It is time for the Cook County – Grand Marais Economic Development Authority (EDA) to take on a more meaningful role in our community. First, the EDA should disassociate itself from the Superior National Golf Course so it can apply its resources to economic innovation, not golf course management.
Secondly, the EDA should focus on making our local economy better, more self-reliant, and more sustainable, instead of engaging in business-as-usual land development as it did with the Cedar Grove Business Park.
We have real work to do. Things are not okay.
We face a growing crisis of global unsustainability. There are now nearly 7 billion people in the world (doubled since 1966). Our technologies for consuming natural resources and producing waste have grown vastly more powerful. And increased affluence, at least for about 2 billion of us, fuels unprecedented worldwide demand to use those technologies.
Driving this crisis is a centralized, corporationdominated economy that is dependent on fossil fuels, that is systematically degrading the earth’s natural systems, and that increasingly concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few. We need to move decisively toward a more sustainable economy, and that should be the EDA’s new mission.
Fortunately, one of the most effective ways to promote sustainability lies right here in our neighborhood – the enhancement of our local economy. Local economies strengthen the connections between producers and consumers which tend to neutralize an array of environmental and social problems.
Two areas that have tremendous potential for creating a better kind of economy here in Cook County are local energy production and local food production. We export millions of dollars out of this county each year for food and energy. TheEDA, and the rest of us, need to get busy figuring out ways to keep some of those dollars here working for us, and for a better world.
eorge Wilkes
Grand Marais, MN
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