McKibben is not into histrionics. Speaking in a gently authoritative monotone, he peppers his talk with plenty of facts, figures and anecdotes. The author of numerous books from The End of Nature to his most recent, Eaarth (the spelling changed to drive home the point that our planet just isn’t the same any more), McKibben believes that our planet has been permanently altered. The problem is that there are a lot of people out there who just don’t get the point, or simply don’t want to hear it. McKibben says there are some problems we just won’t be able to fix. Therefore we have to change.
His message is not without hope. If adjustments are made and people motivated, he says, we can learn to cope. We just can’t just keep doing business as usual.
Speakers and panelists at “over 50 workshops, plenary gatherings and participatory strategizing sessions organized in ten theme areas” totaled about 138, 83 men and 55 women.
Among the notables on hand were some of the movement’s movers and shakers: Hazel Henderson, Susan Witt, James Gustave Speth, John Fullerton, Will Rapp, David Broncaccio and Bard College’s Eban Goodstein. There were speakers from the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), Capital Institute, The Green Energy Coalition, Evergreen Cooperatives, Berkshares, Inc., the Transition Network, the nations of Cuba and Ecuador and, of course, 350.org, among many others.
In the Olin Hall atrium, a computer and large screen displayed an interactive map that garnered attention and enthusiasm. The map project, an initiative of the NEI’s Stakeholders Forum, the New Economics Foundation and the Green Economy Coalition, was created to promote “The Global Transition to a New Economy” by “mapping a green and fair world.” Participants were urged to add information about organizations and projects to the map. You can find it at https://www.gtne.org/.
Susan Witt, interim executive director of the NEI until Bob Massie came on board only 10 weeks ago, was honored on Friday evening. She helped to found the E.F. Schumacher Society in 1980, and has worked hard to implement Schumacher’s economic ideas in her home region of the Berkshires. In 2006, she co-founded Berkshares, Inc., a local currency program in her region that has enjoyed success. Included in her gift bag was a list of books. Her reading list, which will include additional suggested reading from her fans among the crowd, will be updated. She said she would be posting it on-line, at [email protected]. (Check out the conference’s main page, too).
Bob Massie’s address on the second day of conference had the ring and tone of a 12-step program exhortation. At times, Massie’s engaging speech took on an evangelical tone, replete with melodic oration, rising and falling punctuation. Responses of sighs or “yes” escaped the lips of the onlookers. His passion for his subject was self-evident.
Massie quoted Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments, that “all men and women are created equal,” and used it to emphasize his message. “The future can control us or we can control the future … ” and that we need to “Heed the voices that we are now a movement. We must plan as a movement; speak and act as a movement.”
