This essay was a finalist in the How We Saved the World essay contest, where people wrote as if it was 2050 when the world was working, saying how we got there starting with something they did. Here's the intro to this presentation of results, with links to the other finalists and an invitation to make comments about the contest.

12

Restoring Our World

Dearest Earth Community,

Today marks the four-year anniversary of our completion of the Great Turning, which was the worldwide concerted effort to successfully avert the Great Unraveling of our beloved Earth.[1] The Earth is recovering and on a steady path towards homeostasis, societies are finally equitable, life-enhancing, and in sync with Nature and the Cosmos. Collectively, we achieved Net Zero energy consumption, Zero Waste, complete soil regeneration, CO₂ reduction to pre-industrial levels, the reversal of ocean acidification, a total conversion to regenerative agriculture, and an ethical biomimetic Technosphere,[2] economic and food security for all, while fifty percent of the Earth was preserved as wild space,[3] with more being allocated for rewilding every day. The Sixth Mass Extinction[4] event has been stopped, and the wild animal population is growing for the first time in over fifty years. The whales have returned to American bays, the bees are buzzing, and the Himalayas are visible once again. We could not have achieved our goal, without the participation of every individual around the world, at every level of society, working together in tandem. But how did we defeat the odds and accomplish the unimaginable?

In 2024, I finally made the commitment to join the Great Turning and participate in transforming our industrial growth society into a life-sustaining planetary civilization.[5] Little did I know, the small local steps I personally took in my community eventually had a widening influence on the whole world. At the time, I had enough sense to know I personally couldn’t change the world by myself. Instead, I decided to see if I could help my small town, Nevada City—located in the Western Sierra Foothills of California—take on the challenge of becoming a model example of a regenerative community. The place was already filled with consciously minded people, farm-to-table restaurants, co-ops, credit unions, local artisans and small businesses, and the country’s largest environmental film festival, “Wild & Scenic.” My first step was to help turn Nevada City into a “transition town.”[6] The fundamentals of a transition town are local energy, local food supply, and local currency/economy. I decided that the best way I could help accomplish this goal was to run for mayor, based on my organization skills, connections, and experience over the last decade.

The reason I thought running for mayor was a viable source of change was based on what I learned while producing a documentary called The Future of Energy: Lateral Power to the People. As we interviewed leaders about the renewable energy movement, we kept hearing that it was “financially and technologically possible” to transition to 100% renewable energy, but that we lacked the “political will” to do so.[7] We interviewed two Republican mayors who had successfully transitioned their cities to 100% renewable energy: Rex Parris of Lancaster, California, and Bob Dixon of Greensburg, Kansas. Lancaster had harnessed the solar power of the desert, while Greensburg had harnessed the wind power of the Great Plains.[8] The other thing I learned while doing the research for the documentary was that major change on the federal level was nearly impossible, mainly because fossil fuel lobbies still contributed heavily to federal political campaigns, while change on the local level seemed to streamline the process. There was a lot that mayors could do without any help from the federal government, and I learned that the United States Conference of Mayors was meeting annually and achieving their own goals that surpassed those of federal regulations.[9] When we started production of The Future of Energy, in 2013, renewable energy made up less than 5% of the U.S. energy supply. By 2022, 20% of the total U.S. supply was made up of renewable energy, with the sector surpassing coal for the first time in U.S. history.[10] By 2022, renewable energy technologies were not just competing with fossil fuels, they were “significantly undercutting them.”[11] And the fact is, the “U.S. green revolution pales in comparison” to other countries,[12] mainly because this had become a politicized issue in the U.S.[13]

When I ran for the mayoral election in Nevada City, I called in all of the contacts I had made over the last decades in the renewable energy and ecological movements to help me shape my platform. At that point, I had built an advisory council that was prepared to help me transition the town of Nevada City, if I was to get elected. Because more than half of the town was already environmentally friendly, focused on local issues, and there was an existing populace that would vote for progressive politics, my platform had a chance. After a long, hard-fought battle of fundraising and building support from the different constituents in the community, I was able to win the election with a small majority of the vote. For all of the solutions that I proposed, and eventually implemented, I had already witnessed them implemented in other communities, and I had a direct connection to leaders in those fields who ended up advising me through the process.

As the mayor, I led the effort to transition the whole town to renewable energy use. We did this in a few ways. The first way was to reduce the energy demand by retrofitting all of the existing commercial buildings to be Net Zero.[14] This cut the energy demand by seventy-five percent. We then installed rooftop solar on all the existing buildings, put in some supplemental wind turbines along the ridge lines of the mountains, and used strategically placed passive water turbines on the rivers to generate enough power to cover the additional twenty-five percent of our energy needs. As a backup plan, our county committed to Community Choice Aggregation (CCA),[15] and required our electric company to provide only renewable energy to our community. PG&E could then pipe in renewable energy from other parts of California, and eliminate our dependence on coal and natural gas. This allowed us to avoid relying primarily on battery storage, which has its own negative environmental impacts. These steps allowed us to achieve Zero Net electricity use in the first five years by following the example of Lancaster, California.[16] The other important aspect to consider was eliminating carbon emissions from the transportation sector. We increased public transportation with electric buses, and built side paths along the roads for bicycles. We also worked with the state of California to install charging stations for electric and hydrogen vehicles, and incentivized purchasing these vehicles with state and local tax rebates. California successfully phased out gas powered vehicles by 2035.[17]

The next step was to secure the majority of our food supply from local sources. This was an easier step because we already had co-ops, restaurants, and a thriving farmers market that sourced produce, meat, and bread from local farms. We subsidized the local farmers, boosted our support for the farmers markets[18] and expanded their influence, and incentivized local restaurants to source only from local farms by giving then tax incentives. Because local food is generally tastier, this wasn’t a hard sell. We switched to an eighty-percent local food supply within three years, with the remaining twenty percent of food as specialty items coming from other regions. We also implemented a composting and organic waste component to our waste management which, together with recycling, eliminated seventy-five percent of our total waste, following San Francisco’s model.[19] To further tackle the waste issue, we outlawed single-use plastics and Styrofoam, mandated that all restaurants use biodegradable packaging and utensils, and that industry use Styrofoam replacers that are made from biodegradable mushroom packaging.[20] We also required businesses to set their “defaults,”[21] (e.g., no printed receipts and a small optional carbon credit tax) in favor of environmentally friendly standards. Additionally, once we demanded all businesses, non-profits, and local government agencies to be responsible for their own negative externalities,[22] there was an incentive to decrease air, water, and ground pollution, and to eliminate additional waste.

In 2021, Nevada City Chamber of Commerce launched a gift card program for their local currency, “Yuba Bucks.”[23] Since this was already in place, it was not hard as mayor to work with the Chamber of Commerce and local businesses to advertise and promote the use of our local currency to the community. We worked with banks to set up new accounts that would honor and exchange Yuba Bucks, and allowed taxpayers to pay their local taxes with this currency. The use of a local currency reduced our dependence on USD, and allowed our local economy to thrive and avert the worst effects of federal inflationary measures over the years. We also encouraged the development of worker-owned businesses, as it built economic strength and stability, and we worked with our local “anchor institutions” to employ locally and to keep the wealth in our community.[24] This completed our goal of turning Nevada City into a transition town.

Because of the success of our campaign, people were eager to do more and to deepen our commitment to living harmoniously with Nature. We implemented “Rights of Nature”[25] legislation into our local laws, supported the use and development of “Green Chemistry,”[26] and formed an alliance with other towns in the Sacramento River Basin watershed to unite our common interests in our shared “Bioregion.”[27] We supported “Food Justice”[28] initiatives, the “Living Building”[29] challenge for local architects, and enacted California’s ecological literacy mandate for all schools.[30] We also worked with the local Indigenous populations of the Maidu and Nisenan tribes to restore and preserve their ceremonial lands and gave “Land Back”[31] as a form of reconciliation. We hired the Maidu and Nisenan to lead the Firewise[32] forest land management program and followed their lead on land preservation and ecological practices.[33]It took twenty years to bring the forest back into the thriving ecosystem it was prior to settler colonization, but in the end, it was restored. These initiatives, among others, set Nevada City on course to become a model eco-town.

These changes made the community a better, happier, more prosperous, and equitable place to live. What we did not expect was that the model we had created became a road map for other communities to follow our lead. Once news got out about the success we were having, it started to inspire others to take action in their communities. The model was scalable, so it didn’t matter if it was for a small town, a medium-size city, or a large city. It turned out that these practices were applicable to all communities around the world, with slight modifications to meet the needs of the local populations and industry.

During production of The Future of Energy, I had witnessed 350.org hand the San Francisco City Council a brief on divesting from fossil fuels. In 2013, they were the first to divest from fossil fuels, while ten years later the movement had reached 1,613 institutions, resulting in 40.63 trillion dollars divested from fossil fuel companies.[34] Because of this experience, I knew that our small town of Nevada City could be an example of the change we wanted to see, and we could hand over the plan to other cities to follow our lead. With that in mind, we created a brief that included the overall plan, and goals for 2050, and all of the resources needed for each element of this transformation to take place. This “Vision 2050” PDF became the mission statement for global transformation. As it spread to other communities, young leaders decided to run for local office on this platform. The younger generation was able to rally the votes needed to win their elections with the hope of securing their future to live on a habitable planet. Because their campaigns were crowd-funded by the people, these young politicians were not beholden to corporations or special interest groups.[35]

We witnessed coastal communities implement “3D-Ocean Farming,”[36] local farmland communities implement “Regenerative Agriculture,”[37] local neighborhoods in cities implement “Urban Farming”[38] and “Green Roofs and Walls,”[39] and eventually, every county in the U.S. established Community Choice Aggregation programs and demanded their utility companies provide them with clean, local, renewable energy.[40] Tribal councils throughout the U.S. led the way on implementing “Rights of Nature” initiatives on tribal lands,[41] which inspired other communities to do the same. Before we knew it, there was so much momentum on the local level in the first five to ten years, that we started to see changes on the federal level as well. The first major change was that the people demanded political campaigns be publicly funded and that private and corporate campaign contributions be outlawed to curb corruption.[42]This was a watershed moment for true democracy. In 2014, Princeton University published a study showing that politicians did not vote in line with what the public wanted on environmental issues, rather they voted in step with their corporate donors The study concluded that the U.S. was indeed an oligarchy.[43] In 2023, 62% of the American population thought climate change had a “great deal of impact on their local community,” yet politicians were not making enough policy changes.[44] Once federal politicians started voting in line with the interest of the American people, this exponentially changed U.S. policy in favor of a healthy environment. And this only brought the United States up to speed with what other countries were doing. As of 2023, the European Union had already decreased their fossil fuel consumption to below one-third of their total energy use, with renewable energy making up 44% of the total energy supply. Since their peak emissions in 2007, Europe managed to decrease their total carbon emissions by 46% by 2023,[45] and they managed to get to Zero Net Energy fifteen years before the U.S. China was another example of a country leading the way on renewable energy. Back in 2023, clean energy was the primary driver of the Chinese economy, with clean energy investments reaching $890 billion. At that time, this was almost equivalent to the “total global investments in fossil fuels.”[46] China also ended up reaching their goal of Zero Net Energy before the U.S.

All of these great achievements were not won without incessant battles and great struggle. First, we had to win over the labor force of the fossil fuel industries and guarantee them new jobs in the renewable energy job sector. By 2023, there were over 8 million jobs created in the renewable energy sector, and the overall employment growth for 2021 and 2022 was “faster than overall U.S. employment.”[47] This only continued until we phased out fossil fuels completely. The fossil fuel lobby was by far our greatest adversary. Once the government represented the people, and not corporations, we struck a deal with the major corporate interests that were set to lose the most from this transition. We gave them ownership of the renewable energy economy, and let them manage the energy sector of the U.S., in exchange for running their companies as B-Corps,[48] which meant they had to adhere to the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. In doing this, we incentivized the Great Turning so that business could be part of the positive transformation of our society. Once we convinced businesses that it was financially lucrative to be socially conscious and ecologically minded, the power of innovation and commerce shook the world for good.

What we have achieved in the last twenty-five years seemed impossible back in 2024. Yet, because we thought globally but acted locally, the transformation of our global societies happened faster than we could ever have imagined. There is more work to do, but we avoided the worst effects of the Great Catastrophe, and, in the process, united around a shared vision for humanity and the Earth community.

May this anniversary bring reflection on what we accomplished, and may we celebrate this momentous achievement.

With a Tender Heart,

Maximilian DeArmon

January 1, 2050

–

[1] The “Great Turning” is a phrase that Joanna Macy uses to describe the collective movements happening globally. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB6YcL0vy74.

[2] See “Biomimicry,” by Janine Benyus, https://youtu.be/tOrP5qncFnU?si=UMSlDeLV9di1wrek.

[3] See E.O. Wilson’s “Half-Earth” project, https://eowilsonfoundation.org/what-is-the-half-earth-project/.

[4] See Elizabeth Kolbert on “the Sixth Mass Extinction,” https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/books/review/the-sixth-extinction-by-elizabeth-kolbert.html.

[5] See Jeremy Rifkin on “The Empathic Civilization,” https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_rifkin_the_empathic_civilization.

[6] See Transition Town network, https://transitionnetwork.org/.

[7] Both Diane Moss, the founder and director of the Renewables 100 Policy Institute, and Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, have said this. See The Future of Energy: Lateral Power to the People, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07HDXR5KQ/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r.

[8] See The Future of Energy.

[9] See “Energy,” in the United States Conference of Mayors, https://www.usmayors.org/category/committees/energy/.

[10] See “Renewable Energy,” https://www.energy.gov/eere/renewable-energy.

[11] See “Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2022,” in International Renewable Energy Agency, https://mc-cd8320d4-36a1-40ac-83cc-3389-cdn-endpoint.azureedge.net/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2023/Aug/IRENA_Renewable_power_generation_costs_in_2022.pdf?rev=cccb713bf8294cc5bec3f870e1fa15c2.

[12] See “U.S. Green Revolution Pales in Comparison,” https://www.politico.com/newsletters/the-long-game/2022/05/19/outside-looking-in-00033732.

[13] See “The Green-Energy Culture Wars in Red States,” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/03/republican-fossil-fuels-renewable-energy/629420/.

[14] See the Net Zero UN coalition, https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition.

[15] See EPA, “Community Choice Aggregation,” https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/community-choice-aggregation.

[16] The city of “Lancaster is positioned as the nation’s first Net-Zero Energy City, which generates more energy than it consumes.” See https://www.cityoflancasterca.org/our-city/about-us/sustainability.

[17] See the “Office of the Governor,” https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/09/23/governor-newsom-announces-california-will-phase-out-gasoline-powered-cars-drastically-reduce-demand-for-fossil-fuel-in-californias-fight-against-climate-change/.

[18] See Michael Pollen, “Farmers Market,” https://youtu.be/zWpOMJf3lr8?si=zcjMq6ZM-SdoxNDL.

[19] See “Zero Waster Case Study: San Francisco,” https://www.epa.gov/transforming-waste-tool/zero-waste-case-study-san-francisco.

[20] See “IKEA commits to Biodegradable Mushroom Packaging,” https://news.yahoo.com/ikea-commits-biodegradable-mushroom-packaging-220023480.html.

[21] See “How green defaults promote environmentally friendly decisions,” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jasp.12629.

[22] See European Environment Agency, https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/the-cost-to-health-and-the.

[23] See Nevada City’s Yuba Bucks, https://www.theunion.com/news/nevada-city-chamber-of-commerce-launches-yuba-bucks-gift-cards/article_c788fab4-b3d9-5b24-896f-da9b27a9be93.html.

[24] See “How to Build a New Economy,” by Gar Alperovitz and Ted Howard, https://youtu.be/AQdB-a1NfVI?si=1AVgnoxcfD61HOj7.

[25] See Mari Margil and Tom Linzey, “The Rights of Nature,” https://youtu.be/DSVxWxdZyyw?si=0Ea0g0CipcJeKUTU.

[26] See John Warner, “Green Chemistry,” https://youtu.be/4PdUyBBj_xo?si=Z55IKZDOqiuwu4EN.

[27] “Bioregionalism” is a term Thomas Berry used, see http://thomasberry.org/wp-content/uploads/Bioregionalism.pdf. Also see “Ecoregions of North America,” https://www.epa.gov/eco-research/ecoregions-north-america

[28] See Bioneers, “Cultivating Food Justice through Regenerative Agriculture,” https://bioneers.org/cultivating-food-justice-through-regenerative-agriculture/.

[29] See “Living Building Challenge,” https://living-future.org/lbc/.

[30] See “A Blueprint for Environmental Literacy,” https://www.cde.ca.gov/pd/ca/sc/environliteracyblueprint.asp.

[31] See “Indigenous Voices: Land, Healing, and Restoration,” https://bioneers.org/indigenous-voices-land-healing-and-restoration-zmaz2310/.

[32] See “Firewise Communities,” https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/firewise-communities/.

[33] See “How the Indigenous practice of ‘good fire’ can help our forests thrive,” https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/how-indigenous-practice-good-fire-can-help-our-forests-thrive.

[34] See “The only comprehensive database of fossil fuel divestment commitments made by institutions worldwide,” in Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Commitment Database,” https://divestmentdatabase.org/.

[35] Because of social media and new crowd-funding platforms, Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign was the first major political campaign to compete monetarily with politicians funded by corporate money. Following this model, local congressional seats were won by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jamaal Bowman, that were completely crowd-funded by their constituents. This changed the political landscape forever.

[36] See “Bren Smith’s Open-Sourced 3D Ocean Farm Model Can Feed a Hungry Planet,” https://bioneers.org/bren-smiths-open-sourced-3d-ocean-farm-model-can-feed-hungry-planet-ztvz1709/.

[37] For info on Regenerative Agriculture, watch the documentaries, “Kiss the Ground,” and “Common Ground,” and visit: https://kisstheground.com/regenerative-agriculture/.

[38] See “Urban Farming: More than a Gardening Organization,” https://www.urbanfarming.org/.

[39] See Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, https://greenroofs.org/.

[40] https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/community-choice-aggregation.

[41] See “Rights of Nature in Indian Country,” https://bioneers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Bioneers-Rights-of-Nature-Guide-2023.pdf.

[42] See Conrad Foreman, “Money in Politics: Campaign Finance and its Influence Over the Political Process and Public Policy,” https://repository.law.uic.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2781&context=lawreview.

[43] See “US is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy,” https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746.

[44] See “Climate change is hitting close to home for nearly 2 out of 3 Americans, poll finds,” in PBS News Hour, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/climate-change-is-hitting-close-to-home-for-nearly-2-out-of-3-americans-poll-finds.

[45] See “2023: A Milestone Year for Renewable Energy in Europe—Unveiling Ember’s Electricity Review,” in Solar Power Europe, https://www.solarpowereurope.org/news/2023-a-milestone-year-for-renewable-energy-in-europe-unveiling-ember-s-electricity-review.

[46] See “Analysis: Clean energy was top driver of China’s economic growth in 2023,” in Carbon Brief, https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-was-top-driver-of-chinas-economic-growth-in-2023/.

[47] See “Clean Energy Job Creation and Growth,” https://www.energy.gov/eere/clean-energy-job-creation-and-growth.

[48] See “Make Business a Force for Good,” https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/.