Center for Social Innovation

In 2009, the federal government is taking important steps to restore both nature and the economy. Congress is developing global warming and energy legislation. President Barack Obama is prioritizing green projects in the nation’s economic recovery plan. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that greenhouse gases may endanger public health and welfare.

Yet true restoration—environmental and economic—will not come from congressional legislation, top-down stimulus money, or EPA rulings. Instead, restoration will come from a shift in the relationships between people and their ecologies, as well as from the businesses, policies, and cultural changes that will arise from this shift.

Today, people everywhere face a convergence of economic, energy, social, and environmental crises on a scale and immediacy never before imagined. And people in many places can use ... Read more