I wouldn't start here
December 12, 2024 8:11 AM   Subscribe

There's an (apparently) Irish joke that goes something like this: a tourist asks a local for directions to Dublin. The Irishman replies: ‘Well sir, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’. In this conversation, hosted by Alex Forrester, Bayo Akomolafe and Paul Hawken explore climate change as a dialogue between ways of seeing and thinking about it - western and non-western.

Paul Hawken's curiosity and openness sets up Bayo Akomolafe's (Yoruba - Nigerian) observations about how centuries of western thinking has created the climate change problem, which the west seems only able to imagine solving with more western-style problem-solving.

Though Akomolafe's observations are challenging, I found the conversation calming and upbeat. At just under two hours it's a bit long, but worth it if you take the time.
posted by kneecapped (3 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Paul Hawken started (or was instrumental in starting) Project Drawdown. He's one of the most interesting and thoughtful people, so, much as I resist video, will watch, thanks.
posted by theora55 at 10:25 AM on December 12 [2 favorites]


Project Drawdown is excellent, and I have been a big fan E F Schumacher the person, and some of the center's content.

This clip is poetic and if i was more familiar with this discourse and how these terms are being used i could give it a better critique. To me it is largely opaque or suggestive in a style that i can't wrangle.

I'll say this, it is possible that reason we can't fix these messes our system of political economy makes is because our system of political economy and the mindset and culture it came from, reproduces and maintains has critical flaws that allow us to feel and act as if separate from nature, separate from victims, and even separate from the contamination and responsibility. And so yes, to change the trajectory of the climate crisis (or the plastics crisis or the food crisis or the housing crisis etc etc) necessarily entails changing our mindset.

Also, we do need to grieve and mourn and accept what is irreversible.

Knowing hawkin has elsewhere so much concrete advice about the impacta of policies and actions i will hold my complaint that this clip isnt a call to action but an invitation to selfwork and contemplation.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 10:51 AM on December 12 [4 favorites]


Glad to see Bayo getting some airtime on here. Find how he frames things to be incredibly new and refreshing.

The proverb he uses often, "the times are urgent; let us slow down" feels like an important piece of wisdom for us all to be internalizing.

His short blog piece on that is worth the read, for those who might not have time for a whole 2 hour youtube video.
posted by grimace636 at 1:26 PM on December 12 [1 favorite]


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