Tonight is our Cuban evening for the Incredible edible project. I will introduce the film with the following: (or variations on the theme!)
“ There is nothing so difficult in human affairs than to change the established order of things
because those who will be hurt by the change are quite certain of their loss while those who
will benefit are uncertain of their gain.” – Machiavelli
In our personal lives and in the lives of our nations, change usually involves three forces: push, pull and inertia.
That’s the case now as we confront the end of the industrial era and we begin to establish a relationship between our economy and ecology.
There are two huge challenges that we face.
The first is the challenge of changes in the Earth’s climate, and the second is to overcome the political tensions associated with ownership and distribution of oil.
Both these challenges are forcing nations, communities and individuals toward a change of lifestyle.
The force that pulls us forward is the vision of a way of living in our communities with economies that bring security, opportunity and stewardship of the planet. It is our next frontier and it calls for us to exercise an imaginative, sustainable response.
The forces holding us back are many. They may be technical, structural, political and economic. But by far the biggest barrier of all is the barrier of attitude. Do we do nothing, do we resist or deny, or do we begin to think together about the future and how we might want to live in it?
We know that the stocks of oil around the planet are dwindling, we find less crude oil year on year and at the same time we use more and more of it. Imagine an olympic size swimming pool, and then imagine it full to the brim with oil, every fifteen seconds, we are draining that pool - it is running out, and the general consensus of scientists and oil industrialists is that this will happen in the next twenty to forty years. If there is anyone in the room luck enough to be under the age of thirty the chances are that you will spend most of your life in a post-oil economy. We know what is happening with climate change and we are getting better at the projection of its impact on people, habitat and environment. The signs are too many and too persistent to ignore. The question is not if we should change. It’s whether we have the will to make the change necessary.
When Barrack Obama makes his inaugral speech next month in Washington, he will focus attention on preparing the american nation for an agenda of change, in one of his advisory reports it says...
Climate change is not a problem we can put off and deal with sometime in the future. It is happening now. Our job is to keep it from getting worse. We have the tools we need. What we lack so far is a sufficient sense of urgency to use them.
The challenges brought about by climate change and the move to a post oil world will not be solved by new technologies alone. To put it bluntly, smart technologies can accommodate stupid behavior, but only to a point. The solution will involve not just be found in developing new hardware, it will be achieved through the choices we make as consumers and as citizens.
That’s good news. It means that each of us can make a difference.
Tonights film shows one way in which a community faced with a need to change has reinvented itself, it offers a glimpse of a different future where the production of food enables people to reconnect, redesign and rebuild strong and resilient communities.
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