We had been talking about doing a tour with the Reseau Transition Suisse Romande for about 3 years, but every time we had it sorted, Covid would pop by and ruin the party. It started in Geneva. Then I spoke, with interpreter Xavier Combe, my companion for the whole tour, picking up from where Julia left off, giving a taste of what a Transition future could be like if we were actually now to do everything we possibly could do.
The discussion, led by questions from the audience, was pretty charged, passionate, fiery, as well as sometimes funny and revealing. Very funny. We should have more stand up comedians at the end of talks like this. It was really inspiring to see cooperative housing on such a scale. We did some time travel, we discussed how to implement imagination into business, and lots of other things too.
Then we all had lunch, and had lots of conversations with many of the 40 or so people who attended. And then we were off to Basel.
I was their opening keynote speaker. Before I spoke there was a panel made up of young farmers and activists and people working in the food industry. When it was my time for my keynote, I started by saying that I thought that was the last thing they should be, and to tell a room full of young people, in the time of a climate and ecological emergency that demands that we reimagine everything, to be pragmatic, felt to me like absolutely the wrong thing to say.
It was a beautiful audience to speak to, really passionate and engaged. We then had to dash away in order to catch our train to Lausanne, a beautiful city above a huge lake with mountains in the background. For that evening and the next day, I was the guest of the municipality of Lausanne, and they were amazing hosts. That evening I was speaking at the Casino de Montbenon, a seater theatre that had sold out weeks before.
