Building the bioeconomy: A Christmas message from The Digest

There’s a star in the east this Christmas morn, rise up developer and follow.

Despite the gloom of the doomsayers and the naysayers who believe that we have lost our way, I believe our greatest days lie ahead. Yet, as was the task for Noah, that great fermentation expert of Genesis, we have some building ahead of us. God may have the final word, but it is for us to build the Ark.

Build manufacturing capacity, not where it is cheap, but where you live. Make your locality in the world strong, by making it energy strong. Build crop capacity so that it is abundant and affordable.

Build!

Be wary of hand-outs and mandates, for what is mandated may not be enforced, or may not be continued. Be for freedom, freedom of choice, freedom for alternatives instead of freedom from alternatives. Let freedom ring.

Be for fair and full accounting. Whether it is accounting for carbon or the full cost of the incumbent, be for fair. Be against thumbs on the scale, even if they are for you, because they can be against you, and are against you. Be against chains, even to smite your enemy with them. Why? Because you wear them, the chains of the incumbent who has imposed his monopoly on you.

Make your case. Expect not that people are so replete with time to spare that they will come looking for you. Go look for them, speak with them plainly. The road to the mountains of Ararat is hard, as Noah found, but the hard road is the righteous one, and is the right one.

Speak not of Earth at Risk, for it is laughable. The narrow ecological niche from which we obtain our human dominion over the Earth, that is what is at risk. The gift we received in the Garden of Eden, that is at risk. Earth will be fine.

The gifts of God are not all found below the surface — oil, gas, metals, minerals. They are the plants, the air, water, sunlight, and tides.

The road feels long and hard, the burden wearies us all. Jesus, whose birthday we celebrate, said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Elsewhere the Bible tells us, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.”

Your brightest days are ahead. The Star in the East is You.