HOW CAN WE MAKE AN EQUITABLE TRANSITION TO A LOW-CARBON FUTURE?

I asked my Linkedin connections to send me life and business questions. I want to improve my writing and write about things that my network would find interesting. I do not have all the answers, I am trying to shine a light on them from my perspective and background. This is a starting point for a good discussion. Please join the conversation and contribute your thoughts and knowledge in the comments. Be respectful and curious, who knows what a simple question can lead to - for you and your business. So far, this experiment has been fun, eye-opening and humbling for me. Having such passionate and wonderful human beings in my circle makes me jump out of bed every day. Thank you to everyone!

Ashley Bartlett asks

HOW CAN WE MAKE AN EQUITABLE TRANSITION TO A LOW-CARBON FUTURE?

She adds: ”What does an equitable low-carbon future look like?
Why do the global north keep consuming resources to the detriment of the global south?
It may be ‘easy’ for the more wealthy nations to implement technology to reduce their emissions, or reduce their reliance on activities (such as agriculture) that occur in the Global South but this will have a big impact on these less developed countries. How can we ensure their ongoing development and resilience to climate change and not take away sources of their income like trade?”

And Michael LeRoy-Dyson asks

HOW ARE WE GOING TO TRANSITION TO A TRULY SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY?

I asked him to be a little bit more specific, e.g narrow it down into one of the 17 sustainable development goals. He went with 10 (equality) and 12 (responsible production/consumption), so I will include his question in here.

1
We cannot look at how to get somewhere when we don’t know or agree on what it looks like. So the first thing would be to clearly define what an equitable low-carbon future/ a truly sustainable society looks like. The thoughts I share today apply to any kind of global future. It doesn’t matter if we want to focus on low-carbon, responsible production/consumption, health....

The underlying question you both ask is how do we get the whole world to play fair together so that we still have a nice planet tomorrow.

2
You split the world in “Global North” and “Global South”. These are not two groups that talk or negotiate about our future. These are billions of different people living in different countries having different resources. There is no one size fits all approach here.

3
It is very naive to believe that we are able to reach a global solution. I am a hardcore idealist and very happy if time proves me wrong on that one. I would like to explain what I mean with such a gloomy comment. Let’s look at it from angles like history, practicality and human behaviour.

HISTORY and FAMILY - US versus THEM
For simplicity, and to avoid endless discussions about how long people have been on planet earth, let’s say humans have been around for 24 hours. For 23 hours and 59 minutes, life for homo sapiens was not global. We lived in tribes or small groups. We defined ourselves based on the tiny areas of the world in which we were born into. Our world was our family, our village, our belief system, our country.

If you were born 200 years ago into a jewish family, you would grow up with the rules, rituals, cultural and social norms of the jewish tribe. If a navajo mother gave birth to you 200 years ago, you would be doing what your navajo ancestors have done for centuries. The jewish kid and the navajo kid both think that their way is the right way - and the only way - to live. Just like your body rejects foreign organs, most people have an “us versus them” mindset. The person that is not like you is likely to be an enemy. We feel safe when we are around people who are similar to us.

For 23 hours and 59 minutes we did not even realize that there are other people on this planet. On top of that, people who speak, live, eat and think very different from us.

Now, it’s the 24th hour and boom - we have radio, tv, internet and global travel as part of a normal way of life (for most people who are able to read this blogpost).
Yet despite consciously knowing that there are lots of different people and cultures sharing the planet and it’s resources with us, we still have the same unconscious drive, shaped from 23 hours and 59 minutes of evolving in tiny groups. We want to identify ourselves with our group. We desire to feel loved, wanted, safe…
Many people are not comfortable with intercultural relationships. We joke about people of a certain haircolour or race - not always in a negative way, but always in a way that highlights a (stereotypical) difference. We root for “our” sports team and “our” type of car and reject people who prefer a different one.

So there we have now punk versus hip hop, skier versus snowboarder and marmite versus vegemite. We love to create little circles to fill our need for identity and belonging. We go on facebook and instagram to create followers and groups. Again, the “Global North” is not a group like this. It is an amalgamate of thousands of groups, and each has different ways of thinking about what the future should look like.

PRACTICALITY
To make this point, let me talk about one thing that makes me shake my head in disbelief every time I think about it. It is something so stupid that I cannot believe that I have to write about it in 2019. Especially considering so many brilliant things that we as humans have done so far. But this one, it is beyond me. So we have invented cars around 130 years ago. Awesome. We build roads everywhere. Hooray. We have global navigation at our fingertips. Whoop whoop. The cars don’t even need drivers anymore. Great job.
But until this day, we have not globally agreed on which side of the road we all want to drive.
There are thousands of accidents that could be eradicated overnight by simply making an agreement that everyone drives from now on on one side of the road. Can you believe it? I don’t care which side! But if I could be super cheeky and ask for some “common sense”, we would convert to the side of the road that most drivers are used to. And that is just one example of homo stupidus. I titled this thought “practicality” to highlight that even such a simple and logical example for global action would have a lot of work attached to it - as you can imagine. This is not a deeply rooted belief drive question, only 130 years of using the same machine and we cannot figure out a good global practice. So if we cannot work out something so simple for the sake of all of us, good luck with trying to get everyone to agree on a common vision for a low-carbon future.

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
So why do the rich people still exploit the poor people? Because humans. I wrote in quite some detail about human drivers and factors like time, perspective and emotions here, so those reasons are foundations. I would like to cover some other things here as well. Back to the 24 hours of human history example.

Since minute 23:59, we have global and instant access to information, travel and communication. We can produce and buy things around the clock. We get bombarded with marketing messages that tell us that we need to consume things.

We created a hungry monster called consumerism, and this is what drives the economies of the richer states (“global north”). It eats greed for breakfast, has cheap labour and resources for lunch and piles up rubbish and carbon on the dinner table. The rainforest is burning as I write this - are we really trading air for cheeseburgers?

Another example: Imagine Ashley has 30 neighbours in her street and she finds out the household income of each. Then she calculates an average and now she knows exactly which neighbours are richer and which ones are poorer. The fact that they are all neighbours should make for more connection and belonging than if they were strangers, right? Still, I bet that if Ashley goes out with a mission to convince the 15 richer ones to support the 15 poorer ones, (or like global wealth distribution, the rich one of them to support the 29 poor ones) it would not go very well. And that is just trying to get a handful of people to play fair, not half the globe. So that summarizes my slightly dark outlook from the beginning of this article.

BUT

I have had too many amazing experiences with people and businesses - full of creativity and generosity - to believe that we are doomed. One of Ashley’s follow up questions was “How can we ensure their ongoing development and resilience to climate change and not take away sources of their income like trade?” and Michael’s question was also about the way towards a better future.

Now that is exciting, because people like Ashley and Michael are leading this noble crusade.

You cannot change other people.

All you can do is change your actions and start with your life as an example. Then, you will gain immersive experience and this will make your personal change progress even faster and more refined. After a while, the people around you will notice the change and they might ask you questions and sooner or later, follow your example. It can be the smallest steps, like clean up your shopping habits to become more sustainable. Take actions to reduce your carbon footprint. If others see the benefits in your house, they want to copy what you do. Just like I explained in my climate change vs biodiversity post, you cannot motivate people by preaching or sharing negativity. Things like “the war on inequality” or “fight against consumerism” are highly counterproductive from a neurolinguistic programming perspective. Focus instead of words like “the path to equality” or “the way to conscious shopping” and you get the good people to follow you instead attracting the unhappy/agressive ones.

Direct your attention selectively and consciously. Pick one area where you can have an impact for the kind of future you want. Low-carbon future = focus on one thing/ resource/industry and become an expert in this area. Go to the country or industry where you like to make a low-carbon impact. Find a group that you want to make more resilient. Immerse yourself into the culture and history. Try to understand how and why they live, think and feel the way they do. Find out what else they have that could be an asset or a valued resource and help them to grow it in a sustainable way. Help them to become independent from one specific crop, product or country, and assist them to figure out how to spread risk, uncover opportunities and become more self-reliant.

Change starts from within. It starts with questions like Ashley’s and Michael’s. It comes from individuals who care and who can influence others. If you can get people to trust that you have their best interest at heart, you can create immense change. And soon enough, Michael will join Ashley and then another Ashley appears and the change-train is getting momentum. You will get magical support from areas you never expected. If you like a more scientific take on this magic, read Dawson Church’s “Mind over matter”. Want a boost and a role model? Check out Slingshot, an incredible award winning movie about Dean Kamen, one of my heroes. (Dean if you read this, I will work for you for free for a month just to soak up your wisdom, so come and say hi :-))

Thank you so much Ashley Bartlett and Michael LeRoy-Dyson for asking these questions. This is a big and complex topic and Linkedin is a wonderful network to find the best people to work on this topic together. Maybe you both asked me this question so I could connect you here? Please you two, meet, compare notes, share connections and create (y)our future.