Earth Day got me pondering where we went wrong.
The big thing I got wrong in my career was trusting that those denying the need for real change would eventually come around, when presented with sufficient evidence.
My firm belief was that sooner or later, whether folks were ready or not, actual reality would force them to see the crisis clearly, and embrace action. That the snap forward — the sudden recognition of the immensity of our crisis, and the implications of that immensity — would happen early enough to enlist them as belated allies in forestalling the worst.
I assumed that when the crisis got this big, leaders and institutions and engaged citizens across the spectrum would realize that the sheer scale of this thing demands not only serious solutions, but rapid ones — especially once we could demonstrate the huge successes we’ve had in clean energy, electrification, battery engineering, green building, urban planning, sustainable product design, and all the other fast-improving solutions we’re seeing. The crisis is here, the solutions are here, certainly they’ll step up in the end?
What's happened instead is that many of those benefiting from predatory delay — when forced to choose between prolonging profitably destructive inertia, or preserving planetary stability, long-term prosperity and even democracy itself — have doubled down to grab all the money they can. To rephrase Paul Hawken, they stole the future, sold it in the present, then praised each other for their business savvy and went right on stealing.
Predatory delay isn’t just a Big Oil strategy. It isn’t just a “Trump thing.” Predatory delay is needled into the fabric of our society, showing up as urban NIMBYs, outdated university disciplines, triangulatory institutional climate strategies, building codes that are a half-century behind best practices, pension funds that are heavily invested in looting our kids’ futures, big labor groups demanding slower change in the supposed name of equity, boundary policing in the professions... the list goes on and on.
Every society still has predatory delay. That said, I honestly didn't think any nation could backslide as fast as America has in the last few months. This has come partly through executive orders, budget interference and threats from the Trump gang, but also through many executives “obeying in advance” by dumping overboard the climate work that they were at best only partially committed to anyway. We’re seeing thousands upon thousands of work-years of effort on institutional climate science, communications, policy and strategy set on fire, to please some corrupt old men as they work to slow down the pace of the inevitable, again.
Action remains inevitable, but speed is everything, with every delay plunging more of us into grim futures. These people are baking into the future a lot of completely unnecessary chaos, suffering and loss.
I really thought we were, collectively, better than this. I was wrong.
Now the crisis has sunk its teeth in, and whether or not these people choose to act moving forward won’t alter the lurching transformations already set in motion. Dire consequences are erupting all around us because of those past failures. Worse are coming for the failures of our present moment. Options we once had have slammed shut.
We are now in the age not just of decarbonization, but of discontinuity, response and ruggedization. We’re going to have to build the new at the scale of the necessary, during decades of worse and weirder impacts and erosions, without the benefit of collective commitment (indeed, often in the face of outright conflict). We won’t be getting any salvation from global cooperation, or from breakthrough technologies, or from the spiritual tranformation of humanity.
The default future for most of us is tough. Anyone who wants a better future is going to have to build it themselves. Any place that wants a better future is going to have to fight for it. The nations that transform themselves fastest will fare best. Discontinuity is the job, now, folks.
It didn't have to be like this — but it is, and there’s work to be done.
If you’re interested in learning how to make sense of and manage this discontinuity in your own life, you might consider taking my class, Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics (recently featured in The Guardian).
The next live class will happen on Thursday, May 15th from 11:00am - 1:00pm Pacific Standard Time on Zoom. (Class will be recorded for those who cannot attend live.) Registration is open and filling up. A few lower-rate seats remain for those who need it (use code RYLSAVE100 at check out).
» Learn more about Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics.
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The Guardian covered my work last week, in a piece titled, “‘All of his guns will do nothing for him’: lefty preppers are taking a different approach to doomsday.”
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