Economy
STATE: The possibility of Eden
I want to live in a State of possibility, awe and wonder, and that could be Tasmania. Graeme Wood is offering us a most powerful symbol of regeneration with his $50 million dollar plan for an Eden style project at Triabunna, a re-generation of our generation.
The similarities between an old china clay pit in Cornwall, England and the scarred remnants of an obsolete woodchip mill at Spring Bay in Tasmania are extraordinary, as are the visions of two people.
Brainchild of Entrepreneur and self-confessed dreamer Tim Smit in 2001 and the result of countless collaborators, Cornwall’s Eden Project has risen from the ravaged bowels of an exhausted clay pit to become a world-renowned educational catalyst for change.
Part financed by the European Union, over 1 million people visit the Eden Project each year, to learn, imagine, create and collaborate. With a population of over 4.5 billion people on Tasmania’s doorstep in the Asia Pacific, who knows what attention our own Eden Project at Spring Bay on Tasmania’s East Coast might attract?
The 21st century presents enormous challenges for society: food and energy security, clean air, clean water, population growth, growing inequality and all ratcheted up by climate change. It could all seem like doom and gloom. Yet in the UK, the Eden Project has become an exemplar of possibility. It doesn’t profess to have all the answers, but it does celebrate the myriad ways in which our world supports us, demonstrates what a great future might look like, inspires us to re-imagine, collaborate and action our imaginings and brings people and planet just that bit closer.
We’ve all seen the MONA effect in Tasmania, now let’s experience the Eden effect. If we stick with probability, we’ll continue to chip away our collective future. How do you want to live this one wild and precious life, asks poet Mary Oliver. Personally I’m all for risking possibility.
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