Plan C

Roadmap To Creating Sustainable Change From the Inside Out: Part 2

Find Your Reset Point

Nick Kettles and Pat Thomas

Amidst the turmoil of debate, the successes and setbacks, the hope and despair in creating a more sustainable society – and set against the backdrop of protesters actively occupying the financial districts of the world – what is the value of retreat? 

What is the value of actually pressing the pause button completely to disengage from the world, including your quest to make it a better place? Of learning how to turn the mind inwards, and take refuge within the silence, the reset point, at the centre of your very being? 

How any of us achieve this is personal and unimportant. Some people like to meditate, others engage in mindful activities such as making bread. Still others like to walk in Nature and contemplate its beauty. What’s important is that you do it.

At first blush, the benefits seem profoundly individual, even selfish. But a choice to prioritise your personal peace, taking a retreat from the inherent madness of the modern world, is not a way of escaping our responsibilities. It is, instead, a profoundly revolutionary act.

Once the surface noise of our angry or despairing thoughts about the environment, or modern world, begin to quiet down, we begin to detach from the outcome we want to see and a more reflective and creative state of mind can emerge, one that can be applied, once again, to our quest for a better, fairer more sustainable world. 

Once we begin to trust the silence within as a source of nourishment, our fear and sense of vulnerability about the planet can be embraced as confirmation that we are, in fact, deeply connected to the web of life everywhere.

Above all, each time we turn inwards and retreat we challenge the prevailing paradigm that wants us to believe that moments of quiet reflection are purposeless and self-interested, that disengaging is synonymous with boredom, lassitude, lack of choice and the greatest sin of all: being out of touch with the next ‘new’ new thing. 

When we affirm that the emptiness inside doesn’t need to be constantly filled with the ephemeral whims of consumption, we give permission for others to also discover it as a resource rich in energy. In the silence, ideas which can galvanise our sense of purpose have space to grow.

Try stopping for 20 minutes, 3 times a day, to reflect and quieten your mind, in your own unique way.  In what ways do your thoughts and feelings about the environment change?

Roadmap To Creating Sustainable Change From the Inside Out: Part 3 ‘Adopt a new aesthetic’ coming soonish. 

 

 

 

 

Roadmap To Creating Sustainable Change From the Inside Out: Part 1

Accept Your Pain About the Environment is a Reflection of Your Own Suffering

Nick Kettles and Pat Thomas

 

When the Earth is seen as sick and dying, we position ourselves as in charge, and the Earth subject to our will. Humanity is in charge. Humanity caused the problem. Humanity will fix it. Humanity has misused the earth’s resources, now humanity will redistribute them more fairly.

Taking responsibility for our impact is an essential part of our evolution as a race, no doubt, and yet our awareness of who we are, in relation to what we are taking responsibility for, can make a big difference. Our perception of the Earth's suffering may actually reflect our own deepest feelings. It’s not the Earth that’s dying but our worldview.

Our sense of urgency for the 'fragile' Earth, is actually a projection of our own deep sense of fragility and of loss; of the pain that the institutions and way of life that we have invested so much faith in, are in fact crumbling, and no longer systemically sustainable. Our belief that we can 'fix' things with a lot of angry, unexamined, frenetic activity is just one example of the need to control that sense of loss. Indeed it's the kind of meddling that got us into trouble in the first place.

Consider for a moment, the possibility that the Earth is in charge, and we as a species, subject to Her will. Consider what it would be like if we knew intrinsically, that we were a part, an intimate part, of Her whole? A dynamic part of an ecosystem which includes all Her species?

If we recognised this, we can as Satish Kumar says move from an egocentric worldview, where I am separate from the world, and my needs are more important than yours, to an ecocentric worldview, where my comfort doesn’t come at the expense of another, and who I am is determined by my ability to relate to Other, including the Earth.

This may sound like the ramblings of dyed in the wool greenies, like a touchy-feely paean to deep ecology – like that made popular by the blockbuster movie Avatar – and yet, it is absolutely necessary if we are to rediscover our integral place within the web of life.

Rather than play the hero and act to rescue a dying planet because, yes, it’s the right thing to do morally and intellectually, but also maybe to glorify ourselves and our resourcefulness as a species, do we have the courage to restore our interdependent relationship with Nature instead?

Can we take the time to accept Nature as a teacher, by observing Nature’s cycles, by growing our own vegetables, making our own bread, staying long enough in Nature to see it with new eyes, until its interconnective web, of which we are a valued and important part, is revealed?

The act of saving ourselves may in the end be a passive one, one where we do less not more. And having stepped back in that way, would we then, secure in the knowledge that we truly belong, act less from fear, and instead with greater awareness of the best use of our time, energy and resources?

Take time to consider from what perspective you are viewing your relationship with the Earth?  Is She broken?  Are you the saviour? Is She able to heal Herself?  And if so, is our part in that active or passive, or both? What have you to learn from Her? 

Roadmap To Creating Sustainable Change From the Inside Out: Part 2 ‘Find Your Reset Point’ coming soonish. 

Plan C’s Road Map To Creating Sustainable Change From The Inside Out

Nick Kettles and Pat Thomas

It’s over 18 months since we began our quest at Plan C to shift the focus of environmental debate from ‘what kind of world do we want?’ to ‘what kind of people do we have to become to make that world and then live in it sustainably, peacefully, intelligently and courageously?’

During that time our intuition that who we are being in relation to our cause, is equally as important as what we are doing, has only strengthened.

Our discussions - on this site and off - have taken us into deep territory. From the nature of beauty, via our responsibility not to see the earth as a victim, to the role of intuition in guiding us forward, we have begun to recognise certain themes, certain signposts, pointing the way for people who are also beginning to intuit that sustainable change is only possible from the inside out.

Proposing a fixed road map, a prescriptive formula for how to become the dynamic intersection for the political, economic and environmental transitions we need to make today, is not our objective at Plan C.

However, it seems wise to try and articulate the terrain we see. Make clear some of the path.  Point out the pitfalls we've noticed that prevent us from being more effective in our collective quest to create a more sustainable and loving society.

Over the next few months, or however long it takes, we’ll be posting our Road Map to Creating Sustainable Change from the Inside Out, part by part.  You are welcome to read these thoughts as a set of linear steps to follow, or, enjoy them as different facets of the same jewel. 

We look forward to your comments and feedback.

 

This is the show, and it's not going to get any better, any time soon, without you. SO STOP WATCHING THE TV AND GET ON BOARD!

Nick Kettles and Pat Thomas

Have you become a natural disaster junkie?  It makes compelling viewing doesn't it?

Check the body count for a few days after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Monitor news daily to see if the fourth nuclear reactor has blown up in Japan, after the recent tsunami.

Did you keep track of how many flights were grounded last year, when the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in Iceland erupted?  Shake your head as the Haiti earthquake death toll rose to 250,000 plus. Hold your breath over last year’s Sumatran earthquake and the resulting tsunami; would it be as devastating as the 2004 Indian Ocean quake/tsunami the force of which was helpfully measured by the scientists as being the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, claiming at least 225,000 lives? And what about those Chilean miners and their two months underground?

Be honest, are you secretly pleased by every new distraction that our earth is offering up with increasing frequency?

These are devastating acts of nature – for which we believe there are no explanations and over which we have no control. In many ways it is easier to live with the cold quantification of these disasters, the body counts, millisieverts leaked, the tonnes of wreckage, the cubic litres of ash, hours of oxygen left than it is to feel anything real.

Yet, perhaps, this is to be expected. The natural human tendency to stand like a deer in the headlights, in front of a truck rushing towards us does seem to beggar belief, but should we really wonder?

Afterall, Hollywood has done such a fine job of anaesthetising us to the reality of significant weather and earth based phenomena, with an endless stream of disaster movies, dating back beyond Towering Inferno from the 70s, that we are left unable to distinguish the difference between a tsunami in the film 2012, and the tsunami that destroyed so much of Sendai last week.

Emotionally numb we may at best be moved by one event – but dare we connect the dots and not just consider whether they are related, but whether we are culpable; whether human-created climate change is driving these disasters?

But how could they be?  A volcano in Iceland, surely can't be connected to an earthquake in Japan, or a flood in Australia?  We can relate, perhaps to a hurricane being linked to climate change, but a causal chain including earthquakes, and or volcanoes is harder to grasp and more often the domain of people who knock at your door and invite you into a discussion about the Old Testament.

And yet the possibility that the greenhouse effect causes the earth's tectonic plates to shift is something that serious scientists are now willing to speculate on, see here and, here.

It’s possible – but hey, why wait for the data before deciding what to do?

You know the moment it comes in someone's going to dispute it, and even if they don't, it won't lead to anything more than incremental change on a governmental level, so why not do something completely different as the basis for making your own mind up.

Granted, this something isn't that easy when your head's full of the latest news reportage, so you may want to switch off your TV set before you try it.

What we're proposing is that you listen to your intuition.  That's right.

Undervalued and at best recognised as a so called soft skill in the business world, intuition, or our gut instinct or sixth sense, is probably the most powerful barometer of what to do that we have today.

It takes courage to say, y'know, I don't care whether the idea that Climate Change is man-made is disputed, or whether there are in fact cyclical patterns of extreme weather historically, I'm still going to change my behaviour in relationship to the earth, because that's what my intuition tells me to do.

Today, our hearts tell us that humanity has a reciprocal and interdependent relationship with the earth, and that if we all acted in harmony with Her we would experience a fundamentally different world.

We'd cling less to dramatic headlines and the comfort of our TV experts, we wouldn’t blur the lines between natural disaster and man-made catastrophe, we'd sync into natural cycles and JUST KNOW what our place in all this was.

Humans are the only living things that compulsively live and work against their own natural cycles, and as such against their own well being. Homosapien is an entire race of Homer Simpsons sticking its fingers into a light socket over and over again to see if maybe THIS TIME we get a different result. Intuition cuts through this crazy behaviour.

Our hearts tell us that living simply and closer to the land is not just common sense but ultimately the key to lasting happiness and a fulfilled life.

That individual rights and social responsibility are not mutually exclusive, and that in fact loving service of others is the key to Self discovery.

Our intuition tells us to reject the idea that we are all helpless victims of life. And most importantly that we don't need another extreme weather event to verify our intuition to live in harmony with the earth.

As the earthquake rocked Japan and split open her nuclear reactors, Nick arranged a barter with his neighbour, to acquire his first Bee hive that will soon help to pollinate his family's vegetable plot and increase its yield.

Pat planted seeds. Just three windowsills and some pots – but in the middle of the city this is her Eden, her way of staying grounded and putting something back.

What does your intuition tell you to do?

 

 

 

What do you do when the hand of fate presses pause?

Nick Kettles

It’s a rainy day at a fete in beautiful, rural South West France, near the Pyrenees.  The tannoy system is being manned by a jovial man in his fifties, tasked with the job of announcing the next event, prize winners and parking problems over the crackly microphone.   

He’s doing a Stirling job, not only with his key announcements, but also his charming, running commentary about local history, the minutiae of a typical French village celebration, and what it was like last year when it wasn’t raining.    

One suspects he may be filling the spaces between his key announcements, to keep people interested in spite of the rain, in the same way DJ’s waffle on in between records, or simply to avoid the whine and whistle caused by turning a tannoy on and off, too often.  But then something happens which reveals there may be a different reason for his bubbling banter.   

The generator which has been keeping the tannoy system running, runs out of petrol without warning, and leaves our announcer suddenly severed from his audience. 

Without his banter, the contrast is stark.  It is uncomfortable. We don’t know what to do. Everyone suddenly stops moving and talking, like marionettes without an animator. <

The awkward silence stretches on, people shuffle disorientated, heave and sigh, talk in muffled voices, avoid each other’s gaze, before finally, like a clarion call that life has once more commenced, the generator roars into life and after a long whining noise signalling the tannoy is back in action, the announcer reanimates us, and we shuffle on to resume our pre-interruption tour of the fete.

Could it be that even in rural France, where many still rise in the morning to the sound of the cock crowing people have become so conditioned to aural blight through different media from an early age, that they need a constant stream of background noise, in order to feel comfortable with themselves?

Or, more likely, that they are just like nearly every other human being in the Western world, who feels naked, exposed and vulnerable, when the system they have invested so much faith in temporarily breaks down?

I would venture that this is exactly how the many thousands of people left stranded by the grounding of thousands of air flights across Europe felt.

I wonder if any of them, saw it as an opportunity to reconsider their place in the world, and whether another way of living in relation to the earth and each other, is possible?   

How many will have considered what their lives might be like without the pineapple chunks form Ghana or baby sweetcorn from Thailand or cut flowers from Africa, which arrive on their supermarket shelves via air cargo freight plane?    

If some of them had stepped out of the airport waiting lounge, for a while will they have noticed that in the sky free of contrails, the birds were singing louder – no doubt appreciating the opportunity to call for a mate in daylight.   

Previous reports suggest that  London birds had taken to singing at night, because they couldn’t get a tweet in edgewise above the noise pollution to which air flights contribute significantly.

Or, might they have taken the opportunity to be curious about the people sitting next to them, beyond the fact they were waiting for the same flight.  If they had struck up conversation, how many would have reached the same conclusions Corrina Gordon-Barnes explores in her incredibly prescient blog post “When All The Planes Are Grounded.”?    

Or will people have simply associated these moments of quiet reflection as synonymous with boredom, lassitude, lack of choice and, more worryingly, the fear of being out of touch with what the next ‘new thing’ is? 

Always on, comfortably numb by degree, and completely oblivious of our place in the world, until the hand that turns the wheel of fate presses the pause button momentarily and we are forced to reconsider our raison d’etre for existing?   

We don’t need to wait for further Nature inspired interruptions, such as Iceland’s volcanic eruption, to wake us from our stupor, and knock us from our Hamster wheels, but that may be the only way we learn to reconnect with the web of life, where our inter-dependence is self evident in every choice we make.

If they do come, the first step will be to recognize that our fear and sense of vulnerability is not a sign of impending doom, but instead a powerful emotion which can be used to raise our awareness of not just how to deal with contingency, but to also consider a new way of being and relating with one and other.

Breeders of the world unite..

Nick Kettles

Statistics damn statistics. 

Without them they’re would be no environment debate. 

They set the parameters of where we’re at, and where we’re heading, and, at the same time, their ability to objectify the beauty of human relationships as a series of mathematical formula is simply spectacular.

At no time has this been more clearly illustrated, than in the environment movement’s very own bête noire, the debate about population growth and its impact on climate change.

The facts are in. 

Today, there are nearly 7 billion people and rising. It's estimated by 2050, there will be upwards of  9 billion. The UK's Optimum Population Trust estimates the world's sustainable population is 5 billion. 

According to the Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown, Population growth, "contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, crowding in national parks, a growing dependence on imported oil, and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives."

Join the dots: More people equals more carbon CONSUMPTION.  Less babies less carbon CONSUMPTION.  People who have them are selfish, so stop having them.  

Indeed, a recent study at Oregon State University has concluded that in the US, the carbon footprint of having an extra child, is almost 20 times more important than any other actions a couple might take in their entire lives: things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs. Moreover, they conclude, the long term carbon footprint of a every child born  - along with all its descendants – is likely to have more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.

So, there you have it. 

Children, like commodities, carry their own carbon rating, and therefore parents should, where possible, think before they make their purchase decision.

However, based on logic like this, for those of us who are already parents, there’s little place to go.   

The chances of breeders like me ever achieving the same moral high ground as eco-heroes such as Cameron Diaz, who claims she may never have children, on the grounds the planet doesn’t need anymore, or the woman who actually decided to have herself sterilised to ensure she would not overburden the planet any further, are slim indeed.

My partner and my carbon rating will remain lumped alongside Hummer drivers, Lear Jet riders, and other eco-criminals, while my daughters, and in particular my second daughter, will inherit the carbon debt burden our hasty decision to expand our circle of love has created.

Who ever said mathematics wasn’t an emotional subject?

But, is this narrow view truly representative? 

This debate is possibly wider and more complex still. 

Of course, it’s is true that the world cannot sustain a larger population at business as usual levels of consumption and waste, but by the same token, taking a ‘Round Up Ready’ approach to population control does nothing to address the economic system which impoverishes the third world in the first place.

One reason why people in the developing world may have more children is that a lack of sanitation and general healthcare means they die in greater numbers.  Children are part of the workforce in some countries and not to have them means not to have enough hands on the farm.  In short it’s cash not copulation we should be controlling. 

Of course, Oregon University’s statisticians neglect to say what happens if someone in a Western country adopts a homeless Bangladeshi child, to help them relieve the burden of over-population.  Presumably, some kind of carbon credit or trading scheme will be on offer to assuage the impact of bringing up this child in the bosom of the capitalist West.

Like I said, it’s complex.

And, while not having children to save the planet is a noble act, it assumes, that we are already doomed.  There is little we can do, because that’s what climate science tells us. 

Based on what we know about human potential, this is a fair assessment, however, based on what we don’t yet know about human potential, it risks condemning the current and future generation of children hopeless to effect change. Thankfully human potential is not like oil: it doesn’t have a peak point where it starts to run out.  We may not have found the resilience, courage, creativity, and resourcefulness to create the world anew, but future generations might, if we are willing to instil these qualities in them. 

Maybe developed countries actually needs more parents who conceive children, for the purpose of instilling strong values in a new generation who may yet, change the world,  and not those who have children because they forgot to use contraception, got drunk, wanted a house from the government, or to please their parents eager to be grandparents.

Oh, yes, and then there’s those countries like France who are not ashamed to say children are our future.  Compared with the rest of the developed world, they recognise their declining birth-rate means they will soon face problems paying for the pensions and care of their ageing population.  France’s unofficial ‘third child policy’, implicit in their tax system, guarantees exponential tax breaks for larger families. 

Shoring up a system doomed to bust anyway, or ensuring a big enough labour pool to take over all those beloved but at risk, artisanale Boulangeries, Charcuteries, and Cafés which lovers of sustainability believe should be at the heart of every community?

And while it may appear that adoption is the middle way solution, excluding our right to procreate, also denies fundamental choices, which remain intrinsically political.

I applaud Cameron Diaz, for speaking out about her choice possibly not to have children, and right that she should, but she has no less moral fibre in my mind, than my wife’s decision to have our children awake and naturally, because she wished to affirm her ability, which she shares with every other woman on the planet, to give birth free of the control of male dominated obstetrics. 

Which is greater?  Neither.  Both rightly assert a woman’s right to choose – the same choice that has been suppressed by the same forces of progress which delivered this sorry mess we’re in, in the first place.

While statistics often paint a bleaker picture of what’s possible, the human spirit is far stronger and deserves a chance to fully show itself.  This can only truly happen if we recognise that the continuity of our race is really about human connection, and especially the sharing of wisdom and love from one generation to another.  This more than anything needs to be at the heart of a sustainable society.

And for those who rightfully assert your right not to be parents, on environmental grounds, feel free to step in and enjoy the role of being extended family to some children in your community. 

To rescue or to restore..

Nick Kettles

How we talk about the Earth and the language we use probably determines and influences our relationship with the Earth more than we think.  

Contrast the idea of the earth being sick, the subject of a brutal rape by the forces of progress, with the view offered in the draft resolution, entitled Harmony with Mother Earth  (A/C.2/64/L.24) which Bolivia presented to the United Nations in November last year (2009). 

“One of the greatest discoveries of civilization was the realization that the Earth is not flat and that we live on a globe. Today we are in the midst of a much larger discovery regarding the nature of our home. To know that Earth is not only round but it is a WHOLE.”

Yes, you read that correctly.  WHOLE.  Meaning, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, complete, in an unbroken or undamaged state, with no part removed.  

Take a moment to consider this.  If the Earth is Whole, how can it be fragile, raped, dying? 

Is it possible She can be both of these things at the same time? That may be possible in the realm of theoretical quantum mechanics, but what’s more likely is that we perceive that the Earth is suffering, because that’s actually how we feel.  It’s not the Earth that’s dying but us.   

Our sense of urgency for the 'fragile' Earth, is actually a projection of our own sense of deep hurt about our place in the world and perceived sense of impotence in our ability to make a difference and play our part.  Our sense of disempowerment by the relentless drive of progress that insists we sacrifice well being for wealth, and our health for happiness. 

Perhaps for some, these feelings are rooted in a deep sense of loss, that the institutions and way of life that we have invested so much faith in, are in fact crumbling, dying; no longer systemically sustainable.  

When the Earth is seen as sick and dying, we position ourselves as in charge, and the Earth subject to our will.  Humanity is in charge.  Humanity caused the problem.  Humanity will fix it.  Humanity has misused the earth’s resources, now humanity will redistribute them more fairly.   

But who really is in charge here?  Is it really us?   

Taking responsibility for our impact is an essential part of our evolution as a race, no doubt, and yet our awareness of who we are, in relation to what we are taking responsibility for, can make a big difference.     

Consider for a moment, the possibility that the Earth is in charge, and we as a species, subject to Her will.  Consider what it would be like if we knew intrinsically, that we were a part, an intimate part of Her whole?  A dynamic part of an ecosystem which includes all Her species?    

With such a view, would our approach to addressing the impact of climate change be any different?   

Rather than act to rescue a dying planet, because it’s the right thing to do morally and intellectually, would we instead act to restore our interdependent relationship with Nature?

Where once the idea of rescuing fair maiden Mother Earth, provided the clarion call the environment movement needed to mobilise itself, today it’s more likely to impel the kind of evangelism which can and does cause people to switch off and disengage.  It is not that the urgency of those who want to rescue the earth is misplaced – it’s better to act than do nothing – it’s just the idea of rescuing anything suggests that the perceived victim cannot help themselves, and that in turn can leave us feeling helpless at the enormity of the task at hand. 

What’s more likely, in fact, is that without us (humanity) the Earth would do just fine and recover to a relative state of Harmony quite quickly, with the number of species that benefitted significantly exceeding the number that suffered.  Even genetically modified crops would, in the absence of spraying (for which they are resistant at a metabolic cost to the plant), be disadvantaged and probably die out.  

It may be the idea that the Earth needs us and cannot survive without our intervention is perhaps another projection of our own deep seated and egocentric need to be needed.  Not only to be seen, heard, and useful, but to feel that we matter, that we can play an important role, and fulfil our part in the Whole.  This too, is a perfectly human urge to have, and yet, again our point of view makes all the difference.

As Satish Kumar has often said, it only takes one letter to move from egocentric with an individual worldview, where I am separate from the world, and my needs are more important than yours - to ecocentric, where my comfort doesn’t come at the expense of another, and who I am is determined by my ability to relate to Other, including the Earth.

It's quite possible that an ecocentric world view is what emerges when we see that the best role we can play in combating climate change, is not to take up arms on the street, but to actively seek to restore our relationship with the Earth. 

Take the time to accept Nature as a teacher, by observing Nature’s cycles, by growing our own vegetables, making our own bread, staying long enough in Nature, to see it with new eyes, until it’s inter connective web, or which we are a valued and important part, is revealed.

Would we then, assured in the knowledge that we truly belong, act less from fear, and instead with greater awareness of the best use of our time, energy and resources? 

Will a barefoot politician please step forth?

Nick Kettles

It’s quite possible the Copenhagen Climate Change summit is doomed to failure before it has even begun but not for the reasons everyone expects. 

Copenhagen will fail for the simple reason that none of the delegates from the 192 countries represented will truly be able to represent the interests of the earth.  Even if the delegates are genuinely concerned about climate change, their overriding and narrow objective will continue to be how to leverage as little negative economic impact on their own country as possible.

The fact remains that having a concern about the facts of climate change, doesn’t always translate into a deep and lasting concern for the continuity of all life on earth.

It’s true that intellectual discourse can provide the basis for a deeper awareness of our intimate connection with nature, as Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Carpets, eco-epiphany clearly shows.  Ray Anderson claims the impact of reading Paul Hawken’s “The Ecology of Commerce” literally felt like a “spear to the chest” and awoke him to the urgent need to set his company on a new course toward sustainability.

But there is no guarantee that it will always be so.

Abstract concepts based on data sets and statistical analysis, are just too easy to disconnect from the world they represent.  If scientific facts could emotionally move politicians sufficiently to take decisive action, then they would have already taken such action a decade ago. 

What kind of action might the delegates at Copenhagen take if they felt as deeply about the planet as the indigenous tribes people, who met in Anchorage earlier in 2009, to make their own declaration on climate change?

“We reaffirm the unbreakable and sacred connection between land, air, water, oceans, forests, sea ice, plants, animals and our human communities as the material and spiritual basis for our existence.”

Of course we hear of Obama and Gordon Brown ‘growing their own’ in the gardens of the White House, and 10 Downing Street, but just how often do they actually get on their knees and get their own hands dirty to till the soil?  Or harvest the fruit of their labour with their own hands, and then prepare it for their family to eat? 

What’s more likely is that they are like the vast majority of the human race, who environment writer David Nicholson Lord suggests spends less than one day in a lifetime in sensory contact with Nature.  If this is the case, then it’s likely these forays into the garden, are little more than PR exercises designed to mollify the green lobby they hope will keep them elected.

Politicians, mostly male, middle class, wearing their immaculately groomed uniform of suit and tie spend most of their time disconnected from the earth, gathered around synthetically made conference tables, sitting on pump chairs, in largely synthetic environments, where the air, according to German Chemist, Michael Braungart, co-founder of cradle to cradle design, is likely to be more toxic than a smog filled city.

Will the conference centre in Copenhagen be any different, or are we more likely to get more sick solutions from men in sick buildings? 

The fact is that we desperately need our politicians and leaders to get out more.  We desperately need them to forge a deeper and more authentic relationship with the earth, because it’s clear that when they do, they act decisively. 

It’s claimed that after camping in the open air in Yosemite Valley with naturalist John Muir, in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt was more receptive to addressing the state mismanagement of the valley and rampant exploitation of the valley's resources.  Snow fell on them the night they camped there near Glacier Point.  It was, according to President Roosevelt, the greatest day of his life:  “There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.”

Being emotionally moved by nature’s beauty, can awaken the same instincts to nurture and protect that we might feel for an infant or a child.  This is the kind of instinct that is infinitely harder to deny, than the rationale of hard science.

Living in mud huts and wearing hemp trousers is not my personal vision of what a sustainable society might or should look like, but when it comes to our world leaders and Copenhagen delegates, this might not be a bad thing in helping them develop a more authentic relationship with the earth.

What kind of discussions might unfold when if Barack, Gordon and other members of the G8, gathered round the camp fire they’ve made themselves? 

An end to oil as soon as humanly possible?  The radical transformation of urban landscapes into green sustainable cities? The possibility that we might frame our sense of well-being, by the depth of our relationship to the earth and all its creatures?

What chance an eco-epiphany at Copenhagen?  Will a bare footed politician please step forth to lead the way?

Nick Kettles is a freelance writer and co-founder of Plan C.

Welcome to Plan C - Creating Sustainable Change From The Inside Out

Everywhere you look people are talking about change. 

These days it’s often preceded by the word ‘climate’ but it could just as easily be ‘political’, ‘economic’, ‘religious’, or ‘cultural’. The way we live our lives, the way we envision the world, our communities and ourselves really does have to change. And while the issue of change is being addressed on lots of different levels something is still missing.

Plan C’s aim is to address this void by looking a little deeper at the Consciousness, Creativity, Connection, Curiosity, Choice and perhaps most importantly Context that’s bubbling below the surface. Above all, it acknowledges the human element that is central to change, and which provides the dynamic intersection for the political economic, environmental transitions we need to make.

Most people don’t make changes until they have some kind of ‘ah-ha’ experience. Often just a brief moment when they can see themselves as part of the bigger picture and understand how they effect and are affected by the world around them. Often, in these moments of clarity, we find there is nowhere to go to make sense of them; no one with a plan for how to move forward from there.

Of course, lots of people have plans.

For most of the political, and business community Plan A is still in force – get back to normal, business as usual, reassure a worried public that it should keep consuming. This plan, of course, fails to link up the symptom – economic collapse – with the multiple causes – belief in a growth economy that depends on the exploitation of the earth’s limited resources, unrestricted trade, unquestioned waste and unpunished pollution of the natural world. Business as usual will further entrench us in catastrophes of climate change, peak oil, water shortages, population explosion and a polluted landscape.

So what about Plan B?  It’s only six years, since environmentalist and founder of the Earth Policy Institute, Lester R Brown, published Plan B, Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, and only a year since its third edition, Plan B 3.0, Mobilizing to save Civilisation.   With its hard message that only a complete restructuring of our taxes and fiscal priorities will impel the market to tell the ecological truth, the best use of our time, it suggests, is to lobby our elected government representatives.

While our actions at a local level should not be underestimated, only big government can enact the necessary changes. It’s a radical, seemingly all encompassing solution, and yet, given our propensity as a race to fight and squabble over the Earth’s natural resources, who is to say that having undertaken such a massive external restructuring, and overcome the challenges of peak oil, we won’t simply project our internal malaise onto something new such as water, or who owns the sun’s rays?

This is the paradox which informs Plan C and makes it different. 

The question that drives our enquiry is not just ‘what kind of world do we want?’ but also ‘what kind of people do we have to become to make that world – and then live in it sustainably, peacefully, intelligently and courageously?’ Increasingly we sense that who we are being in relation to our cause, is as equally important as what we are doing.  In short, that true sustainable change is only possible from the inside out.

This website is an exploration, an inspiration, a way of visioning the world through a different lens, listening to language in a new way, seeing new pictures, the pattern which connects, in the apparent chaos all around us. It is about acknowledging our contradictions, our everydayness but, at the same time, our power and uniqueness in the world, especially at this time of great change. 

This doesn’t mean we aren’t interested in the big issues of the day; we just look at them differently.  

To this end Plan C advocates a kind of slow media, with thoughtful content, that puts the human experience at its centre. It is a place for enquiring minds, fresh proposals, and the willingness to be honest, complex and sometimes even wrong. Plan C is a work in progress, a place where thoughtful journalists, campaigners and change drivers can come to grapple with the bigger issues free from the usual constraints of the mainstream media.

We may not always be ‘right’ in our conclusions, but from a journalistic point of view, a new more discursive tack is required when it comes to reporting the environment and global climate change; one which attempts to pull back the veil of polarised debate, to reveal the deeper, underlying currents and forces for change. 

This is our objective at Plan C.

                             

                 Pat Thomas                                     Nick Kettles