Talk on Sustainability Leaves Few Stones Unturned

My talk the other day to the Santa Barbara Savvy Investors’ Club went very well.  As I told my wife when I pulled out of the driveway on my way, “It’s a room full of people who read a lot about sustainability.  If I can’t do well with this demographic, I’m in trouble.”

If there were to be a problem, it would occur from “preaching to the choir.”  After all, 45 minutes of a speaker’s telling you what you already know and believe can get a bit tiresome – which is why I tried to pepper it up with references to all kinds of things that aren’t normally found in talks on the subject: a bit of history, anthropology, cosmology, current events, political philosophy, and macroeconomics, as well as the physics and chemistry that form the myriad potential solutions to our woes.

I even broached the subject of religion, albeit cautiously. I recognize that this is going out on a limb, and I normally sidestep the issue altogether, but for some reason I felt compelled to make some sort of brief statement.  I said, “Those who believe that there is a loving God in heaven should believe that He calls upon us to act aggressively to protect the world He gave us.  I suppose it’s possible for one to think that an omniscient, omnipotent deity approves of our ignoring the threats to the survival of our planet’s life-forms (or, worse, actively exacerbating them) simply for our convenience or enrichment.  But that is, I think, inconsistent with the concept of a loving God.”

I thought that was at least an 8 or 9 on the “offensive-to-benign scale.”