As soaring temperatures and tumbling records bring the flames of climate change uncomfortably close to home, new metrics raise troubling questions about our professional complicity in the destruction of the Earth’s climate and biodiversity and rattle some of the taken-for-granted ideas upon which most organisations and professional lives are built.
What are we to do when our formal organisational and political systems are unable to speak the truth or act fast enough to bring about the level of change we urgently need? As Nature is the ultimate boss, the intelligence of living systems is where we’ll find the answers we’re looking for. And our response to Covid-19 is the pilot.
Our primitive need to see good triumph over evil may be satisfied by watching Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg’s head roll but it keeps us blind to our systemic reality. What’s broken is not individuals or even individual organisations but our entire industrial system.
In the age of climate collapse, what do we say to our children? The problems facing us seem too big to solve. And we seem too small. Doing too little, too late. As students take to the streets all over the world, demanding urgent action, this letter responds to one young man’s despair. And suggests where he – and we – may find inspiration and hope.
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