The Crestone Eagle, June 2007:

‘Community Sustainability: 2020, Creating an Achievable Vision’
Conference June 15-17
by Conference Steering Committee (Lee Temple, Vince and Mary Palermo, Paul Shippee, Jo Anne Kiser)

The Crestone/Baca Sustain-ability Initiative proudly presents our community’s first comprehensive sustainability conference—Community Sustainability: 2020, Creating an Achievable Vision, June 15-17 at the Colorado College campus near Crestone.

Several exciting, globally-recognized guest speakers—Michael Brownlee, president of Boulder Going Local, Inc.; Liz Walker, facilitator for the conference and co-founder and executive director of EcoVillage at Ithaca; and Senator Gail Schwartz (D-CO) who supports state-wide reduction of carbon emissions—will outline the various Action Steps needed to help a community like ours achieve its goals and become more locally self-reliant and to significantly reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ in the process.

The goals of this event are to create a Comprehensive Sustainability Policy for the Crestone/Baca Sub-Area and to become a working model to help other communities in the San Luis Valley address similar issues in the future.

The keynote speakers will be interspersed with full group interactions and small-group ‘breakout’ sessions oriented toward seven specific ‘Action Areas’ (Food, Water, Energy & Fuel, Land Stewardship, Green Business Models, Emergency Resources, and Social Sustainability). Our committee has been hard at work over the past several months recruiting the best available facilitators in our community for these Action Areas and we’ve begun working with them to ensure a focused, effective use of our time during these sessions.

Friday night’s two keynote speeches on community sustainability and relocalization highlight current, successful efforts by other communities world-wide, with specific focus on two notable examples found in the U.S. (Boulder, CO and Ithaca, NY).

Saturday and Sunday are devoted to getting down to the serious (and fun!) business of envisioning a more sustainable, carbon-neutral future for our community. Crestone Charter School youth will kick things off by presenting their research project on our community’s ‘Current Baseline Data’: (how much energy, food, etc. we use, where it comes from, etc.).

Then we’ll begin the community visioning process in earnest. We’ll do this first by looking at where we want to be in the year 2020, then work back to the present.

After lunch (free and catered by Mary Lowers and Tsering from the Sage) we’ll hear from Ravi Malhotra, Executive Director of Denver’s ICAST (International Center for Appropriate & Sustainable Technology), who will help us focus on ‘Turning Vision into Reality’. Ravi will discuss and outline the specifics of transforming general visionary ideas into workable, profitable businesses that can help positively transform a community like ours over the long term.

Sunday begins at 1pm with a keynote address by Colorado State Senator Gail Schwartz, who will discuss possible next steps for our community and the ways in which she and others in government at the state level can help us ‘Moving Forward’ to create a better future for our town.

We’ll wrap up Sunday afternoon by identifying the specific recommendations that will, taken all together, form the Comprehensive Sustainability Policy to be presented to the Crestone/Baca Planning Commission to help update the Crestone/Baca Sub-Area Master Plan.

Both Saturday and Sunday will end with time for mingling and refreshments. Saturday we’ll have flute music by Catie Moore and on Sunday, awesome cover and original tunes by Barry Monroe.

Highlights of the conference include speeches by Michael Brownlee on his work with Boulder Relocalization. Conference Facilitator Liz Walker, will speak about EcoVillage at Ithaca, the internationally recognized example of sustainable development, the substantial ripple effects from this innovative community and her experiences facilitating visioning efforts in other existing communities like ours all around the world.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of all will be gathering together with friends to learn how we can cooperatively build a better, brighter future for our community. Looking forward to seeing you there.

The cost of the entire conference will be $15, (further donation appreciated) with registration at the door. Click here for conference schedule.

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