Open Minds and Dropping Conventional Environmentalism

Here is my response to Christine Ottery's excellent recent article 'How to be Less Maladaptive' over on 'Open Minds and Parachutes'

Hi Christine,

If we do as you suggest and keep all bases covered in our 'green' communications, are we not just perpetuating the status quo? It took me a while to find it, but I am now fixed on the 'Don't mention the Environment' approach.

We, as environmentalists, are locked in a battle (that we are losing horrendously) with consumer psychologists employed to keep people believing that material wealth = well-being. Belief in this myth is caused by what John K Galbraith in 'The Affluent Society' called 'The Paramount Position of Production' in the pursuit of economic growth and security. This creates 'The imperative of [maintaining] consumer demand' and, ultimately, our social and environmental problems.

Environmentalists are locked in a paradigm that has been proven over decades to be a fruitless and we need to wake up to it. The influence of long term, short term, immediate and distant environmental problems on people's behaviour are very small. We live in a world in which the majority are unable to properly identify and pursue the things that do and do not bring them well-being. We live in a world of 'pseudo-satisfiers', if we didn't the economy would collapse.

Making people aware of environmental problems is pointless unless it is mixed in with a much heavier dose of deeper soul searching. Rather than point people toward The Ecologist, Guardian Environment, 10:10 and The Age of Stupid; point them toward Alain De Botton, Vance Packard, Neil Boorman, Mihaly Csikzentmihayli, Mohammed Yunus, Tobias Jones, Peter Senge, Peter Singer and Oliver James. Or the albums: '12 Crass Songs' by Jeff Lewis and 'Cold Fact' by Rodriguez. Or films like Garbage Warrior, Into the Wild and Shooting Dogs.

These are the sources that have changed my way of thinking about the world and what the hell I should be doing within it. Stories of environmental despair add to my general despair about the human condition in modern Western life. But it is my concerns about my well-being and the well-being of my friends and family from the developed and developing world that drive me. It is the embedded 'Conventional Wisdom' (Galbraith, 1969, Chapter 2) of our current material consumption driven economic system that needs to change. If we want continued economic growth we have to de-materialise it, to do this we as environmentalists need to help people let go of what Tim Kasser calls our High Materialistic Value Orientations.

Key Reference:

Galbraith, J,K. (1969) The Affluent Society, Pelican, UK

Documentary: The Shock Doctrine: RSA Screening

Last night we went to watch The Shock Doctrine at the RSA....

After a 2009 packed with high impact environmental films: The Age of Stupid, End of the Line, Pig Business, The Vanishing Bees... 2010 looks set to kick off with some films that don't leave you feeling depressed and saddened and helplessly thinking 'oh dear'. The Shock Doctrine, directed by Michael Winterbottom and 'starring' Naomi Klein takes us to the next step; it makes you angry, motivated and ready to take to the streets. The next step after that, something that was brought up during the Q&A is that we need an alternative ideology to follow, economically and politically; we also need a leader, where is the next Che Guevara (without the violence, or maybe with it?)? Neither are currently obvious.

The Shock Doctrine is a film you have to lean forward, listen intently and concentrate on right the way through, it is like an Adam Curtis doc, but not quite as good. The basic premise is the same as Klein's book. Klein argues that wars as well as economic, environmental and terrorist shocks have been used systematically by neo-liberal governments to hurry through public sector reforms in the shape of mass privatisations of just about everything. The end result is inequality of the kind so well described in the book: 'The Spirit Level'. We live in society in which the rich are very rich and the rest of us are sleepwalking in a bubble of escapism, idly letting our public services slip away as everything is privatised and run for profit. The villian according to Klein is Milton Freidmann, whose extreme free market economics was ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher via Augustus Pinochet and Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo and has since guided the policies of nearly all the rest of the worlds governments.

Where does this film leave us? It leaves me wondering whether the UK and US population at large will wake up to the domestic and global inequality that results from extreme neo-liberalism.. I am left wondering whether a digital technology inspired documentary led revolution will give rise to a mass movement of individuals rebelling against free market economics. What we have at the moment is a society in which being financially rich is the main game, everyone wants money and fame. While this mindset persists, which it does so thanks to the mass media, a grassroots movement is unlikely, it is akin to asking people to fight against what they are striving to achieve for themselves... people still believe that they can be super rich, when it is painfully obvious that only a lucky, small elite can ever be. But while individuals harbour this belief and cling to it, their expectations remain high and they go on living as Selfish Capitalists.

Two Films

On Sunday I went to see two Environmentally themed films. Firstly I saw 'The Age of Stupid'. There has been lots of hype about this film and it was, Ok. For me it did seem a little bit like the makers had seen 'The Day After Tomorrow', 'An Inconvenient Truth' and 'The 11th Hour' and thought: 'hey we could do something like that'.... and that unfortunately is all they have done. The Age of Stupid would be useful to show someone who has either not heard of Climate Change before or is not yet convinced about it. It is dramatic, in places sad and upsetting, but it is the same old mix of Fear, Guilt and Chastisement. Those three things, for me add up to create paralysis, something the status quo feeds off.

There was a short Q&A after the film, I put my hand up first and asked 'why is it so pessimistic?' The answer from 'McLibel star and climate campaigning superstar Dave Morris' was 'I know, I kept trying to persuade Franny Armstrong (the writer) to inject more positivity, but she kept saying it is too serious for that, we need to scare people into changing and campaigning'. I really wish someone would make a more positive film, I wish someone would write about the real solutions, i.e. what a low carbon, low waste, wellbeing led economy would look like, we need to sell that to people before we have got any chance of selling something like 'carbon rationing'. No government at present will implement 'carbon rationing' it equates to telling people to give up everything the government and business have been telling us that we need for the sake of the future. It would be political suicide. We need to move quickly to start selling a wellbeing economy!

On that note 'Garbage Warrior' was so much better, so much more inspiring and so much more enjoyable. It is the story of one man, who has long been mystified by human 'progress', going out there to re-design the way we build and live in houses and communities. He has long been stifled by the dinosaur that is American politics but has persisted and now is an icon for architects the world over, I'm sure Kevin McCloud would love him. Be sure to watch that film, it is full of hope and joy and is a story of people who understand meaning and purpose and wellbeing, they are an example to us all!

In other news, I've been on a 'becoming self employed' course today and have discovered not only that I can claim 20p expenses on every mile I do on the bike when going about my business, but I can also claim the tax back on any 'training' I undertake including any films, conferences, talks and so on I go to and any relevant books and magazines I buy! Good news I guess!