Break the silence or become the first species to monitor its own extinction ?

The choice is ours

Like many I’m sure, I’ve really struggled this last week from the intense heat in the UK. Strangely drained and disoriented.

I fell down a climate change hole in 2006 while researching a project and I’ve never really come back up.

Over the years I oscillate frequently between periods of deep grief, anxiety, anger, fear depression and crazy optimism for a more beautiful life sustaining world.

Along the way I’ve cultivated an ever deepening love for this extraordinary planet we live on and the mind-boggling awe of diverse intelligent life, human and more than human that we share our home with and that I’m becoming more and more aware of everyday.

But when I return to the climate science…

the unarguable science - physics, a heating atmosphere from greenhouse gases being released mainly through burning fossil fuels and how that impacts the complex delicate balance of our Earth’s system (the vital organs of our planet) a system that in its total health creates the conditions for all life to exist (including humans) -

- Then unless I deny what I see, or pretend I don’t see it, then it’s impossible not to freak out.

Because there’s only one way this is going to conclude on this current trajectory.

And it’s literally end game for most life.

We are heading in the wrong direction when it comes to both carbon and greenhouse gas emissions reductions, they are nowhere near where science tells us they need to be.

We are heading in the wrong direction when it comes to pollution of our vital air, water and soil systems and how the state of these polluted systems are reflected in the pollution of our everyday lives and the human body itself.

We are heading in the wrong direction when it comes to biodiversity collapse ( which isn’t just nice wildlife), our health is dependent on their health, we are interdependent, interconnected.

If the insects die we will eventually die, if the ocean dies we die.

We are heading in the wrong direction when it comes to demand side behaviours (e.g consumption) our insatiable appetite for energy, materials, speed, ‘progress’ and going faster.

What makes this even more painful and perhaps surprising is most of the problem comes down to predominately Western thinking. A tiny minority of the global majority human population.

A way of thinking that has developed economic, political and corporate designs shaped by very recent ‘fairytale’ stories of eternal growth, no limits and separation from the living Earth.

Stories manifested by intensive fossil fuel energy systems and the extraction and exploitation of the natural world and the poorest and most oppressed.

A context perpetuated by an obsession with productivity, competition, hyper-individualism and short term thinking.

A context where the dominant cultural beliefs and behaviours are shaped by destructive stories of our relationship to nature, to each other, and how we measure success.

Stories that we’ve been collectively living by which make absolutely no sense any more when we now know and understand the problems we face so intimately, what we need to let go of to minimise the chaos and carnage of the future, a chaos which is already being experienced by so many in the global south today, who have contributed virtually nothing to the destruction, and to all the living beings being wiped out.

Back in 2014 as a partner in Swam Partnership , I led the co-design of a project with the D&AD, an inquiry inviting the UK creative advertising sector to explore why it was largely silent when it came to climate change - we named the project - Break the Silence.

As part of that we invited Professor Kevin Anderson, arguably one of the world’s leading climate scientists, who has advised UK Govt on climate science and who also spent many years as an engineer in the fossil fuel industry to come and give us a robust science context on climate and emissions scenarios before a co-creation event.

His work then as today, reveals the widening gulf between political rhetoric on climate change and the reality of rapidly escalating emissions.

As the UK went up in flames last week ( read about it from the grounded reality of a firefighter) and our new PM will be voted in by a membership that has no interest (belief) in the climate and ecological emergency, caring more about stopping refugees from entering the country - make no mistake we are living in terrifyingly dangerous times.

And we are all in it.

We have perhaps the next 3 years to begin with huge collective intention the biggest transformation of the human experiment ever known. According to the IPCC - ‘Transformation at every level of society.’

Can you imagine that happening with our current institutional set up ?

Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys

This is Brexit

Our current way of organising on this Earth, the vacuous and now deadly political mantra of ‘low taxes’ and ‘economic growth’ which fuels a disease of entitlement in our culture is shaped by such poorly developed intelligence, a way of thinking fine-tuned over the last 500 years which is completely incompatible with the operating system of the Earth.

The Economic operating systems designed in recent years (quite literally ‘a cosmic wing flap’ when we think of evolutionary time) by a tiny minority of humans in the West, systems that our politicians, corporations and media eulogise and insist there are no alternatives to - these systems are not compatible with our Earth’s system - a complex diverse intelligent system able to support and sustain a vast web of life, developed over 4.5 billion years of R&D.

These systems are not compatible with life itself.

Which operating system would you trust in the long-term ?

Which operating system would you re-imagine and redesign knowing what we know, knowing the shit we are in and knowing exactly what is causing it ?

This talk below from Kevin Anderson was filmed 8 years ago , watch the whole talk if you can, because you will understand better and with clarity what is happening today.

And collective clarity of this undeniable and quite simple knowledge is vital for these times.

We need to know and understand what is happening, whether we like what we’re hearing or not.

As NASA Climate Scientist Peter Kalmus , incredible human in dedicated service to life on our home planet recently put it as Europe combusted “Maybe stop ignoring climate scientists'“

Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman

Maybe stop ignoring climate scientists.

All the predictions from scientists are happening, faster and more extreme in many cases, as Kevin says the science hasn’t changed for 30 years, what has changed is the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases we continue to put into the atmosphere.

Last week the UK started to experience some of what Kevin speaks to, but this was in 2022 not 2050 and at only 1.2 degrees of warming, we are heading for much higher. Our societies and systems are not designed to be able to cope with these conditions.

This isn’t about access to ice cream and A/C on a hot day, this is about the inability to produce food, collapsing food systems, when people can’t eat what do you imagine might happen?

It’s fucking bad.

I’m not dooming either.

Here’s a thought experiment..

If you get a cancer diagnosis or someone in your family falls critically ill - you’re very unlikely to ignore it, or deny it for long, you are unlikely to tell people it’s a hoax.

You and your loved ones and the community around you tend to do everything you can to get through it, every possible thing to extend life, to heal the damage, to overcome the diagnosis, to try and prevent it from worsening or happening again.

I’ve experienced both of these scenarios in the last few years - it’s both terrifying and extraordinary what an emergency and a descent into grief and despair and then an intentional response can lead to.

So what is it that stops our institutions, government, corporations and media and our own selves from truly accepting this planetary health diagnosis and acting on it ?

I don’t stay in a climate change hole because I enjoy it, it’s exhausting, it has been very isolating at times, but once you understand what is happening, that you cannot game and distort the laws of physics like you can politics and economics, then there is only one true option.

Begin to serve the dismantling of the destructive systems, stories and beliefs that are threatening all life wherever you can.

And support the birthing of something more beautiful, with life-sustaining potential, and to do all of this using our own unique gifts and experiences.

Will it work ?

Who knows but everything we thought ‘we knew’ is coming apart rapidly, and at the very least and perhaps most importantly our children and grand children and future generations will be able to look us in the eye in 20 years time with compassion instead of deep rage and indescribable resentment.

And imagine how we will feel leaving them.

If enough of us step into service, this shift will become unstoppable.

Many years ago I watched Caroline Lucas on stage and she said something which has stayed etched into my mind…

“Will we be the first species to monitor our own extinction ?”

It is such a surreal thought, but over the years it strikes me that this is exactly what we are doing. Surely we cannot passively watch this happen.

Let’s break the silence on this madness, let’s normalise talking about this everywhere, to our loved ones, in our communities, in our work places, let’s put this at the centre of everything, let’s call out the deniers of physics everywhere, and let’s face into both the fear and the extraordinary possibility together.

Kevin finishes his talk with this quote from Robert Unger

"At every level the greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different"

Through my work and exploration I witness more and more people re-imagining and bringing into the world new ways of being, ideas, systems and ways of organising ourselves grounded in the realities of the climate and ecological emergency, ideas which put care, love, healing, social equity, fun and long term thinking at the centre.

I see this especially with the young and those who’ve been marginalised the most during this age of extraction, domination, exploitation and the great separation from the Earth.

We must rapidly wake up to this reality and divert our attention, intelligence, creativity and energy towards demanding the systemic change from our powerful institutions and media while getting on with re-imagining and co-creating new human systems in the places we live and work that will at least prepare us as best we can to deal with the enormous challenges and complexity that are coming down the line very fast whether we like it or not.

Let’s go all out on climate action because there is no economic growth, tax breaks, jobs, pensions and border controls on a dying planet, a planet that can no longer support human and more than human life.

______________________________________

Dan

( P.S if you haven’t watched the new documentary series on BBC2 Big Oil vs The World - do it, get clarity - know climate breakdown for what it is - a 40 year denial of science and corruption from powerful elite forces) yes it is probably 20 years too late, but maybe we just need to now go even faster in dismantling these life destroying systems - Let’s speed up to slow down. )