BETH SACHS ON CONNECTING ENVIRONMENT,
ECONOMY, SOCIAL JUSTICE
(Editor’s note: The following comes from the recent Vermont Folklife Center exhibit, Portraits in Action: Pioneers in Renewable Energy, Environmental Conservation, and Land Use Planning. For more, visit their website.)
[B]eth Sachs, founding director of the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC), elaborates on bringing a passion for “common sense” to VEIC—listen below—then read her response to the question: What will bring us to the next level in meeting the energy and environmental challenges we are facing today?
What will bring us to the next level in meeting the energy and environmental challenges we are facing today?
Making the connection between the environment, the economy, and social justice will bring us to the next level in meeting today’s challenges. All people need and deserve clean air, clean water, the means to support themselves, and freedom to live their lives with dignity. We need to understand that we’re all in this together and truly care about each other. We need to reach out and listen to people we don’t meet in the course of everyday lives. By engaging, we become more aware human beings, and together we will find new ideas and solutions that we won’t come up with in isolation from each other.
Beth Sachs
Founding Director, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation
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Portraits in Action: Pioneers in Renewable Energy, Environmental Conservation, and Land Use Planning brings together a diverse cross section of twenty-five pioneers, activists, and leaders in renewable energy, environmental conservation, and land use planning, and invites them to speak to the issues at hand. It is both an oral history and a call to action.
The Vermont Folklife Center’s mission is to broaden, strengthen, and deepen our understanding of Vermont and the surrounding region; to assure a repository for our collective cultural memory; and to strengthen communities by building connections among the diverse peoples of Vermont. For more, visit us.
