 When we talk about sustainability, there's an implication there that is present in the question, what is it that we want to sustain? Sustainability was coined as a term to be more palatable to the establishment. It seemed more scientific and less tree-huggy and less hippie to talk about sustainability and the need to have a world that we can continue to live in, that can be sustained, systems that can be sustained. But for me, it brings up the question, do we want to sustain the systems that we have? A lot of the discussion around climate and especially energy is basically taking for granted that it will serve human well-being to continue most of the systems that we have operating today that are highly energy dependent, our agricultural system, highly energy dependent. So if you assume that this is the only way to feed the world, then we're going to have to keep producing a lot of energy. If you assume that our medical system, highly energy dependent, is the best way to maintain human health, then we're going to have to continue to produce a lot of energy. If you assume that our current patterns of living, where everybody has their single family home and a big yard, is unchangeable and desirable, then we're going to have to produce a lot of energy. But I would like to question those assumptions. From the viewpoint not of, well, we've been too greedy, we've used more than our share, we're going to have to make do with less, but rather understanding that these have not really benefited us. And in a sense, we're going to have to make do with more by changing these systems, we're going to enhance our happiness, our joy, our well-being, our health. People are not happier in far flung McMansions in these vast suburban tracts where they have to drive everywhere for everything, where they don't have any friends within walking distance, where people are never outdoors. They're not happier in those settings than they are in you know, a traditional Italian village where there are old men playing chess or drinking coffee out on the street and street musicians and kids running around and everybody knows each other. Where would you like to live? We're not talking about a downgrade here. We're not talking about a lower quality of life when we build communities that don't require hour-long commutes, that don't require us to drive everywhere, where we have walkable cities and bikeable cities. This is not a downgrade. It is not a downgrade to grow some of your food in your garden. People do that for leisure. People feel like they don't have enough time, they would love to do that. It's not a downgrade to maintain our health with holistic practices, with herbal medicine, with nutrition, with all kinds of modalities that are outside the purview of technological medicine. We can be healthier that way. So really it comes back to the question of what kind of world do we want to live in? What kind of lives do we want to have? And to recognize that this is not working. It's not working for the poor especially, and it's not working for the rich either. Their suicide and depression rates are just as high as everybody else's. So when we approach people as environmentalists, it's really important to be able to authentically say, I'm doing this for you too. I want you to be happier. I don't want you to sacrifice. I'm not your enemy. The things that I'm asking you to sacrifice on some level, you don't even want them. They are compensations for what's missing in modern life. And if we can bring these back into modern life, point to a pathway toward the recovery of these things, then we don't need to talk so much about sacrificing our quality of life. It's true that we are using more than the earth can sustain, but to what purpose? These piles of plastic, these vast junkyards, these monstrous homes where people spend most of their time in the breakfast nook and not in the cavernous living room. What purpose do they serve? So maybe we need to just get more serious about living a good life and recognizing where a good life comes from, then naturally we come into harmony with the rest of life so that the rest of life can also live a good life. To believe that we need to sacrifice something important is to buy into the value system that holds those things to be important. And this transition is about a transition to a different value system. We hold other things valuable and no longer aspire to more and more more and more property, more and more money, more and more control over the world. Those things have not gotten us to anywhere worth being. I was in Brazil, in a favela, one of the poorest places in Brazil. And every, I was walking with a local guy there and on the street everybody was greeting him and everybody was greeting each other and there were kids running around, playing freely outdoors. And I said, man, in suburbia, in the United States, in most places, people do not know their neighbors. They look into, you can look into a house and you don't know what's going on there. You don't know who these people are. Nobody knows you. And he was like, yeah, it sucks, man. He was glad to live in the favela. And that's not to minimize or trivialize the poverty, the insecurity, the food insecurity, and the way that the people there are being exploited. But they also had access to a level of joy that I do not see very often in North America. Could we imagine a world in which we have food security and community?