Success Stories for Sustainable Communities
by Adam Taggart
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity
“Locally there are lots of nice, tidy, quarter-of-a-million-dollar investments sitting there that the large companies will not do because their overhead is too high. So one of my themes is look in your own backyard — focus on fiscally-conservative, sound investments and focus on local employment. You will be surprised at the opportunity that just leaps out at you.”
So says Francis Koster, author of the new books Rescuing Your Local Economy and Rescuing School Kids who specializes in identifying community investment opportunities that offer attractive returns for the capital provider as well as long-term benefits for the local residents. Chris and I have interviewed Francis several times over the past few years and are continually impressed by his inventive and scrappy approach to finding fresh, sustainable solutions for many of the long-term Three E challenges we face. He’s one of the voices we respect out there at the vanguard, identifying real answers to today’s structural problems.
In this podcast, Francis highlights a number of the case studies he’s collected at his website, The Optimistic Futurist, where motivated individuals have improved their local schools, roads, food, water supply, etc. while earning double-digit returns. These models can be adopted in nearly any community, which is the purpose behind Francis’ work.
Here’s just one example: