So the whole point of this little European tour has been to search out Sustainability at its finest. I realize that I've told a lot of silly stories and talked for an inordinate amount of time about food, but I haven't said much about this sustainability stuff.
I'm reading "A Geography of Hope", by Chris Turner, a Canadian who decided to tour the world in search of sustainability at its finest in hopes of encouraging the replication of ideas that already exist, and already work. I have read about industrial symbiosis (where various factories use each other's 'waste' as inputs, like steam or chemical byproducts), mixed use living (the very opposite of suburbia), sustainable energy, houses as power plants (aka decentralized power generation where each house is 'power positive' and sells its excess energy back to the grid each month), biomimicry (copying nature since it has had millions of years of evolution to get it right), and the idea that smaller is better (autonomous decision making units acting independantly in their own self interest but governed by a higher body's thoughtful and deliberate steps, ie: independant power generators like wind turbine owners who invest confidently in technology because they are guarenteed a specific rate from electricty utilities).
I digress: that was the longest sentence I've ever written.
Back to my point. I have seen some of these concepts in action already. Their basis is so sound, so obvious, that I wonder why more people haven't gotten it yet But tonight, tonight I am not frustrated or discouraged, as I (we) can sometimes get when facing the same frustrating paradigms, the same thoughtless marching forward. Tonight I am inspired.
And world, watch out. Inspiration is a powerful thing.
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