The idea of how to make sustainable business competitive has been a key missing link in the “greening” of our global economy. What Gunter has done through his work via his NGO ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives) is provide some inspirational examples of how synergistic designs can lead to cascading interactions between various feedback loops within an industrial ecology and/or agricultural production systems. One example has been his support of George Chan, an environmental engineer from Mauritius who went after his days at the US EPA to promote one type of Integrated Farming.

This kind of thinking if implemented properly provides a level of optimization that can make sustainable businesses competitive with conventional ones by more efficiently using natural and human resources. The idea is how we can learn from nature considering how both ecological and biological marvels can be incorporated into the development of products, built environments and social networks to weave together a global economy that is mutually supportive rather than mutually exclusive as is now the case.

Fritjof Capra one of Gunter’s mentors will be a special guest at the event. He is well known for being an advocate for new theories of how we see life. Such visionary thinking and rethinking of science is key towards building a sustainable world. One of his more notable books is The Tao of Physics.

Ode presents the launch of the Ode Salon Series:

An evening with Dr. Gunter Pauli, author of the book, The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs, with special guest: Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics and The Science of Leonardo. Dr. Gunter Pauli will speak about the world beyond green and sustainability: The Blue Economy. He will explain how a new generation of entrepreneurs can bring innovations to the marketplace, secure the basic needs of all, and make sustainable businesses competitive.

Fritjof Capra will comment on Dr. Pauli’s findings and Ode’s Editor-in-Chief, Jurriaan Kamp, will moderate while taking questions from the audience on this very interesting and perfectly timed subject.

We invite you to join us for the first in a continuing series of Ode Salon’s throughout the year.

When: Tuesday, April 27th – 5-8PM Where: Fort Mason Center, San Francisco

COST: $35 Includes a free copy of the The Blue Economy 
(retail value of $29.95) and organically grown wine and food supplied 
by our generous sponsors. Gunter Pauli will be on hand to personally sign your copy of his book.

REGISTER NOW!

Find out more about it here: http://events.linkedin.com/Water-Footprinting-Availability-Risk/pub/187537

http://www.wiserearth.org/group/oilspillsf

The Ecocity World Summit, (7th International Ecocity Conference) San Francisco, California, USA, will take place on April 22-26, 2008. According to Ecocity World Summit organizers Kirstin Miller, Conference Director and Richard Register, Conference Convener:

The event puts the largest things humans create – cities, towns and villages – squarely within the context of the triple crisis of peak oil, species extinction and climate change, and focuses on how we can redesign the built environment so that it works for everybody, not just the few, and is contributing to bio-diversity on the planet, not destroying it.

In order to communicate and further develop this shared vision of the city, town and village built in balance with nature, we’re assembling the world’s ecocity visionaries and thought leaders, plus the people, businesses and organizations out there working to build the better city right now.

Life-threatening global environmental problems and limitations on resource consumption demand a restructuring of cities and transportation systems worldwide for long-term energy efficiency and conservation. Concerned citizens in every community – in every city, town and village – must get involved in formulating and implementing new land use and transportation policies and practices, preserving and reclaiming agricultural lands and open space, and reclaiming natural habitat. More about the conference is here.

I was particularly intrigued by Featured Speaker State of California Assemblywoman Fiona Ma who is Chair of the Legislative High-Speed Rail Caucus She says that:

In order for our state to continue innovating to protect our environment and to stay economically competitive, California needs the vision to prioritize spending for the modern day transportation system that is desperately lacking. The cost of building the project is a small price to pay for the enormous environmental and economic benefits of high-speed trains. In California, the high-speed train system will combat global warming by saving the state more than 5 million barrels of oil annually and by reducing CO2 emissions by 12.4 billion pounds per year. High speed trains will also create jobs. Over 450,000 high-paying permanent jobs are estimated to be created once the system is up and running and these jobs cannot be sent overseas. The project also has the potential to provide thousands of construction jobs throughout the state, including a substantial amount in the Central Valley.

The system, which will carry 86 million passengers annually across the state, will be reliable and affordable. No longer will you have to wait in traffic, wait in long lines, or languish at the airport. A trip on a train, which will travel over 220 mph, from San Francisco to Los Angeles will only take 2 ½ hours and will cost about half the price of a plane ticket.

Of possible relevance is a recent blog post I did about a colleague Steve Bosserman who is working on a wiki to explore the development of kits to build ecologically responsible Park Homes which he calls Micro-Houses (park homes like mobile homes are pre-assembled in manufacturing facilities).

Also noteworthy in July they posted a job opening at the Regenerative Design website (no deadline date for applying). The Oakmoss Village website is here but I did not much there. This seems to indicate that the project is still relatively early in the development stage.

Planning for Adversity:

A major premise of the project is that we have to build sustainable human habitats because there is increasing evidence that human induced changes may lead to a more adverse climate (in the broadest sense of the word):

1. Fuel and supplies will be more expensive and thus there’s a need to adapt to renewable, energy efficient and more self-reliant habitats;
2. Various changes will increase climate adversity so we need to design for adversity in how we live and plan for the future;
3. Economic instability may increase the economic risk for more sustainably developed projects as the costs of high quality green business services become unrealistically expensive in a adverse economy;
4. Disruptions in the global economy may cause supply line disruptions that makes increased self-reliance a hedge against that potential risks as mentioned in 3.

The core idea seems to be that we need to be more clever about making use of the limited resources. We also need to learn to use existing resources to create the paradigm shift as an alternative to a total rebuild of the built environment. However the question is how much of the existing infrastructure be viably salvaged and made into a transitional sustainable built environment?

That above question about the feasibility of retrofitting the existing built environment applies especially in the zone of modern development called suburban sprawl applies especially to Mobile Homes. The project is ambitious not just because it is visionary and innovative at how they seek to take the ecovillage development to new models that make increase its relevance to the mainstream modern built environment but also because mobile homes in many respects are the most unsustainable because of the cheap and substandard materials used. To me the question that will ultimately determine the viability of this project is: what percentage of the infrastructure of a mobile home can be realistic salvaged and retrofitted.

There are various issues that need to be considered in retrofitting a mobile home:

1. Mobile homes are notorious for having Indoor Air Emissions/pollutants such as Formaldehyde;
2. Constructed using flimsy materials that make them easy prey for tornados and high winds;
3. Materials used in construction also are cheaply made (therefore they have a very limited product lifecycle) and often use the most unsustainable building products.

Social Enterprise Approach
I use the term social enterprise to describe “blended ventures” that combine aspects of non and for profit entities. Some refer this hybrid as “for benefit corporations”. Specifically I like how they developed a blended approach, seeing the project as a “model for profitable sustainable reengineering of rural and urban mobile home parks, residential neighborhoods and small towns.”

Transforming a mobile home park into a prosperous sustainable community is not a normal ecovillage plan. Oakmoss Village appears to be attempting to address climate change and peak oil challenges from a unique perspective using already existing housing and seeking to reconfigure that so that it is more sustainable more, “while also generating prosperity for the community and profits for the developers.”

To me this is in line with the thinking that ecovillages have to be more focused on how to replicate and expand to the mainstream society. This means on some level embracing existing infrastructure social, political, economic and physical while retaining the core alternative message of sustainability. This is the art of compromise that it seems progressives have not refined as of yet.

Key issues for these visionary eco-community developers include:

• Localizing production of many community goods and services;
• Reducing fossil fuel consumption;
• Lowering household and community carbon footprints;
• Creating village businesses and green collar jobs;
• Transforming renters into owners.

Project will feature:

• Affordable green homes;
• Low-cost green building system;
• Conversion of septic evaporation ponds into bio marsh-pond system;
• Integration of commercial SPIN farm plots into residential parcels;
• Solar thermal power plant for community heat, cooling and electricity;
• Community electric shuttle;
• Green home financing strategies;
• Edible landscaping and creek repair.

Recently this number was rekindled in my head upon my receiving a number of Architecture 2030 emails. Architecture 2030 is a program put forward by The 2030 Research Center and NM based Green Architecture Ed Mazria. The 2030 Challenge is a way to reduce building energy use by a minimum of 50% negating the need for new coal plants. I wondered why 2030 so I went through their site and as I suspected in The 2030 Challenge page:

Credible scientists give us 10 years to be well on our way toward global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. Yet there are hundreds of coal-fired power plants currently on the drawing boards in the US. Seventy-six percent (76%) of the energy produced by these plants will go to operate buildings.

Their campaign is focused on the idea that an important step in the effort to reverse global climate change is to stop the current massive effort to build coal power plants in the USA. This includes this nicely done ad Stop Coal Stop Global Warming that they are putting in the NYT.

They point out that over an 11-year period (1973–1983), the US built:

1. 30 billion square feet of new buildings;
2. added approx 35 million new vehicles;
3. and yet increased real GDP by one trillion dollars while decreasing its energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

The point is that we don’t need coal but efficient design and proven technologies. Its a good point but where is the money going to come to push these initiatives forward?

Do we need more taxpayer funded seed money to prime to the pump or will the market get up to speed just by enough socially and ecologically conscious citizens getting energized about the need to take actions? Possibility it is a combination of mandates, subsidies and mobilized civil society and social venture communities. Then it is assumed that once these ecologically designed technologies get up to speed, the costs of building green will come down enough so that they will be able to be fully competitive with existing ones, especially when long term life cycle maintenance and operational costs are considered, because green buildings typically use less resources.

Buildings use 76% of all the energy produced at coal plants. So the premise is that if we make more efficient buildings using currently available technologies that we reduce the need for those power plants. Yet the challenge is that is that the costs of rebuilding the modern built environment in the USA would be a massive effort that would involve massive infusion of money. Money that is currently going to sustain the war on terror or money that would require major tax increases. Currently it seems unrealistic that either the military budget would be reduced or that taxpayers would be willing to pay more to subsidize green technologies, despite the scientific evidence that there is a compelling need for action to reverse current trends in the amount of GHG released into the atmosphere.

Coal is the worst energy source because it has the lowest energy density in terms of the amount of carbon emitted per power produced. Also green buildings reducing coal power plant usage are only part of the equation. When we consider the evils of “King Coal,” the realization is that to reverse the trend of continued investment in coal power plants, we need to offer viable renewable energy alternatives to coal as well as offer conservation as a solution.

To address global climate change, we need to connect coal to the big picture of Global Climate Change at the national as well as international levels to meet the ambitious goals of The 2030 Challenge . The global climate change “pie” in the USA includes many factors besides GHG emissions from coal. There is petroleum and natural gas gives you a broader picture. When you figure in concrete and livestock farming both major GHG emitters with gasoline and diesel for transportation and power generation through coal and natural gas you get a sense that there is no one complete solution. In addition increasing rates of biomass burning (in regards to the fires we keep hearing about in the western US as well as in other parts of the world) on the planet possibly due to climate change is now creating another major source of CO2.

Because the GHG culprits are complex and interrelated in terms of how they have deeply embedded themselves into how we live our modern lives a comprehensive approach is needed that provides a complete inventory of the build environment and enables a new system of design. What’s needed is a design science revolution that introduces wholly new approaches that run the gamut from electric powered cars to integrated farming practices to daylighting and promising renewable energy technologies like Solar Thermal and Algae. An alternative strategy to mandating national change through national orgs, is developing a series of approaches that communities could embrace and tailor to their needs.

Many folks I met while filming in Portland told me it had changed their lives as well. It sure would be great to have our own two-week Village Building Convergence here in the Bay Area someday. Go see him and be inspired!

Event Speaking Dates

• Saturday, Sept 29, 7:30pm- New College of California,  Santa Rosa, North Bay campus
• Sunday, Sept 30, Workshop with New College Students, Contact New College for more information.
• Monday, October 1st, 6-9pm, for Willits Economic Localization Initiative, Willits Community  Center, Willits, CA.
• Tuesday, October 2nd, Regenerative Design & Nature Awareness School with Jon Young & Penny Livingston, near San Gregorio, Evening Presentation,  at 415-868-9681
• Wednesday, October 3rd, Esalen Institute at Big Sur, Daytime workshop and evening community-wide presentation.
• Thursday, October 4th, in Santa Barbara: – Noon-1pm, “Nuts and Bolts of City Repair”, Public Library, Faulkner Gallery. and 7:45pm, “The Village Lives” Presentation, Public Library, Faulkner Gallery.
• Saturday, October 6th, UCLA Planning School, Graduate Student Conference, Presentation and Workshop in the Field. Call Ava at 818.939.9205
• Tuesday, October 9th, 7-9pm, Soulutioneers 2007 Speaker Series, 1950 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley.
• Wednesday, October 10th, 6:30-8pm, An Architects,  Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility Event, Pacific Energy Center 851 Howard Street.
• Thursday, October 11th, Evening Event, in Point  Reyes, Time and Location TBD.
• Alternate Date: Friday, October 12th, 6-9pm, for Willits  Economic Localization Initiative, Willits Community  Center, Willits, CA.
• Monday, October 15th, 7-9pm, Lost Valley Educational Center, near Eugene, Oregon.

Chlorophyll Collective

In prep for Burning Man, Chlorophyll Collective built a mobile bioreactor unit using algae at Burning Man which they taught and showcased as a open source approach at the event.

They have also been featured at the Green City Gallery in Berkeley.

Megan Bracken (aka Meggio Omega) reports on her Tribe.net blog about how the well reported “premature burn” of the Man led to the shutdown of the whole Green Man section of the event affected their exhibit. Apparently no one in the collective was able to go to check on the system for one week as the BM staff raced to rebuild “the man.” From Meggio’s comments this decision to close the Green Man Pavilion seemed quite controversial.

Their system which they call “the Single Cell Solution” is designed to grow in a vertical closed-system using bioreactor tubes. In the process of growing the algae they have developed a process for bubbling the exhaust through it. In this process the algae absorbs the CO2 in the exhaust while it photosynthesizes enabling it to grow. The system includes the use of energy-efficient lighting to synthesize sunlight and stimulate photosynthesis at night. This is so the process continues day and night, whenever the generators are running.

The algae which are the most efficient photosynthetic organism on earth have high oil content. Because of this, many believe they can be converted into an efficient and renewable energy source for humanity. The idea is that the oil can be extracted from the algae and made into biodiesel or simply fed into the gen-set on a diesel configured to run on Straight Vegi Oil (SVO).

Currently this technology is relatively far from being commercially feasible at this time with many development stage companies competing for Venture Capital to develop this promising resource and experimental concept into a commercially viable source of renewable energy.

He is now working with to develop an integrated farm system that uses a gasification process developed by Ed Burton and being put forward under the Ed Burton Company which is based Willits – about 2 hours north of SF on 101.

He says they are doing a joint venture with Tom Reed and Jim Fournier of Biomass Energy and Carbon:

Biomass Energy & Carbon develops biomass gasification technologies that produce clean, tar free, producer gas streams for electrical and thermal energy. The same process will also generate charcoal for use as a new kind of agricultural soil amendment, which permanently sequesters carbon in the soil thereby producing carbon-negative energy from biomass. Future designs will also include oxygen fed gasification systems that produce synthesis gas as a feed stock for catalytic gas-to-liquid fuel production.

BEC draws on the experience of its co-founders Dr. Tom Reed and Agua Das Ellis who together have over sixty years of experience in all aspects of biomass gasification and associated technologies.

The plan to build a 25 KW full Biogassifier in Colorado. The Ed Burton company will be supplying the fuel utilizing our new “chunkateer” spiral cutter. He reports that he has also set up an aeroponic growing system that is based on the Burton Nutrient-rich Water Processor. The system also uses the EPRIDA method of growing plants in charcoal which has been inoculated with arbusto micorhyzal fungus. The result is phenomenal, he says with redwood trees growing as fast as bamboo. The (click for full sized picture of gasifier) vegetable results are equally impressive.

Reinhold is also working with Aerotecture on a project to install innovative screw type wind turbines atop what is to be the San Francisco Civic Center. The building is expected to be more energy-efficient than any large office building in the United States. According to a report about the project in the SF Chronicle, “The headquarters of the city’s Public Utilities Commission [SFPUC] would include design features rarely seen in comparable buildings, such as wind turbines on the roof and a water recycling system in the basement. Solar panels would be embedded in outer walls, and a ventilation system using ‘thermal chimneys’ on each floor would pull hot air out of the building.” Construction is expected to start on the 12-story structure next year.

The idea is that while the sustainability measures add $16 million to the $178 million price tag, it demonstrates the city’s leadership and commitment to implementing sustainability on a very practical way. “We can’t ask people to change their way of doing business and not put our money where our mouth is,” said Susan Leal, the agency’s general manager.

The wind turbines are to be situated on the roof and stacked vertically behind glass walls along Golden Gate Avenue.
The wind tower is made of two Clark Y airfoils in a mirror image of each other. He says there are still “quite a few details to work out but they are planning to mount 36 10 KW turbines (8′ in diameter and 10′ high) and deliver a substantial fraction (to be determined but not estimated at around 40 percent) of the building’s daily budget of 4,000 KWhrs. The balance of this energy is provided by the PV panels on the roof and southern side facing S.F. City Hall.

The renderings are done in Google Sketch-Up which you can download for free. The $480 dollar version is substantially more powerful.

The reality is that it is not just about the kind of car you drive or how much you drive it, but the ecological, social and economic sustainability of the car dependent culture we live in. It was a gutsy move for John Edwards to call for people to give up their SUV’s. However, it would have been an even more gutsy move would be to encourage people to examine the impact of their diets on not just global warming but the ecology overall.

NewsFlash Meat-eating Worse than Driving Cars
Claudia H Deutsch recently wrote an article in the NYT about how various vegan and anti meat groups were reacting a recent UN report on the impact of our meat eating lifestyles on Global Climate Change. The article titled “Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change.”The tagline of their approach is that while Gore may be now famous for his movie the “An Inconvenient Truth,” the fact is the most inconvenient truth of all is that raising animals for meat contributes more to global warming than all the sport utility vehicles combined.

While obviously unpopular in societies like the US where eating meat is about as American as apple pie, the fact is that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently issued a report stating that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.

Another report done by University of Chicago researchers posted in a PR release under the title Vegan Diets Healthier for Planet, People than Meat Diets lays out the basics of research to back up the argument rather nicely:

1. Average American drives 8,322 miles by car annually, emitting 1.9 to 4.7 tons of carbon dioxide, depending on the vehicle model and fuel efficiency.
2. Americans also consume an average of 3,774 calories of food each day.
3. Energy used for food production accounted for 17 percent of all fossil fuel use in the United States and the burning of these fossil fuels emitted 3/4 of a ton of CO2 per person.
4. That alone amounts to approximately one-third the average greenhouse-gas emissions of personal transportation. But when you add livestock production and associated animal waste, you get much higher emissions of greenhouse gases not associated with fossil-fuel combustion, primarily methane and nitrous oxide you get a higher Global Warming impact that gives meat eating much of its bad rep.
5. What makes the problem even worse is that methane and nitrous oxide are relatively rare compared with carbon dioxide, they are — molecule for molecule — far more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. According to the researchers 1 pound of Methane = 50 pounds of CO2.
6. The vegetarian diet turned out to be the most energy-efficient, followed by poultry and the average American diet. Fish and red meat virtually tied as the least efficient.

When that UN FAO report came out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups expected their environmental counterparts to immediately hop on the “Go Veggie!” bandwagon. Perhaps they were a little naive. Animal Rights and Vegan camps quickly realized that most mainstream “Environmentalists are still pointing their fingers at Hummers and S.U.V.’s when they should be pointing at the dinner plate,” said Matt A. Prescott, manager of vegan campaigns for PETA.

The animal rights groups are right in terms of the facts and for standing up for their principles and for the truth, but their approach is wrongheaded and divisive. What this really demonstrates is a failure to see the big picture. We need to create a big tent alliance around the global big picture that is inclusive rather than inclusive and does not push people into places that they are not ready to be in through shame and guilt.

Rage Against the Machine
It’s the same old ball and chain: turning the mainstream marketing on its head as was pioneered by AdBusters in the 80s and 90s. PETA is outfitting a Hummer with a driver in a chicken suit and a vinyl banner proclaiming meat as the top cause of global warming. It will send the vehicle to the start of the climate forum the White House is sponsoring in Washington on Sept. 27, “and to headquarters of environmental groups, if they don’t start shaping up,” Mr. Prescott warned.

• PETA plans to send billboard-toting trucks to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver when Mr. Gore lectures there on Oct. 2. The billboards will feature a cartoon image of Mr. Gore eating a drumstick next to the tagline: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat Is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.”
• The Humane Society is promoting a University of Chicago study that, in essence, show that “switching to a plant-based diet does more to curb global warming than switching from an S.U.V. to a Camry,” The society is not only concerned with what happens to domesticated animals, but also with preventing the carnage that global warming could cause to polar bears, seals and other wildlife. “Our mission is to protect animals, and global warming has become an animal welfare issue,” he said.
• Vegan Outreach says it will give more prominence to the global warming aspect of vegetarianism in the next batch of leaflets it orders. The “U.N. report is an impartial, unimpeachable source of statements we can quote,” said Matt Ball, executive director of Vegan Outreach.

Because of the growing evidence about the link between meat based diets and global climate change, there is a sense of frustration that high-profile people like Al Gore as well as many of the other environmental groups with deeper pockets than his – have not stepped up to the plate.

Where we visionaries often go wrong is in shaming people towards change by demanding that people stop eating meat or driving their cars or even buying big cars. Living in a culture built on addiction, we come to realize (if we reflect on our own addictive behaviors) that changing addictive behaviors is often easier said than done.  No doubt a major shift is needed but it needs to be done in a way that brings the various sectors of economy and society together at the community level, encouraging a diversity of approaches to build a more sustainable economy and society that uplifting and inspirational rather than depressing and preachy.

Defenders of the Mainstream Status Quo?
Mainstream environmentalists like Al Gore recognize that it’s a lot easier to ask people “to put in a fluorescent light bulb or purchase a hybrid than to learn to cook with tofu.” Interesting questions have emerged relating to whether either fluorescents or hybrids are really moving us towards a bona fide green alternative to current practices.

• The Sierra Club for example seems to be taking the realization that the people don’t like to be preached to about environmentalism a bit too far. They seem pretty tepid in pointing out the facts about Global Climate Change: “We try to be strategic about doing the things where each unit of effort has the most impact,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. Mr. Pope’s group stops short of castigating people for driving S.U.V.’s or building overly large homes, too. Yet various voices in the Sierra Club seems to be taking different approaches as is discussed in more detail below.
• So what’s the solution at Environmental Defense? While “in agreement on the value of eating less meat,” says Melanie Janin, director of marketing communications, the focus on spending their time and money influencing public policy a traditional top down approach that involves getting Congress to regulate greenhouse gases.

Understanding the need for a Multisector Approach
We need to see the need to change and to encourage a discussion of the need to change without demanding immediate change. This is where a multi-sector approach comes into play. In addition to developing the multi-sector Holistic ICT for Development model at OVF, I have also been involved working with Melanie St James to develop Empowerment Work’s Partners in Empowerment (PIE) approach.

The core idea is to bring different groups together who traditionally have not worked together. In this process, we can begin to see what each partner brings to the table to solve the complex issues and challenges of our world. Our inability to come together and work towards more multi-sector approaches to collaboration and development may affect humanity’s future viability as a emerging global society.

This reality is confusing to many people who continue to attack problems with a way of seeing the world neatly arranged with one solution for every problem. Of course we are understanding in our increasingly complex modern society there are often many causes to any particular problem. Compounding this is the process by which influential people simplify and spin a complex reality to suit their vested interests or their pet projects. Even the Vegans and animal rights people do this by simplifying the issue into a meat verses non-meat issue when in fact it is more an issue of factory industrial farming verses local sustainable farming.

The problem is complex. It is not a single issue or problem, the evidence cited in this debate is that our meat eating lifestyles actually are greater than the impact of our cars in terms of global warming and overall environmental impacts.  Yet the impact of All mainstream industrial farming practices are detrimental to ecosystems. Its possible that with the wide scale dissemination of integrated farming that the impact of animal farming could be considerably reduced.

Its noted by local Missouri Sierra Club activist Ken Midkiff’s in his recent book on “How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America’s Food Supply” that the problem is the way in which industrial farming is impacting the environment as well as human health. A 2005 Sierra Club national conference also included a Living Well Session about the value of local farming titled “Eating Smart: Alternatives to Industrial Food” by Local Harvest’s Guillermo Payet and Fred Kirshenmann which discussed the vital role of empowering small farmers to promote sustainable agriculture and the relocalization of food production.

Rethinking Academia, Education, Politics and the Media
The reluctance to see the complex interrelated nature of the world’s problems is due to the way we have been trained to think and see the world. This leads to amazingly simplistic notions that we can seriously impact global warming by getting SUVs off the road, buying hybrids investing in ethanol and green fuels and installing florescent light bulbs or changing the political leadership in Washington.

So it is not just about changing this or that aspect of our existence – buying a hybrid is not enough – real sustainable development means a total redesign of our built environments and a total revamp of how we live our lives.

The Challenge for the 21st Century: Creating a Culture of Innovation that Empowers Local People to Create their Own Version of Sustainability
What’s really needed is to create a culture of innovation and enterprise at the grassroots that weans people off of a culture of dependency on unsustainable and unhealthy products made far from them and their communities. Rather than a top-down, elite centered governance approach – more of the same failed policies and approaches that revolve out of Washington and other centers of elite power – what is needed are more inspirational models that show how people (with a little help from Washington and the state governments) can make a difference by promoting more self-reliant ways of living on this planet that support vibrant communities and families.