- [Jon] Understanding what the trajectory,
what the contours of the future look like,
are in your hands.
You have the contours of the future in your hands.
The choices that we made 30, 40, 50 years ago,
when our rivers were on fire,
when our lakes were inaccessible,
when we couldn't eat the fish,
when we couldn't enjoy the relationship
with the water,
When our cities had their backs to the water,
where choices people made 40 and 50 years ago.
They didn't understand and they knew
at the time that that wasn't going to be
a five minute, ten minute, two hour, two week,
two months, two years effort
but that's taken us 30, 40, and 50 years
to get to this point.
On my way over here today,
as I was walking down the,
down the water front, a beautiful piece
of restoration of a city's relationship
with its great natural resource asset, it's river.
I watched a man fish.
And I saw him actually catch a fish.
Sometime you see people fishing
and not always catching.
He caught a fish and that was
either breakfast, or lunch, or dinner.
And I thought that was a beautiful thing
because 40 or 50 years ago,
we would not have seen that.
And if we had, we would have been worried about that.
This river has changed a lot,
but it changed because people
didn't accept what they were handed.
Our parents didn't accept what
was handed to them from before
and said, we're going to start the efforts.
And that was not easy work.
You can imagine that wasn't easy work.
And it wasn't all simple.
And it wasn't all linear.
And it wasn't all smooth.
And it wasn't without fights.
And it wasn't without going backwards at times
and then going forwards.
There are times when you
may not feel you're winning.
How many of you feel that?
[Applause]
That everyday, you're not necessarily moving ahead
in that fashion that you wanted to
when you woke up.
But I want to keep putting yourself to that world.
That world that says, what you were handed,
is not yet good enough.
That we need to re-plumb this system.
That's not just with more pipes and pumps,
but that's re-plumbing it
with the kind of care and thinking
that we know now drives ecological integrity,
drives community, drives social cohesion.
These are the transformational elements
that we think things like,
green infrastructure bring us.
It's not just about water and moving water
and saving a few dollars here and there.
It's about transforming communities and people
and understanding the context
of which we manage water
and how that plays out over time.
That's the pallet that we have.
That's the contour of the future
that we continue to get.
The river front isn't only a good place to play,
but it's a place where community gathers.
It changes the heart.
This park is a reflection of the heart of a community.
We call it green infrastructure.
But it's really about this contour.
When you were a child,
I'm going to ask a couple of quick questions.
When you were a child, who believed in you
that you could change the world?
When you were in high school,
who encouraged you to do important things?
And as an adult, as you get up everyday
and go to work, when your first job,
when you were first hired, full of eagerness
and passion and inspiration and hope.
Who believed and said,
you can change the world?
I want to tell you that everyday you do that, you can.
I believe in you that you can change
the way that we do things.
That doesn't happen in a minute.
That doesn't happen in an hour.
That doesn't in a day.
That happens in a decade.
And that happens on winning every piece
that you can win.
That changes when you work with a client
and you help a client understand
how to think about the world a little bit different
than they had thought about it previously.
That happens when you get to make decisions,
whether you're on the city council,
or you're on a board,
and you help your organization understand
how to change the way it thinks about something simple.
Like managing water off of their parking lot.
That doesn't feel like transformation.
Right? One at a time.
But the Great Lakes are in a better shape
because we thought this way.
And people before us thought this way.
And philanthropies thought this way.
And cities thought this way.
And we all engaged in the hard work of transformation.
Green infrastructure isn't about infrastructure.
In fact, I hate that word.
I'll tell you why in a minute.
Green infrastructure is about rethinking
the way we manage water on the landscape.
And the way we manage water
on the landscape drives four things.
Drives ecological integrity,
how the system functions, the health of the system.
That man can fish and eat a fish
knowing it's safer than it was before.
It drives economic prosperity.
We hear the economic values and gains
of the the kinds of transformational work that we do.
And I can give you some examples of that.
But it also drives social transformation.
It drives how we think about ourselves differently
in relationship to the environment
in which we operate.
A river trail does that.
Right.
A city.
Those are the transformational elements.
It's human and experiential.
And it drives culture.
We are the Great Lakes people.
We have to act like the Great Lakes people.
And we do that, a parking lot at a time.
We do that a roof at a time.
We do that a driveway at a time.
We do that a park at a time.
That may not feel big and transformational
but I guarantee you in 30 years, in 40 years,
when that river is even better than it is
and the Great Lakes are even better than they are.
People will look back and say,
how did they do that?
Where did that come from?
Who had the drive and the desire
to be the change and be the transformational person
or entity or element that did that?
So I believe that you can do that.
And I hope you were encouraged in your life
but if you haven't been,
I'm encouraging you now.
Everyday I want you to get up and be that person
that drives that change forward.