Regardless of how we identify ourselves (environmentalist, conservationist, nature enthusiast, green and so on), those of us who struggle to bring an ecological sensibility to bear on public policy initiatives find ourselves fighting multiple battles on many fronts. Our culture’s “all-growth-is-good” value system leaves little room for suggestions that less might be better.

That’s a shame, given the dire circumstances currently challenging the health and well-being of Hoosiers. It is imprudent (some might say criminal) to continue to ignore or deny the pollution that places Indiana among the most toxic states in the nation.

This sorry situation has been perpetuated by a virulent strain of so-called “environmental management” that reflects the business model of balancing costs and benefits but ignores the many economic and social values inherent in a healthy environment.

The Kentucky poet, farmer and essayist Wendell Berry said it best in an interview during his 2005 visit to Indianapolis for the Spirit & Place Festival: “The idea that you can have a sound economy of money or stocks and bonds with a degraded landscape underneath it is preposterous.”

What would a robust economy look like if it were based on ecological principles that recognize our interdependence and interrelatedness with all living things? How can revivification of the degraded Hoosier landscape add value to the cost-benefit analysis?

According to a recent report by the Center for American Progress, “Creating more green-collar jobs is perhaps the greatest new engine for urban economic growth, innovation and job creation in many decades.”

“Indiana’s Road to Energy Independence,” a study prepared by the Renewable Energy Policy Project and released in late 2007 by the Blue-Green Action Alliance, found that clean energy manufacturing could bring 39,221 new green jobs to 1,321 Hoosier firms.

“We are absolutely committed to making the world a safer place for our children while revitalizing American manufacturing,” United Steel Workers District 7 Director Jim Robinson said. “The amazing potential for job creation held by clean energy component manufacturing and maintenance should make this an important part of Indiana’s power agenda immediately.”

The report suggests that Indiana’s aging manufacturing capacity could be retooled and its workforce retrained to design, manufacture and install wind turbines and solar panels. Additionally, as green building continues its robust growth, a workforce skilled in retrofitting structures for energy efficiency will be necessary in all construction trades, along with designers, architects, landscape artists, electrical engineers and others.

“Employment must truly serve to restore the environment, so that it can take care of us, rather than stress the earth,” said Greg Buck, director of the Campaign for Sustainable Economics. This can be accomplished in part, he said, by fostering pedestrian and nature-centered communities that would decrease the ecological footprint by maintaining consumption within a steady state — in other words, within the earth’s carrying capacity.

Richard Heinberg, author of Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, said the reality of Peak Oil (dwindling supplies of fossil fuels) requires us to develop new strategies for economic development. “When you take the ecological view, the first thing you ask is, “How do we wean ourselves off of this stuff? How do we downsize the human project so that we are once again living within the yearly solar income budget of the planet? How do we reduce our economic process to the point where it’s within the long-term carrying capacity of the biosphere?”

The answer, Heinberg said, is to extract whatever resources are used as locally as possible. “That is the path toward sustainability and a wealthy economy,” he said. “Local production for local consumption.”

Better safe than sorry

Nancy Myers, communications director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, grew up near Goshen, and is a proponent of the precautionary principle as a basis for environmental, public health and economic policies.

“The precautionary principle states that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty about the potential for harm should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent harm,” she said.

Myers is co-editor with Carolyn Raffensperger of Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy (MIT Press, 2006). Myers said our culture is set up to address problems after the fact. ”We just go ahead and make technological progress or economic progress and deal with the problems afterwards,” she said.

The precautionary principle urges policy-makers and citizens to decide what is important and take steps to prevent harm. “Let’s look ahead and see what’s going to make a good future for us,” she added. “If we care about future generations, we can no longer act just in a reactive way — we need to be proactive.”

Myers said whole new schools of thought in science and technology are coming out of adoption of the precautionary principle, including green chemistry, green engineering, green building practices and green community development. “The precautionary principle calls for innovation and really is very much in harmony with cutting-edge science and technology.”

Many of her Elkhart County neighbors work in the recreational vehicle and manufactured housing industries. “What if that changed from the kind of industries that use plastics and create a carcinogen burden in the air to becoming a hotbed of green building?” she said. “What if they developed materials to build a new kind of recreational vehicle or a new kind of manufactured housing that was in harmony with the environment?”

She points to the success of the Korean firm Samsung, which has a company policy to phase out toxic products and materials and to take back and recycle all of their products. “Hoosiers can do this kind of thing,” Myers said.

There are endless possibilities embedded in the “green vision.” More strategies are needed to increase local markets for local growers so we can double the number of farmers. Indiana can embark on an ambitious reforestation initiative and increase the tree canopy by planting a million trees — in each county. Citizens can increase their support of locally owned businesses that are the backbone of a sustainable economy.

But above all, Hoosiers can embrace a creative, collaborative approach to solving the problems of poor polluted Indiana. It will require us to accept the invitation issued by Peru native Cole Porter: Wake up and dream.