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citizen entrepreneur who brings in the needed technology and financing for a distillery. The good offices that have
been supportive of the sweet sorghum initiative of ICRISAT are (a) in terms of policy – the local and national
governments of India, and (b) in terms of advocacy – the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR), of which ICRISAT is one of the 15 international centers under its wings. Since the growing of sweet sorghum
is labor-intensive, starting with the sowing of the seeds, this crop benefits more people by way of job creation. This
kind of sci-fi must be managed well, remembering that what sci-fi management needs is not a business model but
rather a development model. And since ethanol lowers the cost of energy for cars as well as lowers the threat of
global warming, the sci-fi mode for sweet sorghum distributes the benefits of science-citizen-finance collaboration
on a global scale, to the largest ecology of them all: Planet Earth.
Al Gore’s film is Our Film, as Planet Earth is Our Town. Thornton Wilder is quoted as saying about his play ‘Our
Town’ (PBS, pbs.org):
Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind – not in things,
not in ‘scenery.’ Moliere said that for the theatre all he needed
was a platform and a passion or two. The climax of this play
needs only five square feet of boarding and the passion to know
what life means to us.
We can say then that ‘global warming’ is merely scenery, so we
don’t have to present it to the citizens of Our Town. If we believe
that, we lack five square feet of understanding and the passion to
feel what life means to us, all of us together.
Now then, an inconvenient truth is that what the world needs now
is to go into not only a paradigm shift but a mode shift. The sci-fi
mode I have just described for the sweet sorghum initiative of
ICRISAT is so far a successful attempt to scale up science as to
become global, as in:
(a) pandemic, involving wide geographic areas within a country
(b) universal, involving applicability under varied conditions
(c) multi-sectoral, involving all sectors of society
(d) multi-national, involving international partners within a country
(e) total, involving production, processing, marketing, distribution
of benefits
(f) regional, involving formal groupings of countries in a
geographical setting
(g) worldwide, involving multiplier effects or ramifications throughout the world.
Al Gore’s Occidental initiative is
global warning; William Dar’s
Oriental initiative is global
cropping. Oh, East is East, and
West is West / And it’s up to us
to make sure / The twain ever
shall meet. Al Gore is a layman
talking science; William Dar is a
scientist talking layman. They
are talking the same language:
it’s called Global Warming. The
Oscar for The Inconvenient
Truth is another global warning
about the survival of Planet
Earth as we know it, our own
survival as a species as we
cherish it.
An Inconvenient Truth