Issues and Definitions
The core issues for the DeCamp Campaign are:
These issues have their own pages on this campaign website. They are also intimately and inextricably interrelated. The details involved in addressing one issue will also affect the other issues. To addresss them in isolation will be to continue our current problems. Below are the defintions we use in addressing those issues.
Sustainability
Sustainability means to integrate our social and economic lives into the
environment in ways that tend to enhance or maintain rather than degrade or
destroy the environment; it is a moral imperative to pass on our natural
inheritance, not necessarily unchanged, but undiminished in its ability to meet
the needs of future generations; and it entails finding, and staying within, the
balance point amongst population, consumption, and waste assimilation so that
bioregions, watersheds and ecosystems can maintain their ability to recharge and regenerate.
The latter aspect of sustainability is the core concept behind carrying
capacity. Carrying capacity is both a measurable, and legally defensible,
method that communities can use to effectively manage the unrestrained growth
that is rapidly destroying quality of life -- as well as being at the root of global warming.
There are a few axioms that emerge from the definition of sustainability -- the first is that it is not an environmental movement; it is a community movement. The second is that due to the interconnected and interdependent nature of the universe, you cannot become sustainable at the expense of somewhere else (think CAP and the fact that the Colorado River no longer reaches the sea). It is also important to become aware that growth and development are not equivalent. To develop means to improve; make better; to bring to a more advanced or effective state. If we're going to be building a sustainable future, we need the support of those whose expertise is in building. Our challenge is to provide them with a new set of blueprints to work from.
Growth
Growth occurs in nature until it reaches the point of maturation and then a
steady state is maintained. The growth economy, however, depends on bankers
loaning more money than they have on deposit, on the assumption that tomorrow's
growth will pay for today's debt. Growth in the industrial economy is entirely
dependent on ready access to cheap and abundant fossil fuels-which are no longer
either-to power our factories, move us around, grow our food, produce our
plastic trinkets, and create our increasing number of medicines-which are
increasingly necessary to overcome the ill-effects of all of the above.
The rejection of growth is not just a viable policy option, it is a survival
strategy. The alternative to economic growth is a steady-state economy.
Relocalization
One way to look at what relocalization means for Tucson is this relocalization chart.
The following is taken from the Relocalization Network's "What is
Relocalization?" page.
"Relocalization is a strategy that has developed in response to the
environmental, social, political and economic ramifications of global over-
reliance on cheap energy. Climate change, the erosion of community, wars for
oil-rich land and the instability of the global economic system have resulted
from our dependence on cheap non-renewable fossil fuel energy.
"Relocalization is a strategy, which aims to build societies based on the local
production of food, energy and goods, and the local development of currency,
governance and culture. The main goals of Relocalization are to increase
community energy security, to strengthen local economies, and to dramatically
improve environmental conditions and social equity. The aim of Relocalization is
to develop exemplary community actions that can be used locally and as working
models for other communities when the effects of energy decline become more
intense.
"Relocalization is the re-claiming of our socio-cultural and economic systems so
that each locality operates well within its regional ecological boundaries.
Relocalization is a strategy that moves one step further than the strategy of
Localization, which primarily aims to increase the local production of goods and
services in order to fight the detrimental effects of globalization.
Relocalization supports the production of local goods and services while also
making a firm commitment to reducing consumption and improving environmental and
social conditions. In this way, communities begin to develop a greater degree of
economic self-reliance and stronger sense of community."
