Re-thinking our approach to Climate Change

I've just responded to a blog post titled: 'Is it time for the Climate Change movement to completely re-think our approach?' on Be That Change.com. In short, yes it is and it has been for a long time. In the blog Kieren Battles laments the lack of media coverage given to events on 10:10:10 and rightly suggests that: 'Surely we cannot continue to do the same thing and expect different outcomes. As we all know, that’s the definition of madness.' So here is the comment I posted, hopefully it is constructive:

It is nice to read someone honestly admitting that 'events' like 10:10:10 essentially fail to capture public and media attention, you are right they do. On top of this only 74,000 people out of a 60,000,000 population have signed up (and how many of them fulfill their pledge I wonder?) .. You are also right to say that a mass frisbee event (if, and probably only if, heavily sponsored and promoted by a multinational corporation) would have got more attention, it undoubtedly would have. The mainstream media sadly has a habit of ignoring anything that in any way suggests we consume less (of anything) for any reason. The mainstream media is, in the main, run/funded by people stuck in the neo-liberal consumer capitalist paradigm and they are hell-bent on prolonging it as long as they can. I'm not a huge fan of the 10:10 approach and although I think Bill McKibben's 'Deep Economy' is an excellent book, 350.org, is also not the best approach to take... they both use the wrong language, ask for a pathetic amount of change, are reductionist and strengthen the trend toward green consumerism, which in the end creates 'less bad' not 'better' behaviour. What always seems to be missing in the design of such initiatives is a realisation that people don't damage the environment because the HATE the environment, or HATE polar bears. They damage it because they care about other things as well, lots of other things - TV, films, music, clothes, playstations, holidays, toys, phones etc etc etc. It is hardly surprising given all the influences that surrounds them. Environmental concern, however strong, is only one of those influences and often it is a minor and easily forgotten one.

Taking the single issue, reductionist approach of only campaigning on Climate Change, is disingenuous when we need systemic change. Campaigns like 10:10 seem to ask only 'how can we go on living like this, but in a low-carbon way?' We need to inspire people, especially young people, to create new ways of doing just about everything: grow food, make clothes, entertain themselves and each other, build houses, travel, socialise, holiday, work, care, etc, etc. We need an education system that teaches science, maths, english, history, geography, languages, sport, economics, politics and philosophy through the language of sustainability... this way we create sustainably literate young adults, who can envisage different (and more commonsensical) ways of doing things and the skills, knowledge and creativity to do them. Sure you can educate about environmental problems, the end of oil, biodiversity loss and so on, the reality check is essential. But also educate in science about biomimicry and permaculture, in PE and drama about the joy of doing it, rather than watching it; in English about The Great Gatsby's painful experience of the material wealth = happiness myth; in philosophy about Aristotle's pursuit of wellbeing through welldoing and Plato's understandings of simplicity; in economics about the truth behind Milton Friedmann's Fundamental free market, The Spirit Level and the Green New Deal; in Art about the romantic's love of nature and fear for it, etc, etc.. The young people of today need to question everything, they need inspirational teachers who can guide them through this and point them towards ideas like Cradle to Cradle and The School of Life.

A lot of money was thrown behind 10:10, has it done anything more than create a load of convenient 'greenwash' for institutions, individuals, organisations and governments? Could the money have been spent better by campaigning for systemic change in formal education, which is clearly, at the moment, completely unfit for the 21st Century? The inconvenient question then of course is whether they would have got so much support? I'd argue they would have; there are a lot of teachers and parents and pupils out there who are deeply dissatisfied with our current education system. Let's stop pissing about at the margins of a broken system, pretending that it can work and, to paraphrase Buckminster Fuller, 'create a new system that makes the old one obsolete'. The Human Race has not evolved to anywhere near its potential yet, this is obvious by looking at the way we measure our wealth as individuals and countries. There are exciting times ahead, we need to create them, Ellen MacArthur recognises this, please check out her foundation.

@MorganHPhillips

www.becominggreen.co.uk

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Tom Hodgkinson - Love your neighbour

I am not normally prone to getting out of bed at 8am on a Sunday morning to catch the 55 bus to central London, but today was an exception. I have been to a Sermon at the Old horse hospital (behind Russell Sq tube station) put on by The School of Life and starring the author, journalist and champion Idler, Tom Hodgkinson. I've been holding back on writing about Tom for a while, I read his second book 'How to be free' a while back and thoroughly enjoyed it and have always enjoyed his monthly column in The Ecologist.

Today he was talking about the importance of loving your neighbours, which he suggests is something that we, thanks to our cultural and political upbringing, are not doing enough of. As a resident of a block of flats on Hackney Road, I know only too well how having estranged neighbours fuels our individualism, breeds discontent and does little to deter careless door banging. In his talk, Tom began by explaining the formerly sinful activity of usury. I remember reading about this at length in his book. Up to about 500 years ago lending money and expecting repayment with interest was frowned upon heavily, it was seen as a callous, lazy (perhaps idle) way of profiteering from the financial misfortune of others. Given recent events in the mystical world of finance, the modern position of lenders as heroes who let us fulfil our material dreams has been slightly lost. But in general, usury is no longer portrayed as a sin, just a tiresome and tolerated fact of life. It is also probably true that many people would howl with cries of unfair play if all of a sudden this practice was to end.

The idea of having these secular sermons on a Sunday morning does not need to be spelled out. What I found interesting is that Hodgkinson returned often to the morals of Christianity, pointing out how many of the values sorely lacking in modern society, were prevalent in more Christian times; loving your neighbours being just one of these. There are things in the Bible that are a bit hard to swallow in modern times, but a lot of the values taught by it are sound ones and ones we could probably very much do with reminding ourselves of now. There may be no scientific evidence for God and a Heaven and Hell, but should we really throw the baby out with the bath water?

In my thesis I wrote this about Tom Hodgkinson:

Hodgkinson regularly points out the anxieties and stresses created by modern consumer culture and goes as far as saying that the environmental movement, with its emphasis on technological development creates even more stress and should therefore be handled with caution. His articles also point out the importance of finding meaning in one’s life and living in the present and not worrying too much about money. His philosophy can be summed up by the following quote: ‘When you stop working and stop spending you start living’ (Hodgkinson, 2008).

Simms and Smith (2007), in the 'Do Good Lives Have to cost the Earth' book that they edited, introduce Hodgkinson’s chapter and sum up his recommendations as follows:

His main advice for us is that to tackle climate change, possibly the best thing we could do is nothing at all. But he means it literally, not in the sense of just keep on doing what you are doing. He wants us all to stop and take it easy. No more shopping, no more upgrading consumer durables. The answer he says is to ‘decommodify our fun.’

Maybe environmentalists are trying too hard and just complicating things. Tom Hodgkinson is an excellent environmental educator, whether he likes it or not (I’ve not asked him if he considers himself one). He understands that rather than trying to lessen the environmental impact of our current consumer obsessed culture we actually need to shift that culture out of way and let a new one in. As an environmental educator, he is in a minority.

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