I saw Dave Room speak Saturday July 14, 2007 at the Oregon County Fair talking about sustainability for his presentation called Be The Change. Here is a summary of what he spoke about:

We will be going through transitions about energy use over the next thirty to forty years. Our current system is near collapse, our dependence on fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) is at 90%. The US has about $48 trillion in combined debt (business, individual and government),this is compared to how we are in debt with the environment by using up non-renewable resources.

Exploitation of resources happens all the time in nature, an animal will use up all resources around them. It is no surprise that we are where we are today, it is part of the natural order since humans are animals. Can technology can solve the problem, it can temporarily but more energy will be needed. Is it a cultural problem, we need to change ourselves, change our behavior and change our culture.

Mobility and the "small world" concept. We have been raised (with help from Disneyland) that we live in a small world. People live across the country or the world from friends and family and that due to the ease and safety of travel, we travel in time measured by hours. When Mulligan sailed around the world it took over two years and he lost over 90% of his crew, today it's only a matter of hours to go anywhere on the planet. As travel becomes more difficult in the future, our world will become larger.

We need to be less energy dependent. In Oakland (California) sitting on an public committee, city hall wants to reduce energy dependence over the next fourteen years. Ideally they want to achieve a 50% reduction. They want to improve getting from point A to point B, but also want to bring point A closer to point B. People won't need as much transportation this way. By using backcasting, where you imagine the future and plan back to the present, instead of forecasting is one of their goals.

We are evolution becoming conscience. Our current evolution (since eugenics laws have been passed) cannot involve physical change. But we can make a mental change, an evolution of our own way of thinking.

Culture change, we are in a transition culture. Live Aid gave advice to people, such as using compact florescent bulbs, checking your tire's air pressure and other "baby steps". We are slowly changing, which will be less that will need to be done during a crisis, but baby steps are not enough. Yet baby steps are a good way to educate people and get them to take more later, hopefully we won't have to be running at that point.

Little changes can change the entire system. Humans have not changed their needs over the past 100,000 years only how we fulfill them has. We need to create new tools to fulfill our needs. How we fulfill our basic needs and how we express ourselves is what the culture change is about.

Localization, using a small scale as a model so when we need them they will be there already in place. By preparing ourselves and getting used to localization, when it becomes necessary it will be easier to make the culture change. We don't know the future, but we can form the decision about making processes. By creating the right processes (decisions) we can create sustainability.

There is no one solution, lots of baby steps are good but we need to change our lives. We will do it differently and that diversity will define how. We need to look for changes in our daily lives, our spheres of influence. We need to become more local, hopefully more democratic, work local jobs, local economy. This is what most of the world wants. And most of all, we need to be easy on ourselves.

Question from audience member about climate change and that the northwest is getting drier. Answer is that it is hard to predict, climate change is a wild card but it is worsening but will not make us change. People don't think, due to the magnitude of the problem, that they can fix it or are the real cause of the problem. We need to be more prepared and move towards green trades, such as solar.

Question from myself asking that I agree with that we need to change our way of thinking and that we can lead by example, but what about poorer nations around the world who have started to live our energy lifestyle, how do we tell people who have only started to live this way to change their ways. How do we convince them. The answer is that it's not an easy answer to make people who have done without to tell them to possibly go back to their old lifestyles but that we can lead by example. I followed up asking that will this then include a technological change, the answer is that technology change is one of the pillars, the other two are culture change and nature.

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Adam Mayer