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.
Nick Kettles Pat Thomas
