Impact of the financial crisis on global ecology

Hi Charles, Carrying on from last week's conversation on social business, if it were mandatory and not just voluntary for every business and organization to produce a triple bottom line rather than a focus solely on ROI for private investors, the world would be in better shape to make the transition to the green economy. With this, international political action would be essential. That would then make it easier for consumers to follow suit and make the extra effort to put out the recycling etc as well as reducing the wasteful consumer culture everywhere. I think one of the first industries that needs help with investing in renewables and building necessary infrastructure, along with low-carbon energy is the product packaging industry. If every sector was on board it would make it easier to wrestle control out of the hands of the entrenched interest groups before environmental degradation gets to the point where it can't be contained anymore, and by then of course the cost of not doing it will be much higher than any of us could calculate.

Always a pleasure to read you, Jo:

First, I'd just like to note in passing that I'm happy to see you "carrying on from last week's conversation".

A big part of what I'm working at here is the idea that our conversations, both on the Edge and elsewhere, can begin to link up with other "sympathetic" conversations within the cosmic soup of online discourse, so that blog talks with blog and one event with the next. I think the result will be some very interesting "amino acids" in the meme-pool.

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I also think your focus on the packaging industry is important. In every landscape, there are areas in shadow and areas that are prominent, and one of the tricks we have to learn, it seems to me, is to illuminate the shadows. I think about packaging when my attention is drawn to plastic six-pack holders in the oceans, the many birds and fishes trapped by them, or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - but packaging is not the first industry that comes to mind when I think about ecology in general, I think first of cars and carbon.

My point is that packaging may rate high on a concerned ecologist's list of problem areas, but it's not as directly in the public eye as the transportation industry, and there are likely some areas that are even less well-known, but contribute their share to our global problems. And that means we would do well to "rotate" our list of concerns, to keep our level of awareness of the issues from falling into the trap where "star" problems outweigh less obvious ones, as happens when a tsunami ripples through philanthropic giving, sweeping up so much of our generous giving that other, less "immediate" philanthropies fall by the wayside...

Best regards as ever,

Charles

Charles,

What's going on with sustainability is a necessary but insufficient effort. What I believe is happening is a reconstruction of the way we understand the entire financial system, much in the way we went from "red clouds at night: sailors' delight..." to a global climatological model.

We need a financial system that focuses on accounting for intangible assets, not tangible ones. What we have now is a first approximation. Current financial value is based on some model of what the future will look like, which is based on our ideas of what risks are out there and what their likelihood is. But we're human beings and we sometimes confuse what we want with what is likely, and there are many books right now pointing out cognitive biases - that originate for survival-of-species reasons - that make it tough for us to see the forest for the trees.

I believe that this is already in motion, and it will be one of the major achievements of the next generation, over the following 20-50 years.

I can't directly answer your questions except to add:

The early leaders in the United States are Gen X, an entire generation of people who can lead, follow, AND get out of the way. Generations are only one form of culture with which someone might or might not identify, but given that the need for current and future social leadership dovetails with career paths and family obligations, time-location is particularly critical.

This is a large group of people who, because of the boundary-less-ness of the 70's and 80's emerged as adults ideally suited towards leadership during a VUCA era (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous). If we need to rename this generation "Y" in order to get over the hostility and vilification that was heaped upon it in the past, so be it; but whether you call it Gen X or Gen Y, this critically important batch of people have the key attributes that lead to the agility, cleverness, resilience, and a light-weight "touch."

Hi Jessica,

and thanks:

QUOTE: What I believe is happening is a reconstruction of the way we understand the entire financial system, much in the way we went from "red clouds at night: sailors' delight..." to a global climatological model. We need a financial system that focuses on accounting for intangible assets, not tangible ones. :UNQUOTE

So there are two issues here, it seems to me - a move towards a better understanding of complexity (modeling many of the same variables but with increased awareness of fractal effects - and if possible, "black swans" originating in the complex interdependencies between them) and a move to incorporate more "human element" factors into out modeling.

I put forward a formula - "f(x) = (x + rumors of x)" - that's my way of suggesting that our models need to cross the Cartesian divide between world and mind, that our thoughts (hopes and fears) are as influential as our things and processes, that the subjective and objective realms interact - in a manner that monitoring the run-up to Y2K brought home to me: that "bank runs" and "rumors of bank runs" have a great deal in common.

So our mapping needs to take into account those "cognitive biases" you mention, our human nature, if you like - which is arguably way more sophisticated, "complex" and difficult to quantify than the enormously complex web of nested instruments and exchanges that constitute the stuff of business.

QUOTE: I believe that this is already in motion, and it will be one of the major achievements of the next generation, over the following 20-50 years. ... this critically important batch of people have the key attributes that lead to the agility, cleverness, resilience, and a light-weight "touch." :UNQUOTE

I very much hope so, and wonder what we can do to lead education towards those same skills...

Knowing of your work with IFTF, I wonder what insights you have as to the tipping points for a global shift in attitude? I recall Donella Meadows' observation that the level of paradigm is the level at which intervention could most powerfully affect a system.

But that's the realm of genius, isn't it? Of those who think without the box, rather than outside it..

Thanks again.

Charles

I like this wide ranging conversation, which looks underneath the multiple crises for the thinking that drives them. I especially like to hear tipping points used positively, to ask how we can intervene to get global shifts in attitude systems. The practise of seeking such interventions is so rare that it can appear to be the realm of genius. Fortunately it's not. I'm doing this kind of work with primary age kids, who catch on rather faster than most professionals I've worked with. Another hopeful thought is that it doesn't take many people to design tipping point interventions, nor many more to implement them - since they're just changes to the rules of the game. Public acceptability might not turn out to be the roadblock that people fear. After all he public have gone along for decades with a game-plan that was laughably ludicrous. The whole thing about tipping points is that you don't have to go around to everyone, begging them to try harder to do the right thing - it just happens because it suddenly makes sense.

Charles wisely marks out the next step as crossing the Cartesian divide between world and mind, which reminds us bout designing interventions which carry clear messages about changes in paradigms and hopes, not just changes in things and processes. This explains a lot about why the kinds of interventions we've been designing for decades haven't worked. We've been saying 'let's run the same system but with more controls over the unwanted effects'. So we've been obsessing about choosing controls for particular outputs when all along it was the system that needed the design effort not the controls.

The fun part about system-level design is that it is in itself a way to handle complexity. It is the interactions between unwanted effects and layers of ineffective controls which is unmanageably complex. If you think of systems as sets of ideas about how things happen then the paradigm shifts in ideas are not really complex, certainly not more complex than you can handle in any discussion where people are aware of what hasn't worked previously. So the interventions get increasingly simple as their scale and power rises. Climate change for example is an unwanted effect of an economic system which doesn't account for products becoming waste. Rather than trying and failing with ridiculously complex controls on carbon wastes, we could switch the paradigm by saying what if prices accounted for the risk of products becoming waste?. (See reference below for how to do this with precycling insurance.) Then we could handle climate change, waste, toxics and loss of nature simultaneously and immediately. It would be like changing gear in a vehicle that's been going faster and faster in reverse, causing more and more mayhem. The vehicle doesn't need to go slower or more steadily, it needs to go forwards.

There is a tipping point intervention available also for the other issue discussed here, of war and peace. Just as with climate, this issue remains unresolved because of obsessing with arms controls on an unreformed system. The leverage point here is a simple adjustment to national economic statistics which displays a switch of paradigm in respect for life, saying as a nation we value peace. Nations willing to say this will adopt a revised measure of economic growth which simply omits weapons-related spending. I call this Gross Peaceful Product. This doesn't preclude military spending but it does reverse the current incentive for politicians to militarise and big up their economy. Nations would compete to expand their non-military spending.

Those interested can see more at my think-tank BlindSpot.org.uk or my paper in the NATO Science Programme at http://books.google.com/books?id=vnq5eBNf5-oC&pg=PA139. This covers how to find leverage points for global systems and outlines the two examples given above. James Greyson

Jessica, I think you're right gen x(and,or Y)is the generation to steer the world's course away from its current self-destructive path. You know, the really tragic thing is the 20th century will probably be remembered most of all for all the war graves and war memorials there are. Such a waste. Like the flawed and misguided thinking that leads to war in the first place, our cognitive biases inherited from the past could lead us now to dangerous apathy and indifferent misconceptions about the uncertain time frame we have to tackle what ignorance is doing to the earth's atmosphere and environment. Let's hope all misleading messages from the past like the "red sky at night, sailor's delight" story have no bearings on the future. Ditto for the financial system.

Charles, I think communication, education and crucial new infrastructure are what's needed to shift cognitive biases to create the possibility for real change in a post-industrial global society, where the transition (to a global green economy) could lead to the positive restructuring of society as a whole.

Jo:

QUOTE: Jessica, I think you're right gen x(and,or Y) is the generation to steer the world's course away from its current self-destructive path. :UNQUOTE

That would be wonderful - more power to them if they can pull it off...

QUOTE: You know, the really tragic thing is the 20th century will probably be remembered most of all for all the war graves and war memorials there are. :UNQUOTE

I lived in Warrenton, Virginia for a couple of years, commuting up to Arlington, and driving past the Civil War battlefields almost every day was a sobering experience.

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QUOTE: Let's hope all misleading messages from the past like the "red sky at night, sailor's delight" story have no bearings on the future. Ditto for the financial system. :UNQUOTE

I know from our previous exchanges, Jo, that you appreciate Carl Jung's work on the nature and power of the unconscious, and I'm sadly afraid that when it comes to shifting cognitive biases "to create the possibility for real change in a post-industrial global society," and "the positive restructuring of society as a whole," we need a whole lot more than the "communication, education and crucial new infrastructure" you speak of.

In my view "the flawed and misguided thinking that leads to war in the first place" has very deep roots indeed, and it will take an extraordinary act of imagination to swing all of us - alcoholics, addicts, the traumatized in childhood, the people who see themselves as failures, those who think themselves successes, the whole ornery wild cautious self-protecting other-despising human race - into the peaceable kingdom, into the garden.

The British Jungian psychiatrist Anthony Stevens has a fine book

"The Roots of War and Terror" -- exploring those very roots.

Charles, to borrow a line from pop singer Jewel " I'm just a simple girl in a high tech digital world, I follow my intuition. " It seems to me what needs to happen for everything else to fall into place, is for humanity to embrace the shared global destiny we all have that is built on the principles of oneness, inclusion, and cooperation. You're right, it is going to be very hard to shift our cognitive biases as the only roots we know are in ourselves but don't ask me any questions for a couple of weeks I'm away from my computer, Merry Christmas Charles.

Yup. Merry Christmas, Jo, and no further questions.

I'd been hoping to build a poem for the occasion, but it hasn't shaped up the way I'd like. Ah, well.

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So...

Best wishes for the season to one and all, no matter whether it's high summer or the depths of winter where you are!

Forgive my willingness to ponder out loud Charles, so even if you don't have any questions for me, I have a few for you. Jung said "every individual life is at the same time the eternal life of the species." Of course as there are various wars for varying reasons including the narrowness of perspective in using war to manage conflicts of interest whether religious political or economic, the original root of war comes out of our species success as carnivores which encourages the killing instinct in men. So what I want to know is, is this the same instinct that pours vast resources not into saving millions from starvation but into ever more sophisticated weapons of war?

Anthony Stevens is right, human ingenuity can unleash what it doesn't know how to control. "Confront it or perish" is true. If conflict is a principle of nature, (with even the universe having a violent start) it's mankind's primal instincts that is at the core of the roots of war. With the horrifyingly destructive power of modern weaponry, we need to address the fatal attraction of war because it could threaten humanity's very existence.

I believe violent action is the antithesis of creative action. Jung's idea of the roots of war stemming from the polarization and struggle of opposites or opposing forces ( good vs evil, capitalism vs communism etc) as well as the neglect of the unconscious, creates a fundamental force too remote from consciousness for the civilized mind to comprehend. And as you of course know, archetypes are created, (as archetypes are expressions of nature) archetypal structures get activated and all reason and rationality get overwhelmed.

When people slaughter each other, collectively, they are in the grip of something irrational, complex and largely unconscious. Even if the patterns and rituals of war are ancient and biological in origin, in overcoming it I think the answer lies in bringing collective awareness to the metacognition of the superego which not only has an innate dimension for transformation, but can bring into consciousness the dichotomy of primal instinct archetypes inside civilized minds.

History is very telling, war often deflects issues rather than tackling them. This is where "the fog of war" comes in. The deadly logic of war turns the automatic reflexes of primal instincts into conditioned ones, so changing the mode of response is necessary. Humanity also needs to shift the thinking that it is the right of the powerful few to rule the masses by force, as a lot of wars are used as a mechanism to serve personal interests. Bush has shown us that a fight for freedom isn't necessarily a fight for freedom. Trust seems to be the element that is needed most. Dialogue is the best way to break the retaliatory cycle of violence. To break the self-perpetuating cycle, ultimately it is only ourselves that can save ourselves from primal instincts of destruction.

The antidote to war is respect for life that comes with greater prosperity, as this also creates a reluctance to practice violence on others. With this shifting of basic belief, hopefully, the next shift in thinking is with the immorality of plundering the earth's resources and environment for the short-term profit gain by a few.