Alternative Editorial: Scenario Planning
The 17th week since the UK Covid lock-down coincides with the 100th School Strike for the Climate. It seems like a life-time ago that we regularly saw Greta’s face on our screens, asking us to wake up to the climate emergency. And while far too many people won’t make the connection, those who can see how Covid is directly related to environmental abuse will be rueful. The dire consequences that Greta warned us about arrived quicker than expected, in an unexpected manner.
However, if you are one of those who recognised the deep truth in Greta’s words - probably because you have been concerned or even active around environmental decline for some time already - you might have experienced these past 17 weeks as the acceleration of a shared agenda.
In similar spaces of intense reflection around the world, more people have connected the dots between corporate globalisation, the unchecked extraction of natural resources from the planet, the instrumentalization of human beings for mechanical work and wasteful consumption, and the pandemic.
Pennies have dropped everywhere about the need to change our ways. But as Greta tweets, that is not leading to the changes in national and global agendas that we need. As detailed in last week’s editorial, making demands upon government to lead the way may co-opt the rising energy of millions of people for change. But most crucially, it will set the clock for our environmental deadlines to 2050 instead of 2030.
Imagine knowing your house was in danger of falling down the cliff into the sea (a real scenario) and the twitter advice from the local authorities told you that you had thirty minutes to pack your bags and go. But then you get a phone call from your neighbour to say you’ve got ten minutes, max. Who would you believe? Would you spend the next five minutes calling the local authority trying to get them to check or change the information?
Who wouldn’t just use the next three minutes to wake up the kids and go? Only those who simply didn’t have a relationship with their neighbours would die.
Let’s pan out from that scenario and see what needs to happen now to ensure even the sleeping get saved because they are members of our community.
Before Covid we had the idea that the people on the front line of environmental emergency were those living in the global South. We now know differently. We are all now ‘living on the cliff edge’.
We’ve seen the elderly, the less healthy, the unlucky careless die in our own neighbourhoods as a result of the pandemic. It’s now obvious to us that everyone of us faces life and death decisions every day for reasons arising directly from the crisis we thought was so far away.
We’ve no way of knowing how many people are still asleep and disconnected - meaning completely unaware of the danger they are in or putting others in. The reasons are internally and externally systemic and not easy to address.
However, if we had better relationships between those that are actively building resilience and those that are not aware, regardless of whether we agree on the climate issues, we could still organise effectively for a safer future. The principle behind a citizen action network is that it’s designed to appeal to everyone. It’s not a members’ club for those that share our beliefs and values.
Core to that goal are the methods and practices of building relationship as the vehicle for trust. Whether that starts with neighbourhood networks that meet very basic needs of mutual aid, security and friendship. Or the broader goals of developing new shared narratives – stories about Us - that might come through local media, cultural events, learning clubs or deliberative spaces to meet and talk. Or any kind of social initiative, like a new currency, a food or energy project that seems like an obvious thing to join in with for economic reasons – or even fun.
Local relationships, national and global power-games
All or any of these starting points for new relationships building in your area – village, town, city or region – would be massively enhanced by knowing more about each other.
When a few people across a number of streets in a neighbourhood agree it would be brilliant if they could all pool their energy needs, it helps if it’s easy to find out how to do that. That might be another neighbourhood to which you are already connected - and trust.
If you think this should be the job of the local council, maybe consider that it has been their job to look after the well-being of its citizens all along. Of course, many achieve remarkable results – Preston and Dagenham are recent great examples – but few if any are in a meaningful relationship with the citizens they represent. There are almost no effective mechanisms for building relationship with them, other than as prompts to answer questions set by officials.
To bring together groups of response-able citizens, willing to build the relationships with everyone in their community in order to ‘wake them up in time to get out the house’ is what a CAN is for. Trust the People, Local Trust, Transition Towns, Devon Convergence – all of these are CANs, trying every day to attract and serve new and more people.
Next, in their midst and often part of global initiatives, are generators of new economic practice: connecting the long-term desire for people to flourish with the planetary limitations we now understand better. Social enterprises, co-operatives, circular enterprise, “doughnut” civic economics, cosmo-local commoning initiatives —all focus on how new ways of exchanging money that leads directly to good livelihoods for everyone.
Lastly, when these kinds of citizens take over the council Flatpack Democracy style (as they did in 21 councils at the last election) we have the beginnings of a new politics in which more people participate directly in decision making. More neighbours will become response-able and equipped to help those less able – or asleep – to face our multiple crises.
Going back to our opening, how does that respond directly to Greta’s call for substantial national and international level action to make it likely we meet our targets for 2030? Especially given the signs that many major governments, faced with massive economic challenges post-COVID are likely to move in the opposite direction.
By this, we don’t just mean the Trump and Bolsonaro administrations that don’t hesitate to put people in the line of danger in order to keep the economy moving at pace.
But also a UK government that just wants to get back to business as usual to enact their rudely interrupted Brexit plans. Hell-bent on making the UK the new Singapore /Hong Kong - low tax, independent finance systems via freeports - of the international scene. See here for Boris Johnson’s vision for this, which frames freeports as the guaranteed path to more jobs.
The main worry from environmentalists is the pressure this will put on industry to cut green regulations, increasingly caricatured as the kind of red-tape we can now cut away after leaving Europe.
No distinction between thinking and doing
The challenge and opportunity of these times is to grasp the soft power of these contrasting stories. The government’s super-charging the economy at the expense of the Earth alongside a more cosmo-locally informed and participatory goal of unprecedented flourishing for all forms of life. The emotional pull of these stories and the massive reach of the social media that carries them – is both the challenge and opportunity of these times.
Through this focus, if well responded to, the local story can become the national story. Not only will it cause new alliances at the local level, it could have the effect of shifting perception at the national and international level about what is possible and desired. MPs looking for votes will be staying tuned.
Here is how such a battle of stories could unfold. This government’s weapon will be to stress the immediate and very physical need for jobs, plus a story of local growth and autonomy. No doubt the Opposition – if it is awake to what is going on – will temper that with stories about how free ports are tax havens, offering money laundering and the loss of our (previously European) rights to good working conditions.
But will that be enough to get us out of the danger zone that we – and Greta – see? Maybe what is needed is a much bigger story that capitalises on the Green New Deal as the supplier of jobs – much as the Build Back Better campaign describes – but goes even further. What about the story of autonomy and creativity that a 4th sector economy brings – but with the added bonus of making us existentially safe for the future.
Add to that the story of belonging, meaning and purpose that can be brought with the forging of citizen action networks of all kinds. CANs move beyond the party-political divides to create containers for cosmo-local economies to arise within towns and cities - economies that all people can participate in. What about a story of collective achievement--independent councils involving everyone in their town or city in bringing the carbon count down to zero by 2030?
One of the cities we are particularly attentive to – Plymouth in Devon – could become quite a battleground for these ideas. On the one hand, members of the local council unsure as to whether or not they should apply for freeport status. On the other, the growing evidence of Regenerate Devon that a new economy is possible – one that directly links individual to social to planetary health.
That Plymouth may even be too small to step up to what the government is offering, may be exactly the trigger for the city to unite around the alternative on offer. We’ll be watching (and participating in) the local council elections in May next year avidly.
Perhaps the most interesting element of this scenario unfolding is that, viewed from another angle – the deeply local perspective – this may not look like a drama at all. Instead it might look more like the future steadily unfolding as we move into an age of more connectivity and with it, more response-ability for our lives and communities.
The women, in particular, might notice a better emphasis on – even the better funding of – local and personal care, more attention to the young and old, better connection with nature. Investing in the skills, networks and complex organising they have always done naturally. For them, this response to crisis is about moving into balance with more masculine forms of energetic building and responding.
This is the kind of perspective—not exclusive to women, but common amongst them—that doesn’t make distinctions between thinking and doing. They’re used to building the plane while flying. Or accepting a compromise on decisions without compromising relationships.
They’re comfortable with leading the way from the side or from behind the main body of actors, so that each participant can feel their own relevance and autonomy. They’re happy – even fulfilled – by being able to pass the baton of responsibility onwards, especially to the next generation.
It’s this mindset that welcomes Greta’s challenge – as a sign that after lifetimes of patient building, we’ve created the conditions in which transformative change is imaginable.
