STRATEGIC PLANNING MEETING AND BREAKOUT SESSIONS Gov. Christine T. Whitman Report from Breakout Session on Environmental Management If Mike were here, he would understand this. It’s absolutely no surprise the environmental group took longer, discussed more, and didn’t solve any problems but just sort of laid out some things. But what I will do is just go down the list because we try to be quite disciplined, lots of conversation, and a lot of issues could be discussed more fully, but in order to keep it within the parameters that we were asked to do, the first question being: “What should we do, what should we be, how we should take Enlibra and make it into something?” And the thing we really decided upon is that the role for Oquirrh in the environment is one of facilitator. And that the principles that are in Enlibra are principles of problem-solving, and they are ones that this Institute can best maximize by becoming a facilitator, working with other groups to help them solve problems. We don’t want to be a consultant. We didn’t think that was the appropriate role for the Institute. It requires a lot more, a business plan and resources; but to be used by others to help them problem solve is probably the best way to maximize what it was we wanted to do. Another thing, to getting to be more parochial, that was kind of a broad overview of where we thought Oquirrh should be. Some very specific ideas we needed to do and we could do through the Institute is to change the language of the debate and the discussion on the environment. One of the first things we looked at is the cover of Enlibra. The dictionary definition of Enlibra includes the word balance. Well, when you are talking about the environment, you can’t use the word balance. Balance, to whomever you are speaking, whether it’s the environmental group or the business group, and this has been tested out time and again, means somebody has lost. They immediately think they have lost. Whichever group it is, you say balance, they will say, “I have just lost!” It may be counterintuitive because balance is what you are seeking. It may be crazy, but it’s a reality and we need to be sensitive to that and try to change the language that we use when we are talking about the environment. That is something that we can do through the Enlibra principles and through the work we would envision for it. Another thing that is going to be very important is constantly ensuring that the public understands the relevancy of the environmental discussion. What does it mean to them? Why should they care about engaging in this discussion, whether it is the location of the newest Target or the protection of an open space? What does it mean to me at home when I’ve got my bills to pay and I’ve got my budget to be concerned about and the kids and drugs and all these other things? It’s very important that as the Institute engages in the discussion that we constantly remember the need to bring it back to the individual in their home and why they should care and why they should support the efforts and that’s also by way of helping create the atmosphere that allows policymakers to make the right kinds of decisions, the smart kinds of decisions. You need to help them with that. That really feeds into the second question that we were asked to address, which would be, “What would you accomplish?” The thing that we looked at and sort of used, ended up having as our more defining goal of what we would accomplish is, “Healthier Communities and the Environment.” That’s really what it is about. It’s about healthier communities and families and a healthier environment. That’s what all of this is, why people should care, why they should be involved in things like Smart Growth, why they should engage in these discussion overall. Moving people away also from the zero sum gain mentality that has so long defined the environmental discussion. Somebody has to win for somebody to lose. That’s why you can’t use the word balance. We have been conditioned to think that we cannot have a healthy environment and a thriving economy. Those two things are counterintuitive again. I think we all know that, in fact, the exact opposite is true. There isn’t a community or country in the world that is thriving if their environment is degraded; if they don’t have clean water; if they don’t have healthy air. At the same time, the environment desperately needs the money spun off by a healthy economy in order to be able to invest in new technologies and to provide and be able to buy and set aside open space. We need to change that because that is really hampering our ability to move forward as we make these discussions. The time, which was another part of that question, how long would it take you to achieve these? It would depend on the project. If we are acting as a facilitator for a specific group, and that really leads us into how we would fund the project, which would be through partners. If the Institute, say, is brought in by a university, and we talk about partners, we were talking about universities, organizations like Smart Growth America. They are already out there doing some of these things but they may need some more help in being able to bring together all the parties to be able to advance what their particular agenda is. The Peach Hill Institute, which the Oquirrh Institute is already working with in order to be involved in a particular project, is something we feel will show results. It will help build a track record that Oquirrh can then go out and market, as this is how as facilitators we have made a difference. These are the projects where we have made a difference. Aspen Institute, those kinds of smaller foundations. Not necessarily the big, national foundations because they find themselves under a lot of pressure from national environmental groups and others. We may be much better if we concentrate. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, for instance, has a finite area for which they are responsible and where they want to see results and that would also make it easier to get quantifiable results in a reasonable time period. That’s one of the challenges always. People have to pay now for benefits they may never see or that are many years out; we need to be a little bit smarter about that and make this idea of becoming facilitators with different institutions. We also talked about the idea of establishing a chair with the university on the Enlibra principles to help build legitimacy. We’ve suggested some names of people who might be interested in Oquirrh and one of them was David Horne, who heads the University of Oklahoma. As a former governor, somebody who is very well-respected both sides of the aisle, a leading Democrat in the Senate, was a governor. If we could get a chair or get a meaningful part of a course at a university, and again there are apparently nine universities in this consortium that want to work together on sustainability. That is exactly the kind of facilitating role that Oquirrh can play and that will start to build that track record. So we answered those three questions in sort of broad ways and tried to get specific as well. Not surprising the discussion went on longer than the hour-and-a-half that people thought it might take, but these issues usually do.