*Nicole Foss and Laurence Boomert Lecture: Revitalized Communities as the Pathway to Facing Approaching Limits and Building a New Society

We are approaching many limits to growth over the next several decades, and are consequently facing many challenges in our immediate future. Finance, energy, environment, resources and climate will all impact on the single-minded, one-dimensional trajectory human society has been taking in our era of growth imperative. Our current path is unsustainable. It cannot and will not continue, so we must adapt our societies in order to build a new future.

The first challenge is being presented by the on-going global financial crisis, which is far closer to its beginning than it end. Recent events in Europe, particularly in Cyprus, represent a major wake up call that financial crisis is about to resume in earnest. We must therefore anticipate and navigate a period of rapid contraction, while also planning to restructure our societies from the bottom up, so that our recovery can rest on a solid foundation. That foundation requires the resurgence of resilient communities and the development of true human capacity.

Nicole will paint a comprehensive picture of where we stand today globally, how our human operating system functions, how and why it is acutely vulnerable, and what we must do about the predicament in which we find ourselves. The focus will be primarily financial and social, reflecting the priority of impacts likely to be felt in the relatively short term. She will conduct a world tour, using different countries as illustrations of different points in a cycle of economic and societal expansion and contraction, setting New Zealand in up-to-date global context. She will highlight the critical factors for change and outline the possibilities that exist within the scope of the emerging reality.

Laurence will explain how our current crisis reflects an unprecedented opportunity to create a better future. We are presented with the most expansive cultural possibilities in human history, and the power to deliver positive change rests with an increasingly empowered global grass roots. Laurence will present a wide range of working examples of how neighbourhoods and wider communities have woken up to their power to create a smarter, kinder world, using a myriad of both sophisticated and simple social innovations, along with super networked, yet decentralized, systems for meeting human need.

Humanity stands on the edge of a precipice, and where we go from here is in our own hands. Nicole and Laurence believe that there is both considerable danger and tremendous potential to address a challenging situation constructively. We are the first generation with the ability to learn and apply the lessons of history. This is an unprecedented opportunity we simply cannot afford to waste.

Part of the Sustenance Festival and an allied event of Living the New Economy.

By donation.