Missing links and workable solutions
People everywhere know there is need to tackle climate change and other environmental issues, but finding a path where they can participate more effectively in resolution is difficult. My recent book, Nature’s Future Our Future, explains how to create radical change in consciousness and action in our work and workplaces.
“For anyone concerned about the future of our biosphere and how we take action, I urge you to read this book.” Dr James Renwick (Climate Scientist)
The environment situation and challenge is much more to the fore now than when nature was warning us four and five decades ago. The exponential curve of awareness steepens. So too does the exponential curve of ongoing damage being done. Indications are that the latter is leading. Urgency has become critical – we don’t have a lot of time.
Good things are taking place – recycling, lessening footprint, advocating and pressuring for change, or joining organisation efforts to care for nature rather than exploit or abuse it. But it is clearly not enough. Reports of damage expands, threat of severe environmental fallout intensifies, and a sense of disempowerment in the face of crisis deepens.
Persuading a whole population to move on this as a unit is probably too difficult – too wide, too many, too diverse. But creating movements within society’s smaller units of occupational life could well be a turning point. For it is here that the ideologies which enable and increase the damage are put in place.
The question becomes: how do I, and my place of work, fit in with preventing further damage and achieving change?
Building a movement
Building a movement of radical change in consciousness and action in our work environments is the goal. How we do this is a vein running through the book. Perhaps, given the extent of the issues, it is an artery. The starting point is our positioning of our occupations, our careers in the context of our living on a planet where life in all its forms is under imminent threat of collapse. Addressing the missing link, the gap, between what we do at work and nature’s situation and needs will be pivotal for the future.
Imagine the impact of even a dozen specific occupations going public on the crisis: announcing publicly their recognition of the danger planetary life is facing, owning their participation be it in their operation or through their silence, committing to plans for correction, and exhorting other occupations to do likewise. And most importantly, challenging the big three – our political, economic and commercial systems – to get a move on.
Change or more of the same
We are in a particularly dangerous position. Awareness grows, but there is a deepening disquiet that we are not moving deeply enough, nor quickly enough. This energy will either spur us into action, or we will become part of a frightening trend of seeing the issues as too big and ourselves as being too late. The result would be societal fear, acceptance of defeat, and loss of the energy, courage and generosity which have seen us through other difficult times.
We must face the changes directly; nature is making clear statements about what must be done. Conversely, at many levels there is only tinkering around the edges as we do more of the same. Nature continues to be bullied; it is given no voice. Climate might be seen as an issue, but the same structures, ideologies and practice are kept in place. More of the same ensures continuance of the use of fossil fuels, habitat destruction, mining, plastic production and methane release.
Politics, economics and commerce – circumventing nature’s plight
The missing link, the gap, between our occupational lives and nature’s needs is paralleled by the missing link between our political, economic and commercial systems, and resolution of the emergency. Challenging society’s continuing belief that solutions to nature’s decline can be achieved without significant changes to those interests and systems lies at the heart of life continuing on planet Earth. A very different consciousness of what drives the deterioration is paramount.
Fourteen essays
Nature’s Future Our Future is a series of fourteen essays. The first essay introduces the central premises of the book, a bringing together of what we do in our occupational lives and what nature does. This connection, or its absence, will define the future. Whatever our work situation, a priority is the care of nature. The second essay discusses change, processes of change and a possible model to follow.
The next four essays delve into political, economic and commercial life – the most powerful occupational arenas where outcomes must urgently evolve. These institutions house the ideologies and methods that implicate us all in environmental decline and justify the attack on nature and its processes.
Then follows a selection of specific occupations where participants and their leaders are invited to claim the ideas of the first two essays. This means including environmental care as equal in importance to what they do at work – be it in an office, a trade, a profession, a business; be it on land, at sea or in the air. There they will create the critical awareness and pressure necessary for a future where work and care of the environment are one.
This book fronts up to a defining crisis confronting life on planet Earth. It is also a story of hope – possibilities for change are real.
“Des Casey is one of the seers who grasps the magnitude of the transformation in human behaviour needed to restore our unravelling ecosphere.” Joanna Santa Barbara
Additional links
Read the reviews. See the website/get the book. Have a look inside. Further information. Des is available to speak to groups, to schools, to organisations and at events: Contact the author.
