The Upward Path

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sustainability

The two towers – Trump vs fellowship

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Bald eagle looking shocked

OK, let’s get this out of the way.

I hate that Trump won. My weary core sighs that a walking embodiment of ignorance, denial, delusion and prejudice will be the steward of that grand, fractured country where my friends live. A country that desperately needs vision, healing and common purpose.

With dismay I see him gathering a team of ringwraiths in clown suits, high on their own tangled worldviews, floating away from reality, ready to trample the needs of their country rather than ministering to those needs. People whose only interest is for rich white men to have a world that wraps them in cotton wool.

I’m angry that it has happened now, in a crucial time when we need to be mobilising the best of our intelligence, compassion and creativity to steer the world away from peril and toward a brighter future.

Though in a way there’s an inevitability to it, as a symptom of human psychology working its way through. Like here in the UK, most of the people talking didn’t understand what the people listening needed to hear, and weren’t prepared to be 21st century leaders. Energies of dissatisfaction and hurt didn’t get helped or channelled, so they broke their banks.

But here are a couple of ameliorating factors. Trump will tell you how strong and great he is. But atmospheric physics will kick his ass and barely notice. Social and economic problems won’t go away. Reality will come up hard against his frothy pronouncements and his authority will ebb away. But there will be a whole lot of broken bodies, minds and spirits left in the wake of that. A lot of people who don’t have gold towers to take refuge in.

The second thing is more hopeful. Because a lot of people can see that future coming, and it’s galvanising them to step up even more than before. I’ve seen organisations like Avaaz and Open Democracy committing to a new level of activity. Lots of individuals are becoming more vocal too, and seeking channels for action.

It’s the classic conflict of love vs fear. These are the people who carry a great love for our world and its people. Who see truth and feel suffering and loss mirrored in their own hearts. Their tower is not built of gold but of connection and fire. This time round, it’s the good guys who have the burning eye. The other tower is blind.

This isn’t a battle between tribes of people, though it’s easy to forget that. It’s tension and friction between ways of being. Love and fear. Awake and asleep. Vision and darkness.

And it’s not just about Trump. He’s a particularly dramatic symptom, allowing more people to see the lower self in action. You can also look at the neofeudalist government in the UK, or the rise of the far right in Europe, or oppression the world over.

We’ve had so many chances to head off bad things, and too often we haven’t been up to the challenge. Maybe, just maybe, the prospect of a dark lord in control of the supposed bastion of freedom will rouse the world to better.

(With apologies to Professor Tolkien. Though I suspect he’d be unimpressed too.)

 

The main cause of climate change is politicians

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Red sky over parliament

Yes, yes, I know that greenhouse gases come from agriculture and transport and energy generation and deforestation. But take a different angle on the cause and effect of the situation we’re in.

How long have we had to take serious action on climate change? 25 years, give or take. Of course it’s been a long process of getting it into the public awareness, in the face of a hostile media and wealthy corporations working hard to keep their racket going. But that’s happened now. The climate on climate shifted some years ago.

The people we choose as stewards of our society, who we pay to run things on our behalf, who have an obligation to be well informed and take a strategic view. Where have they been? Did they look at the potential consequences and start ramping up action to reduce the risk?

Around 1990 when I was involved in Friends of the Earth, we criticised the government of the day for having no coherent energy policy. As far as I know, no UK government of my adult lifetime has had one.

The politicians, barring a few rare champions, are averse to change and see the fossil fuel companies as ‘people like us’. They’ve fudged, prevaricated and misdirected to try to keep things working with duct tape from an outdated toolbox. It’s still seen as tenable to be a climate change denier at a high level in UK politics.

If you travel round Britain today, you’ll see wind turbines and solar panels. That’s because of the enterprise of companies and communities and householders, who see a future shape they want to be part of. It’s not because of a government mobilising support on a grand, enthusiastic and reliable scale. That support has been grudging, limited and unreliable. Indeed, numbers of solar installers have recently been driven out of business by sudden changes.

A new report by Oil Change International has used industry data to show that if we use all the oil, coal and gas resources currently in production or being developed, we’re probably going to bust the 2C target for temperature rise. The international climate conference in Paris in December 2015 pledged to hold it to well below that, and hopefully 1.5C. So basically we need to stop opening up new fossil fuel resources right now, and try not to use all the ones we already have. George Monbiot writes about it in the Guardian.

PM Theresa May has recently said she will ratify the Paris climate treaty on behalf of the UK – but commenters have not been slow to point out that her government is continuing to force through fracking schemes against local community opposition, and to shy away from investing in renewables and efficiency. It’s transparently inconsistent. One of many examples of vital issues being obscured by the Brexit debacle.

The tide has long since turned on climate change. The scientific consensus is there. The knowledge of consequences and urgency is there. The public awareness is there. The support for renewables and other solutions is there. The economic benefits of massive action are there.

When we look back on these times, and a youngster asks us what caused the climate change that’s transformed their world for the worse, here’s one answer. Politicians, a tragically limited lot who failed to engage with reality in service to the people.

 

The holes in the Earth Summit

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Pushing the Earth uphill

It turned out the Earth Summit was more of a foothill.

This was a huge event back in 1992. We hoped it would lead to fixing everything.

Looking back I can see it was inevitable that it didn’t get that traction. It didn’t have a big enough picture. In the 1990s we simply didn’t know the right things to create widespread change.

But now our toolkit is better.

The Earth Summit

This was the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro. At the time it was notable for bringing so many world leaders together, and also for the involvement of groups from all sectors of society in lobbying for change and running a programme of parallel activities. Campaign groups were there, of course, but so were local government, indigenous communities and many others.   [Read more…] about The holes in the Earth Summit

The upward path – video blog

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It’s an old metaphor. The fork in the road. The point of choice. Do we take the upward path to the world we want to see, or the downward path of fear and short-term convenience?

From personal development work helping individuals to campaigning to influence governments, if you are helping to make things better you are part of the same big picture. And you need to get better at broadcasting your messages over the noise.

 

 

I wanted to ‘nudge’ myself into doing some video work, and I thought the best place to start was with this.

‘The upward path’ started as a bit of a placeholder concept while I was working on other things. But I’ve come to realise it’s a pretty good label for the big picture that is my ‘why’ – and that it’s important to talk about in its own right as part of my own body of messages.

(I’ve also been sharing word-graphics on Twitter under #upwardpath – and Facebook with the tag used less consistently!)

There was a false start with uncooperative technology, and a surprising amount of resistance around being visible, but I think it’s turned out pretty well. Do leave feedback about the content or cinematography in the comments!

 

3 ways to save the world without getting off your bum

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If you’re reading this, you’re probably doing work based on values about making things better. But often, we get caught up in our thing and forget about other areas where our values could have greater effect. So here are some useful actions you can take in a few minutes from your computer.

Graphic of woman sitting at desk in field

[Read more…] about 3 ways to save the world without getting off your bum