Hi Tom, you mention " everything is dependent on everything else" an apt example may be the devastation of the amazon forest by cattle farmers, the removal of the forest is reducing the planets ability to remove carbon dioxide from the planet, and the cattle are producing methane at a frightening rate, the negative effect of which is rated as 23 times higher than the effect of CO2. If this practice continues we may have food to eat but very little air to breath.
Your assessment of timelines may therefore be optimistic placed as 10 years, and yes we do need to act "Right Now"
You're right, of course, Robert. The catch is that we're facing a subtle yet huge challenge: most people (including me...) will anything they can to avoid change, and also want to wait to avoid being first to change. Yet they also don't want to be the last to do the change, otherwise they'll be left behind. The only way out that I can see is to use the old 'tipping-point' trick: we only need a few percent of people to have made the change, in order for a cascade-shift to start. The problem we've had all along with systems-thinking is that we've never reached a tipping-point level: that's the one bit that we need to focus on.
So yes, letting things sit for another ten years would be way too optimistic - you're right, we don't have that kind of time to play procrastination-games any more. The point I was making was that we _can_ pretend that we have a decade, but only for the _last_ to make that shift - _not_ the first. At a guess, we have just one year to hit the tipping-point, maybe two at most. If we haven't hit it by then, then yes, we're probably too late - but one thing that'd be likely to cause us to not hit the tipping-point in time would be if we panic people enough that they won't face the issue at all. Getting the balance right isn't easy - hence why I described this newsletter as 'Small Changes', when the challenges and changes we're actually facing are almost unbelievably huge. :wry-grin:
I agree that we do not want people to panic, but small changes are realistically not going to be enough if we are to to turn this tanker around. Very few governments have addressed the global SDGs by means of policy decisions and rather choose to procrastinate as you so rightly mention.
I suppose one small change that may help is that we need to remind governments that they cannot rescue eco by means of ego's.
Robert: "we do not want people to panic, but small changes are realistically not going to be enough if we are to to turn this tanker around" - oh, very strong agree on that! I'm actually being a bit sneaky here: it's _called_ 'Small-Changes', but it's _actually_ about the really big ones... :-) Or rather, it's a way reducing the risk of panic by making it a mix of the really-big-picture stuff interspersed with small human-level stuff _which also links to the big-picture_. One of the themes I talked about before was that if it's fractal, then we can practice on the small stuff to develop the skills for tackling the big stuff, because they're same skills at every level. That was the whole point of change-mapping and the like: they work the same way everywhere, every scope, scale, whatever.
What I really want to do is travel around as a kind of commentator and catalyst. That's why I set up Small-Changes, as a channel to document and promote these ideas, starting from the bottom-up, the everyday world, everyday experience. The pandemic lockdowns delayed all of that, and for a while even made it literally illegal to do it at all - but with the lockdowns easing off, I should at last be able to get out there and get moving on it. Wish me luck, perhaps? :-)
Agree wholeheartedly that what ever approach we use it must work at all levels, but also for all timeframes. SDGs will require long term planning supported by continuous agile delivery towards a desired long term future.
This will require architecture to work in a Tri-modal manner namely Current, Future and Transitional architectures. Your experience and articulation of the problems at hand will be of enormous value as a catalyst for action.
You have my best wishes that you will soon be allowed to undertake this critical planned action.
Hi Tom, you mention " everything is dependent on everything else" an apt example may be the devastation of the amazon forest by cattle farmers, the removal of the forest is reducing the planets ability to remove carbon dioxide from the planet, and the cattle are producing methane at a frightening rate, the negative effect of which is rated as 23 times higher than the effect of CO2. If this practice continues we may have food to eat but very little air to breath.
Your assessment of timelines may therefore be optimistic placed as 10 years, and yes we do need to act "Right Now"
You're right, of course, Robert. The catch is that we're facing a subtle yet huge challenge: most people (including me...) will anything they can to avoid change, and also want to wait to avoid being first to change. Yet they also don't want to be the last to do the change, otherwise they'll be left behind. The only way out that I can see is to use the old 'tipping-point' trick: we only need a few percent of people to have made the change, in order for a cascade-shift to start. The problem we've had all along with systems-thinking is that we've never reached a tipping-point level: that's the one bit that we need to focus on.
So yes, letting things sit for another ten years would be way too optimistic - you're right, we don't have that kind of time to play procrastination-games any more. The point I was making was that we _can_ pretend that we have a decade, but only for the _last_ to make that shift - _not_ the first. At a guess, we have just one year to hit the tipping-point, maybe two at most. If we haven't hit it by then, then yes, we're probably too late - but one thing that'd be likely to cause us to not hit the tipping-point in time would be if we panic people enough that they won't face the issue at all. Getting the balance right isn't easy - hence why I described this newsletter as 'Small Changes', when the challenges and changes we're actually facing are almost unbelievably huge. :wry-grin:
I agree that we do not want people to panic, but small changes are realistically not going to be enough if we are to to turn this tanker around. Very few governments have addressed the global SDGs by means of policy decisions and rather choose to procrastinate as you so rightly mention.
I suppose one small change that may help is that we need to remind governments that they cannot rescue eco by means of ego's.
Robert: "we do not want people to panic, but small changes are realistically not going to be enough if we are to to turn this tanker around" - oh, very strong agree on that! I'm actually being a bit sneaky here: it's _called_ 'Small-Changes', but it's _actually_ about the really big ones... :-) Or rather, it's a way reducing the risk of panic by making it a mix of the really-big-picture stuff interspersed with small human-level stuff _which also links to the big-picture_. One of the themes I talked about before was that if it's fractal, then we can practice on the small stuff to develop the skills for tackling the big stuff, because they're same skills at every level. That was the whole point of change-mapping and the like: they work the same way everywhere, every scope, scale, whatever.
What I really want to do is travel around as a kind of commentator and catalyst. That's why I set up Small-Changes, as a channel to document and promote these ideas, starting from the bottom-up, the everyday world, everyday experience. The pandemic lockdowns delayed all of that, and for a while even made it literally illegal to do it at all - but with the lockdowns easing off, I should at last be able to get out there and get moving on it. Wish me luck, perhaps? :-)
Agree wholeheartedly that what ever approach we use it must work at all levels, but also for all timeframes. SDGs will require long term planning supported by continuous agile delivery towards a desired long term future.
This will require architecture to work in a Tri-modal manner namely Current, Future and Transitional architectures. Your experience and articulation of the problems at hand will be of enormous value as a catalyst for action.
You have my best wishes that you will soon be allowed to undertake this critical planned action.