"If you're in a bad situation, don't worry, it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry, it'll change."
-- John A. Simone Jr.
Sustainable Leadership: Pattern Yields Practice
In an earlier post I wrote:
Pattern Yields Practice: From the application of Presence comes an understanding of the patterns or dynamics of a particular field or area of endeavor. The more refined, expansive and deep your Presence, the greater the capacity to perceive pattern.
In reality, what does this mean and how does it work?
The process comes from Permaculture. It is one of the Key Success Factors for creating a self-sustaining, ecologically coherent and high yield agricultural system. The concept is simple: the better we understand the ecological system we are disturbing with our practice, the better we can align our practice with that system. The greater the alignment and coherence with the system, the lower our material, labor and energy costs and the more sustainable our yield.
If we move in the opposite direction of misalignment and incoherence we get higher material, labor and energy costs coupled with potentially higher (but unsustainable) yields. If we look at current large-scale agricultural practices they clearly tend toward misalignment and incoherence. The language and practice of large-scale agriculture is that of war and escalation of conflict with the very eco-systems that support us. Diminishing returns are a self-evident result of these practices.
Large-scale energy harvesting and the exergy generation (combustion, electricity generation) have followed a similar path of misalignment and incoherence. In order to live we are destroying, dirtying and damaging the eco-systems that have supported us for tens of thousands of years. Simply, as these eco-systems unravel, we are presented with patterns (global warming) that touch us and (temporarily) move us to change our practice. The key is that we are reacting in fear to patterns after they emerge as opposed to proactively seeking out and observing patterns as they emerge or as they have been emerging and subsiding for thousands of years.
Applying Pattern Yields Practice to business means fundamentally altering the way we perceive our organizations, our selves as constituents of these organizations, and the way we and our organizations choose to behave in the market, in the communities we inhabit and in the web of life that allows us to flourish. Simply it means, expanding our circles of stakeholders to include not just people but the eco-systems in which we do business and in which we, as people, live.
The benefits? Less material, labor and energy costs, less fear and anger, less unhealthy, unhappy employees, and a more stable, strong, flexible and sustainable business model.
Applying Pattern Yields to your Self as community member and leader means creating the space and time to:
- Observe and reflect upon the way you see the world around you.
- What habits of thinking and perception do you have?
- What patterns of behavior do you have?
- Observe and reflect on the world around you, specifically:
- What patterns do you see (for example: rain, diversity of people, plants & animals, water flow)
- What patterns do these patterns link to?
- What larger patterns are these patterns a part of?
- How are you related to and affected by these patterns?
- How do you and other members of your community affect these patterns?
- What meaning is to be made from these interactions?
- To live in a more eco-systemically coherent manner (saving money, energy & time) what needs to change?
- How will these changes affect you and the patterns you’ve observed?
- What are you going to change–starting NOW?
Easy? Absolutely not.
Essential? I suppose that depends on whether you want to be part of the solution or continue being part of the problem.
Tags: global warming, leadership, permaculture, sustainability, sustainable leadership
Innovation and Climate Change Part 3: Gwyn Prins
As noted in the previous post, Dr. Prins and others spoke on inter-related elements of the implications and science surrounding global warming and climate change. Present only for the first half, my impressions are recorded below:
Dr. Prins took us on a romp through the folly of emissions targets and trading in a presentation starting at Kyoto and ending at the collective feet of policy makers at the G8 summit in Hokkaido. He compared the challenge of creating climate policy to understanding a double helix intertwining the physical and socially constructed worlds of humanity.
Really more than a double helix, Dr. Prins described climate change issues as “wicked problems” that arise from the interaction of the complex open systems in which we live. Wicked problems are not “solved”. In an oversimplification they only improve or worsen. Remember that a gain in one place, though, is often a loss somewhere else.
Dr. Prins stated clearly that Kyoto brought no real decrease in emissions and, in fact, could not even decrease the rate of increase. He stated (and I agree) that we need to stop trying to control outputs and focus on affecting and changing the inputs. His proposed solution was to target the industries responsible for ~60% of carbon emissions and work with them to set limits, targets for reduction and development of alternative non-carbon producing processes.
Another significant aspect of Dr. Prins’ presentation was on why the public is having such a hard time engaging with climate change issues. Using the Issue Attention Cycle he described how (we) the public has heard the media and governments sound the alarm twice now yet little is accomplished, there are very few tangible, clearly causally related events and seemingly little people can do help. Thus, there is a very real risk that, yet again, climate change and the behaviors that create and feed CO2 into the atmosphere will, yet again, subside in importance and urgency in the public eye.
In my opinion, the only way out of this cycle is to move as individuals, communities and organizations toward Coherence. At that stage of engagement we begin to re-design, re-organize and re-create from eco-centric, sustainable ways. We need to become sustainable from the inside-out as opposed to having “green” ideologies imposed upon us from the outside-in.
Actually, there is another way. We can do nothing and wait for all hell to break loose-which it will. Then, we’ll have a whole new set of problems to “fight.” And fight we will.
Tags: climate change, global warming, Gwyn Prins, sustainability, UN University
Innovation & Entrepreneurism in the Time of Climate Change Part 2: Jim Hansen
CLIMATE CHANGE - Messages to the G8 from UNUChannel on Vimeo.
The above video is from the United Nations University symposium entitled: “Innovation & Entrepreneurism in the Time of Climate Change.”
As noted in the previous post, Hansen and others spoke on inter-related elements of the implications and science surrounding global warming and climate change. Present only for the first half, my impressions are recorded below:
In general, what I found most interesting and disturbing is the panelists agreement that there is no shared understanding of the problem much less any coherence on what needs to be done.
Central to Hansen’s presentation is that there is an absence of strategy addressing climate change and how to engage it. His approach is, first, to set a limit of 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. He bases this calculation on paleo-historical evidence that indicate this has been the relatively stable level of CO2 in the atmosphere during times in which the Earth’s climate has most resembled the climate we, as humans, have been enjoying for the last few thousand years. In order to realize the above limit, Hansen recommends
- Post fossil fuel thinking + behavior: Phase out emissions from coal plants and stop building more. Institute carbon taxes which are returned to people in the form benefits for reducing carbon emissions and using and developing alternatives to carbon producing technologies (a “cap-dividend” model). Create “low loss” electric grids for the dispersion of energy. His letter to Prime Minister Fukuda that outlines this strategy can be dowloaded here.
- Changes in agricultural practices (not elaborated)
- Reforestation + soil stewardship (not elaborated)
Hansen, I believe, wisely is pushing for action closer to the roots of climate change dynamics. Pushing for an end to emissions from coal burning is a powerful and very challenging goal as both China and India are revving up their infrastructures through-you guessed it-coal burning power plants.
Climate change and the human influenced dynamics responsible for it are a lot like kudzu. Topical spraying and hacking away at the edges of the plant do little to stop it from spreading. We’ve got to find the roots and stop proliferation there. In this case the roots are us. We’ve got to change or change will change us. Guaranteed.
Tags: climate change, entrepreneurism, G8, global warming, innovation, sustainability
Innovation & Entrepreneurism in the Time of Climate Change Part 1
Attended a symposium at the United Nations University in Tokyo as a prelude to the G8 summit in Hokkaido. It focused on a number of differently related topics on climate change. Featured speakers included Jim Hansen, the NASA scientist responsible for sounding the initial alarm around climate change, a thoroughly entertaining and informative Gwyn Prins from the LSE, Bill McKibben, environmentalist author, and a host of other people with different takes on reducing CO2.
Though only present for the first half, my reflections and rationale for missing the second half are below:
I passed on the second half because a large number of the presentations focused on reducing CO2 output. “Fighting” global warming or focussing on carbon emissions reduction and offsets is simply a waste of time, money and energy. Focusing on shrinking our “carbon footprints”, trading emissions and setting disconnected CO2 emissions reduction goals is, to quote the Godfather of Soul “Talkin’ loud…but we ain’t sayin’ nothin’.”
To have any meaningful effect on this issue, we’ve got to look at and change the fundamental behaviors contributing to global warming, rises in oil costs, food shortages and renewed interest in coal and nuclear energy. We also need to understand the meaning of that behavior for the long-term (100+ years) sustainability of human civilization. Less than our survival, a focus on flourishing, I believe, is in order.
The behavior I’m referring to includes individual, family, community, regional and national habits of energy consumption, corporate research, development and production, policy setting and cross-industry, cross-sector co-operation and collaboration. Underlying this behavior is a desire to live well, make money and an unhealthy penchant for short-term “green” action that hurts much more than it helps (oil palm plantation expansion into rain forests is but one example).
The current challenge we are facing is: How can we flourish (live well) while reducing demands for unhealthy energy sources like coal and oil? Linked to this challenge is the, even greater, challenge of integrating our lives with the eco-systemic dynamics that support us and take the Cradle to Cradle approach of creating 0 waste and ongoing, creative recycling.
This does not mean falling backward in some painful Luddite breakfall. It means learning to roll smoothly forward, land on our feet and co-create communities, businesses and economies that are flexible, adaptable and focused on flourishing within the eco-systems from which we emerged and in which we are inextricably embedded.
This means we become eco-centric innovators and entrepreneurs developing technologies, products and services that serve eco-logical and eco-nomic health. This is not an issue of being liberal or conservative, capitalist or socialist, hawkish or dovish, monotheistic, polytheistic or atheistic, Muslim, Wiccan, Christian, Hindi or Buddhist, “dark green”, “bright green”, brown or blue. It is about understanding our fundamental relationships with others and the world around us and intending benefit for all.
The Buddhists call it “right intention.” From right intention springs right action.
What is your intention and, more importantly, what are you doing?
Tags: climate change, corporate social responsibility, csr, G8, global warming, sustainability
Shifting the Focus Away from Oil
Here’s the latest installment of the C+C News. There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal called If $4 Gas Is Bad, Just Wait. The gist of it is that, in the US, gas has gone up and over $4.00 a gallon. Prices in Japan are averaging over $5.00 a gallon and as the graphic from the article suggests, prices are going to continue to rise with Goldman Sachs predicting an upper limit of somewhere around $200 a barrel.
I don’t think we should “just wait.” Wait for what? For things to get so bad that travel becomes simply untenable? C’mon we are smarter and more capable than that. These rising oil prices are a glimpse of a future (and the reality of our present) in which petroleum powered travel and petrochemical manufacturing become non-sustainable. There’s nothing evil or malicious at work here. Oil and oil production are not inherently bad. I’m not suggesting some Luddite shunning of technology either. We are simply entering into a period of transition away from a century of fossil fuel dominated industry and development. Let’s acknowledge it, get over and get on with it.Just waiting, now, would be about the worst thing we could do. We are being presented with an opportunity to expand our individual and collective capacities to engage the world. We, now, have the opportunity to radically re-imagine and re-create commerce, communities and lifestyles in ways that support our mutual, inextricably inter-related short and long term futures. Forget oil, forget the new “war” on global warming. Let’s stop trying to fix what’s irretrievably broken and shift our attention awareness, intention and attention to a more eco-systemically coherent, resonant and sustainable way of living, working and playing together. Imagine a future where oil dependency and carbon emissions are no longer a concern. Let’s plan and design that.
Let’s recognize “now” for what it is. It is a gift, the opportunity to change change and respond with a proactive vision of a future we want versus the future we will get if we “just wait.”
Tags: climate change, gas prices, global warming, peak oil, sustainability
We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us
Was reading the newspaper this morning when I came upon this article: On Climate, Symbols Can Overshadow Substance. It begins with a description of the “Earth Hour” campaign:
The idea was to get 2 million residents in Sydney to turn off all the lights in their homes for one hour. The campaign generated wide publicity, but the energy saved was small — the equivalent of taking about five cars off the city’s roads for a year.
Earth Hour, Earth Day and the Miss Earth beauty pageant — “saving the planet, one pageant at a time” — generate lots of publicity, but they also tend to prompt people and companies to choose what looks good over what works
Not what we would call a raging success. As Rod Williams states on “A Disgruntled Republican” blog:
We don’t need another Al Gore Earth Aid concert. We don’t need another self-indulgent celebrity showing us how much they care by flying their “green” car around the world so they can be seen driving “green.” We don’t need another company selling phony carbon offsets. Enough already of the “green washing.”
Another very interesting aspect of the article comes later:
While the idea that people who are emotionally committed can change their behavior in ways that help the planet seems appealing, a growing body of research suggests that this is not the way large-scale changes in behavior occur. The behavior of individuals, companies and nations is largely determined by structural factors, not personal choices.
“Some people react to ethical and environmental concerns, but a vast majority of people react to price,” Flomenhoft said. “The biggest effect on people’s behavior is price. When gas reaches $4 a gallon, everyone talks about hybrids.
“We are not going to solve this problem with voluntary measures — it is a problem of externalities,” [Borenstein] said. “It is true of pollution and the way we use oil. We address tailpipe emission problems by asking people to make sure they meet emission requirements — we actually check. We have found voluntary approaches don’t work when it comes to pollution.
Take a good look at the message of hopelessness in the above statements. To restate: people will only change when we force them to change. Behavior must be regulated, motivation must be extrinsic. Is there another way?
Here are several more open (and definitely loaded) questions. What would it take for us to live and work in eco-systemically coherent ways? What changes would we have to make in the ways we perceive our selves and our relationships with the eco-systems into which we interwoven?
Where are our individual and collective leverage points to catalyze a paradigm shift where a carrot and stick approach is no longer necessary and appropriate? How do we develop the intrinsic motivation to be sustainable and the wisdom to act effectively?
I have some ideas. How about you?
Tags: capacity evolution, global warming, leadership, sustainability