Bottoms up

A brief voyage into the world of polycentric systems was a nice way to tie together the major ideas from this course as well as the entire online portion of this program.  It’s easy to get lost in the world of wordy academic vernacular and lose sight of the big picture, or better yet the local picture.  As Ostrom (2010) alludes to, people seem to be waiting for some agreement at a global level to validate or motivate them to alter their values or shift their behaviour in a more sustainable direction, when in truth, this change, in order to be effective, needs to start at a local level.  As was mentioned in the group discussions on Moodle, centralized authority can result in fast changes, but it usually precludes any local knowledge,  undermines adaptability, and in the end results in the alienation of local stakeholders.

Change needs to come from everywhere, cascading vertically, laterally and diagonally.  Values oriented approaches have the capacity to motivate change that can build resilience at local levels and in the end create the paradigm shift necessary to address global concerns.  Ostrom (2010) mentions that there is perhaps no better catch phrase than “think global, act local,” and it is at this level that change can and must begin.  In the words of Margret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

  Ostrom, E. (2010). Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change. Global Environmental Change, 20(4), 550-557.

Path to our future

Last night I found myself in front of the T.V watching the final fleeting moments of what seems like an endless hockey playoff season, contemplating meaningless questions relating to les Canadiens de Montreal when I was suddenly awoken from my slumber by three successive advertisements on the CBC.  The first one was a message from our darling Federal Conservative party, reminding us how important jobs are to all Canadians (not to be confused with les Canadiens), the second was sponsored by Enbridge, promoting the Northern gateway pipeline as a path to prosperity for all Canadians, and the third was a message from the oil sands producers, praising the oil sands as the savior of Canadian Industry (I’ll post the links below).   AHHH!! So much green washing and values washing!  The advertisements were filled with beautiful images of natural landscapes and “working families.” The Enbridge add took the cake with its “path to our future" slogan, complete with a green oil tanker (see link below).  Just made me think, as I read through Leichenko, O’Brien, and Solecki (2010), that we are a very long way from grasping the complexity of interactions between global environmental and economic changes, at least the people with money are.  They do however provide great learning opportunities for the development of critical media skills.

Enbridge Path to our Future: http://www.youtube.com/user/enbridgepipelines?feature=results_main

Point of no Return

In the midst of this week’s discussion of a values oriented approach to climate change, on the front page of the news paper today (ok, it was actually the front cover of the B section- Vancouver Sun) I found this title jumping up at me: Earth near point of no return, scientists warn: Effects of civilization on planet threaten collapse of ecosystems in 50 years- with no going back.  Inspiring stuff!!  This may very well be our reality, but if the intention of this article is to bring about change (It is the Vancouver Sun, so I doubt this was their goal), I imagine the words read as relative white noise on the backdrop of what appears on the actual front page (immanent economic and ecological collapse).  After some initial intrigue and a brief hope that Bridget Fonda would reprise her 1993 role as Maggie Hayward, I fell into a haze of statistics and doomsday predictions. 

Shore, R. (2012, Thursday June 7th). Earth near point of no return, scientists warn, Vancouver Sun, p. 1.

What if?

I seem to be falling a little behind with these, it’s now Tuesday June 5^th, and I have just returned from a great week down in San Francisco, as well as a beautiful trek through California’s redwood forests and the Oregon coast.  I am going to comment on some of the readings from week 7, as well as my own reflections on the emergence of the International environmental movement.

It seemed that everyone in the group enjoyed the Jansanoff (2010) article, in particular the discussion on the difficulty in creating meaningful communications strategies that are based in climate facts.  “The work of science tends to erase specificity and remove traces of the human mind and hand” (Jansanoff, 2010,p. 234).  If people are to buy into the narrative (it’s more than a narrative, but sounds better for this line of reasoning) being communicated by the environmental movement, then it will need to be a narrative that the general public can attach meaning to, nothing groundbreaking there. We’ve spent a great deal of time looking at framing (Lakoff, 2010) and conceptualizing the importance of messages that speak to values.  However, it’s always refreshing to read a new perspective on an old problem.  The language of science itself seems to be a limiting factor in sharing our experiences with nature, and fails to capture the true essence of the symbiotic relationship that humans share with the natural world.

Jansanoff (2010) speaks of the need for change on four fronts: community, politically, space and time. I think that our concepts of time are one of the great obstacles in addressing climate issues.  “Climate change occurs over spans of time” (Jansanoff, 2010, p. 237) that don’t necessarily resonate with our typical standards of time, but perhaps even more challenging is our willingness as environmental communicators to accept the duration of time it will take to reverse the negative consequences of our industrial development.  I know we are running out of “time,” and while scientists like James Hansen are arguing that it is already too late, it is going to take “time” to reframe the human/nature relationship.

Political change is an interesting topic to grapple with, especially in Canada as our current administration seems to be headed in the opposite direction of our desired paradigm shift, as they wage war on “radical” environmental groups in their on-going quest to turn Canada into an “energy superpower” (O'Neil, 2012).  In the United States I doubt if the environment will ever be mentioned in the lead up to the November election as Mitt and Barack make empty job promises, likely at the expense of future generations.  It is interesting to consider where we would be if people in the United States had taken the words of Jimmy Carter seriously in the late 1970’s as he tried to promote alternative forms of energy and supported conservation, unfortunately his popularity was undone through a series of foreign policy mishaps, and his replacement led America down a different path (one propagated on limitless growth).  What if the 2000 election had swung in a different direction, what path would Al Gore have chosen, would his attempts to warn the world of the dangers associated with global warming have taken center stage had he held the presidency.  The answers to these questions are irrelevant now, here we are, with Harper in Canada, likely a republican as the next American president, as the fall of the European economy will no doubt be blamed on the current U.S administration.  Will the future leaders be bold and lead their nations down a new path, or will they look romantically to failed policies of the past for answers.

I think that at least some of the answers will come out of increasingly autonomous localized economies that seek to separate themselves from the failing global markets.  Nice thought, should be interesting to see how it plays out!!

References

Lakoff, G. (2010). Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 4(1), 70-81.

O'Neil, P. (2012). Pipelines, protests and recession collide in B.C., Vancouver Sun, pp. A1,A6.

Jasanoff, S. (2010). A new climate for society. Theory, Culture & Society 27(2-3), 233-253.

What's wrong with being right

The questions posed during week six of this course are perhaps the most important questions we face as a collective.  What do we know about humanity’s ability to live within our means?  And what signals do we respond to in order to potentially regulate our “means?”  Simon Sinek (2010) gives a great Ted Talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html )regarding what humans respond to at least from a marketing perspective.  Sinak explains that the companies that have experienced the greatest success or at least the greatest degree of brand loyalty have focussed their marketing on the “why”.  Not the how or what, but the why.  Any company can explain what, or how they do something, but the companies with an ability to clearly communicate their why will be able to set themselves apart.  Sinek uses examples of companies like Apple and Southwest Airlines as models of his “Golden Rule” and how to brand your company.  No doubt the Environmental movement could learn a few things from modern advertising techniques, but I’m not sure a new brand message will be enough to curtail the rapid rate of conspicuous consumption that exists in Western culture.

Maybe the thing that has held the environmental movement back is the “fact” that they “know” they are right.  Nobody likes a know it all, and environmentalists are continually telling people what is going to happen, and that they better adopt their worldview or else, and if things turn out as environmentalists predict the only thing they will have to show for their efforts is a final gurgling “I told you so”.   So what do we do???  Re-brand, accelerate the demise of the current system??  A little humility might go a long way. 

I was recently traveling through the Massey tunnel in Vancouver which links Richmond and Delta under one of the arms of the Fraser River, and I could not help but be frustrated by every single cars individualistic perspective as they “deftly maneuver and muscle for rank, fuel burning fast on an empty tank, reckless and wild they pour through the turns, their prowess is potent and securely stern “ (Cake, “The Distance,” 1996), it was very reminiscent of Hardin’s (1968) Tragedy of the commons, as we all ground to a screeching halt as a result of a failure to recognise the benefit of making a small sacrifice for the greater good.

References:

Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248.

Great Expectations

Oh to be able to predict the future, what a gift that would be.  Many have made attempts to quantify our complex systems, derive patterns and predict the future. Some noteworthy, some forgettable, some intelligent, and some with let’s call it a lack of keen observational skills.  I don’t doubt the need for models in order to give us a glimpse at possible future outcomes, but the complexity inherent in the systems we are trying to model seems to allow for non-experts (media and politicians) to use any short-comings of our predictive capacities (I speak primarily of global warming) as a means of dismissing concerns and carrying on in the current trajectory.

In reading Ehrlich (2009) and his prognostications about the dangers of exponential population growth, another future theorist was brought to mind.  In 1945 in the midst of evolving nuclear technology, George Orwell wrote an essay called “You and the Atomic Bomb” in which he contemplated the significance of this new technology for future generations, and in particular the impact this new technology would have on the organization of Nation States.  I’ve noted some of the more interesting excerpts and points below.

·         Had the bomb been inexpensive to make, “the distinction between great states and small states would have been wiped out, and the power of the state over the individual would have been greatly weekend” (Orwell, 1945, para. 3).

·         “Ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance” (Orwell, 1945, para. 4).

·         “For example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak” (Orwell, 1945, para 5).

·         “The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle” (Orwell, 1945, para 6).

·         “Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the re-imposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity” (Orwell, 1945, para 9).

After revisiting this article I could not help but think of energy as the new chain that binds us to an unchanging paradigm.  Those in power continue to centralize existing energy sources while simultaneously repressing innovation (you need look no further than the 2012 Federal budget) as a means of maintaining the status quo.  As was stated in the philosophers cafe this week: “We need to innovate and take risks” (Suhr, 2012).  This is the only way change will come about.  Innovation in the realm of energy could free developing nations from the remnants of a destructive imperial age and cold war.  As Zane alludes to in his description of Levin in lecture one, this does not have to be from new energy sources, but can come in the form of small scale energy sources that promote local autonomy.

So while our predictive powers might not rank very high on Meadows (1997) list of “places to intervene in a system,” they can serve as inspiration, and fuel discussions that can lead to “out of the box thinking”, that could lead to not using the phrase “out of the box.”

References:

Ehrlich, Paul, & Ehrlich, Anne H. (2009). The Population Bomb Revisited. Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, 1(3), 63-71.

Meadows, D. H. (1997). Places to Intervene in a System, Whole Earth, (91), 78-84.

Orwell, G. (1945).  You me and the Atomic Bomb.  Tribune. — GB, London. — October 19, 1945.

Suhr, N. (2012).  Re: social justice and the population bomb.  In the Discussion Forum.  Wednesday, 16 May 2012, 02:13 PM.

Time to get Radical?

In this week’s exploration of environmental economics we seek out ways in which these two interdependent disciplines can better work together in an effort to foster sustainability. I have spent a great deal of time over the past few years being frustrated by the continual marginalization of environmental concerns, not to mention the most recent framing by the Harper Government of environmental concerns as being radical.  What could be more mainstream than concerns over the well being of the biosphere that supports us?  Yet time and time again environmental concerns are juxtaposed with the need for economic growth. 

Lakoff (2010) discusses the failings of liberals in America to frame the environment in a way that generates meaning for the general public.  And I enjoy Lakoff’s (2010) description of how we are drawn to particular narratives.  I often find myself watching world events unfolding and wonder how the story will end.  Will it be a tragedy, a tale of the underdog coming through at the last moment, or perhaps the people involved will go through some transformative experience.  This analogy will likely reveal that I have spent far too much time watching organized sport, as well as the fact that I am an easy target for frames built around narratives. However, when I do (on occasion) watch a Montreal Canadiens game, I often find myself predicting the outcome based on the traditional narratives of sport: the underdog, the veteran player’s final push, the comeback, the collapse...  I increasingly see this playing out in politics, with leaders not necessarily attaching themselves to an issue, but rather to a story that people can relate to.

So what do people relate to in times of crisis?  Throughout history the trend has been towards more radical ideologies.  This narrative is playing out right now in Europe as they face what seems like an inevitable economic meltdown.  Greece recently split its vote between what are essentially Fascist and communist party’s, leading to the election of an ineffective minority government in their parliament.

Maybe it’s time to start framing environmentalism for what it truly is, a radical departure from mainstream values and ideologies (decide on your preferred level of sarcasm inferred in this statement).  Vive la revolution!

References:

Lakoff, G. (2010). Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 4(1), 70-81.