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| Matt Nelson. |
Future opportunities are viewed by many through a frame built
around what was and presently exists.
Most projects, new or otherwise, are locked into a canon that
because of rapidly changing planetary circumstances will be largely irrelevant
before, or soon after the idea hardens.
Excitement about and commitment to the idea will be
insufficient for what is coming in just years, rather than decades are changes
that humanity has never before encountered.
Humans have always psychologically sought certainty and the
only inevitability we can count on will be a difference quite unlike anything
we have ever seen.
We have seriously depleted one energy source, oil, and coal,
our other prime energy resource, needs to stay in the ground.
The relish we have exhibited in burning those two fossil
fuels has irreparably damaged our atmosphere and rather than using our
inventiveness and inherent anticipatory abilities to ensure growth, we should
be applying them to build community resilience and adaptability.
An unfolding energy scarcity threatens most everything
critical to modernity from food to human movement and because of oil depletion
most everything within reach, including the computer upon which this is being
written, will be threatened.
Just recently the Committee for Greater Shepparton CEO, Matt
Nelson, talked about reasons and circumstances that led to the formation of the
body and the four “strategic pillars” upon which it would shape its business
plan.
Those four pillars are a productive, creative, connected and
inclusive community that considered in terms of what was are wonderful and even
in a dramatically changed situation, have merit and worth.
It is not, however what we say, rather it is what we do and
in this case it is vibrantly important that an inclusive, connected, creative
and productive community is all those things, but one that builds community
resilience within the confines of a setting in which water will be scarce,
along with energy and food, all worsened by an increasingly disorderly climate.
The drive, sadly and to our ultimate demise, for infinite
growth is clearly unsustainable in a finite world.
Institutions from our Federal Government through to myriad
organizations in local communities see their salvation in economic growth, but fail
to acknowledge that the tireless pursuit of such growth has edged humanity onto
a slippery slope.
The ideals and goals of the Committee for Greater Shepparton
are honourable, but upon closer examination it appears eager to build on values
and strengths of yesterday; tenets we must purge if humanity is to endure and
thrive.
Tomorrow is going to be decidedly different even from today
and rather than ogling expansion we should be considering orderly contraction;
a change in behaviours that is about diversifying activities within communities
to make them feisty, adaptable and so durable
