Optimism

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

By Brooke Williams

Jackson Hole, Wyoming - The other day I read yet another article by a guy who is definitely pessimistic about our chances to save ourselves from the ravages of climate change. (The Canyon Country Zephry out of Moab, Utah— http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/dec2009-jan2009/reality.html). In this one, author Doug Meyer points out that we don’t have the money, the land, the raw materials or the political will to make the changes necessary to stabilize our planet’s climate. For example, wind power, one of 14 “stabilization wedges” that will need to be brought on line, will require two million wind turbines, an area the size of Utah, Arizona and Colorado combined, as well as $5 trillion dollars. The other wedges present equally daunting challenges.  On one hand, this is not healthy stuff to read especially if you have children. On the other, I’d much rather know the full extent of the situation. I need the whole story.
What is the full story?

As I read this author’s dire predictions, I felt something shift inside me. This time, rather than decending into a dark frump, I had the realization that yes, we will save ourselves, that the technological ‘fixes’ mentioned in Meyer’s article, along with the changes we all make in our personal lives, will be significant factors. However, the key elements making our survival possible will be based on ideas we haven’t even dreamed yet, that we can’t right now imagine. In the same way that one of my Mormon ancestors pulling a handcart filled with all his worldly possessions, struggling to get to Utah, didn’t say to another, “If we’d have been born 150 years later, we could have flown,” those of us living today can’t imagine the future that awaits us.

I’m starting to wonder if perhaps the most important thing we have going for us is open-ended, imaginative thinking. If I’m right, then in addition to scientists and engineers, meterologists and economists, we need to encourage and support the artists, the poets, the designers.  More than that, we need to uncover the artists and poets and designers inside ourselves.

“Designers,” according to a blog I found by Paul Bennett of IDEO, one of the world’s leading industrial design firms (www.cabinetforum.org/index.php/blog/41/), “are fundamentally optimistic creatures, always looking to turn something over, to examine it from another angle, to get excited by making something new, something real, something personal, something positive.” Bennett emphasizes that today, design is not about the “lone genius,” but is highly collaborative. Designing our way out of the difficult situation in which we find ourselves, requires two fundamental things – the collective sense of optimism that we can save ourselves, and the knowledge that we need to do it together.

The power contained in the sun and wind is part of our survival story. Although it can’t be measured or used in formulas to predict the future, our imagination and creativity is another — I would say, major — part of the story.

Most of what we know about contributing personally to global solutions involves restraint—recycling, consuming less. But if the clearest, most effective solutions don’t currently exist, then perhaps we could contribute even more by removing all restraints from our own creativity. How to do this? I’m not exactly sure, but I’m excited to learn. 

Happy New Year. PJH


PERMALINK:
Optimism | Planet JH News Article: Left Wing Local

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