Opportunity Bill Mollison has stated repeatedly that the “the - TopicsExpress

Opportunity Bill Mollison has stated repeatedly that the “the problem is the solution”. Buried beneath a veil that looks to human perception as a constraint, whether uncontrollable or the reverse, lies the opposite of a constraint, an opportunity. Although our global community is beset with multiple problems, if we heretofore make the effort to begin a creative process of lifting and looking deeply beneath the surface, if we as explorers and adventurers in search of essential truths, principles and methodologies that reward us, when put into action, with sound templates for restoration and resilience, we must arrive at the shores, at the edges, of understanding that we needs must implement needed changes to what has become status quo. As an example let us take a look at the overwrought concentration of carbon currently suffusing the atmosphere. “Climate change” is a topic that seemingly will not go away. Whether the over concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is caused by humans or not, it is statistically convincing. If, in fact, a constantly “growing economy” is the precursor to the “greenhouse affect”, when we take cognizance of this fact, it seems overwhelming to those that would follow its developments, almost as a sense of doom, albeit an issue that cannot be stopped. But where lies the opportunity in all this? Plants, our primary producers, through a process of photosynthesis, sequester carbon and build their architecture with this carbon. It is as if plants appear out of thin air. With a bit of moisture and oxygen thrown into the mix, carbohydrates and proteins are created and embodied in green life that is our primary form of sustenance. Without plants we simply do not exist. So, here lies the problem, and here lies the solution. If one of the primary elements, carbon, that is responsible for creating our primary producers, lies just above the soil matrix in superabundance, we have the unthinkable opportunity to profoundly affect the state of the world by planting trees, and more trees, and the like. A dense plant culture can only benefit from this superabundance of raw materials floating just above their heads and ready to eat. Why is it that we see only the problem? What is in the human mind that sees only this one sided perspective of doom and death? Why can we not open the senses and mind to something wonderful, something that can meet our needs as a race for fifty or a hundred generations hence? When I was in Bangladesh once I asked a gentleman while standing in his patch of rice: “You have so much food growing here. You must always have more than you could possible need?” He did not long to answer: “But brother, I do not have enough money to buy my own rice.” I was heartbroken. All of that food laying at his doorstep and he was beholden to the conglomerate that purchased all his rice and what did he have left? His family was starving, his kids struggled to learn, do you get it. Another time in Africa (Nigeria) I visited the largest grain distribution center in Sub-Saharan Africa. Large does not do this justice. It apparently covered close to ninety hectares, a huge operation. Piles and piles of fifty-pound sacks of beans and grains. Piles and piles of beans and grains loose on the ground like giant anthills. I was invited in to have tea with the director of the distribution plant. I asked why there was so much simply sitting there, piles and piles of food. He responded that it was not about feeding people, it was about market forces that were beyond his control, that in order to drive up the price of these foodstuffs that had been withheld from the marketplace, that it would not matter anyway because the locals could not afford it even when it was in the marketplace. I told him that there were so many hungry people to feed, so many starving families all over Africa. He started to cry, he actually balled his eyes out, and sadly acknowledged what he could not do. How would we respond?