Thank you Susan Bence and WUWM for highlighting Great Lakes CCC’s Michael Brichta on climate change in “Perspectives on politics through the prism of the environment.” The article also offers an additional four-minute audio report about Great Lakes Community Conservation Corps’ Cedar Creek cleanup initiative.
Here is the excerpt about Michael and Great Lakes CCC:
Another Milwaukeean trying to make a difference is Michael Brichta. He says climate change drove his career path. “I spent ten years in landscaping and then went to school for permaculture design,” Brichta says.
Permaculture mimics the diversity and resilience of nature by integrating perennials — like fruit and nut trees — with annual vegetables and herbs.
Today Brichta brings that skill to the Great Lakes Community Conservation Corps.
I found him working with a small crew in the Metcalfe Park neighborhood.
“What we do is go around to startup farms, nonprofits and help them… Over here, we were doing some weeding, and we planted daylilies, black-eyed Susans,” Brichta says.
He wants elected officials—at every level of government—to support neighborhood initiatives rather than industrial-scale operations, which Brichta says “require massive input—thousands of pounds of chemicals and fertilizers that get into our waterway and creates a cascade effect over every single organism in the ecosystem.”
He believes, “There are millions of people in this country who want a clear path to the solutions that we already have available to us at a small scale.”