a competing economic need. After postponing action for so long, the clean up won't be cheap.

      So yes, I am skeptical. It's easy to tell ourselves that "minor" sacrifices will be enough, or that corporations will factor in the environmental impacts as they assess the balance sheets. But these artificial entities are designed to make money, not to protect anything. Under the current capitalist system, they are machines that use the air, water and land without calculating the long-term costs. Meanwhile, most people in the developed world have not truly acknowledged that their lifestyle is built on environmental waste and degredation. As Paul Erhlich put it, there aren't too many people, just too many rich people. 

      Will we wake up in time? Are we finally getting serious? These days I wouldn't bet on it. But I look forward to being wrong.

When Lockheed Came to Town

Progressive Eclipse - Chapter Two

The chances were never great that Vermont’s popular US Senator, widely known as an Independent, a socialist and a congressional hero of the left – would run for President in 2012. But that didn’t stop people from talking about it – and not for the first time. In Bernie Sanders’ old political stomping grounds, however, populist anger was aimed at the overtures he and Mayor Bob Kiss were making to Lockheed Martin and Sandia Laboratories.

On August 8, 2011 after six months of debate, the City Council had voted 8-6 in favor of nonbinding community standards for proposed climate-change partnerships, prompted by an agreement between the mayor and Lockheed. The resolution called for standards which, if they were followed, would exclude working with weapons manufacturers and environmental polluters. 

After the vote Kiss was defiant. Discussions with the corporation would continue, he announced. The city attorney added that the mayor wasn’t bound by the Council’s decision in pursuing such an executive-level agreement. Nevertheless, a few weeks later the talks ended. Apparently aware of the local mood, the defense contractor backed out of the deal in an e-mail message to the Burlington Free Press.

As Lockheed spokesman Rob Fuller put it politely, “While several projects showed promise initially and we have learned a tremendous amount from each other, we were unable to develop a mutually beneficial implementation plan. Therefore Lockheed Martin has decided to conclude the current collaboration.”

It sounded like a Dear John letter – and a bow to public pressure. In reality, the courtship was just beginning.

Sanders refused to comment. But his typical view of corporate criminals and wasteful military spending was well known; in fact, it was part of what had made him a compelling figure. Consider his fiery speech in October 2009 on the floor of the US Senate, taking on Lockheed Martin and other top military contractors for what he called “systemic, illegal, and fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.”

Among the crimes he mentioned were these: Lockheed Martin had defrauded the government by inflating the cost of several Air Force contracts, lied about the costs when negotiating contracts for the repairs on US warships, and submitted false invoices for payment on a multi-billion dollar contract connected to the Titan IV space launch vehicle program. Sanders called the corporation a “repeat offender” that rarely faced serious penalties.

“It is absurd that year after year after year, these companies continue doing the same things and they continue to get away with it,” he proclaimed.

And yet he had invited Sandia Laboratories, which is managed by Lockheed Martin for the Department of Defense, to establish a satellite lab in Vermont. In fact, he’d been working with Vermont utilities, energy enterprises, the university and business leaders on the plan for more than two years. Sanders also accepted the proposal that Lockheed-built F-35s be based in the future at the Burlington International Airport. If the fighter jet, widely considered a massive boondoggle, was going to be built, Sanders argued that some of the work should be done by Vermonters (Rutland’s GE plant had contracts to build an engine) and Vermont National Guard jobs should be protected. In other words, he was just bringing home some “bacon” for his state.

Sanders first visited Sandia’s headquarters in New Mexico in 2008. “At the end of the day,” recalled Les Shephard, Sandia vice president for energy, resources and nonproliferation, “he turned to the laboratory director and said, ‘I’d really like to have a set of capabilities like Sandia in New England — and very much so in Vermont.’ And that’s how it all evolved.”

Sanders listens to Sandia's Stulen at the lab's launch.

Despite concerns about Lockheed’s consistently bad behavior Sanders didn’t think inviting a subsidiary to the state would help them get away with anything. Rather, he envisioned Vermont transformed “into a real-world lab for the entire nation” through a strategic public-private partnership. “We’re at the beginning of something that could be of extraordinary significance to Vermont and the rest of the country,” he predicted.

It was a highly optimistic picture: Businesses, ratepayers and researchers would get a boost, a Department of Energy planning grant would jump start the research, and more government support would follow as the project gained steam. Sandia Vice President Richard Stulen meanwhile confirmed Sanders’ pledge that no weapons development work would be involved. The focus, they promised, would be cutting edge research on cyber security, “smart grid” technology and stopping hacker attacks.

Sandia’s motivation? As Stulen explained it, Vermont’s small, compact energy infrastructure was an “ideal place” to create a model for the rest of the country. The Feds were impressed with the work underway on forward-looking renewable energy technology and a willingness to “tinker with related policies and regulations.” Sandia defined the lab’s mission as energy “security.” For Vermont, the carrot was the prospect of jobs and a chance for local enterprises to get a “global competitive edge.”

The letter of cooperation between Mayor Kiss and Lockheed made a similar argument. Lockheed Martin Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Dr. Ray O. Johnson stressed national security and “the economic and strategic challenges posed by our dependence on foreign oil and the potential destabilizing effects of climate change.” A local partnership, he said, would “demonstrate a model for sustainability that can be replicated across the nation.”

Kiss insisted that the climate crisis required radical action, while Sanders felt comfortable simply ignoring his critics. Yet both claimed, remarkably, that they never discussed or coordinated their positions.

Cracks in the Coalition

Mayor Kiss claimed that his introduction to the idea of a partnership with the corporate giant began in Richard Branson’s “Carbon War Room.” The result was a Dec. 20, 2010 “letter of cooperation” signed with Lockheed Martin to address climate change by developing green-energy solutions. The plan was vague, mentioning only “sustainable business models” and analysis, and “energy and transportation technologies.” Yet Kiss envisioned future fuel efficient vehicles, improving the use of steam from the city-owned generating station, and generally turning “swords into ploughshares.”

Despite years of anti-corporate, peace movement rhetoric the two main elected leaders of the state’s progressive movement had both decided to make research and development deals with a powerful corporation – one that many people considered a war profiteer and a corporate criminal. It was no shock that this policy "coincidence" set off a local revolt and a period of self-assessment.

Military contracts represent less than five percent of Vermont GDP, but substantially more in the Champlain Valley, home base for the two largest recipients, General Dynamics and Simmonds Precision. Between 2000 and 2011 around 600 companies received $7 billion in contracts. Chittenden County was the big winner but there were smaller businesses employing people in almost every Vermont County, producing guns, ammunition, “quick reaction” equipment, explosive components, missiles and aircraft parts. The main Congressional booster for military contract jobs was Vermont’s senior US senator, Patrick Leahy, who frequently made appearances at factories to announce big contracts.

On the other hand, Burlington also had a rich history of social activism. In fact, over three decades it developed a series of progressive foreign policy initiatives. As Ken Picard explained in the weekly Seven Days, the debate over Lockheed Martin touched on “a bigger issue about Burlington identity and the corporations with which it chooses to associate: Given the dire predictions about imminent and catastrophic climate change, should the city accept Lockheed Martin’s technical help, and ample dollars, in the interest of achieving the greater good?

“Or, should Burlington refuse to lend its name and reputation to help burnish the image of the world’s largest maker of weapons of mass destruction? In short, is Lockheed Martin ‘beating swords into ploughshares,’ as Mayor Kiss had characterized it, or engaging in corporate greenwashing at Burlington’s expense?”

 

Jonathan Leavitt addresses Mayor Kiss
at August 2011 review of the Lockheed deal

Those weren’t easy questions to answer, or even discuss. But an early opportunity came on February 7, 2011. City Hall’s Contois Auditorium was crowded that night as the Council considered the mayor’s deal with Lockheed. In a scene reminiscent of the early days of the Sanders era, dozens of local residents told their leaders why they didn’t like the idea. An August follow up attracted a similar audience and the same concerns.

The proposed arrangement reinforced emerging questions about Progressive leadership. After Kiss was re-elected in 2009 major financial trouble was uncovered in the financing and operation of Burlington Telecom. Without public notification $17 million had been borrowed from city coffers to build the system. The apparent plan was to get new commercial financing that would allow repayment, then announce the violation of the utility’s license to the Department of Public Service.

BT also borrowed $33.5 million from CitiBank, and wasn’t able to handle the payments. By September, 2011 the municipal enterprise was under interim management and actively looking for a private partner. But the prospects for finding a “white knight” while holding onto a public stake weren’t bright, and the scandal had meanwhile damaged the mayor’s reputation, not to mention the future prospects of his Party.

With that backdrop, left-leaning residents and younger activists were shocked and upset that the administration also wanted to partner with a corporation that Sanders himself considered one of the biggest corporate predators – number one in contractor misconduct with 57 violations and $577 million in fines and settlements.

In February, the City Council had instructed Kiss to put the deal on hold until they had more information and a public hearing was held. Their resolution also called for serious effort on climate change and local standards for companies hoping to work with the city. The mayor ignored them.

At the same time Sanders flatly refused to discuss the situation, avoiding interviews about Lockheed, F-35s or his alliance with Sandia. And when he was finally caught off-guard at a speech in Boston a few days after the February City Council vote and asked about local objections in Burlington, he testily told the inquiring journalist he was just misinformed. There was simply no opposition in Burlington, the senator said.

In any case, the City Council had voted to set standards for partnerships that clearly excluded a corporation like Lockheed Martin. And opposing that policy were a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans, including mayoral candidate Kurt Wright. That put the city’s Progressive mayor and the movement's de facto leader on the same side as hawks and other conservatives.

The anti-Lockheed resolution was proposed by another Progressive, Mulvaney-Stanak, and was backed by the only other Council Progressive and several Democrats, including Ed Adrian, a frequent critic of the Kiss administration who proposed outright rejection of Lockheed. The overall dynamic dramatized a developing rift between the base of both parties and their leadership.

By October, it looked as if Kurt Wright might actually win the upcoming mayoral race. Even if Kiss opted not to run again – or was rejected at a Progressive Caucus – his party needed to heal some serious divisions and find a way forward. Once again, some Progressive "thought leaders" were coming to the conclusion that their best hope was a sympathetic Democrat. If they didn’t find the right one, the coalition that had launched Sanders and changed Vermont politics could lose control of local government, perhaps permanently. 

Others were more cynical, speculating that it might be better for progressives -- at least in the long run -- if in the short run a Republican ran City Hall.

NEXT: Burlington Gets Occupied

Burlington 2050: Thinking Beyond

Greg's opening remarks for the Arts Riot Mayoral Forum, Feb. 27, 2015

Thirty-five years into the future? That’s a long time… as long as Marty McFly went in Back to the Future. … or, as long ago as when Bernie Sanders first ran for mayor. So, let’s imagine…

By 2050, the city has certainly grown – but not as much as many other places. For a while it did. But by 2030 there were almost 60,000 city residents; it was beginning to feel cramped. Then someone from New York proposed building a Heliport at the airport to ferry visitors to waterfront resort destinations. People said, no way! After that, limits were placed on new construction.

Visitors often wonder how we did it without going broke. But it wasn’t rocket science or Tax Incremental Financing. For one thing, it was more money from the 46 percent of local land that was tax exempt. We also protected what worked and got creative. For an orientation, let’s visit the museum. Not the Fleming. We have a City Museum now, out on North Avenue, a short hop by PTN to the entrance of what was once the high school.

Pine Street corridor, from VDQ, publication of the Vermont Design Institute in Burlington

What’s PTN? Well, transportation changed radically, here and everywhere. High-mileage cars fueled by clean energy were part of it. But fewer people need them now, especially in the city. To get here many visitors take the New York to Montreal line, which stops at the transit hub. Once here, about a third of the population bikes regularly; there are free bikes at the hub and other key locations. Another third use some form of public or private "post-oil economy" transit. Many of us use PTN – that’s the Personal Transit Network – a fleet of small, lightweight “pods” that carry groups directly to their destinations. In 2015 the first PTN system (known elsewhere as Personal Rapid Transit) was being tested in West Virginia.

Back to the museum. It’s actually a public education center that combines changing displays on local history, art, environment and culture; a multi-media public library; video, Internet and TV facilities run by Burlington Telecom; the home of the Burlington Workforce Training Center; and a great outdoor space near the lake for concerts and picnics. There’s also a child care center, part of a decentralized network developed privately with city support.

As the effects of climate change intensified, Vermont became even more desirable for people fleeing overcrowded cities, or displaced by rising water and extreme weather. But we knew that one of the secrets of our success is our size – we're small – and the ability to make the best use of our resources. Somehow we found a safe path – sustainability and carefully managed growth.

After the “Heliport Revolt,” there was a renaissance of interest in self-sufficiency and keeping things in human scale. Ordinance and charter changes allowed for more homesteading. Due to the high-energy cost and questionable quality of corporate agriculture, Vermont passed the Food Self-Sufficiency Act in 2025, setting the stage for the re-purposing of land across the state to produce as much food as possible to provide a healthy diet for all Vermonters. At times, the sound of “backyard farms” makes it seem more like the past than the future.

Before we leave, let’s stop downtown. Still a commercial gem, it looks a bit different. Eight to 12 story apartment blocks have been added to the skyline, as well as the resort hotel on the waterfront, finally completed in 2030. But for the last 20 years Burlington has focused more on opening up space than building over it. Another focus is finding new uses for old structures. Like Memorial Auditorium, one of several high schools. But like other education facilities, it’s more than that: it’s also a place for weddings, celebrations, job training at night, and political debate – an emblem of community life.

Does it sound like an expensive place to live? It was for a while. But when studio apartments downtown hit $2,000 a month people demanded control of the market. Now there’s HAB – the Housing Affordability Board, which reviews rental increases, landlord expenses and tenant complaints about unjustified rent hikes.

I’m almost out of time. Let me just say, not everything has changed. People still disagree about issues like public health, water quality, and the cost of living. Some think there are too many yachts on the lake. Others say we're missing out by staying small. But more people are involved in community life, because more of it revolves around neighborhoods. Technological has continued to connect us with the world and each other in amazing ways. But we’ve also realized what being a beautiful, livable city means – human scale and mutual support, preserving nature and cultivating community.

Somehow we found the right balance.

Champlain Parkway: Burlington's Road to Nowhere

An Early History

By Greg Guma, excerpted from The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution, Greg’s 1989 book about Vermont politics in the 1970s and 1980s. This excerpt concerning the Champlain Parkway is released to provide more historical context for the Feb. 10 AARP Forum on livability at the Unitarian Church. To find out more about the Parkway's complex history: The Mayor and the Connector, published in 2012 by VTDigger.com.

 

In the grand scheme of Vermont transportation planning, it was to be just a short hop – a “connection” between the Interstate highway and the downtown business district -- and its purpose was to ease access for shoppers. When it was designed in the early 1970s, it had been projected to cost a mere $11 million, and the state and federal governments promised to pick up 90 percent of the cost.

 

But the Southern Connector (now known as the Champlain Parkway) turned out to be a much more complicated and expensive roadway than anyone imagined. By the late 1980s, the price tag had reached $50 million. The environmental problems that were associated with running cars and trucks over a former toxic dump, discovered under the route of the road, seemed critical. Even with a modified design, neighborhoods were expected to be cut off from the waterfront. And access plans still failed to satisfy the concerns of nearby home and business owners.

 

Yet over the years it had become an inevitability, and a political non-issue. In the 1980s, for the business community, it was an essential ingredient for continued downtown “vitality,” one that would keep Burlington commercially competitive. For Mayor Sanders, its construction would be one of a long list of accomplishments, an “attractive parkway” that would relieve traffic jams on smaller roads. Though many things changed after Sanders became mayor, whether to build the Connector was not one of them.

 

When Sanders first ran for mayor in 1981, he expressed solid opposition to the so-called boulevard. His allies on the issue were neighborhood residents; his opponents were virtually all the local powers that be. Fidelity Mutual, owner of the urban renewal area in the heart of downtown, warned that prospects for completion of its $100 million project would be bleak until “the bulldozers were moving in the South End.” The City’s Planning Commission, Regional Planning Commission, Chamber of Commerce, State Transportation Department, Governor Snelling, and Lt. Gov. Madeleine Kunin were all in favor of it.

 

Why were the power brokers so adamant? Back in 1976, Peg Garland, chairwoman of the Burlington Planning Commission, had explained the reasons in a confidential memo to Mayor Paquette. “So many of the projects developing in downtown Burlington are contingent on proper access to the city,” she wrote. Already worried that construction might not even begin until 1980, she counseled, “Gordon, I don’t believe our city can wait that long for this vital link. We must take bold action, and you are in the driver’s seat.”

 

Just how bold their actions were did not become known until years later, when city documents revealed that there had been a virtual conspiracy to complete the project. At least one state senator, Thomas Crowley, and City Clerk Frank Wagner had apparently been prepared to bend the rules in order to push the pet project through.

 

Their problem was the state legislature, which had passed a law stating that local communities requesting highway money for roads had to secure their local share within 18 months of making an application. But the late 1970s weren’t an ideal time to ask for money from Burlington voters. Opponents of the Connector were raising questions, and a bond vote would likely have been turned down.

 

To avoid that problem, Wagner wrote a letter to state officials in 1977: A bond vote had already been passed, he told them, so the 18-month requirement had been met. For several years, no one noticed his misstatement. Not until 1981, after Sanders arrived in City Hall, was the letter discovered, along with the city’s failure to secure funds in time. Wagner resigned and a lawsuit followed.

 

A bond vote was finally held in 1979. After he was elected, Sanders tried seriously to alter the design and route, but he couldn’t affect the plans. As the city’s chief fiscal officer, however, he looked at the tax base and, like his predecessor, concluded that the Connector was a necessary “incentive” for future commercial investors. Ultimately, he capitulated. He later said he “took pride” in having found a solution – a connector with slightly improved access for residents – that satisfied everyone. Following his lead, many Progressives came to embrace the standard view: the Connector would make the city competitive with suburbia.
 

Why were so many well-placed people so adamant about the Connector for so long? Back in the 1960s, a waterfront highway, or some variation that would divert traffic and make Burlington more accessible to visitors, looked wonderful on paper. The project was considered necessary to insure Burlington’s commercial competitiveness within the region. In those days, conventional wisdom said that growth would continue indefinitely. Factors such as environmental costs and neighborhood objections were secondary to the expected economic benefits.

 

Another reason was that vested interests supported the project. Some were land speculators; others, like General Electric, wished to ease their own traffic problems – at public expense. Various designers, construction firms, and developers had stakes. If the Connector wasn’t built, many of those who had invested in it stood to lose.

 

And still another was simply short-sightedness. People were tired of traffic jams ion the South End, and the Connector seemed a simple solution. Sacrificing one small part of the city, went this logic, would make it possible to drive in and out of downtown somewhat faster.

 

A final reason was pride. City and state leaders had been fighting for the project as a “sign of commitment” for too many years to simply give up. Millions had been spend on surveys, designers, land purchases, court fights, hearings, and more designers – all before the bulldozers began to move.