Remember the Portlandia episode featuring Colin the chicken and the polygamous hippie farm? That’s close to what the University of Wisconsin-Madison is proposing as one potential U.S. response to climate change — and it’s funded by $5 million from the National Science Foundation.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that one “scenario” under the UW-Madison study, which focuses on a particular Wisconsin watershed, is that the world will be “at the edge of environmental and political collapse” by the 2020s:
“Despite this predicament, youth culture becomes empowered to shift the course of humanity. Disenchanted with the country’s highly consumptive culture, the younger generations embrace community building and sustainability and work together through grassroots action to get their voices heard.”
Yes We Can, 2040?
The protagonist of the story is Rosa, a “community organizer” for a United Nations youth group “Badgers for Our Future,” who presides over the only holiday celebrated in the community, Earth Day.
“It has become custom for Rosa, the unofficial community matriarch, to give a blessing before the Earth Day meal (although not everyone in the community is religious, they say secular blessings before important community meals to express gratitude for what the Earth provided them),” the story says.
There’s also some polite-hippie use of eminent domain to spread the wealth. No word on whether the right to patchouli is discovered under the Fourth Amendment.
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