Sustainability and enthusiasm
On Jun 23, more than 2000 people paid $10 to attend the 12th Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver: Walk the Talk Green Your City at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Pecha Kucha Night involves multiple speakers presenting very short talks that consist of 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each. This high attendance figure is surely evidence of the strong interest that Vancouverites have in sustainability issues. What was striking for me attending that evening was the degree of passion exhibited by my twelve fellow speakers, and the corresponding enthusiasm in the audience. It was very heartening to see sustainability issues presented in terms of opportunity, creativity, innovation and fun.
This experience made me reflect on the degree to which sustainability is often presented in the mainstream media in very different terms: as a painful and expensive moral duty, or as the unrealistic and ideologically charged dreams of a small group of committed environmentalists.
The difference between these two approaches is stark. We need to find more powerful ways of recognizing and fostering the creative energy and enthusiasm of those actually implementing sustainable solutions in our communities. My fellow Pecha Kucha speakers, and the other examples illustrated during that evening, made it clear that there is a lot of raw material for such an approach.