"Small Planet" author to speak at energy fair

The Midwest Renewable Energy Fair takes place this weekend in the small community of Custer, east of Stevens Point. Saturday’s keynote speaker is the author of one of the best selling diet books in history.

“Diet for a Small Planet” has sold more than three million copies. Its author, Frances Moore Lappe, was named by Gourmet Magazine as one of the 25 people who changed the way America eats. 40 years after she first published the book, Lappe is still trying to change the way people eat and think. “We create the world according to the ideas that we hold and if our ideas aren’t based in the evidence, we’re in big trouble,” she says. “And I’m suggesting that we’re really trapped in an unnecessary, what I call scarcity mind, the idea that there’s not enough of anything.”

Lappe says people refuse to believe scientific evidence supporting man made climate change because they are afraid, and the fear is being fed not just by corporate interests, but sometimes by environmentalists. “That reflects a fear mentality, when you just don’t want to hear the truth, because it’s too scary,” she says. “And I think we as environmentalists have a responsibility to make sure that we’re not feeding the fear that causes people to close their ears. The phrase ‘we’ve hit the limits of a finite planet.’”

Lappe says she will tell people at the Energy Fair that there is reason for optimism, if we change the way we think. “In energy, for example, the sun supplies us 15,000 times the daily dose of energy compared to what we’re currently using in fossil fuel,” she says. “There is enough. More than enough.”

Frances Moore Lappe’s latest book is titled “Ecomind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want.” She speaks at the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair near Stevens Point Saturday afternoon.