[sustran] The Politics of Sustainability

[eric.britton at ecoplan.org]

Further to (a) yesterday's message from Kjell Dahle on the topic of the fall
of the latest Norwegian government's on the grounds of its refusal to
undermine environmental policy there and (b) yesterday's referendum in
Switzerland which garnered 21% of the votes for a proposition for steady and
massive reduction in traffic over the next ten years (and which can be seen
either as a thundering defeat or pretty encouraging first try at gaining
support for this sort of initiative depending on your point of view), we
have decided to open up a new working area under The Commons that will
attempt to provide an independent international forum for information and
discussion of these matters.  You can find the rough first cut of the
Politics of Sustainability site today at http://www.ecoplan.org/politics.

In a first instance we are beginning by developing these ideas through an
exposition of available materials on and discussions of the actif-trafic
initiative, as a test case of sorts.  And once we have our basic template,
we intend to push out coverage in the coming weeks so as to provide in time
a much broader base.  Among the concepts that have already been targeted to
get us started: the original Zurich U-bahn referendum, the Car Free Day
approach, ISTEA, the original California LEV/ZEV legislation, and yet
others.

If you check out the site, you will note that we are trying here to stretch
considerably beyond the limits of the usual discussion lists or Web fora, to
the extent that our goal is to provide various ways in which the information
and various views and discussions can be stocked and then called up in some
convenient way when needed.  You can see how we have done this in other
cases with some rather good results, including for example the Car Free Day
site at http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/ and the @World carshare site at
http://www.ecoplan.org/carshare.  That anyway is the general idea.

We think this could be a timely and potentially useful move. The politics of
sustainability clearly needs more work.  I hope you will have a look and
give us your reactions, inputs and guidance on all this. It will be much
appreciated.

Eric Britton

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