MORE CLIMATE DATA?
How does knowing more about the climate and ecological emergency help leaders like us take the action we need to take?
We’ve debated including some resources demonstrating the enormity of the climate and ecological emergency.
We offer the below knowing that each of us is part of the situation. We have contributed to the massive challenges we face, and the significant suffering already experienced around the globe. It is clear that enough of us have privileged our safety and comfort, here and now, to the detriment of many others’ elsewhere, and in the future. It is something we at Leading Through Storms have come to terms with, something that drives us on, rather than paralyses us. We understand that the systems within which we live do not reward the action we are taking, and often actually encourage the opposite of what seems needed. We understand that we have choices, more than many, and that we also fall-short. It doesn’t stop us trying. And it is important to acknowledge that we have not done everything we could have done to support our children’s futures, or others’ todays. It is a wicked paradox. And we seek to bring light and energy to our intended-helpful contributions as best we can, in a way that encourages engagement, rather than prompts shame and denial.
Some of what is written below may be very uncomfortable reading. You may want to turn away. You may disagree. You may find us alarmist. We encourage you to stick with it, if nothing else, treating these few minutes as experimental ones where you can be curious. Curious about how it is for you to persevere, notice what instinctive thoughts and feelings come up. Simply consider this as a thought experiment that might just possibly prompt some changes to your thinking that are consistent with following the precautionary principle - if you feel there is even a grain of truth in what is written!
Simply: things are really really messed-up in terms of supporting life as we know it when it comes to the state of the incredibly thin layer that is the combination of bio-, tropo- and hydrospheres. On which human society completely depends.
Humboldt reportedly developed the idea of human-induced climate change and irreversible resource depletion when travelling in Venezuela in 1799, and Tyndall proved the connection between levels of atmospheric CO2 and the greenhouse effect in 1859. Subsequently we’ve filled in many many gaps in our knowledge and made things more precise. This advancement of understanding has not been matched by a commensurate degree of appropriate action. Indeed we seem to continue to accelerate away from the direction required.
The time for examining more details about ppm or overshoot or planetary boundaries is gone, and now is actually distracting and unnecessary.
People and the more-than-human are already suffering terribly and dying – both visibly and invisibly.
Knowing more detail will probably not help those of us who are acting act any differently.
More information will not fix the situation.
Seeking more information is a distraction from the real work needed, everywhere, now: community-building, from our inner worlds out, learning together how to respond and materially adapt in the best way possible for us as a society.
How we behave in the world, given the cards we’ve been dealt is a choice.
We all can lead by orienting to the challenges as citizens, consciously choosing to practise curiosity and compassion to build a society more likely to flourish as it collapses.
We each need to behave as leaders who know that building a movement capable of supporting society glide through this latest, catastrophic, collapse rather than add the damage of a crash-landing to the hardships we in our lifetimes (certainly if we are under 65) will need to struggle through.
We recommend the work of Schenck & Churchill, Bringhurst & Zwicky and Rutger Bregman, Professor Jem Bendell, Jon Alexander at the New Citizenship Project and this blog on distraction which ends with a sentence so true for us all now: “This problem isn’t going away any time soon, and the first step to solving any problem is naming it and accepting that it’s real.”
This in itself is not easy. It seems that the Northern World, hyper-capitalist-consumerist society is running some pretty strong ‘how to make sense of the world’ algorithms in which most of us are enmeshed, most of the time. Despite our intentions for this to be otherwise. So let's not understate the power these algorithms have over us. Let's be compassionate with ourselves as we attempt to untangle ourselves. So we can engage and connect rather than shrink shamefully, looking away.
The above may help you choose how to practise your version of leading, whilst being human on the glide path for your organisation, community and family.
And we offer you some poetry as another way to contact your restless energies, to help you feel your way towards some spirited leadership:
And a visual representation. Perhaps this viral graphic from Graeme MacKay drawn during the first months of the covid-19 pandemic speaks to you:
We are not in the business of trying to convince you, and suggest that you trying to convince others won’t help either. We choose to curate, to put information and insight in places it may not have been before. And to ask ourselves, as leaders, questions, to let our curiosity then drive experimentation.
At the very least, we do invite you into a thought experiment:
If we are collapsing, what leadership behaviour do you need to model for us to glide to the ground rather than crash uncontrolled? Where can you practise and be truly supported by a community of like-souled minds / humans?
And if you and your colleagues really do still fancy hearing from ‘established physical science’, try these to stimulate discussion and action:
Follow:
Kevin Anderson (@KevinClimate) / Twitter
Johan Rockström (@jrockstrom) / Twitter
Take a look at:
Climate Uncensored: Telling it as is it
Planetary boundaries - Stockholm Resilience Centre
Johan Rockström’s TED talk, 10 years to transform the future of humanity - or destabilize the planet (recorded in 2020)
The latter includes helpful metaphor and quantification, and is sure to stimulate some kind of response worthy of discussion.
We are often surprised when people say ‘I had no idea it was so bad’, so perhaps when you come across this response, point them in the direction of the above.
If, like us, you are interested in the psychology and philosophical worlds that underpin our responses to the polycrisis, these are both worth a read:
The Anatomy of Inaction - Climate Complexity Change - Thomas Hubl
2021-02-Can-ESG-Grasp-What-Ecology-Says-Final-11-pages.pdf (bothbrainsrequired.com)
And you might watch this TED talk from Margaret Heffernan on Willful Blindness.
If you want to engage constructively, try some of the resources in our Free Member Library, join one of our programmes or book a 30 minute discovery call with us to explore what will help you on your leadership journey.