BUILDING RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

A Six-Part Series at Bethany Church, 32 Main Street, Randolph

Lead sponsor: BALE (Building A Local Economy). Series co-sponsors: Two Rivers Ottauquechee Regional Commission and Randolph Area Community Development Corporation.

Part 5: Slow Growth, No Growth, De-Growth: What’s in Our Future? (April 25) Economic growth brings growing resource use, growing waste generation, growing material wealth for the already-rich, and growing busy-ness and stress for most people. How do we free ourselves from growth in a society that seems addicted to it… in an economy that can only grow or collapse? And what might a simpler, slower Vermont be like? Let's talk about it. The degrowth hypothesis is that we can live well together with less if we share more and shift from valuing efficiency to valuing sufficiency. The degrowth movement aims to transform human relationships with each other and the rest of nature toward justice and sustainability. Those are lofty goals and nobody knows for certain how to go about achieving them. Surely, degrowth will look different in different places. Discussing what kinds of futures we want and imagining how to make them happen in our communities is a radical exercise. Come join the exploration with presenter Sam Bliss, a PhD student in ecological economics at the University of Vermont and a member of the academic association Research & Degrowth.