The World We Want: Visionary Ideas for a Small Planet

Frances Moore Lappé speaks in Toronto, Ottawa (Jan.31/Feb.1, 2012)

Ottawa, January 16, 2011 – A global breakthrough is possible. That’s the message from visionary thinker Frances Moore Lappé in the opening days of 2012, with the world embroiled in a series of crises. The impending food, ecological, and financial crises wouldn’t appear as intractable if we were willing to seriously confront some common mind traps.

Lappé, author of the groundbreaking Diet for a Small Planet (1971), has just released her eighteenth book, EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want (2011). In it, she unravels seven myths that she says are holding us back from real and necessary change.

“Solutions to global crises are known and within our reach,” says Lappé, “but realizing them will require a fundamental shift in our perception.”

‘Growth vs. no-growth,’ the limits of a ‘consumer society,’ and our ‘lost connection’ with nature are among the mind traps we need to break out of. “What we’ve been calling ‘growth’ is largely waste and destruction, let’s call it what it is: a system that, in fact, stymies growth and even quickens destruction and death,” says Lappé.

USC Canada is hosting Lappé’s Canadian visit. Susan Walsh, USC’s Executive Director, says, “We support thousands of community-based family farms to build resilient, healthy food and eco-systems around the world. Through our Seeds of Survival program, farmers are doing exactly what Lappé is asking us all to do: using their own ingenuity, resources, and solutions to build the world they want. And they’re doing it every day, from the ground up.”

Event details:
The World We Want, public forums and book signing by Frances Moore Lappé

• Toronto: Tuesday January 31, Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie Street, 7:30pm
• Ottawa: Wednesday February 1, St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, 310 St. Patrick Street, 7:30pm
• Tickets: $10 at www.usc-canada.org/lappe

For interviews and more information contact:
Sheila Petzold by email (spetzold@usc-canada.org) or by phone (613.234.6827 ext. 245)