Sustainability is the strongest defense, military experts say

A professor with a bold plan to prepare an Ohio college town for peak oil and global warming has captured the interest of some military experts.

The plan for Oberlin, spearheaded by environmental studies professor David Orr, includes revitalizing downtown and the local economy, strengthening the arts and the agrarian culture, and making the town less car dependent. The plan seems less remarkable than the interest that it has garnered from key quarters. Notes the Chronicle for Higher Education:

One of Mr. Orr's most vocal advocates is Col. Mark (Puck) Mykleby of the U.S. Marines, who just retired as special strategic assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Over the summer, Colonel Mykleby received national attention for a paper he wrote with another military strategist, Capt. Wayne Porter of the Navy, which argued that America's future lay not with its robust military force but with strategies for sustainable energy and agriculture, fair social policies, and a strong educational system.

Patrick C. Doherty, a national-security expert at the New America Foundation, is another believer that plans like Oberlin's can make the nation stronger:

Mr. Doherty and his colleagues believe that the nation needs grand strategy once again to meet a new global challenge. "We think that the core global challenge is global unsustainability," he says—a convergence of major problems, including a persistent middle-class recession, ecological systems in decline, a vast population of the world's poorest people cut out of the global economy, and a core infrastructure susceptible to shock and disruption.

Part of the nation's grand strategy in the cold war was to build suburbia, to satisfy a major housing demand and stoke the economic engine. But those suburban communities are now both unsustainable and undesirable, Mr. Doherty says. Research shows that the majority of both retiring baby boomers and up-and-coming millennials want to live in walkable, affordable communities, rich with amenities and connected to mass transit.

In short, it's called "smart growth"—and it's the way many college towns are already designed and oriented. In fact, Mr. Doherty points out, college towns (including, even recently, Oberlin) have been the sites of new retirement communities, because that older generation wants to live close to institutions of higher education and the cultures they foster.

Oberlin College has been the biggest contributor to implementation to date. The institution recently renovated its Allen Art Museum, which sits in the arts-district block, for $11.2-million. "Oberlin also put up $500,000 to guarantee a loan for three former students who led a brownfield redevelopment—new green condos and retail space on the site of an old car dealership—in the heart of town. ... The college also recently purchased and started renovating the town's sole movie house, a historic 1913 theater next to the brownfield redevelopment, a project that will cost $9-million."