Dudley Leggett – Director of Sustainability Research Institute, Suffolk Park
Phillip Frazer’s article, (Echo 6 January) is an excellent summary of our global predicament, and a powerful call for action. He writes of the ‘lots of smart and imaginative people’ in this Shire and asks, ‘How about we gather all our Shire’s assets and turn this place into the Save our Species Shire?’.
Many of us have, for years, seen the possibility of this region becoming a living model, an outstandingly successful example of 21st century responsible living. This is something that is achievable today as never before, with the rapid rate of technological innovation and the new sciences, along with the growing understanding that it is Nature that can best guide the purpose and design of life-regenerating technologies.
There are already a number of initiatives being undertaken, but there is a long way to go if we are to move and guide others; we must do much more than just respond to growing threats to humanity’s wellbeing as we need to reassure the majority of the world’s suffering population that a just new world is yet possible.
Letting monetisation control human ingenuity’s technological productivity is taking us towards a runaway entropic extinction process. We must tackle this life-threatening commercial/money-controlling culture and demonstrate a better way. We daren’t wait for that obsolete, but still dominant culture, to completely implode on itself.
As Frazer admonishes, it’s time for our extraordinary community to rise to the occasion, for our own and our children’s sake. Few places on Earth are so able to make a difference. I for one, am up for having a go, let’s set up a ‘think tank’ to formulate a viable strategy.