The speakers of the day all presented challenges along with their information and insight so any quick distillation requires listing them, if for no other purpose than reinforcing subconscious commitments.
Ramsay Taum
Transition to the new global economy will require adjusting our social outlook from ownership to stewardship. We must be focused on caring rather than carrying capacity. It was really refreshing to hear because I watched an Uwe Boll movie the night before called Rampage where the hero goes around shooting up his small town to reduce the population and steal money. Through the whole movie they kept playing media clips about overpopulation and environmental degradation as a way of making the hero seem more sympathetic, and to some degree it actually worked. I'm glad Ramsay opened it up like this because it's easy to fall into a trap of self-destructive thinking that allows us to entertain ideas like war, genocide, and mass starvation as being preferable to accepting personal responsibility.
Challenge: ask people 'Did you eat?' rather than 'How are you doing?' and making sure their real needs are met rather than staying on a disassociated intelectual level. The former is something we can actually do something about, and facilitates action.
Professor Williamson Chang
Besides blowing my mind with the Chief Justice Richardson beach access thing, he made some really great points about island law is vastly different from continental and how our legal system is based off concepts like Blackacre that make no sense in this kind of setting. Probably the most revolutionary concept of the day, and I joked with him about ending up on an FBI list for it, was a model to replace Hawaii's globalization-based legal structure with a combination of 3 legal systems. There would be the State Law for dealing with the continent, Sovereign National Law for island concerns, and the International Zone for working with everyone else. I'm not sure how many other people really understood how radical that idea is. It really would be much better for us, but i'm guessing all the military bases, internationally-based hotel developers, and HECO wouldn't be too keen on it.
Challenge: I don't remember anything he said that we can personally do. Maybe i'll email him and ask.
James Koshiba
His talk was high up there on the young person idealism scale, almost to the threshold where eyes start to roll and people start checking the clock, but he was armed with a big list of challenges as well as a way to affirm commitment and get advice through the Kanu Hawaii social networking site. I haven't signed up yet but it looks like a great site, especially the instructions on how to grow100lbs of potatoes in a 4 sq foot box.
Challenge; Make a statement to eat homegrown once a week, cut dependence on oil use by a 25%, eliminate disposables, and share these statements with people you know as well as the Kanu website.
gonna pass out now. will continue later.
