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| <back | home Update on the For the Future Think Tank in Santa Barbara by Sri Subramanian When oil peaks, how will the city of Santa Barbara deal with the crucial issue of food? That was the topic of discussion during an event on Tuesday, Feb 8, organized by For The Future’s Sustainable Small Cities project in conjunction with Santa Barbara Organic Garden Club. The event was well-attended with 27 members of the public excluding the organizers. Richard Bruce Anderson, founder of For the Future, spoke about the growing evidence for the coming oil peak, and the increasing dependence on fossil fuel of most of the food found in local grocery stores. For every calorie of store-bought food we eat, as much as 8 calories of fossil fuel was spent to produce it. He spoke also, about the example of Cuba, which was forced to cut its consumption of easily-available subsidized oil from the Soviet Union by half within a year when the Soviet Union collapsed. Although the Cubans lost body weight, they coped by converting to organic agriculture. Linda Buzzell-Saltzman introduced For the Future’s Sustainable Cities project and the 17 sectors that need to be addressed in order for Santa Barbara to be sustainable. The focus of this project is to organize circles around each of these sectors to discuss the steps that need to be taken. Linda invited people to sign-up for any of these circles if they were interested. Larry Saltzman, the main speaker, spoke about the need for relocalizing food, and his ideas of how to achieve this goal. He introduced his take on the food pyramid, with "home grown food from your garden or your neighbors" forming the base of the pyramid. Going up, the middle layer is "food from local organic farmers," with the peak of the pyramid being "imported organic food." He suggested that many Santa Barbara locals have great expertise in these areas, and if we could form a circle to dissuss strategies, and lobby local government, Santa Barbara could be easily sustainable for food. At the end there was a creative and constructive discussion with a lot of ideas proposed. Thirteen people have signed up so far to become a part of the food circle. Seven people have signed up to become a part of the circle around energy issues. More information about the Sustainable Cities Project as well as Larry’s food pyramid can be found at www.forthefuture.org. You can also send an email to us (from the website) to sign up for any of the circles around the 17 sectors. More such free events around the 17 sectors are being planned by For the Future. Sri Subramanian can be reached through the www.forthefuture.org website. "My father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son flies an airplane, his son will ride a camel." — Arabic saying . <back | top^ |