Choose Your Level

We would do well to be as clear on our crisis conversation level as we are on our content. We would also all benefit by occasionally stepping outside of the level in our comfort zone to hear what is being shared by those who are actually taking a different kind of action or who are using a profoundly different lens to examine exactly the same crisis.

I would hardly be considered a Climate Change activist. I don’t write letters to my Member of Parliament, I don’t attend protests, and (compared to my colleagues) I don’t spend a lot of time talking about fossil fuels or renewable energy. From a practical standpoint, I’m pretty fanatical about not wasting energy, but I don’t own an EV or hybrid.

Still, I’m by no means a denier, nor am I apathetic, and I certainly know enough to not be a NIMPLE (Not In My Personal Life Expectancy). Instead of choosing the Climate Emergency as my hill to die on, my battleground against our polycrisis is on the tectonic plate that Greta Thunberg’s hill (and several other ecological overshoot battles) rest upon. (Technically, that suggests I prefer to address the metacrisis, not the polycrisis, or some component thereof.)

The last time I discussed this crisis response spectrum (Apples of Hope, Oranges of Doom), I was exploring the common perceptions of solution-focused activists and ‘doomsayer’ systems thinkers. In this essay, I’d like to explore the importance of both - indeed, the full spectrum - to the challenges at hand.

The most effective discussions for anyone to take part in will be those that resonate with that person’s worldview and comfortable operating framework. At the same time, not everyone is wired to work at the same scope level. Planning for the D-Day Normandy invasion called both for someone to select landing beachheads and someone counting the food rations. A successful invasion without either one of them would have been impossible.

To employ another metaphor, think of civilization as some kind of massive computer program. Climate activists see all kinds of issues in the software, ranging from the way it’s being used and the options being chosen, to the actual programming; and the flaws go back a few hundred years at the most. Systems thinkers, on the other hand, see deeper concerns, ranging from the operating system to the actual hardware (wetware?); and some of the problems might arguably be an unavoidable part of our evolution.

Some systems thinkers are indeed critical of the current frontline activists, saying that trying to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a waste of time, and does not alter the ultimate outcome of societal collapse (i.e. why attempt to download a new program for this computer when the memory is sketchy and the power supply is failing?) I suggest that criticism is misplaced. I prefer a Pascal’s wager approach . It’s an undeniable truth that either Homo sapiens will survive this crisis, or it won’t. If a systemic change is indeed necessary for that survival, a key prerequisite for that will surely be having a critical mass of people who care. And if our extinction is indeed inevitable, what’s the harm in trying to improve our dying days? Activity on the activism stage doesn’t really obstruct anything at the systems level. As a systems thinker myself, I don’t believe the ‘solution implementers’ are wasting their time, but it would be a waste of mine to join them.

On the flip side, I’m tired of progressive acquaintances telling me that I’m uncaring or unrealistic, or a spreader of negativity, or a patsy for the fossil fuel industry, or dreaming in Technicolor of impossible value shifts. Yes, it’s true that I don’t accept the possibility of a lasting solution within society’s existing value paradigm. But I don’t disparage their attempts - the fact that they too refuse to accept the status quo is what is crucial.

(A colleague notes that some people are acquiring EVs, not because of their environmental benefit, but because they are cool technology or save them money. He says he doesn’t care why they are going green, so long as they do so. Conversely, I believe the why to be more important, but I take a similar approach. I don’t care as much whether or not they actually adopt a solution, so long as they are aware of the values at stake, and understand the crisis!)

So, when I talk about crisis conversations in terms of their ‘level’, what exactly am I referring to? If there’s an existing framework for this, I’m not familiar with it, so I’ll create my own categories for now. (Am I missing any? Should any labels be changed? Feel free to steer me in a better direction!) The eight crisis conversation levels I list below are not perfectly exclusive. Some refer to conversation content and intention, some refer to the conversation forum, and all have overlaps. The first four are characterized by action (or calls for action); the second four are pursuits with an emphasis on data gathering and understanding over action. As always, my objective is to inspire awareness and a cross-pollination of ideas.

Lifestyle Activism
These are the grassroots conversations of ecological awareness - the gardeners, the practitioners of radical simplicity, the eco-friendly behaviorists.

Political Activism
Protests, opinion pieces, and letter-writing campaigns fall into this second category, all calling for policy changes from leadership.

Technological Activity
This is another solution-oriented category, which covers commercial/industrial conversations as well as those of the early adopters and technology champions. It includes not only leading-edge innovations, but also the implementation of technological changes at scale.

Governance
There is, of course, a large amount of discussion in the public sector, where strategic policies are debated, decisions are made, and politicians attempt to balance the three major objectives of: economic growth, ecological protection/justice, and getting re-elected regardless.

Economic Studies
The conversations in this category revolve around what I called number-based values, with topics like economic growth (or degrowth!), currency systems, and putting prices on environmental benefits.

Ecological Studies
This broad category includes the work of climate scientists, biologists, and those who study natural system metabolism. From the perspective of this particular Substack series, these conversations generally focus on qualitative values.

Sociological Studies
This is similar to the Ecological conversations, but focuses more on human impacts. Common topics include consumption, population, behavioural science, societal collapse, eco-justice, etc.

System Studies
The lowest level of conversation, where I tend to reside, deals with deeper explorations of thermodynamics, philosophy, evolution, and (my personal favourite) value systems. It attempts to distill our crises down to energy flows and immutable laws, and struggles with applying those principles at the higher levels.

So, to discuss something as broad as ecological overshoot for example, that conversation could be happening at any one of these levels - and the discussions at different levels would be vastly different! This is not the same as trying to understand the arguments of those who clearly don’t agree with us. This is an exploration of the second dimension of crisis conversations. In my experience you may discover that people who are entirely sympathetic to your intent and don’t question your knowledge, are still not going to come across as supporters because their perspective is operating on an entirely different level. We would do well to be as clear on our crisis conversation level as we are on our content. We would also all benefit by occasionally stepping outside of the level in our comfort zone to hear what is being shared by those who are actually taking a different kind of action or who are using a profoundly different lens to examine exactly the same crisis.

Here’s another thought for you to weigh in on: There’s a lot of lifestyle/ political/ technological/ governance/ economic/ ecological/ sociological/ system-based Substack writers out there, sharing terrific thoughts on climate change, the environment, and ecological economics. What’s your home crisis conversation level? Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could categorize ourselves (or particular essays) into levels like this so that we could more easily find the content level that we are interested in?