Gary Redmond: Sustainability is Everything

Whenever I record an interview for the podcast, it seems there is always something the person I'm talking to says either just before or just after the conversation that I wish had been part of the actual interview. Sometimes I manage to get it recorded and edit it into the interview anyway, but other times I find myself talking with someone after the recorder has been turned off and then scrambling to hit record again because they've continued to say something special.

That's exactly what happened when I interviewed Gary Redmond for our recent podcast. After we had finished the interview and was preparing to pack up, Gary continued sharing thoughts on some of the bigger challenges we are facing and I managed to catch the best part of what he said. Here's a transcribed version for you:

GARY: ...For a long time, I always thought that human intelligence was this evolutionary dead end, that it really wasn’t working because of what we produced on this Earth, you know? And it seemed like, okay, I think we would have been better off if we didn’t have those choices... and then just a couple, few years ago I realized Oh, I’m not looking at it as a process, I’m looking at it as an endpoint of where we were. You know, the fact of the matter is... intelligence is a process that, once we developed a consciousness and an awareness of ourselves, and we had choices, it’s obvious you’re gonna make BAD choices, you know? And so we have this learning curve to go through... we’d gone to one extreme to where we’d made all these bad choices, we’d made all these decisions, and we’re seeing the results of them right now. And now what we have to do is start making coherent choices, making choices that are sustainable, that have a longer vision... And every decision that you make should be based on that concept of “Does this make sense in the bigger realm of things?”

DAVE: And what you just said, you didn’t even really use any words specific to food -- you could have been talking about the economy as well.

GARY: That’s just it, yeah! It’s... it’s everything. It’s not just food. But the agriculture is such a basic part of it because agriculture, local foods, IS economic, it IS about energy, it IS about the environment, it IS about nutrition, it’s all those things that we’re having problems with and it all can be solved by basically returning to or reinventing a local economy that’s based on sustainability.

You can listen to an MP3 version of the recording here (or right click to download and save).

I hope you find what Gary Redmond has to say inspiring and thoughtful. If you haven't already, listen to our full interview with Gary in Episode 42 of the podcast, and check out the Regional Access website: www.RegionalAccess.net to learn more about his work.

--Dave