Two weeks ago, nearly 300 people gathered at the Envision Maine Summit in Freeport to celebrate all of the success stories now occurring in Maine, in new businesses and startups, and to explore ways to accelerate the growth of Maine’s next economy. The energy and enthusiasm in that room were palpable and infectious, and those in attendance seemed determined to achieve great things for Maine.

Just a week later, the Verso Paper mill in Bucksport announced that it will close, leaving 500 employees reeling and confused. It was yet another in a string of factory closings in Maine that have devastated families and communities, deepened pockets of hopelessness and caused many people to leave.

Politicians did what they are compelled to do, in those circumstances, which is to rush to the site to vow that every effort will be made to bring the mill back. Thousands of millworkers have heard those speeches over the last few decades in Maine. In almost every case, they’ve been empty promises – not because politicians didn’t mean well, but because they have virtually no control over the factors that are causing those mills to decline and close in the face of a changing demands in the global marketplace.

We can blame whoever we want for what just happened in Bucksport, but it won’t bring those jobs back. Candidates and others can exhaust themselves in finger-pointing about greedy corporations, high energy costs, the unions, taxes or overzealous environmental protections. But the facts are what they are. In Maine, the era of the large mills is all but over. We’ll try to keep as many of them that remain as we can, of course, but spending most of our time and energy trying to resuscitate dying industries rather than building new ones is taking the life-energy out of us, and the hope out of our young people.

For a while now, Maine has had two economies existing side by side. One is our traditional economy, built around extracting natural resources from the forests, farms and waters of Maine and employing thousands of Mainers in factories that lined our great rivers 50 years ago.

Today, most of those farms are gone, overcome by the competition of supermarkets displaying mounds of produce from Florida, California and Mexico. Aside from a few paper mills that are still here because of our vast forests, the factories have left us as well. Whether we like it or not, Maine’s older economy is breaking down.

At the same time, a new economy has been sending up shoots everywhere. It is an economy comprised of home-grown businesses, startups, innovators, entrepreneurs, dreamers and doers.

Some of them are growing things like organic foods designed for consumption here in New England. Others are making new products out of the natural resources we have in abundance, rather than selling them as commodities. Some are simply inventing things that could be made anywhere, but choose to make them in Maine because this is a great place to live.

That new economy has been growing in virtually all parts of Maine, from the fields of Aroostook County to the tidal waters Down East, the incubators in Portland and research labs in Orono.

Both the old economy and the new have their own networks of supporters and organizations, which have kept them operating in remarkably separate and different worlds, and even speaking different languages.

The language of the old economy is rife with fear and recrimination, defensiveness and repetition. “Woe is us,” it seems to say. “Everybody’s out to get us.”

The language of the new economy, by contrast, is all about good things that are happening, optimism about Maine’s future and a determination to build a new prosperity in Maine from our own native talents.

The response to the Bucksport closing lacked the acrimony and anger that similar announcements have generated in the past, as though Maine people are becoming resigned to the idea that the old economy can’t be rebuilt, and a new one has to be constructed to take its place.

There are two tragedies that we can see clearly in the Bucksport mills closing. One is the human tragedy for the people who work there and the communities they live in. The other was the tragedy of being unprepared for the future.

Two great cruise ships passed each other over these last few weeks, each with one of Maine’s economies aboard, headed in opposite directions. On one, the big band music was subdued and the energy dimming. In the other, every light was blazing.

Alan Caron in a partner in the Caron & Egan Consulting Group in Freeport. He can be contacted at:

alancaroninmaine@gmail.com