What Can We Do In These Powerful Times?

Hosted by David Bent

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May 2024

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I've been working in the field of sustainability and climate change for some 20 years. It feels like the need for change is growing faster than the impact we are delivering. So, I am wondering what I can do next that is useful. Speaking with others, they have the same challenge.Which is why I’m doing this interview series. In 30 minute bites, I ask some brilliant people what they are doing now and why. All to inspire and enable the audience (which may turn out to be just me!) through stories grounded in experience. Please do listen, be inspired and suggest who I should be interviewing.Thank you -- David (powerfultimespodcast@gmail.com)

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May 19, 202453 min

Rupert Read

Rupert Read is Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, and former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (Twitter, Website, Wikipedia entry).The Climate Majority Project has the mission to "accelerate effective, coordinated climate action by a broad-based coalition of citizens; from grassroots initiatives to high-level policy". Rupert left the relatively stability of academia to wholeheartedly focus on CMP.Temperature records are falling, and there are signs that climate change is accelerating. For Rupert, the paradoxical insight is that now is not the time to get more radical, but to be ready to welcome more people into the climate movement. Experiencing the weird weather will be the best recruiter into climate action.In the interview, Rupert unpacks the four strands of the Climate Majority Project:Truthfulness. Shifting the public narrative about climate change towards the truth, through skilful messaging.Cultures of awareness and resilience. Facing the truth together and taking action calls for inner resources and communities of support.Serious action. Helping people from many backgrounds take meaningful action to help drive the systemic change we need.Building shared understanding. Developing the identity and vision of the emerging mass movement, and helping people see that they are powerful together.Core to the Climate Majority Project is depolarisation, because acting on climate over the long-term needs to be a broad project which reaches across classes, political orientations, identities.As you might expect from a former philosophy professor, there is a great deal of nuance to Rupert's views. One is that there is no shortcut. Just as a technological fix to our predicament is an illusion, so is revolution. He's wants to create a future which is not based on illusion, which involves a transformation over time, it's going to take the time of political culture.Rupert very much believes that, yes, the problem is overwhelmingly vast but when you start to see yourself as part of a huge coming wave of action, and you start to feel yourself as part of that, then it's exciting and energising you no longer feels so puny, or hopeless.Collectively, we are in a time of call-and-response between how the geophysical situation is getting worse, but the human response is also accelerating. The Climate Majority Project is the kind of thing we need so the human response can deal with the geophysical situation, more than just reforming the status quo but not taking the shortcut of revolution, nor settling for ruins.LinksRupert's books here.MP WatchCommunity Climate ActionWildcardGeneral Counsel Sustainability ForumCadence RoundtableThe Deluge By Stephen Markley -- hereMore notesTwitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David

May 12, 202440 min

Erica Austin

Erica Austin is a social entrepreneur, community weaver, facilitator, photographer and Christchurch Ambassador (LinkedIn). She describes her self as a multi-potentialite, or someone with activities in many fields. As we will hear, in Erica's case, this is something of an understatement.I was first introduced to her as the Community Activator in the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, a community of 500+ innovators, entrepreneurs and investors committed to New Zealand as a basecamp for global impact. (I am an Edmund Hillary Fellow.)We have a very rich conversation, touching on many huge themes. One is culture and identity, especially in a place with strong indigenous and colonial heritages plus inward immigration. As her introduction (using the Maori tradition of Pepeha) makes clear, Erica was born in China, moved to Aotearoa New Zealand when she was young. We talk about Aotearoa New Zealand as both a bicultural and a multicultural nation: "acknowledging that, that Maori people are the first people who've arrived in this land, and then comes multiculturalism, to be able to then create a space for all people to thrive". How she is part of something she calls re-indigenisation, not decolonisation.Another theme is neurodiversity. Erica was diagnosed with ADHD when she was young, and really sees this as her superpower, which allows her to connect with other people, and people with places.One consequence is that Erica is involved in many things, and has organised her work according to the Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs).Erica's priorities for the next three years are integrating indigenous practice and knowledge into our modern world, and growing the idea of a learning ecosystem, where people are not just learning in schools, not learning just in the organisation, but actually creating multiple different pathways for them to understand and learn to create better future, the future focus learning opportunity.We did this interview in November 2023, and I remember being energised for days afterwards. I've just re-listened and again have a buzz from Erica's energy, her ambition, her practices of connecting people, and her uses of her superpower.LinksFESTATe Pūtahi Centre for Architecture and City Making E.A.CurationAko Ōtautahi Learning City ChristchurchAlly Skills NZ Leadership Lab NZ Asia New Zealand Foundation Taonga -- treasureTangata Tiriti – Treaty PeopleTreaty of WaitangiMore on the SDG 0 story here.More notes hereTwitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David

April 19, 202452 min

Alex Evans

Alex Evans is Founder and Executive Director of Larger Us, a "community of change-makers who share the aim of using psychology for good – to bridge divides, build broader coalitions and bring people together" (Alex's Twitter).Alex set up Larger Us to flip society from a breakdown dynamic and into a breakthrough dynamic. That means paying attention to hwo the state of world impacts our state of mind, how our state of mind how we show up, and how we affect others through our behaviour, especially in a primed and fast-hyper-connected world.We were speaking a month on from Hamas attacking Isreal, adn the Isreali response. Alex had written a fantastic blog post on how to make sense and respond without just accelerating the conflict.He says the real tussle of our times is between those two perspectives : zero-sum ('for me to win, you must lose) or nonzero sum ('for me to win, you must win also'). If we want contribute to towards nonzero sum outcomes, and avoid feeding conflict, then it starts with managing our own mental and emotional states."For Alex this part of a wider sense that the kind of moment humankind is now living through it is a sort of initiation threshold. We need a deep story that's capable of holding the immense difficulty and intensity and all the contradictions of this moment that we're living through.LinksAlex's book: The Myth GapRupert Read's Climate Majority ProjectLarger Us: Climate ConversationsDeep Canvassing (on Wikipedia)The Larger Us Podcast: How to change people's minds - with Dave FleischerRadical Love campaign in The Atlantic and The Alternative (I couldn't find the Book of Radical Love on the Larger Us website).Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization (2010)The Long Crisis COVID scenariosAlex's blog post on the Middle East.Ways to Get Involved with Larger UsThe Age of Endarkenment essay by Michael VenturaTimings0:50 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?23:35 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?32:18 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?38:40 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?42:15 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?46:43 Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?51:11 Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?Twitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David

November 3, 202336 min

Ella Saltmarshe

Ella Saltmarshe sits "at the intersection of culture, narrative and systems change" (website, LinkedIn, twitter). She describes herself as a founder, systems change specialist, anthropologist, writer, podcaster, teacher, activist, and (as of very recently) a mother.We recorded this interview on 31 October 2023, only a few weeks into the Isreal-Gaza conflict. Anyone who follows Ella's work will have seen her recent focus on that conflict. For the start of any International Women's Day events (8 Mar 2024), she suggested people use some acknowledgements. This one spoke to me in particular:"Before we start, let's take a moment to acknowledge and remember the extreme suffering and terror experienced by women in Gaza, Israel and the west bank over recent months. The 195 women killed by Hamas on October 7th, the at least 14 female hostages still remaining in Gaza. The 8,570 (and growing number of) Palestinian women who have been killed by Israel. The 5500 women who are due to give birth in Gaza over the next month with no medical facilities, with 40% of those pregnancies classified as high risk. May our actions contribute to their safety. May we support each other in working for an immediate ceasefire. As women, may we demonstrate what international solidarity looks like, today and everyday. "Our conversation focused on the role of culture and narrative in helping us transition to a regenerative future. In particular, how we are really messy, irrational, emotional creatures. So we need to be working at the level of emotions. The things that move us emotionally are stories.In particular, Ella is focused on nurturing cultures that have stewardship at their core.She suggests building communities around the questions that move you.LinksLong Time Project "aims to galvanise public imagination and collective action to help us all be good ancestors."Long Time AcademyInter-Narratives. Subscribe to the newsletter here.More on my late wife's work on the use of time in child and adolescent psychotherapy here.You can hear Steve Waygood explain Macro-Stewardship here.Timings0:56 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?9:35: BONUS QUESTION: What is it that you mean by narrative?17:43 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?19:53 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?22:58 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?26:01 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?28: 59 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?29:41 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?Twitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David

November 3, 202341 min

Kim Polman

Kim Polman is Co-Founder & Chair of Reboot the Future, a fellow of the Aspen Institute and co-founder and chair of the Kilamanjaro Blind Trust (bio on the Reboot website, LinkedIn, Twitter). The purpose of Reboot the Future acts on the belief that a better future is possible if we follow the Golden Rule, that we treat others and the planet as we’d wish to be treated.In the conversation we dive into the Golden Rule and how that is applied in Reboot The Future. Plus how Kim is a late blooming baby boomer, who didn't get in front of a microphone until she was 60. She also touches on the importance of love, almost as a practice to be resilient and attract opportunities. Plus, how we are all leaders in our own spheres, and so we can all take action.Note: there's a moment at about 10 minutes where my connection freeze. But it is barely noticeable.LinksThe Golden Rule on wikipedia. The first book Kim co-authored on The Golden Rule: "Imaginal Cells: Visions of Transformation"Pope's encyclical on climate change Laudato si' (wikipedia entry, English version on Vatican website).Imaginal cells on wikipedia.Evolutionary LeadersTranscendence by Gaia VinceThe second book Kim co-wrote: Values for a Life Economy.Powerful Times interview with Tim Jackson.More on the 'Inner Game of Tennis' here.Global Dimension.Executive Masterclass on the Golden Rule.Timings0:56 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?17:16 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?27:50 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?31:05 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?33:01 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?35:33 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?36:53 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?Twitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David

November 3, 202328 min

Jonathon Porritt

Jonathon Porritt is a sustainability campaigner and writer (website, Twitter, Wikipedia). After years in the Green Party (while working full-time as a teacher), in 1984 he became director of Friends of the Earth in Britain and then co-founded Forum for the Future in 1996. (One of the other co-founders was Paul Ekins, who I interviewed for Powerful Times here. I worked with Jonathon when I was at Forum, 2003-2016.) Jonathon was also Chair of the UK Sustainable Develop Commission for nine years (2000-2009) and Chancellor of Keele University (2012-2022).He has been at the forefront of sustainability, in business and also government, for the last 30 years. We spoke in November 2023, just after he had, in his own words, extricated himself from the roles which had been very present in that time, including stepped back from any role in Forum.For Jonathon, at the heart of sustainable development is this very simple, but massively powerful notion of intergenerational justice. That is still provides the rationale for everything that he does and allows him to envision ways in which 8 billion today and 10 billion people in the future could live reasonably good lives in the future.One telling reflection: a focus on positive solutions for the last 30 years has put Jonathon's anger on hold, and he now feels that has been problematic. He's moving back into campaigning, being less reasonable with those who deserve our anger, and also still constantly absorbing in the solutions to the problems we face.LinksBrundtland Commission definition of sustainable development:"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."Jonathon's latest book, Hope in Hell.Grist Imagine 2220Timings00:56 - Q1. What are you doing now? And how did you get there?3:55 -Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?7:35 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?10:31 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?14:00 Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?19:37 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?22:36 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?More details here.Twitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David

November 3, 202328 min

Dave Snowden

Dave Snowden (Twitter, LinkedIn) is Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of The Cynefin Co. The Cynefin Co is "the world leader in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world". The Cynefin Framework is a decision support framework, a way of determining what method to adopt in this particular situation.Dave is a thorough-to-brusque practitioner and thinker using Complex Adaptive Systems (a dynamic network of interactions where the behaviour of the ensemble is not predictable from the components, and which is able to adapt to changing circumstances).Two key points I take from our conversation:-Don't focus on changing people (for which there is little evidence of success). Instead, focus on changing the connections people have with other people opens up more possibility for the whole assembly. -From a complexity view, the world is constantly changing and the information you have is partial. Better to be responsive to what's happening around you, rather than having aplan which will be immediately out of date.LinksProbably the most recent full explanation of the Cynefin Framework and how to us it is here. "Managing complexity (and chaos) in times of crisis. A field guide for decision makers inspired by the Cynefin framework" published by the EU. SenseMaker® is a distributed ethnographic approach to understanding a situation. By allowing respondents to give meaning to their own experience, it avoids the epistemic injustice of third-party of algorithmic interpretations. "SenseMaker® allows the powerful combination of vast amounts of data, with the rich context of narrative, based on the anecdotes of real people going about their real lives. Very importantly, SenseMaker® places the voices and interpretations of people at the centre, instead of privileging those in power."Camino de SantiagoTimings0:50 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?6:03 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?11:52 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?20:58 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?22:46 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?25:52 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?26:58 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?Twitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David

May 13, 2023Episode 3938 min

Jacquie McGlade

Prof Jacquie McGlade (Twitter, Wikipedia) is an administrator, academic, advocate and more besides. Currently she is Professor of Natural Prosperity, Sustainable Development and Knowledge Systems at UCL (which is how I know her) and a lecturer at Strathmore Business School in Nairobi, which is where she lives. She is married to a Maasai village chief.In a frankly amazing career, Jacquie has been a scientist, the executive director of the European Environment Agency, and the Chief Scientist at UNEP. She is also a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Downforce Technologies, a pioneer in science-led, data-driven land management solutions focused on optimising soil health, soil organic carbon levels, and biodiversity (I had a small part in setting up Downforce Technologies).Jacquie has a rare combination of (Western) science and indigenous knowledge. She is like the fish she studied for her PhD, able to travel into the oceans and back into fresh water. The striking themes are on:-The need for high quality data people trust so they can make new decisions.-The importance of having enough people in society trying something new, so society can evolve.-Ensuring her village can thrive without Western tourism income.LinksUCL Institute for Global ProsperityUNEPUNDPIlya Prigogine, Nobel prize-winning chemist, was one of the foundational thinkers of what is now called complex systems,because of his discoveries of self-organisation.UCL Citizen Science AcademyWellbeing Economy AllianceChris Smaje -- A Small Farm FutureJacquie's Gresham Lectures are at the bottom of this link.Achim SteinerCrispin TickellVincent OgotuVandana Shiva Timings0:50 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?13:39 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?22:22 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?25:36 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?28:35 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?31:25 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?36;12 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?Twitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David

May 13, 2023Episode 4049 min

Amy Twigger Holdroyd

APOLOGIES FOR SOME SOUND ISSUES RIGHT AT THE START AND END OF THIS RECORDING.Amy Twigger Holroyd is Associate Professor of Fashion and Sustainability at Nottingham School of Art & Design (website). Through design-led participatory research, she explores plural possibilities for post-growth fashion systems: alternative ways of living with our clothes that meet our fundamental human needs and respect ecological limits.Her main project pursuing this is Fashion Fictions, which invites you to to imagine, explore and enact enticing alternative fashion worlds. Stage One: Worlds is to write an enticing, possible parallel world (as I type, there are 213 which you can still add to here). Stage Two: Explorations is to generate visual and material is to prototypes of those worlds (eg a mocked-up WhatsApp chat). Stage Three: Enactments is to try and experience the prototyped Worlds. Our conversation covers: -How fashion (the clothes people wear, and how those are created) are an expression of society.-Her motivation: using participatory fiction to expand the sense of possibility, because so many people feel hemmed in.-She's currently excited by the realisation that we can write stories, and then, by enacting them, we can make them real. It is a sort of magic. By the way, the sound problems come from having to use the back-up recording. I hope they don't interfer with your enjoyment too much.LinksKeep & ShareBook Amy co-authored: Historical Perspectives on Sustainable Fashion.Arturo Escobar -- Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of WorldsThe Great Transition Initiative, expressed in a book called 'Journey to Earthland' by Paul Raskin.Diana Wynne Jones' series with numbered worlds is Chrestomanci.Kate FletcherTimings0:51 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?12:43 -- BONUS QUESTION: What is your project, Fashion Fictions?22:41 -- BONUS QUESTION: What are the themes in your findings from Fashion Futures?29:41 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?33:58 -- Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?41:10 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?44:31 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?46:12 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?48:02 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?More details here.Twitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David

May 13, 2023Episode 3743 min

Sandrine Dixson-Declève

Sandrine Dixson-Declève is Co-President of The Club of Rome (LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia). She divides her time between leading The Club of Rome, advising, lecturing, and facilitating difficult conversations. She currently Chairs the European Commission, Expert Group on Economic and Societal Impact of Research & Innovation (ESIR) and sits on the European Commissions Mission on Climate Change & Adaptation.We speak a lot about the latest findings of systems dynamics modelling as expressed in the book Sandrine co-authored, Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity.The major finding is the need to address inequality and poverty, in order to avoid a graver social backlash and to make action on environmental challenges easier politically.This is a reversal of many environmentalists over the last decades, who have said: yes, inequality is important, but if we don't address climate change first then any improverments in poverty will be wiped out anyway.Sandrine turning that logic around: the only way to have an environmental transition is to have a just transition.The other finding in Earth for All is that all this can and must be done through economic growth, just a growth decoupled from impact. Sandrine explains how from 22:29.LinksClub of RomeMore on Jay Wright Forrester, pioneering systems scientist at MIT, here and builder of the first World Dynamics modelling which fed into the Limits to Growth report.Earth4All is a vibrant collective of, co-convened by The Club of Rome, and builds on the legacies of The Limits to Growth and the Planetary Boundaries frameworks. In effect the website, background papers and book are the 50 year update to the Limits to Growth report.Amitav Ghosh's The Nutmeg's CurseMore on Inflation Reduction Act, or 'IRA', here.More on Amartya Sen's claim on democracy and famines here.The red dotted-line of GDP still grows in the Giant Leap scenario:This diagram: Callegari B., Stoknes P.E., People and Planet: 21st- century sustainable population scenarios and possible living standards within planetary boundaries. Earth4All, March 2023, version 1.0. EU Expert group on the economic and societal impact of research and innovation (ESIR) here.I have now put the chapter from the unpublished book on my website here. It explores 'security through protection' vs 'security through renewal'.More links hereTwitter: Powerful_TimesWebsite hub: here.Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.Thank you for listening! -- David