"Where do we want to be as a city, a province and a nation in 20 years? What track do we want to be on? The track we're currently on? Or a new kind of track headed for a much brighter future?"

Those were some of the questions posed by Chris Turner, journalist and author of recent national best-seller 'The Geography of Hope,' to a small, yet engaged, crowd at Calgary's Glenbow Museum's as part of its thought-provoking 'Out For Lunch' series.

The hurdle in creating sustainable communities and economies, notes Turner, isn't technology; it already exists. Rather it is the lack of will. While some politicians and economists argue a marked shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewables would be catastrophic for Canada's economy, evidence says otherwise.

Turner points to countries like Denmark, Germany and Spain, all of whom have made monumental leaps in creating more sustainable civilizations in relatively short periods of time through the use of existing technologies and policies — wind turbines, solar panels, better urban planning and Germany's hugely successful use of feed-in tariffs.

It all begins and ends with feed-in tariffs, says Turner, whose piece on microgeneration in the August issue of Alberta Views is a must-read for anyone, concerned or not, about the province's energy future.

"I firmly believe the track that we're on . . . has no future," contends Turner. "So we really have no choice but to make this jump."

Chris Turner: The Geography of Hope from Trevor Howell on Vimeo.

(Special thanks to the Glenbow Museum's Scott Johns for hooking me up with the sound system and the coat hanger.)