Rob Lewis, author of the Climate According to Life, and budding historian on how we lost one leg of climate science, in conversation with Didi Pershouse on how we have been hobbling around ever since.
Love the conversation. The discussion of the type of people who are drawn to this living earth way of looking at the world is interesting and for me brings up so many issues of permission and how the pressures of The Culture come to bear to restrict speech… it is such an interesting and concerning aspect of where we are at in the world right now.
In his book “Trickster Makes this World” Lewis Hyde talk about how tricksters act to change culture and that one needs a trickster mindset to disrupt culture… I will paraphrase a section, (which is about Hermes way of breaking the system he was born into), which speaks of what I see as going on in the climate debate. all somewhat obvious but worth stating.
All cultures have certain rules — our current culture has many rules born from a profit-focused mindset — that are leading to ongoing damage to the living earth. Anyone who attempts to disrupt those rules is pushed to the outside and made to feel stupid or irrelevant, is unable to earn a ‘living’ or indeed in the case of whistle blowers are imprisoned. But as Hyde states ”to call the local property rights [local codes] into question, one must forgo the pleasure of conforming to the moral code”.
But when the “[local code] is insufficient to describe the situation” (ie only seeing one leg of the climate issue) ”...the creative person is the one who will readily endure that insufficiency and, from an ‘immoral’ position [‘immoral’ in terms of the local code], frame a new set of rules.”
“the creative person is the one who will readily endure that insufficiency”. As an artist, while not easy, it is what I do, otherwise my work would be irrelevant (to me and to the world actually) and I would suggest that is how many of the people drawn to this way of seeing the world exist in the world be they ‘artists’ or not.
I would say though, that holding to this slows my work… a lot… so much second guessing… so finding a community of like-hearted people is critical to being able to “endure that insufficiency” and "frame a new set of rules".
Well put , Greer. There is this idea that it's "the science" that has led us to this very destructive approach to climate, but really it's the culture, it's insistence on growth and it's fear of biotic reality. Thanks!
I think science follows the culture, and as it is seen as being able to 'further' the "ascent of humanity" as Charles Eisenstein puts it, it has become the darling of our left brained culture, our culture mistaking science as a set of rules that can be imposed... which it is not - it is a series of ongoing questions. In the 'Regenerating Life' movie John says something to the effect that science is about finding better questions - yes!
'Fear of biotic reality' - love that! it fits in with something I spend much of my time exploring and that is how grief phobic and grief illiterate we are and the impact of that on what we will do to the world. We face grief as a consequence of losses and as the living earth is fueled by a cascade of ongoing losses - death feeds life, (together with photosynthesis) which I find terrifies people - so better not think about it - let's stick with the mechanical approach - no grief there! So anything that seeks to bring people back to the living world - which includes death - is very hard for us culturally to face.
I think where the arts - poetry or visual arts etc play their part is to support others to be able to step into this culturally difficult space.... a one of my friends said one day: "art is a framework that holds you while you feel" (Deborah Redwood).
Thanks to both of you for struggling to capture the wrong-headedness of the climate narrative. At this point it could be called gaslighting, because when we hear the words climate crisis we know there's a set of assumptions that we hear repeated so constantly that their momentum is hard to resist. I still follow a lot of climate discourse on Twitter and when it seems appropriate, I include a hashtag #NotJustAboutEmissions to try to loosen that rigid set of assumptions. I'll say, yes sure, let's replace fossil fuels but if we don't restore landscapes and ecosystems, we're only doing about half of the work that's needed. Am I provoking some actual thought for someone? Hard to tell.
I also often wonder about some strategic concerns in this climate messaging. Imagine a scenario where green energy continues to grow its wedge of the industrial economy, and the limited goals of the McKibbens of the world are seen to be ascendant. It could then happen that climate chaos worsens, as we would expect, if ecological imbalance is not also being addressed. Wouldn't this generate backlash and perhaps demands for immediate intervention such as various geoengineering fixes? I suspect so, and for this reason I look for ways to talk about climate activism that question and challenge its assumptions, rather than tacitly accept them. In this time of attacks on democratic institutions there's a need to talk about ecological wholeness as a common-sense credo, a set of values that can be widely understood and practiced not by a technological elite but by everyday people in an enormous variety of settings and landscapes. We are at serious risk if climate solutions are entrusted to the professional managerial class.
And Didi, I hadn't heard that you were out of commission for a couple of years. Great to see you involved at your chosen scale of activity. Who knows what might come from the ripples you create...
Dec 15, 2023·edited Dec 15, 2023Liked by Rob Lewis
additions to your proposed list of people w ho are drawn to the living landscapes/forests narrative: Albert Bates, needs no intro, David Holmgren, likewise,
Mark Krawczyk, Dave Jacke, Mark Shepard, Steve Gabriel. Local to me here in ontario: Steve Hill, Adrian Hodgson, Gillian Flies, Val Steinman, Ken Laing, Timothy Garrett (U Utah) and I'll keep adding names as they occur to me. I didn't realize the Living Landscapes and two legged narrative was so young, I got in early! Thorsten A and Alpha Lo have turned my version of reality upside down. And you too of course. I took Didi's course a couple years ago.
To shift the main climate community narrative from just CO2 reduction/removal to Living Landscapes+ will take more than a few more articles Didi, as I suppose you know deep down. The curated annotated bibliography that you both have going, as do I in a primitive way, should be on the action list. Getting people's attention: I agree with Rob, it has to be muscular sometimes.
Yes, discovering this reframing through Thorsten mainly, has prompted me to pull back from fullblown post-doomerism.
Thanks for the list, Ian. I recognize some of the names, and will check out the others. Glad you made the pull back from post-doomerism. It's the same for me. I was know known as the king of doom, but now, knowing the power of Earth and her processes, doom no longer adds up for me.
To your specific wondering about how in the early days the land use leg of the climate stool was pulled out, and the narrow focus on co2 was engineered, I recommend looking into Maurice strong. And big finance. I appreciate your work very much. Here is a short summary of strong’s early role:
( like you respecting the living planet and local sovereignty doesn’t cause me to disbelieve that the fossil fuel explosions of the last century are also impacting the atmosphere .)
“The IPCC was created in 1988 largely due to the efforts of Maurice Strong, a billionaire and self-confessed socialist, as part of a larger campaign to justify giving the United Nations the authority to tax businesses in developed countries and redistribute trillions of dollars a year to developing nations. Strong had previously succeeded in bringing about the creation of the UN Environment Programme in 1972 and served as its first executive director. The IPCC is a joint project of that entity and the World Meteorological Organization.
(Strong was subsequently implicated in corruption surrounding the UN’s Oil-for-Food-Program and has resigned from his UN positions. According to John Izzard writing for the Australian publication Quadrant Online, <1> “Following his exposure for bribery and corruption in the UN’s Oil-for-Food scandal Maurice Strong was stripped of many of his 53 international awards and honours he had collected during his lifetime working in dual role of arch conservationist and ruthless businessman.”<1>)
Strong and his allies at the UN gave the IPCC a very narrow brief by defining climate change in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, Article 1.2, as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.” IPCC’s mandate is not to study climate change “in the round,” or to look at natural as well as man-made influences on climate. It is to specifically find and report a human impact on climate, and thereby make a scientific case for the adoption of national and international policies that would supposedly reduce that impact.”
Love the conversation. The discussion of the type of people who are drawn to this living earth way of looking at the world is interesting and for me brings up so many issues of permission and how the pressures of The Culture come to bear to restrict speech… it is such an interesting and concerning aspect of where we are at in the world right now.
In his book “Trickster Makes this World” Lewis Hyde talk about how tricksters act to change culture and that one needs a trickster mindset to disrupt culture… I will paraphrase a section, (which is about Hermes way of breaking the system he was born into), which speaks of what I see as going on in the climate debate. all somewhat obvious but worth stating.
All cultures have certain rules — our current culture has many rules born from a profit-focused mindset — that are leading to ongoing damage to the living earth. Anyone who attempts to disrupt those rules is pushed to the outside and made to feel stupid or irrelevant, is unable to earn a ‘living’ or indeed in the case of whistle blowers are imprisoned. But as Hyde states ”to call the local property rights [local codes] into question, one must forgo the pleasure of conforming to the moral code”.
But when the “[local code] is insufficient to describe the situation” (ie only seeing one leg of the climate issue) ”...the creative person is the one who will readily endure that insufficiency and, from an ‘immoral’ position [‘immoral’ in terms of the local code], frame a new set of rules.”
“the creative person is the one who will readily endure that insufficiency”. As an artist, while not easy, it is what I do, otherwise my work would be irrelevant (to me and to the world actually) and I would suggest that is how many of the people drawn to this way of seeing the world exist in the world be they ‘artists’ or not.
I would say though, that holding to this slows my work… a lot… so much second guessing… so finding a community of like-hearted people is critical to being able to “endure that insufficiency” and "frame a new set of rules".
Well put , Greer. There is this idea that it's "the science" that has led us to this very destructive approach to climate, but really it's the culture, it's insistence on growth and it's fear of biotic reality. Thanks!
I think science follows the culture, and as it is seen as being able to 'further' the "ascent of humanity" as Charles Eisenstein puts it, it has become the darling of our left brained culture, our culture mistaking science as a set of rules that can be imposed... which it is not - it is a series of ongoing questions. In the 'Regenerating Life' movie John says something to the effect that science is about finding better questions - yes!
'Fear of biotic reality' - love that! it fits in with something I spend much of my time exploring and that is how grief phobic and grief illiterate we are and the impact of that on what we will do to the world. We face grief as a consequence of losses and as the living earth is fueled by a cascade of ongoing losses - death feeds life, (together with photosynthesis) which I find terrifies people - so better not think about it - let's stick with the mechanical approach - no grief there! So anything that seeks to bring people back to the living world - which includes death - is very hard for us culturally to face.
I think where the arts - poetry or visual arts etc play their part is to support others to be able to step into this culturally difficult space.... a one of my friends said one day: "art is a framework that holds you while you feel" (Deborah Redwood).
Thanks to both of you for struggling to capture the wrong-headedness of the climate narrative. At this point it could be called gaslighting, because when we hear the words climate crisis we know there's a set of assumptions that we hear repeated so constantly that their momentum is hard to resist. I still follow a lot of climate discourse on Twitter and when it seems appropriate, I include a hashtag #NotJustAboutEmissions to try to loosen that rigid set of assumptions. I'll say, yes sure, let's replace fossil fuels but if we don't restore landscapes and ecosystems, we're only doing about half of the work that's needed. Am I provoking some actual thought for someone? Hard to tell.
I also often wonder about some strategic concerns in this climate messaging. Imagine a scenario where green energy continues to grow its wedge of the industrial economy, and the limited goals of the McKibbens of the world are seen to be ascendant. It could then happen that climate chaos worsens, as we would expect, if ecological imbalance is not also being addressed. Wouldn't this generate backlash and perhaps demands for immediate intervention such as various geoengineering fixes? I suspect so, and for this reason I look for ways to talk about climate activism that question and challenge its assumptions, rather than tacitly accept them. In this time of attacks on democratic institutions there's a need to talk about ecological wholeness as a common-sense credo, a set of values that can be widely understood and practiced not by a technological elite but by everyday people in an enormous variety of settings and landscapes. We are at serious risk if climate solutions are entrusted to the professional managerial class.
And Didi, I hadn't heard that you were out of commission for a couple of years. Great to see you involved at your chosen scale of activity. Who knows what might come from the ripples you create...
additions to your proposed list of people w ho are drawn to the living landscapes/forests narrative: Albert Bates, needs no intro, David Holmgren, likewise,
Mark Krawczyk, Dave Jacke, Mark Shepard, Steve Gabriel. Local to me here in ontario: Steve Hill, Adrian Hodgson, Gillian Flies, Val Steinman, Ken Laing, Timothy Garrett (U Utah) and I'll keep adding names as they occur to me. I didn't realize the Living Landscapes and two legged narrative was so young, I got in early! Thorsten A and Alpha Lo have turned my version of reality upside down. And you too of course. I took Didi's course a couple years ago.
To shift the main climate community narrative from just CO2 reduction/removal to Living Landscapes+ will take more than a few more articles Didi, as I suppose you know deep down. The curated annotated bibliography that you both have going, as do I in a primitive way, should be on the action list. Getting people's attention: I agree with Rob, it has to be muscular sometimes.
Yes, discovering this reframing through Thorsten mainly, has prompted me to pull back from fullblown post-doomerism.
Ian Graham
Old99 Farm, Hamilton ON
Thanks for the list, Ian. I recognize some of the names, and will check out the others. Glad you made the pull back from post-doomerism. It's the same for me. I was know known as the king of doom, but now, knowing the power of Earth and her processes, doom no longer adds up for me.
you won't recognize the local ones, my 'small water cycle' cadre here in S ON, but these need to be integrated across the larger landscape.
Joe Brewer's Design School for Earth Regeneration is another network of activists on the same wavelength. https://design-school-for-regenerating-earth.mn.co/spaces/10703979/feed
Love you Didi
Thank you for staying alive and writing again
Hi Jane, I was just composing a response to this great conversation and you popped up. It is great to hear from Didi and Rob.
To your specific wondering about how in the early days the land use leg of the climate stool was pulled out, and the narrow focus on co2 was engineered, I recommend looking into Maurice strong. And big finance. I appreciate your work very much. Here is a short summary of strong’s early role:
https://climatechangereconsidered.org/about-the-ipcc/
( like you respecting the living planet and local sovereignty doesn’t cause me to disbelieve that the fossil fuel explosions of the last century are also impacting the atmosphere .)
“The IPCC was created in 1988 largely due to the efforts of Maurice Strong, a billionaire and self-confessed socialist, as part of a larger campaign to justify giving the United Nations the authority to tax businesses in developed countries and redistribute trillions of dollars a year to developing nations. Strong had previously succeeded in bringing about the creation of the UN Environment Programme in 1972 and served as its first executive director. The IPCC is a joint project of that entity and the World Meteorological Organization.
(Strong was subsequently implicated in corruption surrounding the UN’s Oil-for-Food-Program and has resigned from his UN positions. According to John Izzard writing for the Australian publication Quadrant Online, <1> “Following his exposure for bribery and corruption in the UN’s Oil-for-Food scandal Maurice Strong was stripped of many of his 53 international awards and honours he had collected during his lifetime working in dual role of arch conservationist and ruthless businessman.”<1>)
Strong and his allies at the UN gave the IPCC a very narrow brief by defining climate change in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, Article 1.2, as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.” IPCC’s mandate is not to study climate change “in the round,” or to look at natural as well as man-made influences on climate. It is to specifically find and report a human impact on climate, and thereby make a scientific case for the adoption of national and international policies that would supposedly reduce that impact.”
I write about climate/ag/finance/drive to measure everything/ ‘a fertile approach (WONDERFUL phrasing :-) here and this has a link also to Corbett’s short telling of the insane biography of strong https://open.substack.com/pub/aliceem2de3u/p/nyse-pulls-natural-asset-company
We need more life! Here’s to the quarterly battles to keep my yard wild against the local property code enforcers as referenced by @greer above