Here Comes the Island Plan

The Island Plan is complete.

For now.

Four years in the making, this long-term plan for the future of Martha’s Vineyard, initiated by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission,  engaged hundreds of people in the collaborative process of its production.  To quote from the plan:  “ The purpose of the Island Plan is to chart a course to the kind of future the Vineyard community wants, and to outline a series of actions to help us navigate that course.  The Island Plan is both a blueprint and a call to action.”

I served on the Steering Committee and chaired one of the nine work groups – Livelihood & Commerce (the others are Development & Growth, Natural Environment, the Built Environment, Energy & Waste, Affordable Housing, Transportation, Water Resources, and Social Environment).

I spent more time working on the plan than I wished to and less time than I should have.

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The Gift that Goes on Giving

In the last post I talked about the upcoming Lake/Hodgson Deep Energy Retrofit open house.  It was a big success, a perfect event.  On a gorgeous blue-sky winter day we were joined by an enthusiastic crowd of 35-40.

The crew had done a stellar job readying up, and the placed looked about as pretty as a just-insulated house with no walls or ceilings can look!!  The questions were intelligent, and it was instructive to see how a house at this stage – where everything is invisible – is a wonderful educational laboratory.

Afterward I received the following e-mail:

John,

Thanks again for the open house — very informative; inspiring, even.  I don’t know how many clients would go for this profound rebuild instead of a new design/build, but, whether in a new or retrofit, the energy efficiency is impressive.

At Habitat, we’ve been building pretty good houses for an amazingly low price, thanks, in part to you.  One of our homeowners came to us a few months after moving in and asked, “Our electric bill is $15 a month. Is that right?”  Efficiency is the gift that keeps on giving.

Best regards,

Jon Snyder

Thanks for coming Jon.  And everyone else too.  Today it looks completely different – everything covered up with smooth plaster.  You only get one chance to see the bones and the muscle.

This blog provides up-to-date news of goings-on at
South Mountain Company and occasional musings
and short essays from John (and others).

• JOHN ABRAMS is co-founder and CEO
  of South Mountain Company and the author
  of COMPANIES WE KEEP read more

• Reading List

  • THE WATCHMAN'S RATTLE: Thinking our Way out of Extinction by Rebecca Costa | Sociobiologist Costa explores the capacity of the human brain, and how we can use ours to solve our greatest problems.
  • THE GREAT DISRUPTION by Paul Gilding | The former director of Greenpeace and long-time corporate sustainability consultant takes us on a journey to the future of our economy
  • EAARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET by Bill McKibben. For McKibben, climate change is not about the future – we’ve already changed the planet irrevocably. Now, as we try to minimize the damage, we have to learn how to live in this new place.
  • WHAT I WISH I KNEW WHEN I WAS 20 by Tina Seelig | The subtitle is A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World – it’s about innovation, radical collaboration and harnessing the unexpected.
  • PLAN B 4.0 by Lester Brown | For over 30 years Lester Brown has been keeping us abreast of the State of the World, environmentally. His latest, Plan B 4.0, is a road map to real climate change solutions
  • THE REAL WORLD OF EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP by John Logue and Jacquelyn Yates | The best primer on employee ownership, this useful book comes from the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, which has actively and successfully helped Ohio companies for decades
  • WHOLE EARTH DISCIPLINE: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto By Stewart Brand | One of the most provocative thinkers of our times makes a powerful myth-shattering call to arms to save the planet. This book changed the way I think about topics I’ve thought about for a long time.
  • THE MYTH OF PROGRESS: Toward a Sustainable Future by Tom Wessels | In this beautifully written small volume the author makes a compelling statement about why perpetual growth is not – and can’t be – the answer to our economic struggles.
  • COME HOME AMERICA: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of our Country by William Greider | The noted author and National Affairs Correspondent for the Nation helps us understand the profound challenges and opportunities of the great transitions to come.
  • BORN TO RUN by Christopher McDougall | An epic adventure about the reclusive Tarahumara Indians in Mexico which, through remarkable characters and stories, becomes a journey about values, community, and human evolution.
  • DOWN TO THE WIRE: Confronting Climate Collapse By David Orr | Another eloquent – and troubling – call to action for the planet. Orr combines science, history, and public policy to make a compelling case that effective political leadership is the essential missing ingredient standing in our way.
  • CHANGE BY DESIGN by Tim Brown | The CEO of the legendary design firm IDEO proposed that Design Thinking – the idea that every problem is a design problem – wil need to become a part of every successful organization.

• COMPANIES WE KEEP is published by Chelsea Green Publishing
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