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Memo From Huey Johnson
November 20, 2008 Dear President-elect Obama, I served as Governor Jerry Brown's Secretary of Natural Resources, responsible for California's environmental policy, and was awarded the 2001 UN Sasakawa Environment prize. I would like to make three brief policy suggestions. For sustainable environmental management we need only look to the experience of other nations whose Green Plans have cut across outmoded policies to properly elevate the environment into decision-making on all levels. The Netherlands' National Environmental Policy Plan (1989) and New Zealand's Resource Management Act (1991) successfully pioneered sustainability planning on a national scale, and they continue to meet enormous challenges such as climate change. The European Union is developing as a Green Plan government, having looked to the Netherlands as a model. If the devil is in the myriad details of managing a national green economy, then years of experimentation can be saved by looking to those who have wrestled with the management issues on a large scale. My organization, Resource Renewal Institute, has studied Green Plans since their inception and recently presented a forum with Green Plans pioneers who continue to work within the living frameworks they created. As our President, you will have the authority to follow the Dutch Prime Minister's catalytic example of asking every sector to function within a Green Plan. Www.rri.org provides considerable information on the details of Green Plans' success around the world. I would be honored to send my book, Green Plans: Blueprint for a Sustainable Earth (Nebraska, 2008). A second point is that your Administration ought to recognize that every citizen effectively owns two acres of the United States. Taxpayers deserve the benefits of environmental and economic security afforded by the bounty of American public land. Unfortunately, private industry too often benefits at the expense of the public's recreational, scenic, and economic use. I hope that your Department of the Interior and Forest Services make decisions from the perspective of protecting everyone's two acres to sustain our economic security. The third point concerns our national - and, increasingly, global - failure to manage water resources. California's otherwise sparkling Global Warming Solutions Act omits energy controls over agriculture's eighty percent share of the State's water appropriations. Such controls could reduce both energy and water waste in the face of climate change and drought. Without new leadership, the silo-ing of our most critical resource will continue. These challenges to our long-term economic health would not be possible in a Green Plan nation where transparency, accountability, and the precautionary principle are practiced; where decision-making is based on agreed long-term sustainability targets; and where flexibility to meet change is built into the system. I would be honored to offer my own or my organization's assistance at any time. Very best regards, Huey D. Johnson |
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