"Iceland is sitting on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which is an area where the plates on the surface of the Earth are being pushed apart by Magma that comes from the Earth's Mantle." "There are very very few places where a hot spot comes to the surface like in Iceland and by the way, Iceland floats in this situation, there's a very critical floatation of it so the whole natural existence of this country is unusual, highly unusual." "Well we are lucky to be situated on a volcanic island and as a result, the ground water is heated and that's where our geothermal power comes from and then we are also in the North Atlantic with plentiful rain which provides us with the hydropower" "The best place to be when we really hit the energy crisis is Iceland" "I was in office for 16 years, which is a very long time during my time in office I saw Iceland prosper from a very hard recession in the 1970's and beginning of the 1980's but some how we recovered from that recession," "but with the privatisation of the banks around the turn of the century some how the Icelanders started to forget their past, people who forget their past have difficulty in tackling the present, not to mention the future" "A whole new value system needs to be created and the greed that has lead us to here needs to stop because otherwise we don't have a hope, for the future" "and there's a tremendous resistance in the system." "People like to do what they are comfortable with and they know how to do, but I think I am seeing a culture of change." "There are some people that want to change the way they live and operate some people talk about the global shift that the mind shift globally is changing" "This concerns two contracts one with Hafnarfjordur and one with Magma Energy, Sweden" "You must be proud to sell off the last assets that we have" "Traitors!" "You weaklings!" "We became a part of this huge international banking bubble where this big mass of invisible money became reality but of course it is greed and of course you never get enough and people were breaking the rules." "It was very macho, masculine driven it was a huge giant erection really" "It was not for sissies." "The women they were all in the back papers, they were not in the front." "These were young guys and they were the coolest guys in Iceland really." "In retrospect they were mad and greedy because they lost the money but if they had not lost the money they would just be successful businessmen" "Well Jon, How would you like it if we had to move?" "If we move to Thailand, I don't know, it would be very hard" "Maybe I'll miss the snow, then I won't be able to go to the Mountains and go snowboarding" "There's enough seaweed for my seaweed bath" "We are now in my home where I both have my business and where I live." "It was first just one house and I wanted to live in part of it and wanted to have a restaurant in the other part of it but when I told most of my friends that, they would usually shake their head and say no, no, no, no" "now you are losing the last thing that you have because this is an awful place and you will never get customers there but that appears to be wrong." "and now I make the old house a restaurant," "I have a home restaurant" "My wife is from Thailand and we have Thai food we take just one group in the evening minimum 6 people and maximum 40" "I built another house next to it, where I have a Spa, a Thai Spa with massage, herbal sauna, seaweed bath and hot tub" "Two years ago I built the house that I live in" "I made a traditional turf house, I could see my dream come true, the ideas that I want to make, I make everything myself" "If the economic crisis had not happened then everything would have worked out" "I have been trying to sell my home and business and I have put it on EBay in Iceland but the market is totally frozen" "I am very very proud of what I have been doing no matter, even if I lose it or if the bank takes it" "I will still be proud of it and if I drive past it and say, 'ah this I made' even if somebody else owns it or lives in it, that's no problem" "The World has been led by people educated in some of the best Universities in the World." "This has lead me to be quite certain that the education that we are giving people is not good enough." "I have spent 10 years trying to figure out why people do not want to face the environmental crisis that we are in." "to be quite frank, if you look here behind me where you can see some of my sustainability books they are not written by Academics." "The thinking behind sustainability and sustainable development, does not come from the Academic sector, except for a very small degree." "The thinking comes from visionary thinkers that are actually leading the debate and the development of ideas." "We have the power and the knowledge to change things but we are not making very good progress and I think there are various issues involved." "There are the stakeholders who want status quo because they are making money on it." "The policy makers who have no understanding of Science and the Scientists who are not very good at communicating their Science to the Policy Makers and this is where we really need to move fast to get people together." "I like us Icelanders to act local but think global" "Iceland has been missing a clear vision for what we like to stand for and how we see ourselves in the World" "Just making new Smelters, for export of Aluminium is very easy and that's why I feel it is very important for Icelanders to gather and get an agreement about what we like to stand for." "The Ministry of Ideas is partly funded by two of the Universities here in Iceland within that facility apart from the Ministry of Ideas, we have several start up companies that work like a single company in terms of exchanging ideas and helping different companies" "to get connected with different people within the community and the business community." "The goal is to generate 50 new companies in Iceland." "This Ministry can be looked at as the heartbeat of the grassroots when it comes to innovation and change in Iceland" "We have a vision that we can plan this and we can kind of visualise what we like Iceland to be in 20 years or 50 years without the involvement of big corporations or political parties then when we go for voting we can vote for politicians" "that we feel, as people in the country that are best fitted to fulfil this vision" "We had the collapse" "I think it is good because now we are in the ruins and we can learn from it we can build up a new society a new environment and a new thinking" "Iceland has huge opportunities because we have these resources and we can become perhaps the first nation to have all our cars and all our ships powered by sustainable power clean power." "Well, at the moment we are transporting food primarily by aeroplane and the days of this being possible are coming towards an end not only because we could have a big eruption that could stop flights in the Northern Hemisphere for perhaps 2-3 years" "but we will also be hampered by the fact that we are using up oil at a very fast rate, so we will not be able to transport food around the World in aeroplanes for much longer." "The age of cheap flights I'm afraid is about to come to an end." "I think it is very important to be able to go out into the countryside and see how food grows where things are really made." "They don't grow in the supermarkets they grow in the soil." "That's one thing that has been happening in Iceland now that we have been making local groups in all parts of Iceland like the Slow Food idea to eat locally, eat seasonal it's going to save a lot of energy and it's going to reduce the pollution" "caused by all this transport." "It is also ok to break the leaves off on the field, if you feel like it's easier, they will just compost on the field, it's ok." "At least in the beginning people saw me as a really strange guy and still people are saying 'Why don't you use chemical fertiliser?" "'" "But, for me to do Organic it's no way back when you see the soil, when you see what you are growing when you taste it, when you taste how much sweeter and better it is, there's no way back." "This is the natural way to do it." "of course, I sometimes think why am I doing all of this job?" "I'm not getting any money, I'm just getting tired of all of this work." "It's something about the soil it's something about Mother Earth that keeps me going" "After starting organic, it was potatoes in the beginning and then came white cabbage and turnips and slowly more and more like lettuce and leek, parsley and some how I got this idea to start growing barley and that's where it started" "to give people a taste of 'Gabriel's Breakfast' Barleyotto, Barley Bread.." "and what I've heard is that the Barley that I grow organic in Iceland tastes better than Barley in other countries." "I can lead the market, yes." "Are you nervous with me looking over your shoulders?" "No, not at all." "You're doing great" "You're working so fast that the machine can't keep up" "Since 2001 I've had volunteers, they come through WWOOF, it means" "Willing Workers on Organic Farms." "It's just young people from all around the World that want to help to build up organic farming." "I used to say it's like organic growing of connections, connections between different countries, so they are making friends here and connecting the World in a positive way and helping me a lot" "Part of my reason for coming here at this time is what is going on with the crisis, to understand what's really happening and to design systems from there that are actually going to create resiliency within our systems and within our people." "So, when something really major happens we are ready;" "we are ready to feed ourselves as best we can, we are ready to meet at the gate whatever giant is there." "I am certain that we have enough geothermal heat to power our greenhouses" "We are importing 70% of our vegetables and 99% of our fruit and in greenhouses we can grow both" "At the moment, the new power plant at Hellisheidi spews 90% of the energy into the atmosphere, which is mad we could have set up greenhouses up there to use the energy to produce food." "We just need to put our mind to it." "And I think Icelandic people they like new trends so once it catches on they will take it and run with it." "We are very into that we should eat locally but think globally." "When we started here a friend of mine he asked me if I was going to waste my life growing tomatoes but this is what I've been doing for the past 19 years growing tomatoes mainly." "and I think that it has gone very well and I think that we have reached the state where we have shown that organic is possible and what is interesting us very much now is going into tropical fruits and we have been learning about this and visiting places" "in Europe, they are also fish farming within these greenhouses so they are using the water from the fish farms to water the plants and the water is very nutritious so it is giving food to the plants and then at these places that we have been visiting" "they are growing fish that can eat green so it is a very sustainable system" "And this is something that we are very interested to bring into Iceland to grow tropical fruits with this sustainable system, with fish farming" "We see it that this pilot project here in Iceland would be showing that this is possible and then we could expand it elsewhere and using this left over energy that we have all over Iceland." "We are a part of nature and we are a part of a bigger village with 7 billion people and as this village has a challenge" "I truly we believe that we can help out and" "If you look at the reason why there is war it is very much about natural resources like oil, even water and this is what we have plenty of meaning energy and all the natural resources." "I think that these resources could be utilised here in Iceland to prototype sustainable solutions in terms of how to consume transportation in a new way" "I think this gives Iceland a fantastic opportunity." "It means that there will be a lot of new start up companies that will test different methods many companies will fail others will succeed if we can just tackle this part in the global village we are actually helping the planet because we only have one planet." "The role of Iceland with the development of new concepts in automobiles is going to be very important." "I think there, exactly there Iceland can be a platform for testing new technologies" "In a small country like ours we can go beyond the critical mass we can develop faster I think and again here Iceland is an ideal testing platform, plus that I would like to see us develop corporations that are linked to the development era and that some" "of the value added is left in Iceland." "Well obviously, Iceland has a lot of expertise in renewable energy science" "We know that about 80% of our primary energy is currently coming from renewable energy sources and essentially 100% of electricity generation or production is from renewable energy sources" "Iceland has a lot to offer other countries." "There's a very good lesson to be learnt here" "How did Iceland manage to reach this far in terms of renewable energy use" "Still today we are at the forefront of this type of education in the world" "but the school was always intended to be International and as such pull students from different countries and educate them and train them and then send them back to their home countries to act as this catalyst of change or hope" "to concentrate on moving out of the oil era, into the renewable energy area." "Iceland as an example was 100 years ago dependant on peat and things like that no real natural resources and then they were kind of stuck in that sense but they have abundant geothermal and hydropower and that really has kind of freed them" "in that sense from this dependency that I think a lot of countries are really stuck with." "But even such a trivial thing as getting richer we should look at renewables as a new source of a good business this can speed up the process putting aside all of the important things like fossil fuels running out or the global warming, why not money?" "That's also a good starting point for investing in renewables." "Money is Green Yay!" "Imagine a leaf of a plant it receives energy from the Sun and it converts this energy into material called hydrocarbons and other things and this is a very good example of renewable energy." "A great challenge in Iceland and the main thing now is some how to try to involve this new energy into producing fuels and I think the next decade in Iceland we'll see the new renewable fuels appearing." "I sometimes say that anything is possible this is why I'm trying to cultivate roses in an Arctic climate." "You can just see here, anything is possible if you were here in January with the snow covering this area you wouldn't believe it but if you have the will to do it some knowledge is needed success is guaranteed" "The most exciting thing for us as a Ministry is the New Curriculum because we have a new law on Primary Schools and Kindergartens and on Secondary Schools and now we're wondering what to do when we have a crisis, do we just want to keep on going" "in the same direction?" "Or, do we want to do something new?" "So, I think we're going to see a bit of a new emphasis, new things in this New Curriculum more emphasis on the ideology of sustainable development more focus on gender equality and general equality and also more emphasis on democracy" "and critical thinking and I think a lot of people have been thinking about that, that we haven't been critical enough and then I mean critical in a positive manner, just to look at things critically." "I think maybe these three things would be new in the curriculum because obviously the curriculum is a much wider project you have to learn all of the old things but I think there would be a new emphasis on that" "I think changing through education is very effective because children bring what they are discussing at school, home and then make sure that their parents comply" "Changing the older generation particularly those where the children are gone or even the retired population maybe more difficult but at least the older ones remember the days of enoughness and where the standard of living was different and perhaps they also remember" "that they weren't any unhappier then." "I think the core of sustainability is to be happy with what you have and find the point where enough is enough" "We as human beings we keep saying well we could have done something different but we can't do anything different, it's already what we have done and it's cause and effect" "We do something now, today and we are determining to some degree some parts of our destiny." "What we can do is we can clean up and take responsibility immediately for what we have broken or what we have failed to succeed at and I believe that in a collective system then you have a lot of posts and a lot of signs and a lot of warnings" "and if people are conscious they detect them and act accordingly but when the whole process of society is unconscious, absent, distracted then those signs are not to be seen or heard." "My most difficult time that is when it is the question can I fix it or should I let it go?" "Or, is there something that" "I don't see that I can do?" "And when you have the rope around your neck and all the time you always make it longer to give you more chance you see ok it is finished but then you get a little chance again but then you break down again and then up again" "that is my most difficult time when I really see the last bus stop where I can get off that has been for the whole of last year, very difficult because about three times" "I have had some chance but really no chance." "It is like when you are in the gym or somewhere when you finish a lift up you have to do one more but all the time one more when you have finished this one more you burn out in the end." "There were only two loans in the Icelandic market at the time when I took this loan I could have taken a loan in indexed to inflation or in foreign currency." "I borrowed about 70 million kronur 5-6 years ago." "The bank recommended the foreign currency loan" "I have paid the bank back about 30 millions since then but now I owe about 135 million and it's still rising and rising and rising." "It was about 5 million every month and no matter how you calculate on your fingers it doesn't add up and it will still be rising and it will be faster and faster and faster, probably by next" "Happy New Year it could be maybe 160 or 170 million." "Even though it's not fair to not pay, it's not fair to not take care of the family." "Take care of the bank What?" "You can put a box around this after" "I think this is the feeling of many people in Iceland now." "Every week I'm meeting some people who are in the same situation and have stopped paying the bank." "I'm afraid that we will be hitting some real tipping points in the next 10 or 20 years and therefore we need to look at what we need to change" "the Western civilisations need to cut their consumption." "We throw away 99% of the stuff we buy within 6 months and now that we are running out of metals and materials we need to make all of our gadgets we need to learn to make things that are" "more durable and we can repair" "I think a lot of re-skilling is necessary, so we learn to grow our own food and repair things and make our own clothes and so on." "It's impossible for the economy to keep growing and growing and growing because it's growing on Earth's resources which are running out" "I want to, for my own children's sake, I want to be able to say the crisis will strengthen us." "It will be difficult for some time but the crisis will strengthen us." "we will see many new things appear now as if a crisis is the ideal soil for new things to happen" "That's the positive thing about the crisis that we are seeing so many interesting ideas emerge there are new people on the scene there are new pathways of thinking and this is something that is very positive about the crisis" "that we should not overlook." "It's very important that the crisis has taught us a new way of thinking" "The power station was built in the 1940s when there was a power shortage in Iceland and we needed energy and it's a coal fired plant, it was before we had more geothermal into our heating and electricity grid." "So this house has been abandoned for almost 20 years and there was money to demolish it already in the budget of the City of Reykjavik but I think they wanted to use the money for something more productive so it would not be demolished and they gave us" "the keys to the house for 3 years." "Hi, I'm Gudrun Hi, I'm Hulda" "Well the idea of Toppstodin basically came over a cup of coffee whilst discussing the crisis and the situation in Iceland which we could already then see would impact our two sectors incredibly the building sector, the architects, workers, builders, so forth" "so we started discussing what could be done" "We have often talked about the fact that designers and the craftsmen they don't seem to interact enough, the schools are completely separate." "The best projects are when people work together, trying to find the solution and the practical knowledge and the design knowledge and the vision goes hand in hand so we started talking about how perfect it would be to create a place" "that people who are without projects could come together and bring their ideas and make something new" "We have already harnessed as much of the natural resources as we can" "We have 5 times more energy than a nation of 300,000 people really needs." "We are to the extreme in all of the fisheries so the only thing that we have to focus on are the human resources, the skills that we have and ways to communicate them, so for example the designers and the architects, they are not going to build a house" "for the next 5 years at least, our carpenters and our skilled workers they're not going to build a house either for the next 5 years." "These groups have to re-invent themselves make smaller things make different things." "If nothing else would come out of this power station except new relationships and activities within the people, that is just quite enough" "It's really important to have a building like the power station for start-ups to come into because you can put in a lot of work and pay less rent, so you can get a larger space for less money," "but you have to work on it for weeks or months to get it in good condition but it's also just important to have the dynamic of the house and the knowledge different types of people with different types of knowledge coming together" "I don't think of it as a big project we cannot expect miracles to be happening here all of the time so we have to think small to make this big" "Everybody says that the old values are coming back, but it will take time we are going back to memory I think and going back to memory gives us a new set of values" "It has been so unfashionable and negative words since the Nazism to have a national feeling but that is the only thing that can help us believing in the country and believing in the people" "To collect the leaves we use gloves, it's because we don't want to mix our energy too much into the leaves because the leaves are going into oil and it's going to turn into massage oil later" "so what we do is..." "you put the bags like this on your belly so you are going to be like kangaroos and you only take the green leaves because of the worm in the trees down here, we have to go as high as possible to get the greenest" "and the most beautiful leaves" "Our economic system is really bad and it doesn't work out" "It's all based on credit, it's all based on debt and there's no getting out of debt when debt is based on interest." "It is all the support for more invisible numbers moving around making people wealthy some people wealthy and some people more in debt most people more in debt." "I hope Iceland will survive the financial crisis" "How to say no, that's what I think, how to say no to big corporate banking, special interests how to rip up those contracts and say this is unfair, it's not really what we want" "so we need to start over" "What are the people prepared to do." "I feel very bad when I am a consumer and I don't know where it is from" "I don't need to consume, I just need to live, to breathe and eat and enjoy the life, the real life" "I think we can't just close our eyes today, we really need to open our eyes and look at what is happening around us." "But I can understand why people just want to have an easy life and don't want to have to think about the world" "I think if everything is on a smaller scale we'll have more of a sense of community, people won't be driving their cars everywhere and just in their own box their own bubble, their own comforts." "I think just a slower way of life would be good for everyone, everyone is so stressed in the world today and I think farming is a great way to relieve stress you're growing your own food I mean it's so satisfying to eat your own food" "that you've grown from the seed." "It's just a better way of life than what we're living right now" "I welcome you to the Ministry of Ideas Meeting" "We're driven by a certain vision for the future of how we want Iceland to develop in the future and one of our biggest projects is... the National Assembly Meeting which is the national conference that we will have in November" "If we look at history, we can see that crisis is very much the mother of innovation" "I think that the current state of the economy is going to give us new ways of thinking, and new innovations and I think that it will give Iceland a fantastic opportunity and it could give us a strong role as a member of the global village" "It's a Meeting where people of Iceland meet it's about 1,500 people, it's half a percent of the nation and that gives us the view of the nation." "It's basically like a vision planning session at some companies like Google or Nokia, we are integrating that with what we can learn from vision planning for a whole nation vision planning for a whole nation is more focussed on our core values" "rather than individual action items." "This is not being managed by any single individuals or groups, it's a cooperation between all of the grassroots organisations it involves the Government and different specialists and everything is voluntary work." "The main role of a politician is to listen to all NGO's and the general public and to try to ignite people to put forward their opinions." "I think that's really one of the main roles of a politician to try to have some kind of a dialogue because the history shows us that the people in power tend to grow a bit the same." "I think that's the role of the nation, they must take care of that that the politicians will stay alert and keep on working" "People usually think about sustainability as only being about nature protection and protecting the environment but that's only one dimension what is also important is to think about the economic issues that are related and that we don't over exploit or destroy nature in our economic activity" "as well as the societal issues of creating an infrastructure to support our people in terms of having a Government with honest politicians that would be nice, wouldn't it?" "having good schools and hospital systems and then the fourth dimension is the well being of individuals so that people feel good within their society and are perhaps happy even." "Maybe we can become a world leader if we use our opportunities we have green energy, we have opportunities to make our transport system for example environmentally friendly by using greener energy we have the electricity from the waterfalls etc... then we have this land we have great nature reserves" "that we can really use by preserving them." "I think actually, we have the biggest unspoilt land area in Europe so that's of course a great treasure for us in using our green energy and using this nature that we have and also in implementing this ideology" "and how we run things, other things as well" "The main issue is that we have to use the green ideology when doing everything else because it doesn't work without that so, you can't just say now I'm going to do a bit of economics and then I'm going to organise the school system" "and then we can think about the green issues, you have to have the green issues here all the time" "I think our economic system has not been run in a sustainable manner so I think we need to use the ideology of sustainable development both when we think about the environment but also when we think about the social issues" "and how we want to run our economic life" "We can and it's actually my ambition to make Iceland a sustainable island we used to live sustainably on this island well not quite sustainably because we cut down our forests so we weren't very smart about it initially, but I sense we are now aware" "of the danger of soil erosion we can evade that and this is what we need to do because we won't be able to import all of this food from abroad we need to go towards the culture of enough" "I think the best thing is to work with your local community get like minded people in your street or in your close environment and start having coffee at home and discussing things and then take it from there" "The balance of power in the World is changing there are huge debts on the Governments that are printing money and somebody else has to pay the debts" "But this has always been the case the Roman Empire lasted for what can we say, 400 years something like that" "100 years BC and 300 After as an Empire, that was a long Empire time the 1000 year Reich lasted from 1933 to 1945, 12 years and the British Empire lasted well 100 years almost" "We of the West we have La Dolce Vita don't we, we complain bitterly, but we consume and we rule, conquer and rule, divide and rule, but the people of the World the Third World" "share suffering" "Unbelievable, unbelievable" "Is it the same letters every month?" "Yes, most of them a long time ago I stopped looking at them and just put them in my folder" "I see the number, this is about that and ok, I don't read it any more" "I cannot do anything, I tried to do everything that was possible like in the first steps of it I tried to make a deal with them and tell them what I can do what I can pay and it looks like they weren't listening and say they have to check it out" "but then I never heard from them again and now one and a half years has passed and they are still in the same steps nothing is going on and now business has been going down and I'm just letting it die easy let the business die" "I can build it up, but that is for nothing because" "I don't know after half a year where I will stay or where I'll be" "This is my Peace Globe about one year ago I made it when the anger started to arrive here in Iceland." "I wanted to make some symbol of my dreams, my thinking" "I put all of the religious symbols around the globe and then" "I wrote around it peace and harmony can be in all of the world, you just have to make one person peaceful, yourself." "People can come and put their peace wish inside and then they ask their God, their High or Mighty no matter what their name is to help them to let their dream come true or their wish come true and when the rain comes it will rain inside the Globe" "and it will melt the ink and the ink will go into the root of the tree and into Mother Nature" "Even though it is bad to say it it is the best thing that could happen to the soul of Iceland because we had totally lost ourselves in greed and forgot what really matters in life my chicken he agreed with me" "I would like to see an Iceland where the intellectual capacity and knowledge is used and we're already using it of course knowledge is the key to everything and fortunately we live in a country where everybody can read and I would really hope that" "my beloved countrymen use this capacity this reading capacity to increase their knowledge and understanding of where they are, their values that can best satisfy us and we have to take care of that body which is our country it has been given to us to take care of it has been handed down to us" "by our forefathers to take care of and I wish that my countrymen could see that" "The human intelligence is so great that I don't believe that it's impossible to find other ways than to build aluminium factories all around the country" "It's obvious that this is not the solution this is our problem it is our greatest problem today that we will destroy nature that is invaluable for mankind and our descendants" "We are on the tipping point exactly now, things can roll very fast downhill if we want it to go downhill." "It's a time to be very socially active and participate in these brainstorms and really question if we want to take another cycle on the old system" "I would like to see things like the Ministry of Ideas and then this National Assembly that will be created, to be looked at as points where we really did decide to go to another direction" "You need to have different people to share different experiences there is plenty of space for everyone to get involved." "If the passion is there anything is possible" "That will move mountains" "For our future democracy, I think there are big opportunities in crowd sourced democracy and I think that the wisdom of the crowd needs to be used, in terms of decision-making." "Wow, is all I can say It's all coming together" "I welcome you all." "What we will be doing here today is probably a unique event." "In the beginning we are discussing our core values, what makes us as Icelanders and these values will make up the foundation for the work of the day in the next phase for this session, we will go into the discussion on our future vision" "of what Iceland wants to stand for and how we see the country in the future." "All of that work will be based on the values, the core values." "This today, is like a sern of political science or social science we are gathering half a percent of the Icelandic Nation randomly chosen more or less and it's a huge social experiment so I imagine that the world can take away from here an enormous" "wealth of information about how such things develop" "Well, something that I've discovered on this trip is that I really don't need much" "I mean half the stuff I brought here I don't even need." "When I get back to the States I don't think I will be able to live as simply just because of the profession that I'm going into I'm going to have to use a computer and things like that" "I haven't turned on my phone since I've been here" "I've listened to my iPod maybe twice" "I don't know, everything technological is so artificial" "It's just nice to have real things all of the time that's definitely something I'm going to try and put back into my life when I get home" "Well, yes of course I've got used to it but it's always hard because they become close friends many of them and it's hard to see them leave of course and many of them really want to stay longer but they have to go because of school" "or something else and I have to accept that." "We need to develop sustainable communities across the World" "Iceland could be a model for that and then in larger cities you would form many centres of sustainability which would be referred to as a polycentric city and each part of the city would then produce their own energy produce their own food" "take care of the education and produce employment for the people who live there all of this travel and commuting would not be necessary any more" "I think this is a reality that has to happen we are running out of resources with now 7 billion people on the planet and predicted to go up to 9 by 2050 we can't go on the way we are going, we have to find a new way of living" "we can do it I'm certain"