In the end, I wound up trying to make some sense out of what it means to be president of CEC, which is a somewhat fragile and volatile coalition of about 90 organizations. One characteristic is that an engaged president of CEC may have a unique view of the region and the complex issues that bedevil us all.

My particular take on things has also been embellished by my new work with the Gulf Coast Institute and urban growth issues, which has taken me on a truly overwhelming reading journey and also on a physical journey to Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Victoria, San Diego, Vancouver, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio to see what people in government, business, and community organizations are doing to improve the quality of life in their regions.

So I’ve been comparing. Here are a few of the things I’ve seen:

• We’re out of synch with the rest of the country. In government, business, and community organizations, we haven’t achieved adequate and widespread clarity of understanding of the link between growth and environmental, social, and economic problems. Most importantly, we haven’t made much progress on a long-term, regional plan to deal with all these issues. When the rest of the nation gathered in San Diego recently to discuss urban growth issues, most cities and regions - including Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas - had several representatives there. But from the Houston region, there was only one person – me. None of our environmental, government, or business leaders were there to hear the governors of Maryland and Utah, the CEOs of huge development companies, and top leaders from the Environmental Defense Fund, the Trust for Public Land, the National Association of Home Builders, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality outline the developing solutions to problems and the building consensus about strategies that are occurring.

• We’re viewing everything too narrowly. If we’re focused on parks, we’re focused on parks; if we’re focused on bays and estuaries, we’re focused on bays and estuaries. As Linda Shead of the Galveston Bay Foundation once pointed out to me, 25 percent of the toxics entering Galveston Bay are airborne. As air quality relates to transportation, transportation “solutions” relate to flooding (and thus to better use of the enormous watershed) and also to the health – and even existence – of the prairie. And housing, jobs, and transportation relate to nearly all environmental issues.

• Our business community is among the least engaged. John Williams, the CEO of the Post Properties development company and head of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, says of his group, “I am not aware of any other chamber of commerce that has made quality of life the cornerstone of its activities.” But Atlanta is not alone in the general push. In most communities I visited, business initiatives toward improved quality of life are growing and bringing enormous power to the communities’ quests. But when a couple of hundred people in our region came together to explore the possible value of Smart Growth recently, the Greater Houston Partnership declined to join many other community organizations as a sponsor, and none of its senior officials or officers attended. So there are at least 200 people here with a deeper understanding of urban growth issues – as they are being routinely discussed in hundreds of American communities – than anyone among our business leadership.

• Our philanthropic foundations could be more engaged. In most regions where quality of life issues are gaining ground, they are being very well supported by regional and local foundations. In some instances, those foundations are actually facilitating and leading the discussion. Last January, representatives from nearly thirty foundations met for the initial planning meeting of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. Members of the Network’s planning committee include the Ford Foundation, the Frey Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Metropolitan Atlanta Community Foundation, the David & Lucille Packard Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Turner Foundation. The Network’s mission is to develop livable communities, and to support broad-based collaboration, equity, a focus on place, and environmental protection. To my knowledge, no local foundation has joined this large national network, and certainly none has made regional quality of life the centerpiece of its giving policies.

• Our community organizations, by and large, are less sophisticated and less professional than many others. Certainly out west, environmental organizations tend to have more paid staff focused on advocacy and legislative issues than we have here. This is not to belittle our organizations, which after all struggle in a place where appreciation of our incredible ecosystem is not widespread and concern for the erosion of environment and human health and well being is not that common. But there is a tendency among many of our organizations to fear serious engagement because of the risk to the bottom line. Partly this is due to the reality that there isn’t much depth of financial support for environmental causes (see above), and this makes us different in scale from many other regions. But part of our timidity has to do with a willingness to accept very small increments of change when large increments are required.

• We harbor a belief in “pioneer spirit”, but we’re afraid to embrace it. We turned a city fifty miles from the ocean into the second largest port in the nation but we’re afraid to use electric or low-emission buses in our transit systems until after all the other regions in the country have tested them for us. Why aren’t our central institutions sending probes out to the future? I hear people from Metro and other institutions talk about Houston’s pioneer spirit, but I also hear them worrying about the notion that pioneers are the ones with arrows in their backs.

• Some of our technological underpinnings are threatened. Our huge energy companies, with the possible exception of Enron, appear to be afraid to embrace the next world of energy solutions, and other regions are developing the fuel cell, solar energy, and other technologies that will give us power in the future. Why isn’t Exxon the world leader in new fuels and energy alternatives?

• We suffer from a lack of research. There are dozens of large and small research initiatives that have transformed thinking in other regions. None of these is available to us. Much of the information that is gathered in the region is proprietary and not available for public viewing. Our Geographic Information Systems seem to be behind and there is way too much separation of efforts and data. Has our per capita income gone up during all the booming of our economy? Have taxes gone down? In what indicators are we leading? Where are we behind? Who has the money? Who doesn’t? People who are working to improve the quality of life do not have the quality and immediacy of information available that people in many other communities do.

So what should we do? First, there is enormous power for change in the alliance of environmental issues with social justice issues. That’s one of the great waves I’ve seen in my exploration. A significant portion of the resources of the federal government are focused by law on issues of equity and justice. Here and in other places, communities of color are learning to access these resources. These communities often have better ties to office holders than do environmental organizations. And usually there is an environmental component to the missions of social justice organizations.

As an educational tool, CEC member organizations that have not already done so should give some consideration to forming doable project-based partnerships with community organizations that work for social justice goals. For instance, a group interested in trees might join up with a group working on affordable housing to help bring trees to a blighted neighborhood that the second group is trying to redevelop. The richness of the interchange is the long-term point, but the practical nature of the improvements brought about early on invigorates the future. An organization worried about toxic runoff into the estuaries might join with an organization in the Third Ward to focus some public and private money on the deplorable situation of the ancient sewer system there and in much of the rest of the inner city.

Secondly, those of us on boards of environmental organizations can start negotiating with each other in pursuit of collaborations where we might each have just enough resources to jointly hire a professional advocate to work full time on ordinances and legislation that will improve things. In Portland, the three-year-old Coalition for a Livable Future is an association of 50 or more organizations that is similar to the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition except in three significant ways. First, it is not an organization; administration is entrusted to one of its members, 1000 Friends of Oregon. Second, it has a fairly large budget of some $650,000 per year and this money supports, among other things, 16 paid advocates who work on various issues, write legislation and lobby the legislature and local governments, and communicate regularly to bring comprehensive planning to area issues. These advocates who work together under this umbrella are from the Audubon Society, the American Institute of Architects, and many other organizations. Finally, the Coalition for a Livable Future is not just about traditional environmental issues, but also includes jobs, housing, food, schools, transportation, and neighborhood issues. In its brochure it says “Land use planning, fair housing strategies, transportation reform, fair distribution of government finances, fair distribution of parks and greenspaces, inner city revitalization, economic vitality, protection and enhancement of fish and wildlife habitat, enlightened urban design, and economic and social justice are all interconnected determinants of metropolitan livability.”

These interconnections are true here in Houston too, and it’s time to reorganize to deal with them in concert. The Citizens’ Environmental Coalition is probably the structure in which to explore this reorganization.