Atelier WeekNotes w/c 13 May 2024
0/DETECTING: Carbon Removals Disquiet. In the Atelier: [Redacted] tech delegation; Influential Trajectories. Outputs: Powerful Times: Erica Austin; Rupert Read.
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (a studio for initiatives at the frontier of generating a better future). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
This week covers:
0/DETECTING
- Carbon Removals Disquiet
In the Atelier
- [Redacted] tech delegation
- Imagining Influential Trajectories
Outputs
- Powerful Times: Erica Austin
- Powerful Times: Rupert Read
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0/DETECTING
Carbon Removals Disquiet
On Wednesday evening I was at a networking dinner organised by Kegan Lovely (who has been in the finance x sustainability x tech space for a few decades; reach out if you want to be part of his Breakfasts With Interesting People (BWIP) or Dinners With Interesting People (DWIP); note that I did not come up with the name).
I had a long, intense conversation with one of the attendees who works on carbon removals.
We agreed on the core need for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR):
To stand a chance of being close to 1.5C of warming by 2100, we will need to be pulling greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere at scale.
We need to start now, in order to have scale and certainty in the second half of this century for what are currently niche and high-risk technologies.
Where we disagreed was on the political risks. I was fearful that incumbents, especially fossil fuel companies and countries, would use CDR as a fig leaf: a future, uncertain reduction, allowing them to continue with a present, clear harm.
My conversation buddy thought this could be solved by having separate targets: one for reducing emissions, and the other for removals.
But, says I, there is a long history of companies using their incumbent power to shape the rules in their favour, or using predatory delay to keep doing what they were already doing.
It was only after 20 minutes that the other person accepted that was a risk. But they felt that left us in in a world of ice, where there was no way forward because the incumbent power would always overwhelm or delay what we were trying to do.
I agreed that is extraordinarily frustrating. But if that is moderately accurate, we need to acknowledge it. Also, if it is moderately accurate, then what we need to work on is shifting the politics (so that incumbents have less sway), and being wary of accidentally helping them in the meantime.
Needless to say, the person I spoke with will keep going with CDR. And, I do accept the fundamental logic of starting now, so we can accelerate later.
But that doesn't remove my disquiet that CDR is helping incumbent fossil fuel companies remove their need to go into managed decline.
WHAT NEXT. I guess this implies working on the political conditions for success, right? More on this in the Powerful Times interview with Rupert Read on the Climate Majority Project below.
In the Atelier
[Redacted] tech delegation
Much of this week went into helping a trade delegation of female tech entrepreneurs with minority backgrounds from [redacted country]. I'm trying to make sure they have a breakfast to meet with tech start up advisors from the pro-impact, pro-sustainability ecosystem in London.
As I type, there is a tentative agreement. The first draft of this WeekNotes gave more details. But I'm not going to tempt fate. Instead, I'll put details in the WeekNote when things are confirmed.
Even so, some reflections, both positive for the Atelier:
Some evidence of connections into the London start-up world. I was able to reach out to 3 different institutions to be possible hosts.
Some evidence of goodwill in London start-up world. People were intrigued and wanted to help.
WHAT NEXT. Fingers crossed, the details are finalised. Then huge thanks to those who have made it happen (actually, I will thank them for trying, even if it doesn't come off). Also, distribute the invite and nudge people to attend. Then go along myself.
Imagining Influential Trajectories
Step: 4/DEVELOPING. Theme: Method; Sectoral Transformation; Governance; Futures.
Reminder: An approach (currently in a development stage) to accelerate change by creating share commitment to investments and initiatives that drive towards ambitious outcomes. The shared commitment follows from imagining different trajectories from today to a future goal together (informed by latest systems transition theories), and testing each to see if the necessary pre-conditions already exist.
Acknowledgment. Very grateful for the opportunity provided by Sustainable Shipping Initiative, and funding from Lloyd's Register Foundation, for the first pilot use in the State of Sustainable Shipping (SoSS).
Last week I hoped to share 'minimal viable product' templates in this WeekNote. In this WeekNote I state again my hope to share those templates in the following week.
WHAT NEXT. Work on those templates! Share them! Now!
Outputs
Powerful Times: 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:Â "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.
Powerful Times: 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. Experience 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 preofessor, 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 a 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.