Growing Uphill…. or selling his future for profit?
An essay/ramble/rant in progress based on the following formula -
Boomers 2 + X = Y Z ??
Growth. I just read - ‘Growing Uphill. The 15 Forces Shaping Our World in 2023’, it is an excellent piece, very thorough. It is also really depressing, detailing everything that’s going wrong in the world and why it’s happening. The world is in a mess, but thank goodness the business strategists have some long-term solutions to it all. With chaos and hardship comes opportunity they say.
Unease. The author of the Growing Uphill article is a ‘business growth strategy consultant’, clearly someone with a proper understanding of how global economics work, and with all the right qualifications too; I possess neither of those things so I’m hardly in a position to be pontificating about the state of global economics to be honest….or am I? Ha, well it’s a free world (sort of) so here goes! The thing is that after reading the article I’m left with an uneasy feeling. Why? It’s quite simple really, I think it might have missed something fundamentally important.
Acceptance. It has been a long struggle, but I have of late come to accept that the future lives of our current young people will bear little or no resemblance to the lifestyles they/we consider to be normal today. With shock after shock (environmental & economic) already giving us a taste of things to come, almost everyone I speak to who works in the fields of ecology, climate science, social demographics and social justice, agrees that the human race and much of life on earth is on a very disturbing trajectory. Many young people are afraid, and they have absolutely every right to be, personally, I’m bloody terrified for them. My heart sinks when I think about my children and the grandchildren I might have one day, what sort of future have I been complicit in handing down to them?
Careless. To be frank, my lot, generation ‘X’ and the ‘Boomers 2’ before us, have been bloody careless with the future. We fell asleep as horrible things (environmental and social) happened in the name of progress, growth, and prosperity; and what is worse we let it all happen despite decades of scientific data warning us about the consequences of our frivolous actions. Our current unchecked pathway leads to one place only, disaster. 1.5 degrees C warming is now a given it seems, and 2 degrees C + looks more likely than not. This all means a world that looks, feels, and functions very differently to the one we occupy today.?Yes yes, I’m aware that we must not lose hope and that we must strive onwards with determination and realistic applied solutions, and above all, we must inspire Gen Y & Gen Z to do better with our planetary home than we Gen X’ers have managed so far. But, at the same time, we must also be wary of that place where hope turns to magic and sleight of hand for answers; a quilt of comfortable denial is not a useful hand-me-down gift to our children at all.?Ref - Paris Agreement future potential technologies for geoengineering and carbon sequestering amongst other hopeful/too late/might not work stuff.
Sustainability. Meanwhile, in the real world of government and commerce, there has not even been so much as a waddle towards much-needed systemic step-change. Instead, those in power placate us with tickboxes; mere nods to the planet’s future wellbeing through incremental ESG interventions and the like, all of it non-binding lip service idly promising Gens Y & Z a future whilst slyly or deludedly (I’m not sure which) fulfilling the only thing that matters to commerce;- a legal and binding duty to maximise financial returns above all else. Of course, the economic model we live with is the only one we have, but let’s be clear it is a model based on a never-ending story of exponential growth; it is a fairytale, no more real and, a lot less benign, than the Never Ending Story about a giant fluffy flying dragon...remember that one? Worryingly, the lack of any designed-in strategy for moderating land colonisation and extraction of resources continues to be glossed over by everyone; instead the life extinguishing activities associated with these things are added to a growing list of ‘externalities’….which in other, more war like, settings is known as collateral damage. Add to that lot the fact that free market economics is a ever-growing machine that handsomely rewards greed and marginalises equity & equality with a promise of goodies trickled down to us via our apex paymasters and the fairytale is complete.
An idea. As much as we’re told by the powers that be that they can and will steer the system towards sustainability, it’s obvious that the system cannot and will not self-correct because by definition it is an out of control system predicated on ‘unsustainability’; by which I mean, we speak of ‘sustainability’ as if it is a virtuous green crusade instead of what it really is - a human-made ‘idea’ which in nature doesn’t even exist because the natural world is inherently sustainable. Sustainability is made up, just like the system that invented it.
Bears. Like everyone else in the so-called civilised world, me and my colleagues work smack-bang in the middle of the economic free-for-all we all call ‘normal’. So that me and my workmates can at least try to achieve something worthwhile amongst the systemic madness, every day we push against the flow like salmon thrashing our way up a raging river…it’s hard work; on most days, just like the salmon, we’re confronted by one sort of human-made impasse or another that stops us in our tracks, or at least slows down our progress to a frustrating crawl.
Capitalism. By the way, my obvious lack of enthusiasm for growth-driven capitalism is not a view based on any political leanings, in fact, I see no political party; left, right or center, outwardly challenging the status quo. My point of view is based simply on the universal law I like to think of as reality. Planet destroying economic growth linked to free market capitalism is the bear in the room that no one wants to talk about. So all me and the draught of folks I work with can really do is flap about in the shallows trying to create positive change without pissing off the bear we are busy trying to save from drowning.
Note: Salmon who push against the flow often get eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner by bears.
Truth. The simple truth must be that we cannot save the future for our children with a business plan, it has been tried/continues to be being tried, and it hasn’t worked…. and it won’t work. In my view, at this late stage, a new way forward is needed in the form of coherent and scalable community resilience schemes based on what the science tells us is likely coming. Part of this process, as painful as it will be, is for us to accept responsibility for what IS coming. Generation X must be honest with Generations Y & Z, first say sorry, and then set about helping them to ready themselves for the very challenging times ahead. Shaping better places for people and wildlife equally; designing-in useful community network-ready ‘habitats’ for humans and nature is now more important than ever because preparing humanity for uncertain times with some useful tools is probably the first step towards creating resilient communities better equipped for a different kind of future. Ref - *Lean Logic.
Action. My colleagues (the salmon draught) and I have created a response to all the above; a delivery framework called Shaping Better Places - see Arc Biodiversity & Climate Ltd . Of course, on its own it is nowhere near enough because however we spin it we still have to do this work in and with the very free-market system that has created, and is still delivering all the problems. But it is a start, and for now, we have no choice but to work inside ‘the system’. So we work within it in the full knowledge that it values financial capital and economic growth above all else. We see how it devalues a healthy natural world and a just society to a point where they have become commodified carrots with which to attract yet more sales and create even more capital, albeit under the ‘green growth’, ‘sustainable development, and ESG banners. We know our own way of doing things, to counter the negative effects of the system, is far from perfect, but that’s okay because it is still a work in progress. Our nuanced ideas about business and sustainability sit awkwardly in a polarised and contextless world of free market economics, politics, and media…but here we stand, doing what we do the only way we know how.
Twitter. I recently had a Twitter chat with the wonderful Nora Bateson, inventor of the term ‘Warm Data’, thinker, educationalist, and daughter of the great philosopher Gregory Bateson. When I described what we do at Arc she said “Ah, the old ‘trying to make change from within’ chestnut, it won’t work”. Ha, yes that’s us I thought, she’s right it probably won’t work. But, later I thought again and realised that actually what we do here isn’t exactly about creating change from within, I think it is more subtle than that. Having had time to mull it over, I think what we do here is to create the conditions for change, so that the actual change can happen by itself….that’s quite different from trying to force change from within…. I think!
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A project. Below is a project of ours that attempts to create the conditions for change.
Paraphrase. As my colleague, Ian Boyd once said “ We must punch holes in the fabric of human ‘reality’, to create windows through which we can invite the natural world and social justice back in”.
More truth. I’ll say it again, we cannot fix our broken future with a traditional business plan. It’s time for something else, something better.
Genius. Maybe something like this is a start - My friend Daniel has invented a way to generate free renewable electricity locally, and with water only as hot as a cup of tea. His invention is open source so it’s about ‘Growing Uphill’ in a completely different way; a way that has a positive environmental impact and social justice designed-in from the outset. It’s a community resilience project in the making, and I think ideas like Dan’s suggest a different kind of future for our children and grandchildren is possible.
Update 1 Patagonia. News just in, setting a new example in environmental corporate leadership, the billionaire owner of Patagonia is giving the entire company away to fight the Earth’s climate devastation. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who turned his passion for rock climbing into one of the world’s most successful sportswear brands, is giving the entire company to a uniquely structured trust and non-profit, designed to pump all of the company’s profits into saving the planet.
Questions. This incredible action raises so many questions that I’m finding hard to know where to start! Clearly this move by Yvon Chouinard is not the normal way corporations do things in the free market system. Folks have told me that Patagonia are ‘different’, but this??! We know why Yvon has made this move because the man himself makes his admirable motivations clear. I would now love to better understand how he’s done what he’s done, presumably he is now, or always was the sole owner of Patagonia? If this assumption is correct, this would mean he was either untethered from the ‘system’ from the start or managed to untethered Patagonia from the system at some point along the way? I say this because the action of giving Patagonia away to a trust presumably means he previously had no binding contract to deliver financial gains for investors/shareholders? Also, all the articles I have read say Yvon is a billionaire. Should I be worried about this? Is he still a billionaire after giving the company away? Did he give away his personal fortune along with his company? I’m not suggesting that would be the correct thing to do, I’m just a bit confused by what has just happened….. this is a game changer and if anyone has anything to add I love to hear from them. My fingers a crossed that the breaking news about the Patagonia giveaway for the sake of people and planet is as straightforward as it reads, I worry only because as previously mentioned in this rant, contextualised news from global media is a rare thing, and I desperately want this news to be exactly as it reads, I really really do, because that would be a step change worth celebrating…wouldn’t it?
Things to look at -?
?‘Less is More’ Jason Hickle
‘Shaping Better Places’ Arc Biodiversity & Climate.