Fuzzy Signals

Evangelicalism versus Environmentalism

Bill Moyers has written a powerful polemic, "Welcome to Doomsday", which describes chillingly well the antagonistic relationship between the evangelicalism of the American Christian Right variety and environmentalism.

He begins by bemoaning:

...the fact that the delusional is no longer marginal but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power. We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis. Theology asserts propositions that need not be proven true, while ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The combination can make it impossible for a democracy to fashion real-world solutions to otherwise intractable challenges.

Moyers uses the term "political religion", which is apt, because that's what the Christian Right has successfully done -- the fusing of ideology and theology -- and it reflects the disturbing trend of the blurring between the hard fought separation between the state and religion. Europeans lost lot of blood over this issue over many centuries; they assumed the rest of the world had learned from its' lessons on bended knee, which was clearly not realistic. But the last people they thought would loose their way was America, because America was perceived as being the leader of leading ideas for the future rather than a propagator of throw-back memes of the past, something that Europe can no longer take for granted. So not understanding the complexities of the American state of mind, many in Europe have concluded that the US has simply lost its' mind.

The follow passage also summarizes what Paul Hawken was alluding to in this talk, the Long Green which I wrote about, when he distinguished between the voluntary stay behinds -- the people who like and love this place called planet earth and want to improve and protect it for future generations -- and "The Rapture" folks who are worried about being left behind. It's the ancient St. Augustinian tension between the City of God and City of Man all over again:

You can understand why people in the grip of such fantasies cannot be expecte to worry about the environment. As Glenn Scherer writes in his report for the on-lin environmental magazine Grist, why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine, and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the Rapture? Why bother to convert to alternative sources of energy and reduce dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East? Anyway, until Christ does return, the Lord will provide. Why bother to convert to alternative sources of energy and reduce dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East? Anyway, until Christ does return, the Lord will provide.

This essay raises a level of urgency in my mind; namely, it puts more pressure and a premium on coming up with better memes that out compete these clearly maladaptive ones. So we've got work to do! The good news is that we're doing it. I hope that's enough.

Vive La France... mais juste les meilleures pièces

What makes living in France so confusing and frustrating is that there is so much to despise and criticize and yet also so much to love, inspire, and emulate. These contradictions would create serious cognitive dissonance, if living here weren't made so easy, if the quality of life wasn't so darn good, which is exactly what the postwar Gaullist bargain had intended to achieve: social stability and lassitude in return for the fruits of the leisure society.

These contradictions make it easy, on the surface, to dismiss the country as irrelevant and in decline, and indeed aspects of this Gaullist bargain may be unravelling. But dig deeper down and it becomes clear that France has got much right -- both in theory and practice. Life expectancy, in France, for instance, has now topped 80 years, the second highest in the world after Japan. So something is working. It's thus worth understanding what and why. Focusing on the parts that aren't working -- which is what outsiders with a grudge love to do -- only makes this harder to see, hence all of these so-called "French paradoxes." Nationalistic mud-slinging clearly gets in the way of understanding; and admittedly, it's only natural to not openly admire someone who is also arrogant and self-deceptive. Add to this language and cultural barriers and it's amazing we learn anything at all: as I've found the hard way, an Anglo Saxon mindset won't get you very far in seeing le systême for all its strengths and weaknesses.

This mix of the best-and-the-worst also pervades the sustainability and environmental scene in France. With the triumphs come the travesties. Yet rising above these contradictions an amazing path-breaking development just happened in France: an environmental charter, championed by Jacques Chirac, was enshrined in France's constitution last month. As The Economist reports,, "This puts the right to live in a healthy environment on the same legal footing in France as human rights, setting the country up as a pioneer in environmental protection -- and Mr Chirac as potential saviour of the planet." (Said, of course, oh-so-British-tongue-in-cheek.) Like any good French person, one needs to reflexively distrust any top down action by politicians. So we'll see if this is just a paper tiger. But the French, like the Americans, view their constitution as sacred, so I doubt this is just a symbolic gesture.

Contrasting Chirac with Bush is interesting sport as well: while arguably both venial and double-dealing in their own ways, the French president is now an indisputable green president -- a proud écolo to compete with the likes of his eco-European peers -- whereas Bush seems to be going in the opposite direction, with a dismal record showing a systematic dismantlement of America's institutions and laws protecting the environment. (By the way, Bill Moyers lists some of these in a must read polemic, however dishearting, "Welcome to Doomsday", that explains the inverse correlation between evangelicals and environmentalism. Hot stuff.)

This development transcends the desires of the politicians as well. The French people do have a deep emotional and intellectual attachment to their land that goes well beyond the self-serving impulse for upholding agricultural subsidies and protectionism, which is how most outsiders interpret their actions in this area. Much much more is going on. Connecting to the countryside, la campagne profonde, has an almost existential drive behind it. And when French people talk about le terrior [teh-RWAHR] -- the name for the special "soil" that creates the uniqueness of a wine or regional food speciality -- they get a misty, transcendent look in their eyes.

Indeed, in our history-free society we quickly forget just how much France has contributed to the world. I confess to this myopia, something that changed only after moving here. But I soon rediscovered that many of our prevailing ideas and driving assumptions come from France, for better or worse. Despite what Bush reputedly said, the word for "entrepreneur" actually originated in France when it was still a hotbed of innovation, sometime after the Middle Ages, as the feudal and guild systems collapsed. In more recent times France has gestated and unleashed countless sea-changing things, everything from germ theory, to Picasso’s cubist breakthough, to the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, to the Enlightenment Thinkers, to the concept of "restaurants", and the idea for the first shopping mall (Mr. Bon Marche), to the many denizens of art, fashion and design too many to list.

Similarly, while France may not be as green as Germany or its Scandinavian neighbours, we also shouldn't forget that this is the country of the late Jacques Cousteau (image left), the charismatic inventor and activist who did more than most to create the global environmental movement. So at this moment I say "Vive La France!" Let's hope as globalization drives further economic convergence and cultural homogenization, France continues to build on its past history and values, and pioneer different approaches to how we should to live, work and play on this planet. The best thing for the world is for France to continue being France, to maintain her distinctiveness, however tempestuous that makes for our interactions with her. Even if France is in decline -- impressively, the topic of much intellectual debate here (did the British do the same during their denouement I wonder?) -- this doesn't mean we can learn from her, appropriating the best of her social model, ideas, and contributions and then repurposing them in our own contexts. Changing our constitutions to acknowledge the rights of the environment, while daunting politically, is a good place to start. Indeed, if France can do it, many other countries can too.

BP - Raising the Bar in Tangguh?

In this weekend's Financial Times, there is an interesting Energy Special worth delving into (especially before website access expires.) In particular, I was struck by an article, "The Houses That Gas Built, about BP's learning curve in relocating Indonesian villagers in the remote province of Papua as a result of their future $5 billion natural gas "Tangguh" project in Bintuni Bay, which will be feeding the voracious energy appetites in China, the US and beyond with liquified natural gas (LNG) starting in 2008.

Described as "an ambitious social experiment, one with the potential to reshape the way resource projects are undertaken around the world", this story is partly inspirational and partly a cautionary tale. It's inspiring, or at least mollifying to us worldchangers, because at last corporations like BP are showing that they are committed to doing the right thing -- taking responsibility for the consequences of resource extraction -- and with adequate resources. Over $20 million is being spent on this project. The corporate norm in this department is far less and often just plain terrible, so hopefully this is an indicator of higher standards other companies can emulate.

But this project also highlights some serious dilemmas as well, which is why I liked the article so much; so much reporting on this topic fails to mention these. For starters, the complexity of this project was far greater than BP ever had expected; something they thought would take 6 months is now well over four years in the making. This project is thus challenging the limits of BP's capabilities. "It’s asking engineers and geophysicists to do social work - which is 'very different from building LNG plants'" said one BP employee. The BP-built village is also "creating jealously and confusion" among other villagers nearby. And there are new dependencies being formed, as the elected chairman of the resettled residents confessed: “In the old village we weren’t dependent on BP. But here we need time to learn."

The FT journalist, Shawnn Donnan, thoughtfully gets to the crux of the matter when (s)he says:

This is an era in which corporate social responsibility is a mainstream idea. And at the core of that idea is this as-yet open question: can resource projects ever be friendly to the people who live closest to them?

This question haunts me too. While I applaud the mainstreaming of the practice that corporations should take responsibility for their actions and be good citizens (that's just a fair baseline), I'm wondering and worried about this happening in a vacuum where the role of the other actors -- namely governments and civil society -- is unclear or impaired for any number of reasons. For resilient, sustainable, and just societies require a careful check-and-balances between all three sectors. Unfortunately, these have been out of whack for some time.

For instance, in the case of Tangguh, does the corporate involvement of BP let the Indonesian governments off the hook from making long term investments? Perhaps this was part of the deal, who knows. Furthermore, does this kind of intervention make it easy for local communities like New Onar to slide into new dependencies and mindsets that impede their sense of responsibility for their own futures? Is it possible to have a legitimate, authentic, and thriving community that was not organically created but manufactured as such?

Of course, these questions speak to something much larger than BP's experience in Bintuni Bay. Among many other things, these questions are emerging from the unintended consequences of the great structural realignment between government and business and civil society over the last few decades. (A great survey of this is the Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin, who incidentally has oil industry credentials as well.) The cumulative effects of privatization and the corresponding public sector devolvement has now created a vacuum. On one side, this is being filled by corporations like BP under the rubric of social responsibility; while on the other side social entrepreneurs and civil society actors are emerging to fill key voids as well.

Privatization, CSR, and social entrepreneurship all seem like good ideas, especially at the time, and aspects of these ideas are robust. But their aggregate and interacting impact has blurred and confused the important division of labour between the private, public and civil society actors. For each sector has their own distinctive competency and sphere of influence of action; and problems start to compound over time when these jobs are conflated and confused, exposing much deeper conflicts and fundamental differences in how these worlds operate.

To understand why, we need Jane Jacobs and in her classic work, Systems of Survival. She argues that there are two fundamental "moral systems" in human civilizations: (1) guardian systems whose primary purpose to protect the public and preserve public goods; and (2) commerce systems whose purpose is the immediate exchange of value. The former focuses on the long view, is slower moving and more deliberate; while the latter is faster moving, creative and inventive in the short term. Both modalities complement and need each other for a well functioning civilization. Problems, however, occur when these jobs are conflated and confused, which is what I see happening now.

So do Cradle-to-Cradle authors Bill McDounough and Michael Braungart. They argue that the mixing and matching of private and public sector roles creates "monstrous hybrids". Too much regulation and onus on corporations to deliver public goods impacts the very fast moving virtues of commerce, impeding the creative, bottom-up problem solving the market excels at. Similarly, if governments are incentivized too much by money, this will corrupt the guardians and encourage them to make short term rather than long term investments. (Indonesian officials take note.) McDounough and Braungart argue the solution is in better design from the outset. They believe that regulation is actually a signal of poor design. "Regulation can be a license to harm: a permit to do acceptable amounts of harm". And this rings true when we look back at how governments have indirectly subsidized corporations to do the wrong thing, either unknowingly or through influence-peddling. In any event, all of this is easy to advocate for designing new systems, but less helpful in dealing with entrenched industries like oil and gas where the degrees of freedom are far less.

The point is still well taken. We need a more comprehensive methodology for designing projects like Tangguh that is ruthlessly rigorous and honest about the question "who should do what?" with mechanisms for resolving the inevitable dilemmas and areas of ambiguity. Organizations like UNDP and a dazzlingly array of consultants would argue that this is already happening with the latest private-public sector partnerships ("PPPs") craze. My sense is that these are likely to disappoint, unless some of these core assumptions are clarified and sorted. Corporations, for instance, should not be in the business of making long term investments in infrastructure. Making these long payout decisions is what governments do best (assuming they are properly functioning in the first place with perceived legitimacy and democratic feedback looops.) Rather, the private sector's role is to invent, increase the churn, and density of options.

In terms of "who should do what?" in the sectoral dance, I have no clear picture yet of the steps ahead in our shifting context. I suspect that will become more apparent in the next decade. The fear is that governments --under the auspices of national security -- reassume too much of the mantle. On the other hand, the good news is that this is one of those moments of creative destruction where out of the ambiguity can rise new positive possibilities. My hunch is that the highest leverage solutions, the most important social ingenuity, will emerge from the new protocols, processes, and institutional players that re-negotiate this precarious division of labour and mindset amongst sectors. Civil society actors are likely to be critical intermediaries and thus shapers of this outcome. So look for those boundary spanners at the cross hairs. Perhaps this is what we're seeing now, however obliquely. And I think this is a good thing 'cause these civil society folks tend to be worldchangers.

Guru Watch Dog

While we understand that gurus are held sacred by many, they are also public figures deserving of scrutiny. Our primary aim is to inject a little humor into what can be an excessively self-righteous enterprise, and to illustrate the primary truth that no matter how divine their devotees believe them to be, gurus poop on the same pot we do.

This resonates because we both have had much experience in the guru-enabling business, albeit in the world of business intelligentsia not Yogis. (Admittedly, he more than me, having supported at least three gurus and counting!)

Personally, reflecting back on these experiences, I wonder about the sustainability of the "guru" model for personal development or as a vehicle for inspiration and action. Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but it's possible that in the business world at least we're starting to see a backlash to gurus as "the market" becomes saturated. A measured increase in skepticism is already apparent, and the very existence of this blog is a good indicator that self-corrections might be in the works. Indeed, there is much to deplore about the guru world: it's hype, hypocrisy, and most insidiously, the unreflective supplicant relationship it instills between the guru and disciple -- a relationship that tends to invite abuse and harm. A chilling example this abuse is recounted in this blog, Chinmoy Aborted Carlos' Kid.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with having teachers and mentors; I grant much good can come out of humbling yourself to another's wisdom and living within a disciplined structure, just as long as it doesn't diminish a person's dignity or their degrees of freedom in making their life's choices.

Yet can we imagine a world without gurus? It's a stretch isn't it? Humans crave answers; we crave being told what to do and how to do -- the S&M fetish market being an extreme case in point. As Time Magazine puts it in a special report on futurists (“Visions of Tomorrow”, October 11, 2004: 37-38):

We desperately need prophets, even false ones, to help us narrow the infinity of plausible futures down to one or at least to a manageable handful. We look at the present and we see the present; they see the seeds of the future. They are our advance scouts, infiltrating the undiscovered country, stealing over the border to bring back priceless reconnaissance maps of the world to come.

Most of us intuitively feel that the "world to come" is going to be quite different from our present existence. So this also might explain why the need for gurus seems to be proliferating across all aspects of our lives: from our spiritual needs to guidance about the next "killer app" to the latest food craze. No doubt this is an aggregate sign of people trying to cope the rapid pace of change. Despite the decades of postmodern thinking and experimentation, we still struggle with embracing and living with ambiguity and uncertainty, yet these are skills which the present and future will select for and reward. Then again, decades is nothing in the temporal scheme of things. Our current mental hardware and software, for instance, dates from a hunter-and-gathering era, so give it time to evolve. Posted by nicole at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)