Back Issue - May 2003

Persistence

At the time of my writing the last Boiling Point in January: 'On keeping your eye on the ball' (now listed on the Back Issue page), the priority seemed to be to keep focussed on urgent environmental issues against the noisy background of all the talk being of war. However, instead of more long-standing problems regaining public attention after the war has happened, the future of the planet seems more confused and more uncertain than ever. How can this be usefully understood so that we can decide what to do about it?

Part of the answer appears to lie in a very confused outcome of the war. In the February issue of The Ecologist, Paul Kingsnorth wrote an arresting piece called 'Weasel words' where he quoted an essay of fifty-five years ago by George Orwell in which he said:

' "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness... When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.... If the words fall upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details",

then somebody somewhere is doing something they don't want you to know about, and probably in your name and with your money.' Kingsnorth then gave examples of current euphemisms and their true meaning: 'modernisation' of the fire service = 'privatisation'; 'unlocking cost savings' = 'sacking people'; 'collateral damage' = 'dead babies' as a result of war; 'pre-emptive defence' = 'attacking anyone we want to and justifying it by saying they might attack us one day'; 'daisy cutter' = 'the most powerful non-nuclear bomb known to man, and known to much of recently 'liberated' Afghanistan (and now Iraq) which it levelled last year like, well, daisies, apparently?'

So, confusion in the political sphere about Iraq, and a lot else, has to be expected. George Orwell's famous term 'doublespeak' from his book '1984' has become second nature since 'New Labour' was first 'spun'. Lots more examples can be found in the environmental sphere, but, in order to give them coherence I want first to explain the title of the Boiling Point: Persistence.

Way back in the 1960s I was introduced to the importance of Persistence by a teacher I greatly admire. He pointed out that the ability to persist in a line of action depends upon three prior conditions, which are, in preceding order: the ability to Control, understood as the ability to achieve chosen goals; the ability to Learn; and the ability to Communicate, understood as the interchange of information between (primarily human) beings. He had so much to teach on these subjects that he once devoted a whole year of weekly meetings to the subject of Communication alone.

Communication

The examples of 'doublespeak' I have given, and will complement with others in the environmental sphere, all block effective Communication. The lessons we can draw from such miscommunication are therefore bound to confuse our effective Learning ability. With our capabilities for Communication and Learning thus fouled-up, it is almost impossible to achieve chosen goals (Control). And, lacking that ability, the chances of Persisting in our efforts 'to protect and sustain the natural world' (the aim of Save our World) are greatly diminished. And many of the spanners-in-the-works appear deliberate, so don't feel too surprised at being profoundly frustrated, if not depressed. On the other hand, I take it as axiomatic, that an essential element in improving our totally necessary powers of Persistence, is to clear up the confusions that beset us, in the realms of Communication and Learning.

Some of them are probably obvious to us in Europe, but with the brainwashing going on in the US, they may be in such common parlance that they are difficult to stand back from and recognise there. Take the report in the UK Guardian newspaper for Tuesday 4 March this year. Under the title 'Memo exposes Bush's new green strategy', we read that the environment 'is the domestic issue on which George Bush is most vulnerable'. The advice of 'the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz' to politicians is thus all too predictable:

' "Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."

'The phrase "global warming" (considered "frightening") should be abandoned in favour of "climate change", Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as "conservationist" instead of "environmentalist" , because "most people" think environmentalists are "extremists" who indulge in "some pretty bizarre behaviour ... that turns off many voters". Words such as "common sense" should be used, with pro-business arguments avoided wherever possible.'

This report clarifies a lot of confusion, doesn't it? It makes it abundantly clear that the motivation of the adviser, and so presumably the advised, is not disinterested scientific knowledge, but pro Republican and pro big business ideology. It sets out deliberately to con the public. It further explains why the Republican party and big business welcomed the global-warming-is-good-news 'skeptical environmentalist' Bjorn Lomborg with open arms (with endorsements from the Washington Post, the Economist and The Wall street Journal and even by a party Senator on BBC Newsnight) - the danger of which I foresaw in writing the Boiling Point issue for September 2001 on 'Denial, Justification and Deception about the Climate Crisis' (now a Back Issue). And it explains why the US Administration, and the UK one, suddenly went quiet about their oil corporations dividing the spoils of war in Iraq - as soon as the public started to tumble to the 'need' for oil being one of the causes for war.

More insidious than these gaffes, of course, are the silences and inactions on the environmental crises. It has become second-nature to flinch at an expected barrage of 'What crisis?', for there have been a number of such 'skeptical' ( I rather like the misspelling since it reveals its underlying hostility) challenges in the press, and no doubt there will be many more. They, like Lomborg, invariably try to reduce those ringing alarm bells to silence and reassure the public that they can go back to sleep, because 'there is nothing to worry about' and 'life as we know it will carry on indefinitely'. These messages reinforce public denial of especially global warming/climate change as an urgent problem, which most people want to hear - for very understandable reasons.

Not content with silence and inaction, much of the media diverts the consuming public's interest into sporting and entertaining pursuits, which keeps it safely away from challenging political/corporate interests. Such interests epitomise, to the authors of the new Schumacher Briefing 'Gaian Democracies', the predominant western culture of Global Monetocracy. To dispel any doubt about this, just consider the carve up of reconstruction contracts in Iraq which are currently being awarded to the 'victors' in the disputably legal war against Saddam's Iraq. This is what our initially clear-sighted children grow up to Learn: 'facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details'.

So what can those actively seeking to protect and sustain our exquisite planet do about all this? First of all: Wise Up!, which the foregoing observations are aimed to support. And a big part of doing so is also to become your own detective.

Learning

As we can no longer take anything we read or see on TV at face value, we have to cross-check everything of importance from a number of different sources. Unless an immediate response to new information is necessary, it is normally sufficient to keep one's ears and eyes open for additional later support or contradiction for what one comes across initially. This not only provides more confidence, but it enables one to take a reliable stance on big issues. In other words it provides a strong and independent basis of Learning.

Not taking what we read or see for granted also applies to sources that we have taken to be reliable in the past. You may consider this either worrying or stimulating, according to your temperament. For instance, the revelation that the lifestyle we generally enjoy in the UK and Europe requires the equivalent resources of three Earth planets instead of the only one we have (six planets for the 'American Way of Life'), should make us realise that in the eyes of much of the relatively disadvantaged world, we are the exploiters, that need to change our lifestyles anyway, not just on account of future impacts of e.g. Climate Change. This realisation, of course, makes a mockery of our government's claims to reconcile a policy of unlimited economic growth with so called 'Sustainable Development'.

Most of us have also grown up to take the objectivity of scientific data for granted, as well as the neutrality of scientists. It was not until I embarked on research for PhD that I realised how long this assumption has been contested, though scientists, like all professionals, have liked to be credited with being 'experts' and have generally not let the public realise how doubtful this has always been. The claim for objectivity and neutrality is becoming ever-more tenuous with the establishment of corporately-funded chairs and faculties in universities and corporate interests represented on funds-awarding research councils. The following eye-opening extracts are taken from: 'Oil on water: Academia may be compromised by its links with the oil industry' in Guardian Education on February 25, 2003:

'At the very time the government has committed itself to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, its energy research policy is geared to increasing dependence on fossil fuels... The Royal Society of Chemistry evidence to the Dearing Committee: "There was great difficulty in finding impartial scientific experts for the inquiry into the Exxon Valdez oil disaster, as the university scientists with suitable expertise were compromised through working in collaboration with the oil industry ... Because the government now sees education as entirely job-orientated, industries are starting to write the curriculum. As a result, many geology courses now have compulsory modules in petroleum geology."

This is thin end of the wedge for Dr David Packham (senior lecturer in the department of material sciences and engineering at the University of Bath): "Unless considerable care is taken, the commitment to truth and freedom of thought is replaced by the de facto engendering of an ideological commitment. A colleague of mine accepted oil company sponsorship to prepare teaching materials on petroleum. He was ordered to delete all references to oil spills and their damaging effects." '

I am continually amazed that, despite this kind of information now being readily accessible in the public realm, scientists and academics still attend conferences with the firm conviction that all they have to do is to present a rational, scientifically supported, case to the government for e.g. renewable energy, for the government to adopt it promptly and make it policy. So much for an outdated notion of Learning.

Control (achieving chosen goals)

Heaven forbid that 'achieving chosen goals' becomes confused with 'control-freakery' - which shows how many associations we need to Un-learn. My previously mentioned teacher used to say the main problem with Learning is Unlearning what is mistaken knowledge!

A year ago, at the time of Save our World's vigorous correspondence with the UK Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, energy-levels and hopes were high of 'real progress' on sustainability at the World Summit in Johannesburg. Now all that has dissipated, and we cannot even get a workable forum together of Non-government Organisations to form a proposed Coalition for Climate Crisis Resolution. Why?

The current talk everywhere seems to be of 'Road-maps' ... for the Middle East, and even among the 'Pro-euro' politicians in the UK parliament and their supporters. Fear was publicly expressed last week, that support for the UK adopting the Euro currency would fragment if the government does not provide a 'road-map' for making it happen. I guess the same dejection is affecting the environmental movement over the lack of a 'road-map' for stabilising the world's climate or for achieving sustainable development.

The latter is made impossible with the kind of 'doublespeak' or 'spin' about it as described above. Stabilising the climate has ironically been undermined by the UK Prime Minister's latest impassioned demand for the same greenhouse gas reductions we were campaigning for last year: more than 60% in under 50 years - followed the very next day by his own Secretary of State for Transport announcing a proposed dramatic expansion of the aviation industry! Undermined because air-travel is the fastest-growing cause of increasing greenhouse gases. And this is not the first time this farce has happened! Tony Blair's last impassioned speech on the environment was immediately followed by his government caving in to the (fossil) fuel-price protesters - and effectively sinking the government's traffic reduction (and so greenhouse gas reduction) policy!

We therefore Learn not to believe our Prime Minister or his government on their climate-change and other environmental policies (of which the so-called 'debate' on genetically modified crops is likely to be the next stitch-up) - and rightly so!

One thing we can do is to make our own 'road-map' with inevitably more modest goals. And the one that comes immediately to mind is aimed to challenge our Aviation Industry's plans for expansion in a very down-to-earth way - by mounting a campaign to combat its proposals for the construction of additional airport runways. The advantages appear to be:

It is concrete, specific and responding to events on the ground and effects on local people's lives, which I believe can engage our supporters who find climate coalition-building otherwise too abstract to get involved with.
It can have mutual benefit for the protesters and those affected in the localities, as well as for supporting a broader movement to avert dangerous climate change.
It includes the most critical and fastest-growing threat to climate stability in the form of greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft - which is an additional ingredient that the local protesters are not able to address sufficiently themselves.
It encapsulates the Government's dishonesty in claiming to demand radical action on averting dangerous climate change, while promoting the expansion of the greatest threat to climate stability.
It opens up wider issues that the protesters have no means of addressing, such as: the Government's projections of the demand for air-travel (ignoring financial subsidies and tax incentives supporting it, and the undermining effects of fears of terrorist attacks), support for unlimited economic growth (see argument on this above!), and reliable Insurance Industry projections (presented to the UN climate change international conference at The Hague) that the rising cost of weather-related disasters is forecast to bankrupt the global economy by 2065!
It creates another possible specific campaign (in addition to Operation Noah described in the last Boiling Point/Back Issue 'On keeping your eye on the ball) upon which to focus the embryonic Coalition for Climate Crisis Resolution; and:
It provides opportunities for co-operation among subgroups (or sub-coalitions) of organisations, according to areas of agreement and shared energy, within the overall C4CCR, without areas of conflict between individual organisations disrupting or emasculating the overall Coalition.

These points do not provide a 'road-map', but a set of potentially achievable goals can be developed in order to produce one, by those who are convinced by them and agree to work together.

Persistence

However, there is more to Persistence than having resolved confusions of Communication, established one's Learning on a sound footing, and produced a good 'road-map' for achieving chosen goals. What makes one 'walk-the-talk' and Persist in doing so? One's inner resources.

Communication is the interchange of information between (human) beings - not machines, not brains, not bodies, but beings - whole people, unalloyed by obsessions, addictions, and cravings - whether that be for oil, power, or being returned to power in the next election. Learning is primarily a function of being - of who and how you function as a human being, not a repository of data. Achieving chosen goals requires understanding of what is involved and the quality of persistence in pursuing the necessary cycles of action required to achieve the goals.

So Persistence requires the development of inner qualities and is a quality itself. On the one hand this may appear daunting, but on the other it reveals that most of what we require is within us - not dependent on others. It is also much simpler than one might suppose, for the most crucial point in taking action is changing one's attitude (hence the inclusion of changing attitudes in the Objects of Save our World). Is it not true that a change in attitude towards whom you date, live with or marry, directly affects the rest of your life?

Persistence applies to achieving goals, but is not limited to specific ones. As both individuals and organisations like Save our World are always pursuing one goal or another, the quality of Persistence is a general quality that all of us always need. The same applies to the other qualities that have featured in previous Boiling Points, particularly the one (now a Back Issue) on: 'It all comes down to what you care about most'. There I wrote about: care and compassion, commitment, resolution and endurance, and 'stating our truth'.

Environmental Citizenship

People that I come across, both within Save our World and generally, who are concerned with solving increasingly critical environmental problems, do so from a wide variety of angles. Most of these angles are dualistic, pitting oneself or one's group against 'others', 'the system', institutions of some kind. And most people look for solutions through trying to influence: governments, politicians, the media, corporations and others through using: persuasion, lobbying, strategies, campaigning, tactical manoeuvres, assembling facts or direct action - without first considering where they themselves are coming from and what baggage they are bringing with them.

Whereas what really counts is one's state, self-understanding, motivation, integrity, conviction, steadiness, commitment, faith and the other qualities just mentioned. These qualities are preconditions for effecting any durable change. So I am interested in developing group training in these qualities and perspectives, applied to the current and critical environmental situation. By doing so I aim to facilitate a culture of common values, support and understanding to our own activities within Save our World, and offer the same to other individuals and organisations. I believe this training will have lasting value, what ever the ups and owns of the current issues we try to tackle.

So I invite you to respond both objectively to this proposal for developing environmental citizenship, and subjectively as an individual who might be inclined to use such training, in your own environmental activities.

The link between taking practical action and developing these qualities implies a much closer relationship between the pragmatic and the spiritual dimension of Save our World - than even I considered until recently. Surely this is one of our distinguishing qualities. It would be great to have your views on this as well, both generally and for an organisation like ours.

Best wishes for now.

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