Stairway to Sustainability: Defining the New Economy in the Age of Austerity

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While many may think that the modern environmental movement began in the 1960s-the decade that saw the publication of Rachel Carson's landmark book  Silent Springand the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency-you could go back to FDR's New Deal, which has generally been left out of America's environmental history.

During the Depression, when President Roosevelt visited the Great Plains, stymied by dust bowls and droughts, and the Tennessee Valley, overwhelmed by floods, he saw firsthand the intimate connection between economic and environmental disasters. Indeed, one of the major public works projects of his New Deal was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), established in 1933 to control floods and generate electrical power along the Tennessee River.

"[L]ong before I went to Washington, I was convinced that the long road that leads to green pastures and still waters had to begin with reasonable prosperity," he said in his address at the Green Pastures Rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 10, 1936.[1]

Reynard is a Justmeans staff writer for Sustainable Finance and Corporate Social Responsibility. A former media executive with 15 years experience in the private and non-profit sectors, Reynard is the co-founder of MomenTech, a New York-based experimental production studio that explores transnational progressivism, neo-nomadism, post-humanism and futurism. He is also author of the blog 13.7 Billion Years, covering cosmology, biodiversity, animal welfare, conservation and ethical consumption. He is currently developing the Underground Desert Living Unit (UDLU), a sustainable single-family dwelling envisioned as a potential adaptation response to the future loss of human habitat due to the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Reynard is also a contributing author of "Biomes and Ecosystems," a comprehensive reference encyclopedia of the Earth's key biological and geographic classifications, to be published by Salem Press in 2013.