Cop15 Videos/Campaigns

Would be interesting to discuss these - a mix of promo videos, personal testimonies & some which are both - to see what's working for people & why?



















...and speaking of 350 dont forget the International day of (photographing a '350' in a public place) Climate Action this Saturday http://www.350.org/

Legal Disclaimer

I've been contributing a few posts to the green awards blog. Checking in on the site I just happened upon their legal disclaimer - it's an absolute thing of beauty. Placed next to the possibly naive feeling of freedom in blogging (except in China where a contact tells me Greenormal is blocked by censors) it strikes me as something like the old Swedish comedy show which featured a couple of guys roaring around in a Volvo that happened to be encased in a jumbo mattress. A thing of beauty anyway. (I get it, but cant help smiling at the need for it). Here it is....

Blog Disclaimer

The opinions expressed here are the opinions of the writer and are not the official position of the Green Awards. The information contained in this Blog is for general guidance on matters of interest only. The application and impact of laws can vary widely based on the specific facts involved. Given the changing nature of laws, rules and regulations, and the inherent hazards of electronic communication, there may be delays, omissions or inaccuracies in information contained in this Blog. Accordingly, the information on this Blog is provided with the understanding that the authors and publishers are not herein engaged in rendering legal, accounting, tax, environmental or any other professional advice and services. As such, it should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional accounting, tax, legal, environmental or other competent advisers. All information in this Blog is provided "as is", with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information, and without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including, but not limited to warranties of performance, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will the Green Awards, its related partnerships, agents or employees thereof be liable to you or anyone else for any decision made or action taken in reliance on the information in this Site or for any consequential, special or similar damages, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

New Article for Mediacat Magazine

Climate Change – The Creative Brief

It is said that "the journey of a thousand miles begins with a step". Actually that isn't entirely true. As storytellers know the journey of a thousand miles begins with a need to be a thousand miles away. A murder. A loved one a continent away. Or a job transfer. But anyway a human necessity to get there.

The long awaited United Nations Climate Change Conference ‘COP15’ is approaching. The goal is to agree a framework to replace the Kyoto treaty so that nations can work together on averting man made global warming. This is a political matter. But after the targets are agreed (at Copenhagen or later) what then? I’ll argue actually that this then becomes a marketing issue - creating public and business movement to match the ambitious objectives. But as in any good brief let’s focus on the Why? before the How?

The COP15 coverage has focused upon the nation state politics. Can a deal be reached with India and China? Will America make real commitments? Is it fair for the developing nations to be asked to cut emissions? Should the richer nations who are responsible for the bulk of emissions bear the load? That is an inevitable consequence of staging a multi-nation event aimed at brokering a deal. But it’s also potentially the wrong frame. Climate change is not an issue (like trade) about the balance or deal struck. Climate change is like a dark wave rolling towards us – we need to link arms or all be swept away.

When people in my country imagine climate change (I know this because I’ve conducted focus groups on the subject) they see it was bringing hotter summers and milder winters, and at worst potentially some increased flooding. And they see these changes happening over 40-50 years. They know that the effects may be much more extreme for “poor farmers and polar bears”. But they are not exactly losing sleep over the issue.

What I think this picture misses is the extraordinary degree of volatility and interdependence in our globalised economic world order. It’s like looking at a human body and saying ‘what difference could just a few degrees higher make?'

In 2008 the price of oil, some poor harvests, demand for biofuels, a flight of investors into safe commodities… produced a global food crisis which according to the UN doubled the number of people going hungry, while halving their supply of food aid. Why? There was still enough food for everyone. But the price of food increased. In poor countries food can account for about 30% of household spending. Hence an alarming increase in the numbers who could no longer afford 3 meals a day.

Those are the kinds of emergent effects I think you need to imagine to ‘get’ the impact of climate change. Human societies are like the climate itself. I picture both systems having a ‘whip’ like effect. When the atmosphere gets a little more energy and humidity on average the knock on effects on storms, floods, droughts and so on are not gradual and linear, they are dramatic and destructive. And we know it's the same with economies don't we? The knock on effect of some dodgy American home loans being a near meltdown in the global economy, also in 2008.

Politicians understand this. This is why when the UK parliament was surveyed in 2006, all but one of the 315 MPs who answered said that climate change was THE single most important issue facing our generation. A position that has only been reinforced by the Stern Report which warned that a failure to invest 1-2% of GDP now could lead to a loss of up to 20% of global GDP later. We have lived through a profound global slump this year. But the GDP still rose (according to the IMF) by 0.5%. Imagine it fell 20%. So that in some countries it would fall 40, 60, 80%. The socioeconomic impacts would be unimaginable. A whole world out of work, public services at a standstill, a mass extinction in many business sectors (ironically except possibly oil?) Imagine the fall of Soviet communism then times it by ten.

When you see that this is how even relatively mild (2 degrees, IPCC) predictions of climate change would play out – pretty much like a 2 degree rise in our body temperature compared to normal functioning – you realise how hugely important it is that we find some solutions fast. The good news is that many such solutions already exist. But taken as a whole it’s a radical shift. It’s about more than changing energy sources. It’s about a total redesign of society. Especially when you consider the next most pressing issue after climate change is probably the end of the era of cheap oil. Then there is food, water, biodiversity... the list goes on. We are running out of world and running out of time.

This transition in business, government and throughout society cannot happen until there is (in Al Gore’s words) a climate for change. And this is the heart of the creative brief for climate change. Politicians may see the medium term risks. But the public absolutely do not. In a Pew poll in the USA in 2009 the US public ranked climate change 20th out of 20 priorities for their government to tackle. Why? Because it doesn’t really seem like such a big thing to worry about.

I am not advocating mass panic-inducing alarmism. It’s actually potentially an exciting phase in human history. One of people rising to a proper challenge and feeling part of an epic achievement. One where some of the other imbalances such as the global wealth gap may get addressed. We do have the solutions if we can change our worldview enough to seize them. And we also have human ingenuity, and enough necessity to fuel huge invention.

So the crux of the creative brief is this. How can we help people in very large numbers grasp the necessity of human change in response to climate change? How can we help people prioritise it?

People who ‘get’ that this is a priority don’t have to become eco saints. We will still have lives, loves, and all too human inconsistencies. But it is a straightforward thing to want a better life for our children, to have worked on things that matter in the longer term, to have each in our own little ways been a part of the history of our times. It is as one commentator said a ‘simple matter of self esteem’.

Ultimately this is a marketing challenge. And I hope you’ll feel inspired (if a little daunted) to know that post Cop15, or whenever the targets are set, the next challenge largely may be down to us!

Climate by Numbers

Numbers are important in creating climates for change. Especially countdowns and the notion of approaching limits. For instance the Y2K bug meme persuaded governments and businesses to take urgent action because of a countdown to 00:00:00:2000. There was a common understanding that at this time, if urgent precautions were not taken, computer clocks resetting could trigger effects in critical applications such as hospitals, nuclear power stations, bank records.

350.org (as many readers will know) takes the view that the 'red line' of climate safety is 350ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is the number put forward by James Hansen, Director of the NASA Godard Institute (although he also says we really have no idea if anything above pre-industrial levels is 'safe'). Hansen's view is that we are in imminent danger of triggering runaway climate change due to positive feedback effects; where warming produces effects leading to further heating: ie tipping points - one study from the Potsdam Institute pointed to nine of these potentially being triggered in the next century.

Slightly worryingly we passed 350ppm in 1987 or so. Some runaway climate change effects, such as that associated with methane clathrate release (marsh gas released from Siberian permofrost due to warming), have been claimed (in a recent study published in Nature) to have resulted in shifts of tens of degrees within decades in past geological eras. And there are some worrying signs on that front too.

All of which should be cause for URGENCY - the factor in human organisations (according to John Kotter's recent book) which gets things done. And 24th October is one chance to spread the word (or in fact the number - 350) as it's International Climate day of Action. Basically place the number 350 somewhere public, take a pic, and upload it to their site. And perhaps also chat to people around you about why you are doing this - spread the word. More details at http://www.350.org/

All part of the countdown to Cop15. But more importantly part of starting a tide of public opinion and motivation that can carry us beyond target setting to some urgent action. If you are busy on the 24th, are one of those I keep meeting who shy away from the more alarmist views on climate change, and/or want to commit to a sensible and serious series of personal actions next year then 10-10 is for you.

We Are One

I'm not usually a huge fan of coffee table books but this one looks almost worth buying a (second hand or otherwise responsibly sourced) coffee table for! Here's some details from Jo Ede who created and edited this book & has been working with and filming indigenous peoples:

'We are One', the book on tribal peoples I have created and edited, is being published in the UK and Holland this Friday 16th October. It will be available in most bookshops nationwide.

We are One is a collection of previously unpublished statements from the world's tribal peoples, from the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon, to the semi-nomadic Penan of Malaysia and the Innu of Canada's sub-arctic tundra. These are supported by powerful essays photographs from authors, campaigners, politicians, philosophers, poets, artists, journalists, academics, anthropologists, environmentalists and illustrated by beautiful images by international photojournalists. We Are One celebrates the lives, homelands, rituals, languages, ideas and values of tribal peoples and explores the relevance of their wisdom to the present time. It is both a portrait of the beauty and diversity of tribal peoples, and a call to arms that examines many of the contemporary humanitarian and environmental issues inherent in their fight for survival - such as climate change.

Every single article, literary extract and photograph has been generously donated, in recognition of the 40th Anniversary of Survival International, the human rights' organisation that campaigns for tribal peoples (www.survivalinternational.org). All royalties from the sales of the book go to Survival International. We are One includes contributions and extracts from: Richard Gere, Zac Goldsmith, Colin Firth, Bruce Parry, Jane Goodall, Joanna Lumley, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Damien Hirst, Satish Kumar, Tony Juniper, Colin Samson, Jonathan Porritt, Vandana Shiva, Kari Herbert, Sydney Possuelo, Carlo Petrini, Wade Davis, Arundhati Roy, A.C. Grayling, Roy Sesana, Laurens van der Post, Doris Pilkington-Garimara, Eduardo Galeano, Robin Hanbury-Tenison and many others. Photographs by: Sebastiao Salgado, Mike Goldwater, Steve McCurry, Mirella Ricciardi, Carol Beckwith, Yann-Arthus Bertrand, Tim Allen, Claudia Andujar and others.

For further information, please either contact Jo Ede on (+44 (0) 7721 093067, (j.eede@virgin.net or je@survivalinternational.org) or Miriam Ross at Survival International on (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 ( mr@survival-international.org)

Draft Article for Sublime: Hope Issue

Dystopia? Utopia? Myopia? (Wetopia?)

When you imagine life in the year 2030 what do you see?

A. Dystopia? Climate change, peak oil, biodiversity, food, water, ecosystems collapse, tipping points: “A perfect storm by 2030” according to the UK chief scientist, Sir John Beddington: Or “A global Somalia” according to James Lovelock: Hell and high water, either way.

B. Utopia? A low carbon society will mean flourishing, elegant, harmonious, low carbon cities – with wonderful air quality, green spaces, cycle ways and free electric transits, mixed use campus-style neighbourhoods. Children, cats and handcarts loaded with fresh produce chase each other up grassy streets, while adults stroll between work places, symposia and city farms.

C. Myopia? 2030 is only 20 years away. Things will change but life will go on. There will be cars (now electric), supermarkets, offices, homes. Many of them still using today’s buildings. Some things will look advanced and some retro – just as if we’d peered ahead from 1990 to today we’d have been struck both by the iPhone and the number of cyclists.

D. All of the above? (But strangely reconfigured).

Any of A, B or C on their own are imbalanced (which would you choose – depression, mania or neurosis?) I am going to argue for D. I call this more panoptic viewpoint Wetopia; as the important shift could be from excessive ‘everyone for themselves’ competition to more joined up co-operation.

I agree with A that there is no change until denial is overcome. I agree with the B that there is no motivation without hope. I agree with C that the extremist views (A or B) largely go over the heads of most people. But that’s why we need a mix of all three. And we need to take them as ingredients for a recipe that is wholly new and strangely reconfigured. Because we need to adjust well to a fast-changing set of realities.

The either/or arguments that break out when these positions hit policy makers are so draining:
A. We MUST help the public understand the chasm of risk.
B. We MUST sell the public the dream of a better quality of life.
C. We MUST reassure the public that it’s not the end of the world.
With the three views pressed vehemently in every meeting on climate change, it’s no wonder decision-making becomes paralysed?

These are the wrong MUSTS. They assume a ‘public’ rather than a global village of fellow human beings. They assume propaganda, mass psychology, manipulation and spin… where conversation could be. They assume passive consumers, voters, viewers (who need to be sold a problem, a solution or a status quo)... where citizens could be. A citizen being defined as one who takes responsibility for the common good.

What’s missing from public engagement with the risks we face is a lack of citizenship. It’s not that people haven’t seen the melting icecaps, forest fires, floods on TV. They just don’t have a way to take any of this in and respond. Society is figured as a malfunctioning machine and they don’t know how to tinker with it – or even know that they could. I can’t think of any way through this except a return to participative democracy. Something that seems underway already; the democracy 2.0 of #iranelections, myobama.org, moveon.org and we20.org; the transparent scrutiny applied to policing, corporate human rights and MPs’ expenses.

Where eco-techno utopian fantasies fall short is they portray only the ‘lifestyle’ surfaces of society. This is still nuclear age thinking; complete with futuristic gadgets, energy and cars. They are hence less utopias; more product catalogues. Great if you sell cycles, solar panels or electric cars. And lovely stuff - I’m all in favour of all of this. But arguably these artefacts are about as pivotal as the props in a Shakespeare play. To be optimistic about a better quality of life, shouldn’t we rather be looking at new human systems; looking forward for instance to a more co-operative economy? With short working weeks, mutual company ownership, communal facilities, radical re-localisation of food, manufacture… everything geared to maximise wellbeing? Most utopias were radical plans for social equity. Plans like the Diggers of 1649 (if enough people joined self-sufficient food-growing communities the aristocracy would follow suit for lack of anyone to grow their food). Plans like the Rochdale Pioneers of 1844 (co-operative shops as stepping stones towards new “colonies” based on co-operation).

It’s the same obsession with surface that limits the myopic view. Yes we will likely re-use current buildings. But that doesn’t mean we will use them in the same way. St Luke’s (a company I co-founded in the 1990s) was an employee owned co-operative. We moved into an office, which had already been fitted out by a conventional company. But we just used it differently – turning what would have been directors offices into project rooms, an open floor into a library. It’s the configuration of social relationships that is plastic and subject to rapid change. It might take 200 years to replace our housing stock. But we could see the molecular (communal) household replace the nuclear household in a few decades?

Wetopia isn’t that new an idea. A version of this shift from hierarchy to co-operation has been the core idea in most of the alternative visions put forward over the last 500 years. It’s what Ghandhi meant by Swaraj or ‘self rule’: Meaning not a top-down India Congress (as proposed by Nehru) to replace the British Raj: But rather government that welled up from villages, people and ultimately the Hindu concept of Self as seat of moral certainty.

Not a new idea then, but to quote Ghandi again – when asked what he thought of Western Civilisation – “I think would be a very good idea!”

John Grant’s new book Coopportunity (Wiley) is out in January 2010.

Sublime Magazine Article (Art & Philosophy Issue)

The Original Copy

A security guard at the Tate Modern gallery came over to ask me politely but firmly to stop taking pictures. The irony being that I was photographing No Ghost Just a Shell initiated by Pierre Hyghe and Philippe Parreno, an artwork exploring the subject of replication and intellectual copyrights. They had purchased the copyright for the image of Annlee, a Japanese anime figure (from Ghost in the Shell) and invited artists to use the image free of charge in their own video creations.

All life is based upon reproduction. But life’s idea of copying is far from (only) mechanical. For a start there is a wisdom in the fact we descend from several parents rather than being cloned. And also in that every cell in your body may have the same dna, but they are fabulously diverse in both their specialized functioning and interrelationship. In living systems, copying is just one part of the broader webs of emergence, adaptation, growth, interdependence, self-repair and so on. The simplest thing to say about this is that life is not mechanical. It is something else than that.

Life’s copying began with our molecular progenitors in a primordial soup and has been rushing ever since onwards and upwards, asymptotically towards us - and also presumably past us to some destination unknown. But if it was only copying life would be static, always forever the same. Instead it is a living process of both replication and ramification; in constant conversation with the ecosystem. And it is always evolving, mutating, re-shaping. This works because of imperfection, variation and chance. Through this a dance of intricately connected life-forms emerges. A caterpillar ‘learns’ (through selection of those who evolve this behaviour) to hang by a thread to avoid predators on plant stems. A species of wasp ‘learns’ to climb down this thread to inject its eggs into the caterpillar. Another species of wasp observing this scene ‘learned’ to reel in the thread and add its own eggs – whence its larvae will feed on the other wasp’s larvae that feed on the caterpillar. It’s horrifying from one point of view, but a miracle of co-design from another.

Let’s call the alternative to this living, evolving form of copying: ‘dead copying’. Dead copying is mechanistic and dead to its surroundings. It is death as in statis – no further change being possible. It is dead as in plastic bags, just sitting almost immutable in landfill. Dead copying is monoculture wheat fields, loss of biodiversity, rows of identical plastic toys, genetic modification, nanotech, pesticides, learning by rote, sterile digital media recording… Dead copying is the perfect opposite and enemy of life. Most environmental problems have something to do with this: society as machine, people and nature as economic parts. Dead copying even strips time of its significance, each moment in a climate controlled mall being the same as the next (it’s always ‘Christmas’ – and hence never inwardly that festive?) Malls, car journeys and whole cityscapes rob us of the the rain on our faces and daily experiences that root us physically in the living world. A development the slow movement are encouraging us to turn back from. Still living in cities, but savouring life, local and seasonal foods, passing pleasures.

In psychological terms dead copying is the enemy of feeling alive. Subjectivity is lost as our experiences and thoughts become alien to us - as if mechanical parts. We do have a replicating culture of artifacts, manners, idioms, writings and styles. But this reproduction is part of a living system - kept alive through human identification and subjectivity. Stone Age people making successive daubs on cave walls would not simply be copying. But rather re-experiencing; identifying with both the other and also their subject – a deer or bison, perhaps. Their copying was ritual participation, through an animistic worldview - whereby your own subjectivity was constantly mingling with others’ – that of your ancestors, prey animals, even the stones. That’s our inheritance too, something the school of phenomenology attempted to recover. When we encounter another person – or indeed any sentient being – we imaginatively identify with them, through a process of inward and even muscular mimicry. What might it be like to be you? Psychoanalysts say that we discover our own identity through these identifications with the other. But to identify is not to become identical. Each such identification is subtly different. Two people watching someone riding a bicycle will not have the same subjective response. One for instance who had been involved in a past accident, might watch with unfolding horror as a car approached the bicycle at a junction. Another might be drawn into a reverie based on the big red bike they got as a 7th birthday present.

Postmodernism was the artistic and philosophical climax of a reaction to and against this mechanistic trend. It was fundamentally about recovering subjectivity, even within a world of mechanical reproduction. I say ‘was’ because it seems we may be moving past this. Towards something like a new folk culture. Partly through a dawning awareness of the damage done by our split with nature (and human nature and community). It’s not all about slow food and handiworks either. Folk culture is flourishing in web 2.0 where self made media and the ability to share good content bypass the old media pyramid schemes, that replicated content to make money. That is for me, as one subjective observer, the implication of No Ghost Just a Shell. It is actually about reanimation; a coming back to life.