Spark — crowd-financing for community-based energy efficiency projects — is here!
The anti-bodies are kicking in!
When the coal industry desperately tries to stave off its demise by ramming a new supply line through the heart of Cascadia, communities steadfastly resist.
Though the oil/auto/asphalt cabal continues to dominate the politics of public investment in transportation, a better new alternative to driving alone (and paying for tyranny) seems to pop up every day.
And now, instead of playing roulette in the stock market or investing your retirement savings in CDs with returns equivalent to stashing it under the mattress, you can fund local energy efficiency projects. You can earn decent, safe returns. You can create jobs. You can help local schools and businesses. You can finance climate solutions. A thousand Sparks of light? Oh never mind, you get where I’m going. Go Spark!
I’m not giving up on big transformation through public policy change because a) I don’t know how we get to solutions at scale without it and b) it feels like capitulating to the oilgarchs and c) it would render most of my professional skills obsolete.
But I have to ignore much of the available evidence and political wisdom in order to maintain this posture. “Hope,” as Frances Moore Lappe said, “is a stance, not a calculation.” I smoke what I gotta to keep plugging away for sweeping policy change, but in the meantime, it’s the Sparks that keep me standing up.
It’s a hard rain’s gonna fall…..but look what’s growing up in the moisture!
