Returning to sit in the stream
So we had our little learning village today with the kids at Aine’s learning centre which my partner, daughter and I designed. We explored these questions of what kind of inner climate is needed to engage around questions of climate change and the kids followed the energy. They got really interested in what kinds of things they could say to the global leadership meeting in Copenhagen. They wanted to convey a sense that, yes this is a serious issue, but how you choose to meet together matters. They were dismayed and discouraged by the prospect of a lot of angry and worried people sitting around for a few days trying to reach a creative agreement. One kid said that she doesn’t work very well if she thinks there is a tiger behind her about to eat her.
So we had a little circle and talked about what we know about principles of meeting together. The kids generated this list:
We even took this advice, and broke into groups to see what kinds of things we could brainstorm around climate change solutions. The kids worked for 40 minutes in a world cafe, and then we shared some ideas (“Someone needs to develop shoes that massage your feet while you walk.” “Busses should be free”). We discovered that if we practice some of the principles, they really do result in creative thinking, and a more civil tone.
So the kids were pretty clear that they didn’t have answers about climate change, but they did have recommendations about HOWthe leaders should meet in order to find creative and sustaining solutions. We made four videos (the kids chose to do sketches) which we are editing and will get quick parental approval before sending off to Copenhagen through various channels.
My takeaway on this is that there is a lot of science and highly technical information that is required before you can make useful contributions to the global warming debate. Very few of us have access to that level of understanding and while we might have some good ideas, we don’t really have the ability to engage at the level of understanding that results in concrete solutions.
We do however all have experience of conversations that work. Youth are very clear about ways in which learning takes place. I was delighted when they began naming principles of participatory process and conversational leadership, which are just fancy terms for what we already know about how to collaborate. Twelve year olds CAN make a contribution, and can learn and reflect on process as they share their own experience about what works.
Natalie Angier, inspired by Kandinsky, celebrates the circle,
I also learned of Kandinsky’s growing love affair with the circle. The circle, he wrote, is “the most modest form, but asserts itself unconditionally.” It is “simultaneously stable and unstable,” “loud and soft,” “a single tension that carries countless tensions within it.” Kandinsky loved the circle so much that it finally supplanted in his visual imagination the primacy long claimed by an emblem of his Russian boyhood, the horse.
Quirkily enough, the artist’s life followed a circular form: He was born in December 1866, and he died the same month in 1944. This being December, I’d like to honor Kandinsky through his favorite geometry, by celebrating the circle and giving a cheer for the sphere. Life as we know it must be lived in the round, and the natural world abounds in circular objects at every scale we can scan.
Canada is about to be roundly shamed at the Copenhagen summit, and it can’t happen swiftly enough or with enough emphasis for me. Our government is showing itself to be a dinosaur when it comes to tackling climate change. Here is Stephen Harper touting a total myth:
“Without the wealth that comes from growth, the environmental threats, the developmental challenges and the peace and security issues facing the world will be exponentially more difficult to deal with,” Harper said in an address to South Korea’s National Assembly.
via Harper Says Global Recovery Must Precede Environment (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.
The truth is actually the other way around, but Harper is so willfully blind to the realities of system thinking, climate science and global consensus that he has chosen to act as a bully and a coward all at the same time.
George Monbiot recently wrote a slamming indictment of our potentially negative contribution to these climate talks coming up. It seems that, doing the bidding of big oil, Canada will try to scuttle the talks by dividing and conquering the conference. The Saudis will be hiding behind our skirts delighted that they don’t have to be the bad guys.
So, rest of the world, you need to know that Harper has never governed in Canada with a majority of Parliamentary votes, nor has his government ever had anything close to a mjority of the popular vote. It is a particular set of regional political anamolies that has resulted in him becoming Prime Minister. Canadians have never wanted him to govern in numbers that would give him a mandate to speak with such surety about what we want as Canadians, or what our role in the world should be. He has refused to govern cautiously as a minority leader, and has refused to even try to build consensus, choosing instead to be a brinkman of the highest order and calling the bluff of the Opposition parties who have ended up supporting his bullying through a fear of their own political hides being hung out to dry.
So knowing this, world, and speaking as a Canadian, I hope you will not hold back in exposing Harper for what he is, and challenging at every turn his right to speak for Canadians. He should be a marginal curiosity at this summit, and he will be if YOU ALL put him there. Please do not accord the Canadian government’s position at this conference with any of the respect that is usually accorded to us. We sometimes are allowed to punch far above our weight, but in this case, call the man’s bluff. He does not speak for most of us.
