The Common Sense Revolution We Need Now: Why I’m Writing 2026’s Answer to 1776

January 10, 2026

Two hundred and fifty years ago today, a 47-page pamphlet landed in colonial America like a tidal wave. Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’, published January 10, 1776, did something extraordinary, it gave voice to what people already knew but hadn’t yet articulated. It held up a mirror showing colonists who they had already become, a people ready to break from a broken ruling system and design something better.

I’ve spent my entire life searching for that kind of clarity. That moment when common sense cuts through the noise and shows us the obvious path forward.

Today, 250 years to the day after Paine’s revolutionary pamphlet appeared, I’m announcing that on Earth Day (April 22, 2026) we’ll release our own 47-page manifesto:

Common Sense 2026: The Revolutionary Story of Food for Planetary Regeneration

This won’t be the last word on our food system’s failures or our planet’s distress. It will be the first of many—a quarterly drumbeat of common sense released every three months on what we’re calling Quarter Earth Days: April 22, July 22, October 22, and January 22.

Why resurrect Paine’s format and spirit? Because like those colonists in 1776, we’ve already moved on from our dying system. We just haven’t fully stepped into what comes next. The machine is broken (catastrophically so) and we have it in “Our Power” for “Our Planet,” this years Earth Day theme to begin the world over again.

 

A Farm Kid from Bremer County

Let me tell you how I got here, because this story matters, just like your story matters. It’s personal, and it should be. I was born in 1947 on a small farm just north of Waverly, Iowa, in Bremer County. The last of five kids. For my first four years of schooling, I walked a mile each way to a one-room schoolhouse through cold, through sleet, through whatever Iowa weather threw at us. My dad would only drive us if it got dangerously cold, and that meant he’d be late to work at his job in town, the job that kept our family fed.

That one-room schoolhouse gave me something precious because while the teacher worked with eight different grade levels, my brain was absorbing it all. I was learning far beyond my years, taking in the mathematics and history and science being taught to older kids. I didn’t know it then, but I was being trained to see connections, to think systemically, to understand that everything is related to everything else.

We moved when I was eight into a small rural community nearby. My dad took over a closed gas station in Denver, Iowa, turned it into one of the region’s most successful operations. They built him a brand-new showplace station, but then told him he couldn’t do mechanical work, couldn’t get grease on their pristine floors. So, we moved again, to Hudson, Iowa, when Phillips 66 offered him a new station where he could actually do business, and serve customers the way he knew made sense.

That restlessness, that refusal to accept artificial constraints in my family, that commitment to doing things right even when the system pushed back, I learned all of that from watching my father, and mother become engaged, and pillars in these highly connected and small towns. But I learned something even more fundamental from those early years on the farm and in rural-small-town Iowa. On the farm my parents would consistently boot us kids outside saying, “Go outside and play. Go do your chores. Get out of the house.” We spent every possible moment climbing trees, hiking, fishing, and being in nature, when we were not doing our chores, which were not an option. Not as recreation, and playing separate from real life, but as the foundation of joy, fun. and of real life.

That’s where I fell in love with the outdoors, and environment. That’s how I became a “Tree Hugger” and environmental lover, and where I learned, in my bones, that we are not separate from nature. We are nature.

 

The Revolutionary’s Path

At 25, I did something that people said couldn’t be done. After getting an education degree at the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls, and teaching school for a year, I took a sales job selling Iowa educational materials for the elementary, and secondary schools. From my first sales call the teachers started asking me for a new textbook to teach the course of Iowa History, Geography and Civics. The current edition they were using was 25 years old and
falling apart, difficult to work with. The publishing company I worked for was not interested, but I could not ignore the need. With an instructional design background, I began my publishing career. Given I was not sold on the textbook approach that schools and teachers conventionally used: “reading the chapters, and answering the questions at the end,” because to my innovative mind it was not only inefficient and boring, but not a good teaching design for either the teacher, or the students.

So, I began thinking outside the educational box, and used what we know today as Zero to One Thinking. More about this a little later. In essence Zero to One thinking is to not do something familiar, but create something new. Peter Thiel states, “The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.” The Story of Food to innovate, and change the world is fresh and strange. So, I put my creative mind to work to create something fresh and change in education, and materials development. Reinventing an old textbook approach ended up becoming an activity-based, hands-on, multimedia, multidiscipline
approach.

In 1973 I produced the first Iowa program. With its success and business profitability, my wife and I moved to Colorado and Boulder in 1974, before Boulder got discovered by the rest of the country, and world. After producing other state history, programs, and the provinces of Canada, plus U.S., Canada, and World Studies programs, our little company rapidly grew to be not so little, and we were dominating the Social Science, and ELHI (elementary, secondary) markets for nearly 20 years in the U.S., and Canada.

I tell you this not to brag, but because it taught me something essential, that when the system says no, when the established players won’t innovate, you have to do it yourself. You have to trust common sense over conventional wisdom. You have to believe that people will recognize the truth when they see it, even if (especially if) it disrupts the status quo.

That’s exactly what Thomas Paine did. He and Benjamin Franklin saw that the colonial relationship with King George was finished. Not because they wished it so, but because it already was. They just articulated what everyone could feel but hadn’t yet named.

 

Who Are the New Founders of America

I never thought about it quite this way until recently, but what we are building with The Story of Food is a 2026 version of 1776. And we are not the only ones. Around the world, brilliant, committed people are working on regenerative agriculture, circular economies, soil restoration, water quality, new healthcare systems in which “Food is Medicine,” renewable energy, and new ways of doing business outside the grip of big business and corporate control that leads to economic development in our counties, and community development for local resilience. But we’ve been working in silos. Separate movements, separate organizations, separate vocabularies.

The Story of Food connects it all.

Because food is not separate from environmental health. It’s not separate from human health. It’s not separate from economic systems or social cohesion and our cultural beliefs, or climate change or energy production or our governmental structures. Food is the web in the web of life. Food is how everything connects to everything else.

When I look at the people I’m collaborating with like one of our talented writers, and a brilliant thinker Liam Quirk, Ryan Slabaugh and Denise Nicol at Think Regeneration, and their staff, Tim Jones with Longer Tables in Denver, Brad Buchanan and the NWC Team (National Western Center) in Denver and their amazing work to establish a global epicenter for Regenerative Agriculture and Food Systems Transformation.

Other amazing people and organizations include Aaron Perry with his new publication of Our Biggest Deal, and his Y Community in Lyons, Colorado. Sally Ranney and her immensely important work with her partner Inga Ralph to address the melting of the Arctic, and Antarctica. My old friend Bud Wilson, former director of John Denver’s Choices for the Future Windstar Symposiums. Bud and I got started on this path 40+ years ago with John and many of us from around the world, when we first began recognizing in the 70s and 80s, and the common sense in regards to environmental and human issues we needed to be addressing. Issues and challenges which are now on our front door steps. I am in awe of our collective potential if we could come together with a new Common Sense for the future of our nation and world like the Founders of America did 250 years ago. Earth Day Network is close to my hears, as I helped initiate this movement as a student- activator on our college campus, April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day ever. WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development), and international leaders are needed to get out of their silos and support our ‘grassroots’ effort, from which we can meet in the Missing Middle and use the Power of Collaboration to create an MRP (Massive Regenerative Purpose), and what I am calling an End Game for People and Planetary Health.

I need to acknowledge a few other organizations out there doing the work such as EarthX, Green Cross and Global Green, American Farmland Trust, Green America, TNC (The Nature Conservancy) and the E.O. Wilson Institute.

I see these leading voices as our generation’s version of the Founders of a “New Idea and More Perfect Union for our nation complete with an American Dream 2.0., and a Planet B operating system. Only this time not our founders are not just wealthy landowners. This time with diverse skilled people of all races, and ethnic groups and statuses, with the same revolutionary spirit, and the understanding that we cannot serve a dying system and serve the future simultaneously.

With a “new common sense” we are declaring independence from extraction and disconnection. We are stepping fully into regeneration and connection.

And we need you in the fight.

 

The Machine Breaks Down

Here’s what I know with absolute certainty: Our current Earth-Human system is broken. Not metaphorically. Actually broken.

Twenty-two of Earth’s 34 “vital signs” are flashing red. We’ve blown past six of nine planetary boundaries. Our agricultural topsoil has lost 40% of its depth in just 40 years. Insect populations, the foundation of the food web, have crashed 75% in 50 years. Ninety-seven percent of Americans have forever chemicals in their bodies. Eighty percent of us have microplastics in our bloodstream.

The powers that be continue prioritizing short-term extraction over long-term regeneration. They subsidize fossil fuels with trillions while renewable energy that could save us goes begging for support. They allow industry to treat our water and air as an open sewer while we watch cancer rates climb.

This is not sustainable. This is not even sane.

The beautiful, revolutionary truth that Thomas Paine would understand immediately is that the system is breaking down because we need it to. We need to see clearly that the answers we seek are right in front of us. They’re not in laboratories creating substances incompatible with biology. They’re not in spreadsheets that refuse to count actual costs to our ecological commons. They’re in the soil beneath our feet. In the water we drink. In the food we grow and share. In the communities we build together.

The answers are in nature’s operating system: The Story of Food.

 

What Common Sense Looks Like Now

Our booklet, releasing on Earth Day 2026, attempts to do what Paine’s did. It speaks to where we already are, not where we were. It names the new identity we’re already inhabiting, even if we haven’t fully stepped into it yet.

We start with Planet B, and a New Planetary Operating System for Planet Earth, not because we’re abandoning this planet, but because we’re choosing an alternative operating system that’s already available. The regenerative, circular, life-affirming way of organizing our economies and societies.

We outline the leverage points that will exponentially (10-100x) cascade positive change throughout our systems: soil health, water quality, human health, community resilience, renewable energy. These aren’t separate issues. They’re interconnected aspects of The Story of Food.

We name the ideology of disconnection that got us into this mess—the false belief that we are separate from nature, that we can dominate and extract without consequence, that waste is inevitable rather than a design failure. We need to see clearly that the answers we seek are right in front of us. They’re not in laboratories creating substances incompatible with biology. They’re not in spreadsheets that refuse to count actual costs to our ecological commons. They’re in the soil beneath our feet. In the water we drink. In the food we grow and share. In the communities we build together.

The answers are in nature’s operating system: The Story of Food.

And we point toward what’s possible when we embrace connection instead: abundance, resilience, health, prosperity, purpose.

It’s 47 pages. You can read it in under an hour. And like Paine’s ‘Common Sense’, it will tell you things you already know but haven’t quite committed to or articulated.

That’s the power of common sense. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

 

Every Quarter Earth Day

We’re not stopping with one booklet. Every three months, we’ll release another 47-page manifesto on the 22nd: April 22 (Earth Day), July 22, October 22, and January 22.

Why? Because the key to learning is repetition. Earth Day once a year isn’t cutting it. We’ve had 54 Earth Days, and look where we are. We need a sustained drumbeat of common sense, and we need to come together and design new Earth Days that will accomplish Gaylord Nelsons original genius and intent for the days and make Earth Day Every Day, and both a Top-Down, Bottom Up, In the Middle strategy with “Speed & Scale, and Exponential Results.”

We need to support ongoing events with quarterly advances, and reminders that we have work to do and we’re doing it together. Think of it as Earth Day becoming Common Sense Day. Four times a year, we gather around the revolutionary idea that we can (we must) design our human systems to work with nature rather than against it.

We’ll focus each quarterly booklet on different aspects of The Story of Food. Different leverage points. Different success stories. Different calls to action. But always returning to the central truth: food connects everything, and when we get food right, when we regenerate soil, clean water, nourish bodies, strengthen communities, everything else begins to heal.

 

The Collaboration We Need

Here’s what I learned from that one-room schoolhouse, from my parents gas, and service station and one of the first convenience stores in the country they started, but due to the early death of my father was sold my freshman year in college. From my first publication of the Iowa history materials, and from every single thing I’ve done in my 78 years: common sense only wins when we work together.

Thomas Paine didn’t create the American Revolution alone. He worked with the likes of Franklin, with Washington, with Jefferson, with Adams, with countless others, and 56 signers of the American Declaration of Independence whose names history has forgot, whose contributions mattered just as much.

We’re building the same kind of collaboration. The Story of Food brings together food heroes, food growers, and producers, and specifically regenerative farm and ranch heroes, plus healthcare, and Food is Medicine heroes that are rebuilding our nation’s soil, and food health, and helping to grow a healthy people, and planet. I believe we can bring the common sense out of us all. to uniquely do this.

We are bringing a process called Strategic Doing, which moves us beyond endless planning to immediate action, linking existing assets, adapting through quick wins, innovating through collaboration. We collaborate across different movements and organizations instead of staying in one lane. We hold each other accountable and follow through with our shared vision and goals.

This is how revolutions actually happen. Not through lone geniuses, but through networked collaboration. Not through perfect plans, but through committed action that learns and adapts as it goes initially led by a core group of business, NGOs, and non-profits of all types and sizes in your communities, and neighborhoods in all 50 states, and globally.

 

What I’m Asking

I’m asking you to read our booklet when it drops on Earth Day. I’m asking you to share it, discuss it, debate it, argue with it if you need to. I’m asking you to recognize that you’ve already moved on from the dying system. You already
know, deep down, that we can’t keep extracting and polluting and pretending the bill won’t come due. I am asking you to step fully into that new identity. To make choices every day—food choices, energy choices, community choices—that align with regeneration rather than extraction.

I’m asking you to connect. Find others doing this work. Share your skills and assets. Collaborate across silos. Build the networks that will cascade positive change. .

Most of all, I’m asking you to remember what Paine knew: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Not through violence. Not through domination. But through common sense applied with revolutionary determination, that becomes a renaissance with new mindsets and thinking. The machine is broken. Nature is not. We are nature. Food is the story that connects us all.

It’s time to write a new chapter – a new story for ourselves and our only home and planet. Join us on Earth Day, April 22, 2026, when we release “Common Sense 2026’ “The Revolutionary Story of Food for Planetary Regeneration”: Read it. Share it. Act on it.

The revolution, the renaissance starts with regeneration. And regeneration starts with The Story of Food.

We need you and your support and your commitment and your work in bringing together a “Grand Collaboration” for Local to Global Innovation.

I hope to hear from you. Please stay in touch and add your skills, and gifts to a new vision of the ‘American Dream, with our 2026 version Common Sense, this year on its 250th Anniversary.