January 21, 2021

Changing

(Maintaining)

“Face it, Accept it, Deal with it, Let go of it.” Venerable Master Sheng-yen

When student leaders from my school traveled to Washington D.C. to march against the TransCanda Keystone XL Pipeline extension I found myself wondering about the assumptions driving the design of these particular change tactics, namely the demand by student groups for full or partial divestment from funds that profit from coal, gas and oil. Are current activist strategies effective? and if so for whom? and by what measures of efficacy? Further, why do today’s activist campaigns borrow from political tactics of the past? Historical precedents for radical activism such as the influential global divestment campaigns against Apartheid in the 1980’s and against tobacco in the 1990s (Shogren) although instructive as models, are not necessarily useful roadmaps for the emergent activist territories of today.

In the intangible realm of policy and public opinion, organization is the key unit of agential redirective change — but tactically how? Social media aided flow of science communication does not necessarily result in an informed and motivated public (Hulme, 225) as environmental reform giant Bill McKibben learned the hard way with his first book and acknowledged on Twitter, “My theory of change was people will read my book & then they would change…that’s not actually what happened-“ (McKibben). As we learned from the Million Man March, Occupy, and Climate Marches, physically showing up in the streets does quantify our values in a way that the media likes to capture. Although there is great value in mass solidarity, there is a growing consensus that our 20c forms of activism (and design) won’t get us there. Whether various economic, stigmatizing, or anarchist tactics ‘work’ seems to matter little so long as they serve to validate positions along a spectrum of concern. In this balkanized civic space moral admonitions and market instruments are blunt instruments, bound to fall short of the nuanced, co-created response required of climate adaptation. Although they may serve to raise awareness about the interrelated causes of climate change, the social cost of carbon, and intergenerational ethics, sensationalized political demands win their gains at great human cost.

Some small liberal colleges have agreed to the student demands, the Brown Divest Coal Campaign being one of the most successful to date (Shogren). The Fossil Free Campaign launched by 360.org fuses profit and harm to stigmatize the big suppliers “If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage.” (350.org). Student groups at our peer institution the Rhode Island School of Design have organized as Divest RISD. “Our demands could not be more reasonable or more feasible. We want the college immediately to stop making new investments in fossil fuel companies, and then to sell off their holdings over five years.” (Henn). Several of my students, representing Students for Environmental Action (SEA) and SAIC for the Future raised concerns that The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is involved with firms and funds that are invested in fossil fuel (Isaacs). I speculated with students about the kinds of changes these tactics are designed to produce. Although divestment from fossil fuels, along with offsets, carbon trading, and lifestyle impact analysis can and do enhance our individual and collective adaptive capacities, from a systems perspective divestment of colleges and universities would be but a drop in the bucket in terms of creating change in the energy market. It would serve the symbolic function of shifting a perceived locus of responsibility from a consumptive society to the suppliers of fossil-derived energy. Such engagements although arguably productive, may reinforce existing political factions and actually delay key interventions (Lowe). Further critical analysis may support the argument that such campaigns are for the most part only designing deepened entrenchment of existing conflicts. Post-modern climate activism for the most part remains, from a design strategy perspective, an exercise of maturing progressive orthodoxy’s narratives of power. Typical ‘climate porn’ message characterize Millennials as the next ‘victims’ of climate change as a means to motivate participation in the growing climate movement.

Being an interlocking systems challenge, climate is the trans-disciplinary challenge of our day. Climate is contextually interrelated to issues of poverty and wealth, population and energy. Yet the intangibility of climate concepts and impacts, with causes and effects distant in time and space, make them notoriously difficult to visualize and narrate. In complex and contested conditions such as climate adaptation, strategic change design and media messaging are always a political and never neutral (Hulme). Climate has many names and facets, each representing communities of belief (Leiserowitz et. al.) within a constantly evolving multicultural discourse. Serious participatory civic narratives may help prevent climate activism from vacillating in negative feedback loops, over- and under- reacting to a dehumanized and intangible foe. The Institute for the Future’s Governance Futures Lab prototypes flexible policy architectures offering complementary and polycentric scales of governance, feedback and regulation with the capacity to yield a range of benefits across different sectors of society (Cole).

How might we engage the power of collective intention, creativity and behavior as we evolve our ways of designing for human systems? Climate is a mega life condition calling for integration of trans-disciplinary collaborative expertise, collective creativity and action. Climate issues pose decisive questions about our common humanity, basic needs and creative capacities, and the value of human and other life. They challenge us to design processes that will bring humility into dialogue with the Other -even those who hold views very opposed to ours- in the interest of a finite planet. Post-postmodern design dwells in the present, remaining attentive to acute needs and observing contextual changes. This serious designing agency is post-combative —eschewing stereotypes and meeting others as human beings first — and in present time.

In writing this I hope to express my conviction that radical change tactics, in order to be effective must account for the multidimensionality of reality- the subjective and intersubjective, the objective and inter-objective, and the individual and collective. Integral opinion leader, author and activist Terry Patten describes an emerging approach to political engagement that embraces reality in its fullness by integrating beliefs, values, feelings and awareness with behaviors, policies, norms, and structures“Integral practitioners are embracing practical action. They are attempting to bring their practice and consciousness to bear in ways that affect lower right institutions and structures. They are attempting to further cultural evolution, bringing it to higher levels and that make a difference.” (Patten)

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