634: Donald Robertson, part 1: Thinking in Systems (a third listener episode)
Don regularly reads my blog. We’ve emailed for years so after inviting to record episodes with other listeners, I invited him.
We both find a systems perspective the most effective way to understand and act on our environmental problems. I enjoyed talking to him about systems. Many people see them as technical, to the extent they get the view at all, but you don’t have to work with them that long to see they are how to understand the environment and how we can act on it effectively.
The alternative is to keep proposing solutions that sound nice but exacerbate our problems, things like trying to reduce carbon emissions alone, carbon offsets, recycling, chasing efficiency, and plans that accelerate the system and its polluting results. What works is changing our values, goals, images, beliefs, and things leaders work on. Changing the system, not being more efficient.
If you get and like systems, you’ll find our conversation refreshing. If you don’t get systems, you’ll appreciate learning from our conversation.