The High Price of Materialism

Alongside 'Psychology and Consumer Culture' and his work on Common Cause, Tim Kasser's 2002 book The High Price of Materialism has had a powerful impact on the sustainability movement. The Center for a new American dream has just released this five minute summary of Kasser's work; it is a great starting point for getting people interested in this most important debate:

Locking out contamination AND recyclables?

I wrote a piece for the Waste Watch blog today:

http://wastewatch.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/locking-out-contamination-and-recyclables/

The Accidental Environmentalists - #1 Alain de Botton

A couple of years back I interviewed a few people on the subject of 'accidental environmentalism' exploring with them whether, in educating FOR sustainability, we actually need to talk about environmental issues at all. Sustainable lifestyles are made up of a vast collection of sustainable behaviours. They are all underpinned by a set of values such as kindness, empathy and respect. The argument is that to build sustainable lifestyles we need to work from values. I'm fortunate now to be working at a charity that truly understands this. The sustainability movement in general seems to be waking up to it too.

These interviews were intended to become some sort of coherent book on the subject. Maybe one day they will become that, but judging by how busy I currently am, it won't be anytime soon. Therefore I feel that I should no longer sit on them, waiting for a rainy day. Over the next few weeks I'm going to publish some of the transcripts here.

The first one features the philosopher and School of Life founder: Alain de Botton.

Alain De Botton (London, 21/08/09)

I started off by asking him how engaged he is in sustainability issues.

I think it seems to me to be part of a broader thing that no thinking being can be unconcerned about, which is really the position of man in a very advanced technological age in relation to nature and natural forces and the balance between the human man-made world and nature, which includes things like nuclear weapons as much as it includes global warming. I think it is part of a broader thing; it encompasses lots of different things and is perhaps over and above everything else. So, it almost encompasses war as well. It is about human beings as agents of destruction, rather than as respecters of life, or givers of life. Yes, it is hard to be human and not to have come across those issues in some form.

I explained the traditional structure of education about and through the environment and their overall aim of being for, and that there is a limit to this in terms of changing people’s behaviour.

Well the point is that if you talked to them about kindness; that might have as much of an impact on their attitude to the environment, because I think a lot of it is about aggression in its broadest form and the opposite to aggression is kindness.

I wondered if people are consciously aggressive towards the environment?

Well they could be consciously aggressive, or they could just be heedlessly destructive of it, like we are with people.

I explained to him how I view his work as being education for sustainability despite it not talking too much about the environment at all. I asked him if he sees his work in any way as a sort of education for sustainability.

You are right in that people can care about certain values that do not immediately seem connected, or not directly connected to a particular issue, but values don’t have to be. So if you are interested in a value like tolerance, let’s say, tolerance is an application to how you discuss a recipe with a friend to how you run your immigration policy as a country to whatever. In other words one can say that a book or a theory can be discussing something, or be relevant to something without discussing it. It’s like if you read a Jane Austen novel, you come away looking at your world through Jane Austen’s eyes and so it weirdly seems as though Jane Austen is telling you about office politics in the 21^st century. Even though that’s not what she was writing about. It has a relevance that stretches beyond. So you know you could find that Greek tragedy is about environmentalism or whatever and it’s not implausible to say that. So yes I think the amount of people who may be relevant to the discussion might be much larger than traditionally understood by people who are trying to define an ‘eco’ literature or eco-philosophy, or whatever.

I explained that that is where I am coming from and that there is a lot of accidental environmentalism going on. My argument is that if this ‘accidental’ education can be aligned with understanding’s of why (from a purely environmental perspective) it is important to use low energy light bulbs, recycle, compost and save water, then we might start to get somewhere. Rather than telling people to ‘stop doing this...’ and ‘give up that....’ and so on. Especially when there is so much education against sustainability going on around us all the time.

I think you are right, but I think one might need to make that connection explicit sometimes and to say ‘you know about this... and you know in theory that you should do that, well there is a bridge between the two.’ You might need to make that bridge explicit, that would be invaluable, maybe.

I said that this is what I am trying to dig out and whether we can integrate other forms of education. I went on to ask him about The School of Life (TSOL) and how he thinks that might fit into Education FOR sustainability.

[Chuckles] I don’t know. Again, perhaps not directly, immediately. I guess it’s one of those things that if you really took the message of many of the things that TSOL does, you would be unlikely to end up as a sort of ‘eco-destroyer’ as a destroyer of the environment. It is not that there is a direct course in how to save the environment, but if you take it seriously, if you engage with almost anything that it does, there would be a serious incompatibility if you then emerged as a logger of the Amazon rainforest. So again, it is not that it is explicit, but it is implicit. You know, ‘if you take ‘x’ seriously, you are almost by definition going to be quite sympathetic towards ‘y’.’

I spoke about realigning our value systems and working out how to meet our emotional needs in authentic, non-material ways and how The School Of Life can help us to do that.

I suppose it raises the question of what a concerned citizen should do... In modest ways TSOL is trying to change the mindset, but it is a very tiny thing next to ‘The Sun’ (the newspaper, the Sun). It is an incredibly tiny thing. I do think in our society opinions are shaped by the media, it is a cliché, but it is true. The reason why people start to worry about things, or know about things, or think about things it is because disseminated through organs. Which explains why there are people like PR companies etc. The problem is that it is incredibly difficult to get some of the more complicated or awkward[m1] messages through for any length of time and TSOL can try, but on a bad day, in terms of a global problem, you could say that it is just appealing to the converted. It is appealing to people who are basically pretty nice anyway and they need to get together and that would be very nice for them, but its lacking power in a serious sense, in the way that The Sun has power.

I said that it has the potential to be a leading example, or a prototype of this sort of approach and people are already starting to copy it, people are recognising the need for this sort of thing and this approach can build.

For me, one of the questions is what do you do if you care about things? Traditionally for me the response is you write a book and that helps things. But I also recognise that a ‘pilot project’ can in a way can be a good thing and that is why I see TSOL as a pilot project in the sense that it’s a model for how one might do things that could then spread out. We haven’t got the resources or energy to do that, but it is a small thing that could grow. So in that sense it is the equivalent of the single issue campaigner: ‘I’m not going to change the whole mentality, but if I manage to stop this sewerage works from being built, or I manage to stop thatfactory polluting.’ Maybe that’s as good as writing 100 editorials saying ‘shouldn’t we all... whatever’. So it’s trying to get ‘local’ and do one thing.

I then discussed my time at TSOL and how I wanted to get involved because I could see the FOR sustainability potential. I said that I felt that they didn’t want to engage with sustainability, or have that tag and I asked him whether he thought that was a conscience decision.

Personally speaking I think one has to find one’s own way to an issue and the thing about environmentalism and sustainability etc is that these are things which are words often made up by others to describe a problem, which sometimes you have to find your own way to before it actually becomes something you feel and understand deep inside. I think there is a real distinction between an academic intellectual understanding and a sort of emotional understanding. I’ve seen this with lots of topics you know, I remember sort of ten years ago or something when I was writing much more about the personal. Someone said to me ‘have you ever thought about writing about the workplace, or politics or whatever?’ I would say that of course these are things I have thought about, but I have not found a way of writing about it in a way that would feel personal, in a way that would be my own, rather than just a newspaper editorial or something. And for me it is slightly the same with the environment and I think that I am on the edge of finding my way towards a more authentic way of speaking about these things, but I’m not quite there yet, but I can feel it, I can feel it’s coming because I think you just need a topic to sit with you. [m2] I think that teaches me that if I’m feeling that, then probably lots of people are feeling that. You know, we are told by the media to worry and be concerned about a lot of things and a lot of time we are not actually concerned, because we don’t have the experience and we’re not at the right life stage. I know, as a man who has children, before I had children, I didn’t really understand.... For example I’d read in the newspaper headlines that a childs been run over and I’d think ‘oh dear’, you know... I didn’t really understand it, you know now I understand what that means, in a way that a media account would never prepare me for. Likewise there are many people in the environment movement who feel at a very deeper sense what this means and I think that is something that one has to realise takes some time. It’s like, racism, we live in a world where to be racist is considered immediately to be absolutely terrible and that’s it! So you don’t even allow anyone one second of thought that they might have a racist view or racist feeling and not be the antichrist. So for many people it takes actually quite a while for people to discover what it might actually really mean not to be racist, rather than to bullied into not being racist. It might take a trip abroad and it might take contact with people from different races until actually really they think ‘OK, I am going to stop faking that not-racist thing and I actually live it now, I actually believe it fully, I sense it with all my being.’ I think the same thing is true of environmentalism, I think it is unacceptable not be concerned about the environment and because of that strong pressure many people are simply too sort of scared to talk about it.

I asked him if he thought that it leads people to do ‘green’ things, to be seen to be doing green things, to be ‘conspicuously green’. I asked whether before a person has that deeper understanding and realise that it is not just about climate change, it’s not just about turning your taps off and that it is about re-evaluating all of your value systems and all of your decisions, being green just becomes another status symbol.

Well obviously there are horrifying sort of fake versions, just like there are fake versions of everything good. Like people who fake that they are interested in art. That can happen with anything that is good, anything good is open to fakery. So I don’t think it is unique. But I think you are right there is always a heart felt way of doing things that is better. If I was an advertising agency and was thinking ‘how can we sell concern for the environment?’ ‘What would be the best way into this topic?’ You could do a lot of research, perhaps you have done already... into... ‘When’s the moment when somebody feels an issue personally?’ As opposed to feeling it intellectually. I mean intellectually it is simple enough, you tell someone the ice sheet is melting and they go ‘ooh gosh!’ What moment might they... it might be a way of connecting, I mean this is normally this is the way it is done, you connect something that does happen to everyone and you try and show how that thing is connected to a bigger more abstract picture, so you say ‘that playing field that used to be near your house is now being concreted over, it is being concreted over by all sorts of forces and these are the forces blah, blah, blah.’ Then you zoom out from a particular and you hold on to people’s emotional connection.

I agreed that there is strength to that sort of approach of putting it in people’s back yard. I then discussed how it is possible to engage people in conversations about climate change when extreme things have happened, for example the floods in Cheltenham. I went on to pose whether it is more important to talk about things in people’s every day lives, like why did they go to Primark, why did they buy three shirts instead of one, what forces brought them there and what is the impact of that? I then said, this is why I felt that maybe we don’t need to talk about the environmental issues.

Yes it is a more general conversation about thoughtfulness, empathy, kindness and so on. I think there are some people that I’ve met from within the environmental movement, who in a previous age would have been saving people’s souls, I don’t mean that in a bad way... They are more broadly interested in kindness and a certain kind of redemption, salvation and so on, all these kinds of things, which obviously, they sit on religious topics but that is not to say environmentalism is the new religion as though that is immediately a bad thing, or a crazy thing. I think there is a very strong impulse in human beings to, obviously to kill, but also to nurture and it is part of that nurturing instinct which, at some points in history, has led one way and at some points it has led towards Buddhism and at others to other things... It is a way of worrying about human selfishness and greed which has always been a concern for a certain percentage... you know 15% of the population [m3] has always been acutely troubled by our impulses towards greed and thoughtlessness and have tried, in whatever way the age offered them, to channel those energies.

I wondered whether the survival of the fittest thing, could be modified with intelligence, in that we need to work together if we are going to help the species survive.

So it is the co-operative versus the individualistic drives in human nature battling it out[m4]

Next, I brought the conversation onto travel and explained how it is probably the hardest thing for environmentalists to talk about... I discussed the NEF five ways to wellbeing and how most of them can be done and coincidentally done well in environmentally responsible ways. But, travel is a harder one because it can be so valuable to people. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to talk to him about so I talked about escapism and how travel can be so much about escaping physical surroundings, certain people and so on, but it is harder to escape emotions.

There is one view that we never need to change our locations because we can do everything through our minds, so there is a disembodied view of human nature that everything you do, you can do in your mind. Then there is another view which is to say that we are embodied beings and we live through our senses, all of us not just our reason and that we are influenced by such things as the weather, the texture of the carpet and how high the ceiling is. And these are all awkward thoughts, because it signals a loss of control. It’s worse to think that your life might depend on the height of the ceiling, you ‘ooh how awkward, I might have to buy a new ceiling and that’s a major investment, or I might be dependent on the weather and it is only nice 3 months of the year.’ There is an incentive to deny that I think. I juggle with this, but I think that on the whole we remain awkwardly dependent on the external environment for our moods, happiness etc, state of mind and we may sometimes need to travel. I think one of the deepest reasons to travel is in order to cement an inner change, to somehow mark a change and help that change. If you think about how pilgrimages used to work. The whole idea of a pilgrimage was that it was an unpleasant long journey which provides a demonstration or commitment to some idea. And in a way the more unpleasant and long it is the better, because that will lend solidity to the idea. So you know you will walk to Jerusalem, you don’t need to walk there, you could take a boat, but you say ‘let’s walk it!’ you know. I think that is still bubbling away in us. For example, you might get a couple saying, we need a holiday, to get away from it, to mark a step or to re-charge our batteries. Or someone might say ‘I’m looking forward to the flight because when I’m on the plane I can look at my life in a different way.’ We need distance and perspective, etc, etc. I think that that will never go away. If there is a hopeful thing for environmentalism in relation to air travel for example, it’s that I think that that pilgrimage point plays right into an argument for making air travel more limited and more of a treat as it used to be you know 30 years ago, we might do it, but not that often, you’re not going to fly to Paris kind of thing.

I then discussed the concept or habit of ‘throwaway travel’ using a £30 trip to Berlin as an example and saying that one might not put as much effort into it.

Imagine if it cost £3000 people wouldn’t enjoy it any less, they might enjoy it more. If you were only allowed two trips to New York in your life time, ‘that’s it two trips!’ When are you going to take them and how are you going to think about it? Boy oh boy would people think about it. And if they cost 18 times as much the airline would still make money. The argument would then be that only the rich people would keep flying. Ok, but, it only goes some of the way... other people could fly as well, they would just have to save up for it more. You could tax it, according to income tax, or whatever. Anyway, there would be other ways of structuring it.

I discussed the travel experiences of people like James Cracknell and Ben Fogle and how they can inspire people to do similar things and to put themselves into a situation of forced reflection on their lives and priorities. I also discussed ‘slow travel’, but finished by saying not all flying is bad.

No, no, it just has to be limited to a certain level.

I told him I thought of him as a commentator on ‘life’ and asked whether he has ambitions greater than just commentary and whether his involvement in TSOL is an attempt to change things.

Yes I think that [TSOL] is an attempt to change the world rather than comment on it! I’ve always been troubled by this and the role of a commentator. That is why I have always had a vulgar interest, vulgar as in a desire to popularise and vulgarise ideas, which has got me into trouble with people who don’t like that, people who are professionally invested in things being as they are, but I think that, yes, I’d rather a bit of vulgarity I guess at the end of the day. I do think we live in a world where the idea of the artist, thinker, and philosopher is associated with irrelevance, you sit and you knit while bigger things are happening. Again to come back to religion, I’m always attracted to people like the Jesuits who understood the need to engage with power and to engage with the real world; if they wanted to do stuff they might have to sit down to dinner with someone they didn’t particularly like and butter them up and try and get some money off them, you know, whatever it was and that is actually part of life, it’s not some horrendous thing, it’s part of life. I’ve always understood that and felt open to that and a need for that, so TSOL is a first step in a way.

I asked him if one year on it is going the way he expected it to be.

Yes, I mean it is incredibly fiddly, we are now just doing an audit into how the money will work etc etc. I was speaking to a friend the other day who said ‘what you are doing is really original and on a normal business plan it should be like that [uses hands to express growth] or there is something terribly wrong.’ And they were saying that it might just take a bit more time for it to really catch on. You know, things are building up really well for the Autumn, courses are building up well. There are signs that things are getting incrementally better but it shows me new respect for the practical world, you know just to get anything, to organise a payroll for four people is a major operation. It is very very difficult and it is not surprising that the people who have been able to do the thinking and the commentating, on the whole, have not been the ones who’ve been able to organise the other stuff because it is almost another side of the brain, it requires such patience. But, at least unlike some writer colleagues, I’m at least sympathetic to that discipline even if I do tire in front of the Excel spreadsheet. At least I deeply respect its role in trying to get to things that are valuable.

I suggested that his last book [on work] made him appreciate the mundane things people have to go through every day.

Yes, but also that the mundane can be in service of the not mundane and that if you can get the two aligned then you’ve got something to build from.

I asked him whether he ever considers the impact that his work and other things like it might have on people in terms of leading them into an existential crisis.

I suppose because I live it myself, these are journeys that I go through and they involve disruption but also growth, I don’t know, it never occurs to me. My feeling is that people pick up things and read things and get disturbed by things when they are ready to be. It may not always be a comfortable experience, but basically they are ready for it and they want to do it. No one is forcing them, you just shut the book if you don’t like it, or you don’t even pick it up. So by the time someone’s picked up a book or engaged with a film or something it is because they were ready to do so. So even if there is disturbance it is something they are inviting in.

I suggested that a lot of people are not willing to listen to it.

The majority

‘I get this all the time, I talk to my friends about these kind of things and they are like ‘oh shut up, can we not just talk about football?!’ and I reply ‘[sigh] well I guess we can!

And it is very frustrating because people are ready at different points.

‘You kind of feel like shaking them’

It is one of the great tragedies of friendship that, you know.... Of course these people might in twenty years time go: ‘oh my god I’m so concerned, I’d like to have a conversation with you.’ But, by this time you’re living in a different country, they’re doing something else and that moment’s not aligned. It is very hard to get people in a room who feel the same way, who want to, at that moment, talk about the same thing. I suppose that is why people read books, to make sure that they can find somebody, at that time, be it a writer who died a hundred years ago, who feels the same way.

How about the internet?

Well the internet can connect you, at that moment I guess.

I told him what I was up to with Global Footsteps, EcoActive, doing these interviews and so on...

Well, I feel for you. We’ve all got a limited lifespan and the whole problem is, if one cares about these things, what is one to do? How is one to attack the problem? Do you go into here, or do you go into there, this is something I ask myself every day, every day! Am I attacking the right area you know? I am perennially troubled by this I don’t know?

I told him I thought he was doing some good!

Yes, some good, but you just think... I always think the powerful forces in this world can feel so powerful. For example at the moment I am writing this book about Heathrow, I don’t know if you read about it, but anyway.... it’s a nice idea for me and it has enabled me to get all sorts of ideas across, so I have slightly gone to bed with the devil a little bit, but it is interesting. But I’m aware that to get certain ideas across you can get on the Today programme like that [clicks fingers] and to get other ideas across that actually feel totally important and valuable they would say ‘oh goodbye, that’s not for us.’ It is censorship basically and there is censorship in our society and you cannot get certain messages across.

Any examples?

Well some of the more: how are we living? So I was on the Today programme the other day talking about this Heathrow baggage system and it is totally computerised and automated and everyone is terribly excited about it and I said to the presenter: ‘you do wonder why it is automated, we have coming up to 3 million people unemployed, why have we automated it? What is so good about automating it? Why do we always want to do this, to put machines everywhere, chuck people out of work then pay them unemployment benefit, so that they can sit at home?’ We’ve got too little work on for people and yet we are obsessed by automation. Anyway, it is a big point about the role of machines and the role of humans, of course it has got completely cut for reasons that it was not quite ‘on the message’. We don’t live in a Stalinist dictatorship, it is a self censorship, people kind of know what is acceptable and what is not and you can’t really question the economic system. There is a moment at which it gets... you know, people will kind of say ‘oh that’s a bit too strident’ or something, they don’t see themselves as censors, but that is exactly what they are. People sometimes say things like ‘I wonder what it would be like live under communism, everyone would be whispering and so on’. And I think ‘you don’t have to imagine so hard you know, look at your own society and look at the way people naturally censor themselves!’ In work, when they are talking to the media etc, people naturally do it and they don’t even notice it and that is exactly how it would have been in communist society. People wouldn’t have gone ‘ooh I can’t say this’ they would have done it exactly how we do it. But we play up this enormous difference, ‘oh it was so un-free then!’

Ah well!

Tricky stuff!

Thanks very much!

---

[m1]Interesting choice of word

[m2]Maybe this is the stage we are at collectively? This topic is currently sitting with people... they are thinking about it and maybe they will soon ‘get it’.

[m3]This is a big point, we are never going to make everyone concerened, maybe the 15% need to stop trying to make others concerned and ‘like them’ they need to change the behaviour of others, in other ways?

[m4]Is this all it is, is it like he says, the environment, just a vehicle for those who rally against individualism to sit in?

Which Amazon do we most value?

The profits of Amazon.com have fallen this year, but this is only because they are making huge investments in their infrastructure, so as a business they can continue to grow and grow. Although their profits have fallen, they are still pretty huge; they made £116m last year.

"Low prices, expanding selection, fast delivery and innovation are driving the fastest growth we've seen in over a decade," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive.

So, while one Amazon grows and expands, that other Amazon continues to catastrophically shrink and disintegrate. You may have received a nudge to sign an Avaaz petition today. The petition is calling on the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to veto changes to forest protection laws; have you signed it?

At the time of writing, 976,000 people have signed the petition to save the Amazon rainforests, while Amazon.com makes over 2 million sales every day.

What does this parable say about what we have come to value most in the world? Is it stuff, or the stuff of life?

Walking alongside to create change

Two inspirational men I've been fortunate enough to spend small bits of time with over the last couple of years are Satish Kumar of Resurgence Magazine and Andy Middleton of The Do Lectures. I want to discuss something they've both taught me about creating change.

I'm reading 'No Destination', Kumar's autobiography. I was very lucky to share a meal with him in Cheltenham last year. I'm on chapter three, which describes the time he spent walking around India with Vinoba Bhave, a student of, and successor to, Ghandi. What Vinoba taught Kumar about creating changes to land ownership resonated with something Middleton explained to me about inspiring sustainable lifestyles and made me think about how we're reacting to Rupert Murdoch right now.

It was 1957, Vinoba was seeking to revolutionarise land ownership in India in the years after the Ghandi inspired removal of British rule. Vinoba wanted the land to be more fairly distributed to help the poor, he was seeking to create this change through peaceful persuasion, it was a lengthy process. Kumar was asking Vinoba why he wasn't calling for a radical civil disobediance campaign. Why wasn't he trying to force the landlords to adopt the principle of community ownership of land or force the government to change the laws of private ownership? Vinoba replied:

'Gandhi used civil disobedience successfully against the British only because the British government was not an elected government but an imposed authority. The situation is different now. We are living in a democratic set-up. The people have elected the government. If we want a change in government we should convince the voters, who, after all, are the masters. It is no good going to the government which is a servant of the people. My task is to create revolutionary consciousness in the minds of the people.'

According to Kumar, Vinoba believed that 'to overcome landlordism, we should not resist the landlords but assist them to act rightly.' Vinoba did not believe in 'opposition' arguing that it reduces the chances of a change of heart. 'It creates insecurity through which a man is drawn to defend himself just at the point when he should be taking a new impartial look at society.'

I spent time with Andy Middleton while doing my PhD, he told me something similar that has guided my approach to conversations and education around sustainability ever since: 'if you want to create change don't square up to those you want to change, don't confront them face to face. Instead walk alongside them, find common ground and try to guide them along a different pathway.'

Vinoba used an analogy to illustrate this to Kumar: 'Take the example of a house. You want to enter the house, but it has high walls around it. You go to the wall and fight to get past [through] it. You can not. What happens? Your head is broken. But if you find a small door, you can get into the house and go wherever you want. But you have to find the door. Like that, when I meet a landlord he has many faults and shortcomings, and his egotism is like a wall. But he has a little door. If you are prepared to find this door, it means you have risen above your own egotism and you can enter his heart. Don't worry about his faults, only try to find the door. I am in search of that little door in every capatalist landlord. If sometimes I can't find the door, it is my fault, my fault that I am banging my head against his shortcomings.' Vinoba successfully managed to encourage thousands of landlords across India to donate a total of over four million acres of land to the poor to create villages with communal ownership of land, the gramdan.

If we want to change the behaviour of Rupert Murdoch should we square up to him, attack him with accusations of selfishness, greed and corruption? Or, should we open those small doors he has offered us, get alongside him, applaud his public apologies and his promises of reform? Will this, rather than knife twisting, encourage him, News International and the rest of the free press to change the way they operate?

The role of Government

I had a big row via email with my friend Adam on Sunday morning, it started off as a debate about the public sector pensions row and then veered off into a general argument about the role of Government. I think we both ended up with sour tasting cornflakes, sorry Ad! Today I came across the Henry David Thoreau's essay: 'On the duty of civil disobedience' the first few lines of which express (far more neatly than I managed) how I feel about the role of government:

"I HEARTILY accept the motto,—“That government is best which

governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly

and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which

also I believe,—“That government is best which governs not at

all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of

government which they will have."

I've been criticized before for thinking like this. The argument I get back is that if I think like this then surely I am arrogantly arguing for strong government NOW because I don't think that the men and women of Britain are currently prepared for a government 'which governs not at all'. Therefore, by extension, I'm also arrogantly arguing that men and women will not be prepared for this until they all think like me! Or, until they can be trusted! Hands up, against these accusations I am at least partly guilty [apart from the bit about everyone having to think like me - we are already far too samey, I adore diversity, long may it blossom and widen].

With all its slashing and cutting of the public sector and public services our current hyper neo-liberal Government is hurtling along a path to becoming one that 'governs not at all'. Right now this genuinely terrifies me. It seems to me from reading, watching and listening to our contemporary daily news that we continue to mistreat our fellow human beings both in the UK and abroad daily and horrifically. We also continue, through our actions, to mistreat the natural world; we're definitely not ready to be left to our own devices, if we were there'd be no need for BBC Panorama.

For me Governments are there to temper and actively discourage our most damaging behaviours. They are to do this by incentivising and rewarding good behaviours while enforcing laws that prevent us from harming each other and the natural world. But, I believe that Governments should temper our behaviour only so much as is absolutely necessary and not a tiny bit more; acting like a good nurturant parent who allows their offspring to push boundaries, learn from mistakes, mature and take responsibility for themselves. As opposed to the strict parent whose child is only capable of following orders and remains unable in adult life to decide, independently, how to behave maturely. Eventually, probably, public moral norms would have shifted far enough that it would have become totally socially unacceptable to smoke in confined public spaces. The smoking ban that the Government introduced would not then have been necessary, we would have self-governed ourselves into the exact same scenario, restaurant by restaurant, pub by pub. We were being nurtured towards this as we matured as a society, the introduction of the smoking ban in 2007 was simply our nuturent parent getting a little strict on us by saying 'right I'm introducing a new ground rule'. This effectively speeded up the process. The fact that there were not too many tantrums, or too much kicking and screaming demonstrated how well timed its introduction was.

So, in summary, I believe that Governments should allow us as much freedom to self govern as possible, without giving us so much freedom that we cause intolerable harm to others and the natural environment. That is, not so much freedom that we are able to compromise the freedom of others. It is an incredibly hard balance to strike, but right now, this Government seems to be making it too easy for those who are inclined to oppress others and harm the environment for their own gain, to do exactly that. As a parent it is being too hands off.

New Home Front - Poster Competition

Please click on this pic to be able to actually the information on how to enter the New Home Front poster design competition!

You can also read about it at www.newhomefront.org get your entries in by 30th September.

£30bn for the UK's natural spaces

Assume somebody wanted to buy all of the UK's natural space and cover it in tarmac and concrete, what would they need to pay? In their UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA), DEFRA today revealed what they have calculated to be the value of the UK's ecosystem's. Far from being a financial burden the UK NEA proves that the annual benefit to the economy of our green and blue spaces is somewhere around the £30bn mark. So, does this mean that if I wanted to buy all of this natural space I would need to compensate the Government to the tune of £30bn? Well, no, not quite. If looked at in purely financial and economic terms, I would need to ensure that I contribute at least £30bn a year to the economy as a result of changing the use of this land and water. If I couldn't guarantee that, I would assumedly need to pay 100 x £30bn plus interest at the rate of inflation to cover 100 years worth of loss, or maybe it should be 200 years, or 300? I'd also need to buy the land and a competitive market rate, that is likely to be loads more than £30bn. However, by throwing up a load of luxury apartments on say Hyde Park and Regent's Park, I could probably charge rents totaling more than enough in London alone. Or how about I buy Hyde Park, keep it as it is, but charge an entry fee to the public? Luckily I don't think DEFRA are looking at it this way, I'm confident that they recognise that some things truly are priceless. Then again, we have to pay an entry fee to get onto some National Trust land.

Adam Curtis: This is really all I'm saying in all these films:

Have you been watching Adam Curtis' latest documentary series? 'All watched over by machines of loving grace' seems to be his most controversial work yet.

I found a recent interview from the excellent Resonance FM show 'little atoms' on YouTube. At around 17 minutes in Curtis says this:

This is really all I'm saying in all these films: I'm very sympathetic to a lot of the protest movements and to challenging power in society, but you are not going to do it through self organizing networks where you all sit round and there are no leaders and there is no guiding vision, except self-organisation. It's a retreat I think and I think in many respects it is a cowardly retreat on the part of the left from confronting the fact that power is getting more and more concentrated in our society, but they don't have an alternative. They retreat like bureaucrats, like librarians into process; processes of organisation, without actually inspiring me with a vision of another kind of way of organising the world.

The Green Party in the UK recognised this, when in 2007, members voted to do away with it's non-hierarchical policy of having no defined leader. New party leader, Dr. Caroline Lucas MP has gone on to become the first ever Green Party MP in the UK. Despite a limited platform the Greens have been able to promote 'an alternative vision of another way of organising the world' and voters are beginning to take notice of it. Caroline Lucas is an inspiring person and a good leader, she has assumed a position of some power and I agree with Adam Curtis, she should not feel scared of using it. Curtis' series (like all his other work) explores power, who has it, where it comes from, how it can be challenged and what people do with it. One thing is omnipresent: power itself.

To follow Curtis' advice we shouldn't just argue against the existence of Power, seeking to remove it entirely in the unrealistic hope that we can all live in a non-hierarchical self-organizing societal system. We should not do this because power never really goes away, it just changes hands. Since the late 1970s neo-liberalism has seen an unprecedented hollowing out of successive Government's in the UK, power has shifted away from elected politicians to the boards of unelected faceless corporations whose decisions are shaping the way we live. A decline in the power of Governments should not be confused with a decline in the existence of power itself. This is a convenient confusion, that does exist, and which serves the needs of an elite few. Hierarchy and power will always exist; the myth that we are becoming a non-hierarchical society is one propagated by an ever narrowing power base. The result is a society where there are many powerless and a concentrated, tiny, powerful elite. The challenge is to spread power more equitably through society, placing it more widely in the hands of more visible, accountable and trustworthy leaders; that is true democracy. We should do this while recognizing and accepting the inevitability that leaders do emerge and that we need honorable ones. Leaders like Caroline Lucas MP

Why don't we call it pollution?

Just asking...

When we are talking about climate change we call the gasses that come out of the exhaust pipes and chimneys carbon ‘emissions’. Why do we do that? Why don’t we call it ‘pollution’?

The word emissions is so tame, the word pollution is cutting and devastating. I don’t suppose anyone set out to deliberately re-brand this sort of pollution as carbon emissions, but once it started to be used, it stuck. Now this is probably because ‘carbon emissions’ is much less offensive than ‘pollution’. There is a precedent here. The Grandfather of Madison Avenue, Edward Bernays, consciously dropped the word ‘propaganda’ in favour of the more palatable ‘public relations’. He did this because of the negative mind control connotations associated with the word propaganda but later admitted that public relations was essentially the same thing.

When you frame marketing and advertising as ‘propaganda’ - a psychological technique that plays on your deep subconscious anxieties and emotions to manipulate you into buying a good or service - it sounds sinister and deeply unethical. If, however, marketing and advertising is framed as a profession practised by creative, cool and sexy ‘agents’ who show you how their product or service can fulfil your wildest dreams it seems clever, interesting and harmless. You know you’ve been tricked, but you don’t mind because you were tricked by Don Draper and you want to be him/sleep with him /drink bourbon over ice in a seedy New York jazz club with him.

When you frame the climate altering gasses that we each create in huge proportions every day as Carbon emissions, they sound a lot less devastating than when you call them what they are: pollution.

Embracing our own hypocrisies

Yesterday Ed Gillespie wrote a Guardian column on the hypocrisy of 'green' celebrities. Debate raged in the comment reel, I can't imagine Ed got a lot of work done as he typed up defense after defense of his own behaviour, which according to the accusations chucked at him meant he was no less a hypocrite than Sting, Bono and chums. Ed has responded again this morning on the safer territory of the Futerra blog. I started to comment on it there, but got carried away, so am giving my response here instead.

I find that being honest with people from the beginning that I don't always 'walk my talk' helps temper accusations that I'm giving it the old hypocritical: 'do as I say not as I do'. I do environmentally damaging things all the time, it's not because I HATE the environment, but because I like other things too. I enjoy experiencing what the wonders of the human mind has been able to create and make possible: eg: Reading festival, aeroplanes, wine, iPhones, go carting, etc, etc, etc. As Robert Tressell in 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' described it, I like to enjoy the 'benefits of civilisation' a little bit. To deny ourselves the 'benefits of civilisation' is to deny ourselves what it is to be human. Robert Tressell's painters and decorators, his ragged trousered philanthropists, were being denied this because of the low wages paid to them by those they worked for. Their bosses were milking the profits and enjoying the finer things in life, while keeping their employees in poverty. It is why the central character, Frank Owen, saw himself as a philanthropist. He, his fellow workers and their families were being forced to sacrifice their own basic wellbeing and enjoyment of life by the controlling elite, corrupt forces of business and local government. We all need to enjoy what it is to be human, when people deny us the benefits of civilisation we quite rightly rebel.

Thanks to my ongoing sustainability education, I'm learning how to ensure I meet my basic material needs (food, clothing, shelter) in as low impact a way as possible and am discovering how to enjoy music, travel, drinking, communication, speed etc, etc, in lower impact ways too. I've questioned whether Reading Festival is really that enjoyable compared to writing and playing my own music with friends, whether I need to travel by plane to Morocco, or whether an overland journey might be more fun and whether the satisfaction of ripping downhill at 50mph on my racing bike after a long climb up is more fun than go-carting. This doesn't mean I don't sometimes want to go to a big music festival and still do; or don't enjoy go-carting when I do it, I truly do; or don't use an iPhone (I'm a slave to it). I do do all these things, but a bit less now and it is because I have learned that what it is I get out of them can be found in other, more fulfilling ways. And with some sustainability literacy I'm able to do them in an environmentally more sensitive way.

But, hey, I flew back from Morocco. I want to talk to you about that, not to justify it to you, just to dig deeper into this common dilemma. Exploring why, despite all the physical and emotional discomfort it caused me, it still made the most sense and was therefore ultimately what I wanted to do. In the list of my life's priorities, my environmental concerns are sometimes trumped by my other concerns - I want to talk to you about those other concerns and how they came to be. Exploring with people our own environmentally destructive behaviours and what drives them takes you to a position where your audience feels they can walk alongside you, rather than wanting to square up to you and punch in your hypocritical nosey nose.

Chandran Nair at The RSA

Emma and I attended 'Constraining Consumption' at the RSA this evening. It was nice to hear someone telling it like it is. Here, very briefly, is one part of the argument as I understood it!

From the end of the second world war onwards Government's in the Western world had to work out how to deal with the fact that they had a production system that produced far more goods and services than people actually wanted. Too many resources and too few consumers. The business of public relations was ushered in and set about convincing people they did need more stuff. In the process they ensured that demand matched supply and that a lot of producers got rich. This story is told most succintly in Adam Curtis' Century of the Self. The result was rapid and spectacular economic growth. Today in Asia the problem faced by the governments in Beijing, Delhi, Manilla and so on is the exact opposite. Too few resources, too many people. In Consumptionomics Chandran Nair argues that they are apparently blind to this reality and instead obssesively follow the consumer capitalist model of the West. It is an absolutely insane thing to do. At exactly the time when governments should be working out how to constrain consumption they are out there, all over the world, actively encouraging us to buy, buy, buy.

Paul Gilding at The RSA - Where are 'we' in The Great Disruption?

Paul Gilding is talking tonight at The Hub Kings Cross on his new book The Great Disruption. Its free, but you need to sign up and is chaired by Ed Gillespie from Futerra. My wife and I went to his RSA talk last night; he's great to listen to!

I agree with a lot of Gilding's analysis, we are coming towards the end of global economic growth, it is a scientific fact. The world's capability to produce enough for the 7 billion of us currently on Earth is diminishing rapidly, I'm in total agreement. The world's economy is going to contract, it is going to be disrupting! I've not read the book yet, but the most interesting thing to me at last night's event was the use of the word 'we' by Gilding and the chair, Martin Wright. They seemed to be talking about the global 'we'; 'we' as a species, and argued that this 'we' will eventually, collectively, act to cope with the great disruption. I admire the optimism.

At the end of the Q&A, Wright asked the audience to put their hand up if they agreed with the following statement: 'We're going to go through a serious shit storm and then we'll eventually emerge, slightly weather beaten, but basically in tact in about 70 years time.' (I'm paraphrasing!) I didn't put my hand up, because I assumed he was talking about the global 'we'. My hand would have (regretfully) shot up if he'd been referring to 'we' the rich 1 billion.

Why? Well I was left wondering if anyone really cares about GLOBAL economic growth; I mean is there anyone out there activitely on a mission to sustain global economic growth? Or, is it just the cumulative result of lots of people autonomously caring about personal, national and corporate economic growth? Surely it is and always will be. The upshot of this is that as the global economy retracts people/politicians/CEOs will do everything they can to delay the death of their most immediate economies, in fact they already do this daily. As these more immediate economies are under threat from increasing oil prices, impacts of Climate Change, new regulations, redundancy or whatever other crisis they face (which many already are) the instinct is to act selfishly to cope with or diminish the emerging threats. There is little incentive to care about the detriment your actions will have on others(1). The rich 1 billion, in its various overlapping guises as nations, corporations and wealthy individuals, has been doing this for decades, most noticeably for us, here in the UK, through the government's ongoing foreign policies. The result of all this is the growth of between country and within country inequality. More threat (and more perception of threat) intensifies this process; fear breeds protectionism, resource grabbing and self preservation. This is one of my concerns about creating a 'fear' of climate change.

But, will individual economies/nations/people/businesses acting in their own self interest between now and 2050 add up to a global collective movement capable of navigating the great disruption with all the estimated 9 billion people in tact? It seems to be a hope some are clinging to right now. But, the consumer culture fuelled demise of our ecosystem services and natural resources suggests it won't. What will probably happen is that the current weakest economies will collapse and the stronger more powerful economies will swoop down to mop up their scraps to keep their economies going as long as possible. It is a frankly terrifying future prospect and one that makes me feel quite ill.

Is there any hope? Yes, I strongly believe, like Gilding that the Earth has the carrying capacity to feed and shelter 9 billion people, in a more equal, less consumerist, world it would be possible. We might even be able to still enjoy some of Robert Tressell's 'benefits of civilisation' too. Part way through his talk last night Gilding said that for this to be possible 'we simply need to change the way we think'. He was of course talking about the need for us all to appreciate that the true ways to wellbeing are found not through shopping, hedonism, celebrity and power, but through giving, caring, connecting and playing. The 'simply' part was an enormous understatement, but I totally agree and it's why I passionately work to do this everyday with Global Footsteps, Becoming Green and most recently Common Cause. It is a far from 'simple' task, but its not impossible and Gilding cites some precedents for this happening. If the global 'we' is successful in doing this I'll be a delighted 80-year-old come 2050, if not I will be able to sleep at night knowing I was one of the those who was trying to make it happen. Paul Gilding, Martin Wright and Ed Gillespie are three others amongst a growing crowd who will also be able to look themselves in the mirror and say 'I tried'.

Notes

1. Other than pissing them off so much that they rise up against you and even then you can avert that threat by owning weapons of mass destruction

Action for Happiness

Action for Happiness launched today. So far I like it.

Find out more via their website.

Follow them on Twitter

If you're not the sort of person who does all the things listed below, you probably don't read this blog. But, just in case, try one or two. I'm off out now and will try to do number 10.

T-Shirt for sale: 'I'm Cameron's Big Society'

This soggy dog was photographed in 2008 by the pond in Springfield Park, Hackney. He probably made a mess; someone probably had to clear it up.

Springfield Park overlooks the River Lee and Walthamstow Marshes in East London and is becoming increasingly popular as the people of Hackney seek a refuge from the overcrowded fashion show that Clissold Park in nearby Stoke Newington has become. My wife and I took my parents to the Springfield Park Cafe yesterday on our way home from Sutton House in Homerton. As Dad and I queued up for the men's toilet, the resident Park Ranger lamented to us the difficulty he and his colleagues are having in keeping Hackney's parks litter free and well stocked with loo paper. With a wry smile he complained, 'I was here at 8am this morning waiting for Cameron's Big Society to turn up and help me clear up yesterday's litter. They didn't come; its 3pm now, I don't think they are coming are they?' I was quite moved to want to help this guy, but the thing is I really, really don't want to be one of 'Cameron's'Big Society'. He is not a leader I am drawn to follow, I'd hate to wear the 'I'm Cameron's Big Society' t-shirt. I don't want to vindicate him, he's a hypocrite. If Caroline Lucas MP asked me to grab my litter picker and pooper scooper, I'd be there, she's not a hypocrite. It's not that I don't want to help others, I continue to volunteer on projects I've been involved in for several years, but to take on any new volunteering, especially something as conspicuous as litter picking, stinks of Cameronism. I won't volunteer to help Cameron's re-election campaign.

The selflessness that should be at the core of the Big Society is a value I certainly hold, but it is not a value I easily associate with Mr Cameron and Conservative party members. There is a carefully veiled hypocrisy here and it surfaces in the Government's 'Giving' Green paper. The paper condescendingly explains to the NGO sector that to encourage selflessness you need to highlight the self-enhancing benefits of donating time and money. OK, this approach can mobilise people in the short term, but it's oxymoronic and doesn't address the root of the problem. Boiled down the message is this: Be selfless for the sake of yourself; it will reflect well on you in your social circles, it will make you feel good and make your life better and safer. 'Selfish people have been dropping litter in your park, be selfless for selfish reasons and pick it up won't you?' This, according to the the Green Giving paper, is what NGOs should be communicating to the public to create the Big Society.

Such advice is grounded in our current culture and is therefore an insufficient challenge to it. We live in hyper-individualist times where self interest is championed by the business and political elite almost everywhere we look. From adverts selling us status symbols to the recent revelation that David Miliband MP has set up a company to change and lower his personal tax burden (Labour are certainly not immune here). From this base, it is very difficult to encourage generosity, kindness, community spirit and genuine altruism. When the Big Society fails, as it surely will, Cameron and colleagues dare not accuse the public of selfishness; they reinforce it in them on a daily basis.

To lead a selflessness revolution, Mr Cameron, as the 'Prime' version, should look up the definition of the word 'minister' ('to attend to the wants and needs of others') and so should his parliamentary colleagues. They should all be exemplars of this ministering. Currently they only seem to be attending to the wants and needs of a few at the expense of the all the 'others' they have been elected to attend to. This should surely be the other way around (I do recognize the need for trade-off and compromise in Politics!) Until selflessness becomes observable in the deeds as well as words of our political leaders, they will remain difficult leaders to follow.

Adam Curtis documentaries

This is just a link to a website containing most of Adam Curtis' documentaries.

Possible streams of effort to carry Common Cause forward within the education sector

Please feedback by commenting below or by emailing

Morgan Phillips: mail@becominggreen.co.uk

It is my strong personal belief that the sustainability sector¹ is too small and too powerless to create a mainstream shift towards sustainable lifestyles on its own. Such a shift would require a dramatic modification of the values of the entire population and the sustainability movement is only a very tiny shaper of those values. The forces that drive and embed self-interest and therefore consumerism in our society are numerous, complexly interrelated and self reinforcing. This is not to say they can't be challenged, they are and can be; I'll discuss how a little later.

Following on from discussions on March 11^th, 19^th, 20^th and 21^st that I’ve been having in various ‘Common Cause’ meetings I want to suggest two streams of effort that those interested might want to join together to pursue. They are related and mutually reinforcing but need not be pursued in any particular order, I am therefore naming them the RED and BLUE streams.

RED stream - Getting our own house in order

As a sector¹, and as Common Cause points out, what we absolutely must not do is be complicit in reinforcing damaging self-enhancing values. Heaven knows they are reinforced enough elsewhere! So, no longer, for example, should we encourage environmental behaviours by preying on cost and time saving motivators, however tempting such short-cuts can be. There is a very real need for us to get our own houses in order. No matter how difficult and challenging it might be, this must be the path we set out on. We must do this for several reasons, one not least of which being that if we are playing on self-interest to further our agendas, we are in effect - as respected ‘universalists’ - further legitimizing hyper-individualism².

The first task in getting our houses in order is to communicate to the sector as a whole the necessity of actually doing this. Waste Watch’s collaborative Sustainable Lifestyles framework and its initial discussion paper 'Working from values'³ provides a very useful starting point for us. The 'next steps' of that project will explore the issues in more depth and contribute further advice, through research and best practice case studies, to help the sector as a whole to modify its approach. Tim has called for others to come forward to help him develop these next steps; it is up to us to respond to that call.

However, dissemination, I feel, must not be restricted to PDF files and online forums. Face-to-face contact in the form of one-to-one conversations, workshops, action research and ‘work experience’⁴ need to happen as budgets allow. Several networks⁵ exist to make dissemination possible, we should use as many as possible to ensure we reach all corners of the sector.

The shift in practice called for will not happen overnight, there are many obstacles⁶ to overcome. As advocates and consultants⁷ we can catalyse a change in practice - the shift is already in motion, we need to help it gather speed until it snowballs.

Getting our own house in order is crucial not only to improving the efficacy and long term impacts of our own work, but will also allow us to carry out the BLUE stream more effectively.

BLUE stream – Engaging the wider education sector

Formal education in the UK is beset with many difficulties⁸; many argue that it is not fit for purpose. Schools are filled with disengaged students, frustrated teachers and worried parents. The formal education system is ripe for transformation and we need to get along side those calling for change, find common ground and combine with them to become a powerful and irresistible voice.

I may be a bit naive here, but I believe that if you ask teachers and parents what they want their children to grow up to be, they don’t say: image and celebrity obsessed, infantalised, hyper-hedonistic, dependent, conformist, selfish capitalist consumers. They are probably more likely to want them to be: creative, kind, independent, community spirited, mature, intelligent, caring and selfless young citizens. If they do want them to be the latter they have an enormous role to play in nurturing them and making it possible⁹.

As we know children and adults are surrounded by self-enhancing values. Adam Curtis called the 20^th Century the Century of the Self ¹⁰; the 21^st Century shows no sign of being any different. We are taught to look out for number one, to buy large houses and fast cars, expensive holidays and designer clothes. We have status anxiety, debt and boring jobs. Consumerism, for many, is an escape, a temporary relief and a way of life. Self-enhancing values are reinforced constantly, by celebrities, public figures, script writers, musicians, academics, teachers, parents, brothers, sisters and friends. Often it is done inadvertently, it is so embedded in our culture that our ‘natural’ behaviour unwittingly reinforces self-enhancing values.

But, every time we hold a door open for someone, lend an ear to a friend in need, give our family members a lift to the shops or organise a birthday party for someone close to us we reinforce self-transcendent values, all is not lost! Our learning institutions have a very important role to play in helping children and young people to decipher the world around them. Teachers can help children to celebrate the joy of giving and caring for others. Teachers can help children to understand their emotions and basic material and non-material needs. They can help them to think critically about the things that influence their values. They can marvel at the wonders of nature, science and art with them. They can nurture their creativity and bring stories of self-transcendence, rather than self-enhancement to life. They can do all this through books, films, poetry, photography, field trips, music, art, sport and history. The point is they can do it within their chosen subject, it really is not that hard and it is probably what the majority of them would actually like to do¹¹.

The conversations I have been having with those with several years more experience of working in and around the formal education sector have led me to the following premise: Lasting change in education is more likely to happen from the bottom up. Education ministers come and go; schools and teachers stick around a lot longer (and believe or not do have some autonomy, creativity and pride in their work). Although the thinning out of the curriculum will present challenges¹², it also presents opportunities. Teachers beyond the core subjects of English, Maths and Science will be freed up to express their self-direction and their creativity. They will have more freedom to decide what they teach and the resources they use. We need help them curate these and encourage them to facilitate and celebrate creativity in children. In doing so, we can hope they produce young people who are creative and caring, rather than creative and selfish! ¹³

If change does happen from the bottom up, we need to work out ways to engage teachers, parents and children (and perhaps civil servants). Can we go into schools and ask some fundamental questions? Why are you a teacher? Is the current education system fit for purpose? How can you change it? Are children leaving school with the skills, aptitudes and values that will help them flourish as adults in the 21^st Century? What do we want our children to grow up to be?

The BLUE stream will require us to get alongside other groups who are also interested in asking these sorts of questions. Those in the arts and creative sector, those interested in children’s wellbeing, those interested in bringing New Economics into schools, those interested in introducing philosophy to children, those interested in reclaiming Sport as an environmentally benign and community building pastime. We need to identify these groups and link with them. There are workshops, weekend retreats for teachers and parents, discussion papers, books, documentaries and so on to be made. What will these look like? How can we modify existing approaches and create new ones?

****

I hope this is useful and helps focus efforts. I am keen to hear your feedback, tell me if I am being unrealistic or idealistic! The RED stream may well be the easiest one to navigate, but the BLUE stream is where the real opportunity for change seems to lie, I recommend doing both.

If you can think of a GREEN or indeed YELLOW stream to add to this, please offer it up! I look forward to hearing from you.

Notes

1. The sector I’m referring to here includes all those working in education for sustainable development, development education and environmental education. Most specifically those who engage with schools in the UK.

2. ‘Hyper-Individualism’ is a phrase I am borrowing here from Bill McKibben’s (2007) book ‘Deep Economy’.

3. ‘Working from values’ available from: http://wastewatch.ning.com/group/workingfromvalues I’m sure you can also contact Tim Burns directly tim.burns@wastewatch.org.uk to request a copy.

4. There is no better way to learn about a new approach than to witness it firsthand. I hope organisations pioneering this approach will open their doors to fellow practioners.

5. Networks: Sustainable Schools Alliance, SHED, PRISM, Compass Network, Common Cause, LEEF, HEEN, Project Dirt, Sustainable Lifestyles, IES, The Green Party, NEF etc, etc. [Please add to this list].

6. Obstacles to change within sector: Funding hoops to jump through, Culturally embedded practice, Audience expectations, Time, Resources, Ignorance of funders/educators(!), Heavy emphasis on actions, desperation and impatience.... (I researched this during my PhD studies)

7. As momentum for a shift begins to occur, there is likely to be a role for advocates and consultants who can help organisations and individuals to modify their work. Advocates and consultants will need to be trained and resourced to do this.

8. Problems with formal education sector. For a brief summary just watch Sir Ken Robinson’s RSA Animate: http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/10/14/rsa-animate-changing-education-paradigms/ Please feedback to me with other good critiques.

9. I argue this more fully, but from a Higher Education perspective here: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/6065/Emotional-Wellbeing.pdf

10. Adam Curtis’ BBC Century of the Self documentary series details the rise of Public Relations and is well worth watching, you should be able to find it here and you can often get DVDs of it on EBay.

11. My personal website: www.becominggreen.co.uk is a collection of resources and ideas to be used by teachers of all subjects who wish to explore values, wellbeing and sustainability; it hopefully demonstrates how wide education for sustainability actually is / could be.

12. The core concern I heard raised at the recent launch of the Sustainable Schools Alliance is that schools will become preoccupied in achieving success in the small range of core subjects, therefore lessening the emphasis they put on more peripheral subjects, especially sustainability.

13. I have just written a piece titled: Creative and Caring, or Creative and Selfish: http://becominggreenblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/creative-and-caring-or-creative-and.html