Creative Responses to climate change and Optimism
Creative responses to climate change was the title of one of the most inspiring talks I have attended in a while, hosted at the RSA with Brian Eno.
Eno is one of the most influential musical creatives of our modern era, having composed and produced for himself and the likes of David Bowie, Talking Heads, Cold Play to name a few. His Wikipedia page is very long.. He is also the founder of Earth Percent and founding member of the Long Now. An inventor and ceaseless passionate about what engenders creative ideas, Eno originated generative music and idea generating tools harnessing serendipity such as Oblique strategies.
Today I will share what I DIDN'T post on social to avoid duplication, and make this special.
The talk was part of a new RSA event series aiming to answer this: 'What could go right?'.
At a time of climate collapse, Eno went on to unpack this. Because we need optimism.
First Eno pointed to the absence of long term thinking. In our (sort of) defense he explains we used to think we were doing something good called progress. And once we had invested in this, we needed an ROI (Return On Investment). But we couldn’t see what we were losing. What was important and being lost wasn’t showing in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) indexes and graphs.
Once a cycle of production starts and suddenly a lot of people are living off that speed, it has a huge amount of momentum and is hard to stop it.
Eno stated:
How can we unpick these things and keep what we want? Given the fact the catastrophe of climate change is inevitable. Now it's about 'how can we have a better catastrophe' citing activist and author Andrew Boyd.
[Note: I'll list hyperlinked sources just scroll down when you're done reading (in approximately 1 minute).]
Eno shared we need to rethink how government works. In Japan there is a future generation committee being assembled. This is something Wales is doing and Scotland is thinking about too. Citizens assemblies are also popping up around the world.
Citing a recent Oxfam report revealing wealth went up 43 trillion pounds with 63% having gone to 1 % of the world's population (he wove his thinking through creatively, as only a wonderful story teller and speaker would. Using metaphors and connections).
'In society we are constantly creating fish tanks that have to be attended to and adjusted' (referring to a tropical fish tank a friend of his owned that needed intense and artificial daily upkeep that could nit be left alone for more than a day).
Most of us can’t survive in nature without the huge structures around us. We rely on the fact we can borrow each other's brain power. But this huge brain is a sort of fish tank. This is what the internet is, but what if it shuts down…? We have built this huge brain but it’s extremely fragile.
Then Eno went on to weave us through the idea of working with the Earth. How farmers do not have these issues. Recently his team at Earth Percent have started developing the ability to co-author a song with the Earth, thereby giving it the intellectual property rights to that song, and income every time it gets played anywhere around the world, as musicians and bands do.
With this idea of being united around one cause no matter your background, Eno shared that at Earth Percent, their team is made of priests, Extinction Rebellion members, scientists because they all know they work for one thing: the Earth.
'There is something going on that is phenomenal'.
Segwaying into the idea of a revolution, citing a Russian author whose name I could not hear well:
Revolutions happen in 2 phases:
the realisation something has gone wrong
the realisation everyone has realised that something has gone wrong and you're not the only one
Eno's take:
'Revolution happens when people feel their strength as a community.'
Then questions from attendees came in of which here are a few:
Question: What role does education play here?
Answer from B.E.: How can we start from an early age. Arts and humanities get downgraded as they are seen as not easy to translate into careers. The thing we really need is not generating more data or shuffling it again in a different way. There is more and more data about the climate crisis and it doesn’t change anything. What we need is imaginative thinking and that’s what novelists do. The important job is not adding up the sums and collecting data. We need for nimbleness of thinking and laterality. This he shared in the context of cross pollination of fields and the importance of art schools, even if we don't always understand what art school students do.
Question: Can companies and cities be agents of change?
Answer from B.E.: Companies could be the solution. BUT there is a sense that corporate billionaires know that something is not going to last much longer so 'let’s make the most of it. I’m just going to grab as much as I can now' citing Peter Thiel owning a mega estate of 477 acres in New Zealand.
Eno retells the story of a Futurist friend of his. This I realised is Douglas Rushkoff who has written about this experience extensively. It goes like this: Obscure client requests him to come for a talk. Gets paid like 50K. A plane picks him up. He is blind folded. Driven to this secret place. Then arrives in a room with 5 billionaires who ask him: what should we do when civilisation collapses 'the Event' as it is also referred to?
Question: What’s the one thing you’d like us to do tomorrow after having heard you speak
Answer from B.E.: The most important thing is we have to connect with each other and talk to each other. Stop Netflix and all that distraction. Even though he did admit he is addicted to his phone.
If you want the rest of his pointers go to my IG post here.
Links below based on Eno’s mentions recommendations:
First, Book recommendations from Brian Eno:
His warning. These are 3 books dealing with the possibility we face catastrophe. They start with bad news and halfway through focus on solutions and better news according to Eno.
---> Less is more by Jason Hickel
---> I want a better catastrophe by Andrew Boyd
---> At work in the ruins by Dougold Hine (not yet out, will be released in a few weeks)
Now links I have dug up that relate to what Brian Eno does in climate activism:
---> Earth percent
---> The long now
Oxfam 2023 report
---> Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years
---> Survival of the richest report
Douglas Rushkoff's encounter with billionaires hatching an escape plan:
---> Escape fantasies of tech billionaires on Vice
---> Survival of the richest book
---> Survival of the richest on Medium
Future Generation governmental action:
---> the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales
---> Future Design for the Survival of Humankind
---> Why we need to reinvent democracy for the long-term
Radical Optimism and Urgent Optimists:
---> Super better by Futurist Jane McGonigal
---> Radical Optimism by Futurist Ken Kelly
Find out more about the RSA:
---> Event replays
---> Main website
By Geraldine Wharry
