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<br />turned to cities. Are cities sustainable? If not, can
<br />they be made so? Essays by Jane Jacobs, Lewis
<br />Mumford, and Paul Relis provided an infrastructure
<br />upon which we built our ideas, then Paul Relis came
<br />to personally broaden the discussion. Paul is execu-
<br />tive director of Santa Barbara's Community Environ-
<br />mental Council (CEC), and a font of knowledge about
<br />local- and global-scale recycling issues. After visiting
<br />with the interns Paul addressed Salimins at a public
<br />forum on "The Future of Recycling," sponsored by
<br />The Land Institute, The Smoky Hills Audubon
<br />Society, The League of Women Voters, and Citizens
<br />for a Healthy Environment. .
<br />Integrated Waste Managementis a concept
<br />pioneered by, Paul and his coworkers at the CEC
<br />which considers not only material recycling, but the
<br />uses of recycled products and markets for them. Such
<br />an approach is slowly catching on as businesses and
<br />individuals realize its worth. For almost twenty
<br />years economist Herman Daly has espoused a steady
<br />state economy based on a systems approach, as
<br />Integrated Waste Management is. His ideas seem to
<br />be finally catching on, too. Plant breeder Peter
<br />Kulakow led class discussions of Daly's seminal
<br />works, plus writings of William Ophuls from his book
<br />Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity. Their theses are
<br />simple: we must pay attention to the consequences of
<br />our extractive economy. In the book Economics,
<br />Ecology, Ethics, Herman Daly declares: "Growth
<br />chestnuts have to be placed on the unyielding anvil of
<br />biophysical realities and then crushed with the
<br />hammer of moral argument."
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<br />Afternoon field work continued in September, even after
<br />classes began. Paul Muto sharpens hoe before going out to
<br />hoe the experimental plots.
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<br />And if the nuts of growth-mania aren't
<br />crushed? Adam Smith's invisible hand broadcasts
<br />pollution, acid rain, ozone depletion, global warming,
<br />loss of biological diversity, festering megalopolises-
<br />the "ain't it awful" stories we hear (and tell) so often.
<br />It takes a nimble mind to bounce over the bad news
<br />and get to some concrete proposals for positive action:
<br />enter David Orr. Recently moved from The Mead-
<br />owcreek Project in Fox, Arkansas, to the environ-
<br />mental studies department of Oberlin College, David
<br />is a long-time friend of The Land and thinker and
<br />speaker extraordinaire. Henry Thoreau recom-
<br />mended we "read not The Times, read The Eterni-
<br />ties." David reads both, front to back and between
<br />the lines. After addressing a crowd of hundreds as
<br />part of Kansas State University's Lou Douglas
<br />Lecture Series, David visited The Land for an ex-
<br />tended session with staff and interns. At KSU he
<br />posited that re-ruralization is inevitable, and pre-
<br />sented suggestions to help make the transition a
<br />smooth one. A "discourse on methods" followed at
<br />The Land Institute, and David's political science
<br />background and familiarity with history emerged as
<br />he sparked discussion about community and the
<br />individual, language and values, new-Luddites,
<br />strategy, and praxis.
<br />From New England came Robin Grossinger
<br />and Dick Backus. This past summer Robin worked
<br />with Ocean Arks, John and Nancy Jack Todd's solar
<br />aquatics firm that builds sewage treatment facilities
<br />using plants, animals, and sunlight as natural filters.
<br />Through "ecological engineering" Ocean Arks has
<br />expanded from its roots in the New Alchemy Institute
<br />to a successful firm in a few short years. Dick Backus
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