With graduates of Nordhoff and Chaparral barely a week into their summer, there's probably still plenty of celebration going on...even if it takes the form of relaxation and recreation before school starts again for the 95% of Nordhoff graduates who principal Dan Musick says intend to attend college. Between both schools, every student that the VC Star interviewed plans on pursuing their passions and talents, and that means leaving the valley, often for very distant places. For those who stay behind - as well as for the rest of us - our world of opportunities is in the Valley all around us.
The Ojai Valley Green Coalition last night hosted Trudy Ingram in a presentation and forum about exploring the Ojai Valley's ecological footprint, a measure of peoples' use of nature, linked and converted to land area. The opportunity is tremendous: our current consumption patterns as a community require 22.3 acres per person per year to support us, while we only have 3.9 acres available per person. So we're operating at 18.4 acres per person per year over the capacity of our natural bioregion to sustain us, the majority of that excess being in "energy acres" needed to absorb our CO2 output - mostly from transportation and buildings. (Gas up with care: use the ojainews.com Gas Prices tool to find where it's cheap!) To "help the earth care for us", as Trudy suggests, we need to see and seize this world of opportunities.
The Planning Commission of the City of Ojai presented its 2006 Design Awards on Wednesday, and while the criteria for said awards bears further investigation, i'd strongly suspect that we're looking at a "pretty" contest more than an award for those with the most progressive look at how to make buildings which use less and collect more energy. If we're to be a truly sustainable and model green community, these types of considerations must go into our development consciousness. So far, there doesnt look to be anything related on the City Council agenda for Tuesday the 26th.
Meanwhile, i saw a double-hopper gravel truck turn right onto Ojai Avenue from Montgomery Street. If we expect people to continue bringing their tourist dollars here, expect them to still turn out for our still buzzing Music Festival, and expect our youth to want to stick around after graduation, we'd best manage our world a little better. The opportunities abound.
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