The Rural Voice, 2005-10, Page 13pot &groat
"TOYS FOR THE
BIG BOYS & GIRLS"
1 Owner - Immaculate
M
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2002 DODGE DAKOTA SPORT 4X4
• 4 door Crew Cob • 4.7 L V8 • fully loaded
• prospector cob high cap • bedliner
• low kms. • silver
$18,950 certified
1 Owner - Only 79 Kms.
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2001 CHEV TRACKER 4x4
• 2.0 L 4 cyl. automatic • 4 door
• fully equipped • step up bars
• fuel friendly
$11,995 certified
1 Owner - Only 80 Kms.
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2000 PONTIAC AZTEK
• 4 door •3.4 L V6 automatic
• loaded • fuel friendly
• real nice - test drive
$14,995 certified
HOURS:
Mon. 9-5;
Tues., Wed., Thurs. 9-6;
Fri. 9-5; Sat. 9-3
I don't want to sell you a vehicle,
I want to help you buy one.
"?jauK `,tack Specialist"
HWY. #6 CHATSWORTH
Office/Fax: 519-794-2765
8 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Now that would be a paradigm shift!
Keith
Roulston is
editor and
publisher of
The Rural
Voice. He
lives near
Bluth, ON.
I haven't heard anybody speak
about a "paradigm shift" for a while
now. Ten years ago the phrase was
everywhere.
Mossadiq Umedaly needs a
paradigm shift, or whatever they've
calling a complete change of thinking
these days. ,
Umedaly is the chairman of
Xantrex Technology Inc. of Burnaby,
B.C. and you're probably most
familiar with his products from those
Canadian Tire ads about the
rechargeable portable power packs
that look like a ghetto blaster but
provide an emergency power source.
But Umedaly has a more far-reach-
ing vision. Last October his company
introduced a home system in the U.S.
that harvests and processes energy
from solar panels and feeds it into the
power grid. He believes the world's
electrical grids will increasingly be
powered by a web of non-traditional
sources: millions of home rooftops,
wind and solar farms.
"We're going to have an Internet
of electricity," he told Report on
Business magazine.
Ah the Internet. Talk about a
paradigm change. For a century we'd
been un a centralizing kick with
information and resources
concentrated in a few places. Instead
of hundreds of little creameries and
cheese plants throughout the
countryside, we concentrated
production in a few mega plants.
Instead of thousands of little shops
selling a wide variety of goods from a
wide variety of sources, we've boiled
retailing down to mega stores owned
by huge corporations who wield so
much market clout they dominate the
production of goods.
The Internet reversed the trend.
Now there's a far-flung system of
production and distribution of
information, from websites set up by
little stores, and craftspeople to
people throwing their opinions out to
the world through web -logs.
Imagine if the internet and people
like Umedaly could shift the mindset
of society and its movers and shakers
to look at our system of organization
differently? Rural areas would be the
first to benefit.
Until the last couple of decades
farming was an example of the kind
of thinking Umedaly proposes. We
produced our food on thousands of
farms each producing a little bit
which added up to a lot. Recently the
industrial model of concentration and
specialization has taken over farming,
with larger and larger livestock
facilities, for instance.
Umedaly's idea of thousands of
tiny energy production pinpoints
mimics nature. We get the oxygen in
our air, not from one big manufac-
turer, but from billions of trees and
plants. We get our water from
trillions of tiny rain drops.
But paradigm shifts are easier to
talk about than accomplish. The
status quo has powerful friends. The
provincial government's first attempt
to encourage wind power. for instance,
saw it turn to large companies,
instead of making it easier for
neighbourhood -owned wind projects.
Hydro One still sets up roadblocks
for small power producers to feed
into the grid. They prefer to deal with
a few major producers not thousands
of little guys as Umedaly envisions.
The normal reaction to new
technology on the part of the reigning
powers is generally to try to take it
over. Even the miracle of modern
communications, for instance, has led
to a corporate structure where all
decision-making is concentrated in a
central headquarters based on inform-
ation gathered at the local level. Look
at how OMAFRA closed its county
offices and concentrated all inform-
ation dissemination from Guelph.
I hope Umedaly is right. I like his
vision a lot better than I like the
centralized, homogeneous world of
today's decision makers. He's in a
tight battle, though, with those who
like things the way they are.0