"Only a crisis produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around." --Milton Friedman
What are we up to, we bright greens? It might be said that we know there's a crisis coming and we're trying to make sure that when that hits, people find the transformative solutions they need waiting for them.
We're approaching a threshold moment. For the first time, the gravity of having built an unsustainable civilization is beginning to tug at the public mind. This is the end of the beginning, and a very good thing.
But we haven't stepped across that threshold yet. When we do, it will be because people suddenly confront two large, heavy and interlocked ideas. First, that more than just polar bears and penguins are at stake here -- the catastrophes that loom ahead threaten our homes and families, our well-being and security as well. These catastrophes will be unfolding in our lives, not on our TVs. Second, that the changes we need to make to avoid these catastrophes will not stop at small steps, but will demand the rapid redesign of our entire material civilization.
When hundreds of millions of people wake up feeling like someone took a sledgehammer to their understanding of the world, you'd better believe that huge upheavals will follow. It's not easy for people to realize that they are poised on the brink of an unthinkable future, and that self-preservation demands a leap into the unimaginable. That moment will be the real crisis.
That moment may arrive sooner than we think. When it comes, we'll all be glad for the work of the kinds of people we here at Worldchanging write about, work with and admire from afar.
Because if we all keep doing our jobs right, when our friends and neighbors and coworkers and countrymen recover from their initial shock, and begin to look around for some practical tools for fixing the problem, they'll find them. Better still, they'll find tools for making their own tools.
Indeed, these might be our victory conditions:
That when that hour of need comes, we have already realistically and compellingly envisioned the planet's future as both bright and green.
That we can offer working models of how to deliver dynamic and prosperous lives to everyone, allowing us to thrive within the planet's very real limits.
That we've assembled a toolbox of the best existing solutions for rapidly building out those models using new systems, new approaches and new thinking.
That we can widely share the techniques for making your own built-to-fit tools for solving your own unique local problems.
That we've learned how to talk with people about the changes we face, and the capacities we have, in such a way that they understand that they must be the ones who act to solve this crisis... they have some sense of how one might go about doing it, and some confidence in their success. That we replace fear (and fear-mongering) with intentional optimism.
We get there fast enough, it seems to me, and we win.
But what about you? How would you like to mass-produce the change? What ideas would you like to leave lying around for when the crisis hits?
