West Coast Oneness Event Series
The Global Oneness Project event series in May 2009.
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Created: Sep 11, 2008
Updated: Jul 28, 2010
Membership: Open To Apply
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Climate Crisis: Fixing Systems, Not Symptoms
Climate instability is a symptom of systems that can be fixed. So why does everyone keep trying to fix the symptom?
Some problems seem so huge and so mind-bogglingly complex that the habit has been to tackle them separately, break them down into manageable pieces and make plans for gradual improvement. This is the routine with every global problem, but it has worked with none of them – because it can’t. It’s like asking the problems to please behave how we wish they were, rather than how they are. Actually, they are indivisibly joined up, regardless of how convenient it is to handle them one at a time or a bit at a time.Whole-system problem-solving is not the done thing and may feel odd at first, like pretending to be a
superhero without even a cape. Fortunately, people are natural-born systems thinkers; we instinctively search for connections and new perspectives. Given an incentive (like, for example, the impending collapse of life as we know it?) we might surprise ourselves with what we can achieve collaboratively. Perhaps the opportunity of a peaceful sustainable planetary community has been waiting patiently throughout history, until this moment of crisis.Here on WiserEarth, I'm hosting a new fast-growing group called ‘Fixing systems not symptoms’. The group unites renowned systems scientists with professionals and activists with vast experience across the issues. Together – and hopefully with your help – we will question the assumptions of both business as usual and solutions as usual. If we succeed we will define a set of policy changes at the necessary scale of ambition, to reverse all major global problems, against all odds, before it’s too late. Please join us.
This article is from the bimonthly WiserEarth Community Newsletter which showcases the work of organizations, groups and individuals whose efforts exemplify our goal of promoting environmental and social justice issues. Hopefully, it will provide our readers with a shortcut to connecting to the 'hot spots' in our expanding network. Leave comments, post suggestions. Get involved!
Comments (1 - 20 of 30)
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Flag comment for removal boatsie 4 months ago
oh ok, i added this article to bolivia410!
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Hi Paul, I like meat and potatoes too.
For the climate, the meat and potatoes is rapidly lowering GHG concentrations. Whatever achieves that is a 'solution'. I wouldn't say that reductionist thinking is wrong or that hands-on action is wrong. It's certainly not about getting everyone to think like me - what a scary thought! It's about the scope and joining up of thinking and action, as we discussed earlier.
Your comment about the article on cars is an excellent illustration of how solutions can require thinking at a different level than the problem. So indirect, lateral or oblique thinking is handy. New questions invite new possibilities for solutions. Without such questions we have only the ways of the past, which haven't worked have they?
Ultimately people choose. "Change is not necessary. Survival is optional."
The systems group is open to feedback, even from those who choose not to join. So please feel free to comment on the content pages you find there. If you opt to join it would be lovely to see a pic of you on your profile, so we can see each other as a community of real people working collaboratively.
James |
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Critiques of wrong thinking are important. Good questions are needed. But at the end of the day, the key to making a change is coming up with solutions, not questions. If questions lead to solutions, fine. But it is the solutions which are the meat and potatoes.
I am curious to know what solutions are being put forward as a result of system thinking in this group.
Recently, in an article in Alternet, Alex Steffens observed: if there is a problem with cars, you don't try to redesign cars, you change the design of cities. This points to some solutions even if it doesn't present them.
In my work with Zero Waste, I urge design changes and then present many actual new designs for improved functioning. This is a road we must be ready to face. Coming up with solutions is the hard part. Of course we still need to apply them, refine them and make them work. But we need solutions, not endless questions.That is where our work is ultimately tested.
Sometimes, the changes being sought amount to: "everyone needs to start thinking like me". Or even "like us". Good as far as it goes but pretty nebulous. There are multiple ways that people have approached this goal. Popular organizing is perhaps the most common, and maybe that's all there is. But there are other social, political and economic interventions that have had startling effects. The recent Tea Parties have had success. Filibustering Obama has worked for those who do it. NAFTA and WTO were inventions that certain parties dreamed up. Those depended on achieving political power. Look at how the Dems are squandering the political power that they gained. There are also wheels within the wheels that have to be turned. If you waste your opportunities, what good does power do?
Sorry, I didn't mean to focus only on political solutions. Let's find others.
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Main issue with solving larger-than-usual problems is to teach people that their individual benefits are not above the society, it's the other way around. Adam Smith's theory about the fact that even if a person pursuits his own benefit, he helps the society as a whole works only until humans reach a certain number.
Right now, it works like "I want tons of money and I don't care what happens along the way". That's obviously wrong, but very fer can see it. |
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This is a well presented topic. I find the problem of fixing symptoms similar to trying to find cures for all body ailments separately without first targeting nutrition and a more active lifestyle. Same with crime.
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Yes, shovelling grit can be how it feels to take part in a world where net-destruction is the routine. Great to imagine and plan to reverse that! |
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Shoveling sand into a bottomless pit can be a good description of how humanity works. Technical inventiveness leads to greater and greater speeds of sand and gravel shifted. People are well versed to compete and improve technology but they are less well equipped to ask the question why they perform the useless task of filling sand into a bottomless pit in the first place. The workers have a simple answer: they get paid for it, it's their livelihood. For the objective observer, all this does not make any sense. Sadly, humanity does exactly the same thing now. Much activity is used for producing things to pile up in landfills. Much activity is used to solely make a profit. Much activity is used to defend this profit and inequality. Much activity used to defend obsolete society structures. Much activity is used to destroy food and sell it to people through supermarkets. Much activity is used in the health and pharmacy sector to cure those people who ate this destroyed food and exposed themselves to environmental pollutants. Much activity goes into polluting the environment. Much activity is used to produce unnecessary weapons and fight unwanted wars. Etc, etc. Considering all this, we can conclude that 90% of human activity is useless. So how much productivity could humanity have after this nonsense has been washed away by a paradigm shift that causes a significant system change? What could humanity accomplish with all that surplus productivity? |
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Thanks Doug, a gritty story :-)
Will be great to have your thoughts on paradigm change for the systems group. The suggestion that change 'must start in the lowest levels' is very popular because that's where we're all standing and shovelling. That's what matches our learning and what feels most comfortable. I'm also interested to discuss change across levels. |
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Ok, I'm back ... it's been an interesting and complex week. Continuing the saga of the three blokes shoveling gravel and sand ... as a reminder, this is about Climate Crisis: Fixing Systems, Not Symptoms
As I read James' article, I had a vision, a metaphor for the myopic view of granular parts of a system rather than the entire system as a whole with the interdependencies ... admittedly this metaphor is not complete or perfect, but it demonstrates my view that we need to rise above perfecting or protecting our parochial niches. My experience is that industrial organizations have a built-in bias against the system view. So for what it's worth, allow me to finish the story I started earlier:
Imagine, three huge piles of gravel, distributed around a bottomless pit. Three blokes, each with a shovel used in the garden or by a workman to mix concrete or dig a small ditch. They are shoveling their respective pile of gravel into the bottomless pit. One pile is coarse crushed rock with angular edges. Another pile is smooth river rock ranging in size from 1" to 2" diameter. The third pile is fine sand. Each is tossing a shovelful of material into the pit, steadily, rhythmically one by one. They are working effortlessly, efficiently, ergonomically, energetically.
Each is paid to shovel as much of his respective aggregate into the pit. The more that is shoveled, the more the financial reward. Quotas and bonuses are included in the individual compensation packages. The task of moving the piles of gravel seems never-ending. But soon, the angular edges of the coarse crushed rock are too abrasive and the shovel is worn down to an ineffective nub. So bloke #1 fashions a larger scoop and begins anew. A while longer, even the smooth river rock proves to be damaging to the traditional shovel, so bloke #2 fashions a newer shovel from thicker steel and resumes working. The sand has little wearing effect on the traditional shovel of bloke #3 who steadily shovels greater volumes of sand than the others ability to shovel their respective rocks. After a long while, the sand pile is a bit smaller than the pile of river rock, and that too is smaller than the pile of coarse crushed rock -- but the piles are still seemingly infinite in size. All the while, new shovels are fashioned with thicker and stronger materials as they periodically wear out and become inefficient and finally totally ineffective. Experiments with design, shape, size and other ergonomics evolve uber-shovels that out perform the original implements, and the workmen are able to shovel more efficiently with improved productivity. They even experiment in preprocessing the river rocks and coarse crushed rocks to make them smaller, finer, and smoother. That, too, reduces the wear on the shovels and further increases production rates.
The three workmen each earn comfortable income and enjoy the financial "fruits" of their labor. After much effort to improve from rudimentary methods to super efficient preprocessing and tool improvement which seems, in retrospect, a blink of an eye to these three workmen, the pile of sand is half its original volume, and the relative difference in size of the river rock and crushed rock are noticeable, but they too are much smaller than they were originally. With the sand half gone, and the larger aggregate approaching the state of being "half-gone" the three blokes call a meeting to prognosticate when they will have to look for new jobs, since there is apparently an end in sight. "We have perfected our shoveling, processing and systems, and we need to find more aggregate to move." "But there is no more aggregate beyond these diminishing piles we see before us." "But we have these wonderful implements." "But they are useless without aggregate." "But ...."
While each worker optimized the performance of his own shovel and processed the material so it could be handled more efficiently, the end result was that the source of the material ran out. Like buggy whips became a part of history with the advent of the automobile, their uber-shovels will become history with the depletion of aggregate.
More realistically, fuel efficient and hybrid automobiles are destined to extinction as we move past peak oil; and water heaters and furnaces will become extinct with the depletion of natural gas. Similarly, the uranium we will use in the future has mostly already been mined and stockpiled, and the peak of remaining reserves (stockpiled and yet to be extracted) is not far away. Eventually, the same is true for other commodities, e.g., copper, etc. It may not be a matter of actual reserves of resources, but "economically exploitable" reserves.
While we improve the efficiency of hot water heaters, space heaters, ovens, stoves, clothes dryers, and production facilities that consume oil, gas and coal, the supplies will decline relative to demand, yet we continue to tweak and make incremental improvements to the appliances and the processes in the face of depleting feed stocks.
This is nothing new to those who are here on WiserEarth reading this page. The issue for me is how to change the corporate and organizational paradigm to look beyond the department, beyond the division, beyond the facility, beyond the corporation, beyond the nation ... to the global perspective?
I believe the paradigm shift must start in the lowest level working units in the industrial and commercial sectors: it must start with you and me ... at work with our peers and managers ... no matter what business we are in.
As a seed, I think we need consider what might have to change within the corporate and small business structures: organization, traditional thinking on accountability, incentives, communication, education, "quality circles," etc.
Again, this may not be perfect or complete, but hopefully it will help spawn collaborative discussion. Thanks again James for starting the conversation. |
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Yes feedback systems are inherently unpredictable.
Thanks Wade and others for your splendid input on this last one in our systems group!
Doug, looking forward to news of the bottomless pit. Will be great to have your input too! |
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Some great resources here. Some good sites to check out asap. Thanks much. In Dancing with Systems, I particularly liked "Locate responsibility in the system." and "feedback systems are inherently unpredictable. They are not controllable.... We can't find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of omniscient conqueror."
Great phrase: omniscient conqueror!
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Greetings, friends. This page is fantastic. It supports my way of thinking, even as a one-time corporate planner. Trained in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, I firmly believe in the importance of the system view which takes in associated indirect effects in other parts of the system that are impacted by the immediate "problem" at hand. A corporate planner must find solutions to "opportunities" that have a total net benefit to the corporate bottom line. Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom of managers of small segments of a business focus only on the profit or performance of their little kingdom, because bonuses, incentives and "being allowed to keep you job" rely on the scrutiny of the manager one step up. Most people are myopic and do not see the "big picture" because they are paid not to. This I have learned from my career in a series of business-as-usual corporations, large and small.
My time is short at this moment, so I will not develop a complete thought around the premise laid out so well by James, but promise to complete the scenario that comes to mind as I read the thread leading up to this point.
Imagine, three huge piles of gravel, distributed around a bottomless pit. Three blokes, each with a shovel used in the garden or by a workman to mix concrete or dig a small ditch. They are shoveling their respective pile of gravel into the bottomless pit. One pile is coarse crushed rock with angular edges. Another pile is smooth river rock ranging in size from 1" to 2" diameter. The third pile is find sand. Each is tossing a shovelful of material into the pit, steadily, rhythmically one by one. They are working effortlessly, efficiently, ergonomically, energetically. Got it?
To be continued. Must catch my bus to work.
BTW, I recently joined CalEPA Air Resources Board and am presently working on a regulation under AB 32 that will impact the 60+ largest CO2 emitters in the state, including a dozen oil refineries, two dozen gas-fired power plants, and several "handfuls" of cement plants, mineral plants, hydrogen plants and a few remaining oil fields. I set up a few WiserEarth groups over the past two years for specific purposes, and want to see this community collaboration broaden and become more influential in the near term and leading up to Mexico City 2010. The near term in my mind is defined as getting meaningful and effective energy and climate legislation signed by Obama by Earth Day 40. |
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Hi Cathy, adaptation is needed to the extent that climate instability doesn't get fixed. If their proposal is to discuss adaptation instead of fixing the problems then it sounds like heads in sand. This amounts to a plan to allow things to get worse beyond any possible adaptation. They'll need a lot of sand!
Although looking at multiple problems together makes the whole mess look initially overwhelming, you also get the potential to generate new types of systemic solutions with the potential to work fast enough. Every locality can take part in the public debate about what these could be globally, as well as applying many of them immediately. The "powerful people" have a powerful role to play in this. We all do.
Best of luck - hang in there! James |
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James
It is Cathy Orlando in Sudbury ON Canada. Please see background information below..
I am deeply involved in trying to help my community break free from the thinking that got us into the climate crisis (our egos) and grasp a more "we" way of thinking.
"Whole-system problem-solving is not the done thing and may feel odd at first" .... I agree
Just wanted to say your post helped and I will keep posting.
Thanks soooo much
Cathy Orlando MSc, BEd I hold the position of Science Outreach Coordinator at Laurentian University. I was one of the 2500 people worldwide trained by Al Gore and the Climate Project.
I live four hours north of Toronto, Canada's largest city, in a Nickel mining town of 120 000 people. Our city had a notorious reputation of destroying much of its surrounding forests and farmland through open-pit nickel smelting and then almost destroyed the Eastern seaboard's maple syrup industry through acid rain by our industry's production sulfur dioxide pluming from our large superstack. All this was pretty much sorted out in the late 1980's.
Things have changed.
In the next six weeks our community will hold two very important meetings with regards to adapting to climate change.
We are not debating the climate crisis issue up here. We are not addressing mitigation because the powerful people that are steering these meetings have a strong sense that we don't have much time before the end of cheap oil and the climate crisis start affecting the more vunerable peoples in our community. As well we know there are opportunities that await us.
Who are those powerful people I am talking about? Our mayor, many of city councillors, our district officer of health, our Social Planning Council director, our member of Parliament (which would be like your congressperson), our province's cochair to Climate Change adaptation (he works at our university and is a collegue), and the president of our university (he signs the cheque for my very vague job).
The first meeting is a town hall meeting that is being organized by my Member of Parliament's office and me.
The second is a more of a closed meeting of managing partners from key sectors laying our city's plan for adapting to climate change.
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Thanks Deborah, also for setting up the article. Have added a note underneath pointing back to the entire set of newsletter articles.
Will enjoy seeing future articles on whatever themes the writers chose. If you want more contributions maybe add a 'article' tag under the 'contribute' heading on the wiserearth homepage?
Fun thing about your discussion Next Steps: Proposal Feb. Meeting etc is that anyone can chip in. |
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James, the success of this article and your placement of it is an example of how I want to change the newsletter ... so that it remains active and generates discussion and interaction from issue to issue.
So if you were to consider the top 3 themes on WE which might be as successful, what would they be?
Frank Patton is going to write about water and population for next issue. I am working with someone to write about localizing food production highlighting one of her projects and then connecting to what's going on on WE relative to food issues ...
Wade Norris is going to write a short article.
I still want to keep this discussion front and center.... Visual presentation, interactive presentation ... fluidity .... ...
Anyway, just soliciting ideas ....
I like the idea of 'hot spots' but don't want to use that term ....
Working on draft after meeting with Peggy .... she is totally behind WE holding a regional meeting as well as functioning as active sponsors as we move towards December in Mexico. James Hanusa is going to report in on a meeting he is attending tomorrow.... at which point we can more clearly define WE's role ....
I am thinking of setting up a separate private group for a few members to hash this out. What do you think? |
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Hi Anne I really enjoy Annie's films too and look forward eagerly to a future film with more about what to do instead.
Bowo was asking about presenting ideas visually on the precycling page. I bet you'll have great ideas on that! James |
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James, thanks to this post of yours, I was looking around at your website yesterday, which in turn led me to Annie Leonard's films. I had seen her Story of Stuff in the past, but not her Cap and Trade film. Both are incredibly cleverly made to make complex systems clear. Leonard's animation helps organize the random issues we talk about every day into images that make inter-relationships evident to the viewer. That ability to convey complex ideas visually is what I've been talking about in "visual rhetoric," ( http://www.wiserearth.org/forum/view/9a18c1c85d929b71bd6fbdde6af4dabd ) and what I'm doing in my own art blog ( blog.AnneBobroffHajal.com ), which deals with social systems (Russia's historical pull toward autocracy in particular).
Anyway, because I was so struck once again with the Annie Leonard films yesterday, I asked the webmaster of our local group, EcoNeighbors.org , to include the films on our website. She's already done that, and you can see it on our homepage if you'd like to see one small result of your own raising of these issues. I hope this will help her films be viewed by more people. So thanks for steering me to them once again.
Anne |
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Jonathan I was just teasing you about 6 buzzwords in one comment. Can you advise how I could get myself consciencised and avoid decapacitation ;-)
As I said, I think the work at Marsh Farm looks splendid. Including the OW work. |
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New to this thread. Just want to say that I found Michael's post particularly valuable. Thanks all!
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