Reminder: Living Between Worlds. | Glasgow: What now? | Trimtabs: 1-on-1 | Hope
LIVING BETWEEN WORLDS
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Last month we explored four-letter words, starting with hope and fear. (h^t Meg Wheatley.) My plan for this month was to visit the four-letter word “plan,” and in the wake of the Glasgow climate summit we’ll do just that, both conceptually and pragmatically.
GLASGOW: What happened. What didn’t happen. What was revealed. What now.
In a nutshell: Progress and disappointment at COP26, perhaps inevitably. An overwhelming lack of urgency…that was likely though not inevitable.
It’s hard to move even one complex organization—the wheels of bureaucracy grind exceedingly slow—let alone a complex planetary culture. But it’s telling that the largest single delegation in Glasgow was the fossil fuel industry. Even more chilling, for me, behind the great difficulty of getting a clear commitment to the absolutely fundamental step of ending fossil fuel subsidies—which after all are the way that we tax ourselves to pay ourselves to destroy ourselves—was the shocking discovery that this is the first time “fossil fuels” were even mentioned in a COP draft in 25 years! Can you imagine how stuck we are?!
What now? Well, let’s talk about that Wednesday. My initial speculation: Politics, though deeply disappointing, still matters, and despair and abandonment will just make make things worse. But elections aren’t the only or the key domain of action; keep your eye on the streets, picket lines, and shopping carts. My own attention and efforts are focused on the innovation and action in business, finance—and the stories we tell ourselves.
TRIMTABS: 1-on-1
As many of you know, in addition to strategy and policy work with companies, cities, and asset managers—and these conversations with you—I work one-on-one with a few selected clients as a Trimtab 4 Trimtabs™. Odds are that you’re a trimtab—the small rudder that turns the big rudder that turns a ship so big that the big rudder is impossible to move directly. That’s what you do; you find the ways to turn the ship. I help you find ways to help you turn you.
So, if you’re:
– A leader or emerging leader focused on climate, sustainability/regeneration, innovation, impact investing (and, some of you, “the transformation of everything”)…
– Challenged, animated/energized, —and maybe overwhelmed—by the pressure, possibility, and opportunity of this moment (in history and in your life)…
– Prepared to invest in yourself, your future, and the future you’re committed to bring into being…
– Then please complete this intake form, and apply for a no-obligation sample session.
HOPE
“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
In solidarity,
Gil