The Occupy movement appears on the political scene as a welcome counterpoint to the Tea Party, Glenn Beck-like radical conservatism and anti-climate change activism. Occupy challenges the humanity of extreme social inequality by highlighting the link between unregulated Wall Street manipulation, the 2008 financial meltdown, military adventurism, footloose global capitalism and the erosion of the social contract in first- and third-world nations.

As the 99 percent realize, when the 1 percent controls such disproportionate human and natural resources via too-big-too-fail corporate monopolies - and seeks to control them even more - declining social and environmental protections result via a global game of playing one nation off another. We call this game globalization.

If the 99 percent designed a global system, they'd add adequate wages and regulations, but even a just global system must not produce all goods because long distribution lines mean more carbon in our age of climate crisis.

Occupy is consistent with the pre-existing movement - relocalization - which is neither the opposite of globalization nor a form of isolationism. Rather, it's the countering of globalization by a wealth rebalance toward the local in energy production, agriculture, manufacturing, natural resource use, media and living in close proximity to reserve outlying areas for farms. Relocalization calls for carpooling, public transit, bike paths and walkable village centers to reduce car use to lower carbon emissions and the cost of living, enabling higher taxes to fund services. Relocalization also calls for towns cooperating with themselves and other government levels for cost and environmental enhancement.

Relocalization was originally called "decentralization" in the 1973 book "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered" by Ernst Schumacher, who saw the deleterious effects globalization had on local wealth.

Bill McKibben urged relocalization for both economic and environmental reasons following publication of his book "Deep Economy." Massachusetts relocalization advocates co-sponsored McKibben's talk on "Deep Economy" at the Odyssey Bookshop in 2007, and retained him as keynoter in their 2009 "Boston Relocalization Conference."

Another Occupy effort is Pioneer Valley Local First, showcased by Larry Parnass' Nov. 30, 2011 Gazette editorial "'Living' economies," celebrating research that much more money circulates locally if one shops local versus chain.

Given the pervasive acceptance throughout the Valley of the buy- and grow-local movements, we wondered why the November Amherst Town Meeting rejected a proposal to develop a village center, since village centers are a primary feature of relocalization, and the Amherst master plan calls for them. Perhaps it was hesitation to change lifestyles to achieve these advantages. Creating a village center is admittedly difficult given the developmental complexity and the concerns of affected neighbors, so the proposal needs to be well conceived.

One problem is that the master plan is only advisory and was never brought to Town Meeting. Another is that it is sedate on climate change and doesn't explain - which relocalization does - how village centers are necessary adaptations to it. The town administration needed to address the updated dangers of climate change, because urgency about it is lacking in the master plan - written before scientists' mid-2007 alarming discovery of the much faster rate of global warming than before. Perhaps creating a village center will require Town Meeting first passing an updated master plan.

Certainly, strong financial sanctions against development in outlying areas have to occur simultaneously to drive any new population to the centers, and this was not part of the proposal. Holding developers accountable to promised design elements - like photovoltaic solar panels - must occur. Perhaps affected neighbors could be financially compensated. Lastly, more charettes and more occupying of Planning Board meetings before Town Meeting are evidently necessary.

Village centers must happen quickly, so further thinking and compromise are needed soon. Village centers with photovoltaic buildings, traffic calming and bike paths will powerfully motivate lifestyle changes town wide. Amherst can relocalize with village centers by embracing the spirit of Occupy ## being continuously present.

Larry Ely, Steve Randall and Rob Crowner lead the Pioneer Valley Relocalization Project, described at www.masschc.org/PioneerValleyRelocalizationProject.html.