reNEWeconomy

This blog is my personal act of hope at an incredible time to be alive!

Hope is a force, a force that is spreading through homes, towns, and cities across the U.S. and the world. Even in this time of economic crisis, when good people are facing the acute heartache of losing their homes and their livelihoods, hope prevails, because we know deep down something new is happening.  This new hope-force is what this blog is about, a force that believes in the foolish notion that we CAN arise from the ashes of this greed-ravaged economy and build something new– an economy that values the things we all hold most dear: healthy, happy children living in communities with clean, safe air and homes, who know their neighbors and know where their fresh organic food comes from, children who are ready to join with their parents in protecting and renewing the fragile, finite, and unspeakably beautiful planet that is our only home.

My name is Celeste Froehlich.  I am a social worker, therapist, peace and justice activist, and mother of two very active and creative boys.  One of them has learning disabilities, food allergies, and a pre-asthmatic condition that are in part linked to environmental toxins.  In recent months I have simultaneously been struggling with culture shock after a year living with my family among the Rwandan people and doing trauma healing work, and struggling to understand my son’s allergies and learning disabilities, and grappling with the reality of the urgent Climate Crisis.  I have started reading everything I can about Peak Oil, Climate Change, The Economic Crisis,  and The Great Turning.  In delving into these interrelated issues, especially the continually unfolding economic collapse, I eventually discovered not despair but hope.  As I continue to read obsessively to understand the causes, consequences, and most importantly solutions in this moment of crisis and opportunity, I decided to start this blog as a place to share my learning process.  It is also my small contribution to the central challenge and highest calling of our time–  turning the world’s governments, economies, businesses, and homes green.  As Van Jones writes in his ground-breaking book, The Green Collar Economy (2008), “To create a pathway to a livable future, a mobilized U.S. citizenry will have to march into the halls of power and rewrite the rules– at every level of government.”

This blog is about a movement, a green revolution that has already begun in the greening of ghettos from Oakland to the Bronx, in the shopping lists of moms who go hungry to give their asthmatic or allergic children safe, organic, GMO-free food, in school gardens, in the resurgence of farmer’s markets, in the massive green building and retrofitting that is slowly building steam.  It is not about utopia or socialism, but rather about the rise of what some are calling Conscious Capitalism or Eco-capitalism.  It is about human-scale Local Living Economies, sustainable regional food systems, renewable energy and clean transportation– a new, just & green economy that will create Green-Collar Jobs for All.

You are part of this– please share your comments, creativity, and ideas!