Byron Ballina Greens -> articles -> pathways

Mayor opens Pathways to Low Carbon Future Forum in Byron Bay

Byron Shire Mayor Jan Barham opened The Pathways to a Low Carbon Future forum on Thursday night . Speakers included Giovanni Ebono, Dr. Sally McKinnon and Tim Winton.

Giovanni Ebono addressed the issues of how to achieve a low carbon future.  He said that apart from the technical issues of reducing energy consumption water use, etc. we must work out how we can achieve this. It is more of a social issue than a technical one. There are two groups of challenges to deal with.


The first group of issues are the really gig ones such as,  climate change, globalisation of the economy, militarisation of geo-politics. These are really big problems and we often feel  helpless in affecting them, but they depend on us. For example; if we disengage from the global economy by starting to grow our own food, buying local,  and growing community gardens,  we start to disempower the Globalisation of the economy.

The second group of issues is how we interact with one another in our communities and come to agree on goals and  ideas amongst our selves. This can sometimes be the hardest. It is easy to waste energy fighting among ourselves. Tonight we will explore pathways of how these goals can come about.

Dr. Sally M^cKinnon talked about the The Ethos foundation, and the Beechmont community. The Ethos Foundation is non-profit,  self-sustaining, and  enterprise based. Activities  include; Transformational Learning, (bringing diverse groups together in workshops and activities), sponsoring young people to attend the activities, and interacting with local government on community and environmental projects. They are also creating a bio-regional campus in the local Beechmont community, working with The Permaforest Trust, on post carbon activities and community gardens.

Tim Winton, founder of the Permaforest Trust, said that in their community near the Channon they have been living the Permaforest Principals, eg low enegy use, growing their own food, community, minimal car use etc. He said their experience shows that when we use less, we have to share more, which means we have to talk to somebody and interact with the community!

At this time on the planet with dwindling resources and expanding population and consumption, we have two choices.

1: The right-hand path of a creative and integrated world; creatively working our way out of the problem, positive community interaction, learning to make use of less.

2: The left-hand path of  fighting over what is left. Obviously bad, and of course the fighting uses up /destroys even more resources into the bargain.

He stressed that it could be hard to counter the voices of the left-hand path, but it is most important to counter them.

See Mayor's Reports