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Democracy
Fishbowl at the WISE
A unique public discussion format lead by the Greens to talk about climate change shows a lot of promisee
By Kevin Potvin
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A climate change forum hosted by the Green Party Wednesday April 16 at the venerable WISE Hall featured a new and promising format. Introduced as “the fishbowl” by host Andrea Reimer, the set-up involved five chairs arranged in a circle at the front of the room and occupied by the featured speakers who had earlier given brief talks to set the agenda for discussion. Then, as others in the audience felt compelled, they were encouraged to come up, eject someone from any of the five chairs, occupy it and wait a turn to pick up on the ongoing discussion. It took a while for people to get the idea and, as always, it’s difficult to get the first movers moving. But the format eventually came to work. There was a sense of a controlled, on-topic discussion involving more than questions to an expert and answers issuing therefrom, and there was a widely shared sense of responsibility to contribute. At one time, “Q and A” line-ups behind microphones in the aisles of a speaking hall were a novel idea. Witness how fast big lines form behind those mics now that everyone is familiar with that format of public discussion. The fishbowl format, a new innovation, will soon become familiar and whatever minor problems there were launching such a discussion last Wednesday will evaporate away. It’s a nice hybrid—there is still a focus, a front-of-room authority, to the circle of chairs, and at the same time, there is an equality between invited speakers and attending audience. The topic of discussion, by contrast, was not nearly as promising. Bill Reese, he of the ecological footprint idea from UBC, presented up-to-the-minute updates on the state of food: nation after nation closing their borders to exports of staples, market prices rapidly tripling, food riots all over the place, and rigid limitations to the capacity for food producers to respond. The Australian wheat crop, typically generating one of the largest export supplies, is a quarter of its usual volume this year due to climate-change induced drought. And oil, an integral ingredient to food production, is ten times more expensive than it was just a few years ago. Reese explained how the so-called “green revolution” of the 1970s, when global food production was rapidly increased nullifying the Malthusian prediction of billions starving to death, had almost nothing to do with new crop technologies or science, as is widely believed, but was almost all due to simple mechanization—the arrival of fossil-fuel burning machines on farms, particularly in India, where previously crops were sown and harvested by hand or animal. Mechanization, of course, is all about oil. Take away the oil, or double its price again, and the green revolution evaporates away like a mirage. Further compounding problems is the US decision to divert corn production from food exports to domestic ethanol production instead. As Reese points out, if all arable land in the US were converted to corn production for ethanol, the resulting fuel would still supply only a miniscule portion of the US driving market. What’s more, the energy required to grow corn and to produce ethanol from it is equal to or greater than the energy in the resulting fuel. And in the meantime, you’ve removed critical food from the supply chains. The even bigger worry, however, is the production of greenhouse gas emissions that have begun to noticeably raise global average temperatures. Canada is required to cut its overall production of greenhouse gasses by 80% to reach a fair and equitable target per capita for the whole world. Mike Carr, the able Green candidate for Vancouver East in the next federal election, and Betty Krawczyk, the admirable Work Less Party candidate for Mayor of Vancouver in November civic elections, both responded to Reese’s keynote talk with a range of ideas by which government might begin transforming behaviors at the civic, provincial and federal levels to start approaching that staggering but necessary 80% reduction in our use of fossil fuels. Current lone COPE city councilor David Cadman offered insights into various technologies that each, if adopted by a government intent on leading, would begin chipping away at our greenhouse gas emissions. Like those many small technological ideas, the forum at the WISE Hall is a small but necessary step in the required direction. A society that uses 20% of the fuel we use now is unimaginable, until someone starts to imagine it, that is. And that imagination can only be sparked in face-to-face discussions. These things are never thought up alone. And the format of the fishbowl seems a great new innovation for sparking the creative, open and equal discussion new ideas require. Once we all become more familiar with the technique, there might be some tangible results.
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