As mentioned in the previous post, I learned about adaptive cycles from Nerbonne’s presentation. Nerbonne is the Environmental Sustainability program director at HECUA (Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs). What I took away from her talk was less what the title suggested and more like this headline she showed from Grist.org: "Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair."
Why don’t US citizens care about environmental issues as strongly as we did about, say, civil rights? We discussed a number of issues: it’s too big to tackle, we don’t experience negative feedback (e.g., subsidies hide true effects), some people are too poor to care, dispassionate scientists are telling the story, etc.
Nerbonne added another point: The cognitive dissonance is too great. It is psychologically challenging to understand the effects of a nation’s driving or meat-eating habits and continue to drive or eat meat. So we choose not to think about it or to downplay its importance.
Yet if I understand correctly, part of Nerbonne’s job is about trying to get people into that challenging state. And another part is to give hope to those challenged people that the issues can be resolved, that the world can be put back on track, even if your city doesn’t currently have public transportation and nobody you know is a vegetarian.
Here’s where adaptive cycles come in again, the framework that is compelling to me because it is broadly applicable and gives me hope in bottom-up change. It’s not just for analyzing ecosystems. You can analyze your life, too. For example, I experienced rapid growth two years ago when I consumed all sort of vegetarian and nutrition literature. I entered the conservation stage when I began taking classes at the U. I reached the release point when the reductionist view of nutrition threw me into a tailspin. And now here I am, reorganizing myself, refocusing my resources.
The adaptive cycle is stackable, too. Individuals’ releases have an effect on their immediate communities. In fact, my transfer to the U was prompted by a classmate’s transfer. And I like to think that some of my excited conversations at family events have had an effect. Who knows what will nudge someone to their release point.
Extend this vertically. Small communities nudge a city to release. States nudge the federal government. So for all the people that are frustrated that change is not coming from the top, find hope in bottom-up change. Struggle through your reorganization, educate yourself, and keep your eye on the prize.
Michelle Obama and local students in the White House kitchen garden.
Images from idrc.ca and picapp.com
I think part of the problem with climate change does have to do with lack of authoritative action. I'm all for helping the environment, but I don't know exactly what will do that. There are conflicting opinions on what should be done on a large scale.
ReplyDeleteWithout a central plan I don't think we can hope to accomplish much. Even if everyone agreed to stop climate change that wouldn't guarantee that our actions would be collectively effective if there wasn't an organized principle or pragmatic end goal shared by all participants.
We need to push government to make this their responsibility to come up with a plan that will be effective and direct us. I know this is the end effect of your bottom-up change idea, but it seems like we really need to focus on getting the government to move on this and less on educating ourselves. As long as I know there is a problem I don't need to understand it if there are smarter people who can take that responsibility and tell me what to do.