===== Luminous Green Interview with Vinay Gupta =====

==== How would you describe who you are and what you do in a few sentences? ==== 
I'm Vinay Gupta, an occasional teacher of meditation, and more-or-less full-time resilience activist. I've worked with US DOD on topics like
genocide-resistant biometric systems for Iraq, and done well reviewed work on rehousing people after nuclear terrorism and similar large scale contingencies.

I'm best known as the inventor of the hexayurt, an open source replacement for the disaster relief tent which is about half the cost and lasts several times as long.

==== Who and what inspires you in your work & life (people, books, artworks...)? Why? ==== 
I'm very much a follower of Buckminster Fuller and Mahatma Gandhi. I'm inspired by people doing their own thing. The Burning Man festival
just happened and there are reports of hundred of hexayurts that people built themselves and lived in for a week in the harshest desert in America. It's really splendid seeing the pictures of hexayurts in use showing up on the internet.

==== What does 'resilience' mean for you? ==== 
Resilience is simple: it's the ability to keep living your life on your own terms as conditions change around you, rather than being forced by circumstances.

Personal resilience is about … money. Right now, our societies are structured so that personal resilience can be bought. In other cultures, personal resilience is healthy cattle and good land. It's a complex business but it factors down to land in the end.

Social resilience is about … services. Water, food supply chains, access to energy. All of these things are bought and paid for by our collected tax euros.

Planetary resilience is about … limits. When an ecosystem is pushed too hard for too long, by an invasive species or by climate change makes no difference, things can change radically, or suddenly break. Right now, we are the threat to planetary resilience.

==== Which aspects of contemporary culture give you hope for the future? ==== 
It's in two places. Firstly the ultra-cheap solar panel fabs of Konarka and Nanosolar, racing to solve our energy crisis, and secondly
in the small scale improved organic agriculture which promises to revolutionize our food system to the same degree.

In both of these areas the future is being made in real time, day by day.

==== What did you appreciate the most from the Luminous Green retreat? What were you surprised by? ==== 
It was an amazingly diverse and intense group of thinkers. Truly marvelous. The range - from NASA habitats to renewable fabrics, in a single room!

==== Which project, proposal or statement from Luminous Green do you want to continue working on? ==== 
I'm very enthusiastic about the village and the guild - the located-in-place learning about a single environment, and a complex, spread-out, interwoven skill-exchange and training structure to produce the multi-skilled adepts which 21st century transformation requires.

==== What would you need from the Luminous Green community and what are you willing to offer? ==== 
I can build it. But I can't handle the land, or building the community to live and work together in such a village. I'm a technologist at
heart. I can make things which house other people's wonders. I can teach the old guild structures, too.

==== Is there someone whom you would invite to the next Luminous Green and what do you think they would contribute? ==== 
I'll have to think about that one!

==== How would you explain resilience as a streetwise and cool virtue to a teenager? ==== 
The adults have screwed up your planet's future by using far too much of everything and the result is that many of the things we take for
granted won't be there for you. The resulting chaos is going to take a lot of resilience to deal with - things will change year by year, decade by decade, in ways that we could not even have imagined in the 20th century.

==== If the European Commission was to create a DG (Directorate General) Resilience to work towards a Luminous Green future, what would be its biggest challenges? ==== 
Energy and food. We're very good at food policy in as much as we've transformed European agriculture once already and the infrastructure exists do to that a second and a third time. On energy, however, we have never done this kind of directed transformation.

==== If you, or someone you know would be a Luminous Green superhero, what abilities would s/he have, what would s/he do? ==== 
I think Bruce Sterling is our patron saint!