{"id":2881,"date":"2015-12-12T19:01:13","date_gmt":"2015-12-12T19:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astraea.net\/blog\/?p=2881"},"modified":"2015-12-13T20:03:57","modified_gmt":"2015-12-13T20:03:57","slug":"system-change-social-media-and-your-choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/system-change-social-media-and-your-choices\/","title":{"rendered":"System change, social media and your choices."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"drowningworldcar\"<\/a>COP21 comes to a close as the wind howls and Jaspar’s rugby game is cancelled because so much water fell on the pitch last night.\u00a0 Climate change is great, but it’s not good.\u00a0 I love the warmer weather so here in Ireland it’s almost as warm as Hong Kong in the winter; you can go jogging and enjoy the breeze.\u00a0 But the volatility of weather is a symptom of broken systems.\u00a0 Both civilisation and nature.<\/p>\n

The consequences for the breakdown of nature and civilisation will be different.\u00a0 Nature will change – once nature was a burning ball in space, now it’s a paradise become decadent and failing.\u00a0 Civilisation will simply disappear – and might never come back.<\/p>\n

For some the idea that the human systems are dysfunctional and the weight of humanity is crushing nature is familiar.\u00a0 For many of them, it is a new realisation and the response reflects where they come from: community driven people tend to activism, strategic operators tend to business solutions, organisers tend to regulation, and so on. For a few the notion of integral solutions is a dawning awareness.<\/p>\n

\"Hand<\/a>All of these people are connected by social organisation and media.\u00a0 We all communicate with each other and ideas circulate quickly as nuggets of information on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, websites, journals, TV shows,\u00a0 … We tend to communicate with like minded people.\u00a0 It is not easy to cross over.\u00a0 But the filtering of from one group to another happens because in each of our circle of family and friends there are always a few “strange ones” who bring unfamiliar concepts to the conversation.\u00a0 (I might fit that description for many of my family and peers!)<\/p>\n

Social media allows this cross-fertilisation of ideas and it reveals the homogeneity of your group of friends.\u00a0 Who shares ideas about politics, art, religion, business, .. and so on?<\/p>\n

\"COP21march\"<\/a>While there has been a great deal of activity related to COP21, it has been predominantly among the same people:\u00a0 People who want to see system change, or people who have a vested interest in things staying as they are.<\/p>\n

The outcome of COP21 is not going to be remarkable.\u00a0 Sadly, the depth and breadth of understanding among leaders, and followers, is shallow and narrow.\u00a0 For example, even I was a little stunned, on the way back from picking Richard up from the airport, to calculate that we had released a quarter of\u00a0 his body weight of 60 odd kilos in CO2.<\/p>\n

\"gas_balloon_scale\"<\/a>A litre of fuel releases between 0.6 and 0.7 kg of carbon, which grabs another two molecules of oxygen to make carbon di-oxide, bringing the weight to around 1.8 kg.\u00a0 So for a 150 km round trip at 45 mpg (15.8 km\/litre) we needed 150\/15.8 or 9.5 litres which create 17 kilos of CO2.\u00a0 Just that one event produced nearly the same weight of CO2 as you find in a bag of cement.\u00a0 It’s heavy!\u00a0 And it’s just one event on one day.<\/p>\n

So even people like me can be stunned by the challenges we face.<\/p>\n

The problem nature faces has much to do with energy and our gratuitous use of fossil fuels.\u00a0 The reality is that humanity must live within the laws of nature, including not consuming more energy in a year than that captured by photosynthesis in a year.<\/p>\n

\"unethical\"<\/a>Civilisation is breaking down because the systems we have in place are unethical.\u00a0 Every crisis comes about because of moral failure.\u00a0 Corruption insinuates business, politics and religion.\u00a0 There are cries for change and some who show the way, but the establishment finds it hard to give up power.\u00a0 If evolution is not chosen, revolution erupts.<\/p>\n

So while you are part of the establishment, spare a moment for the alternative view that is shared by the fringes of your social circle.\u00a0 It’s not about equality it’s about equity.\u00a0 Be open to finding a way for systems to evolve.\u00a0 The system is a result of everybody’s choices.\u00a0 We must all choose better.\u00a0 We must aim to do the right thing the right way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COP21 comes to a close as the wind howls and Jaspar’s rugby game is cancelled because so much water fell on the pitch last night.\u00a0 Climate change is great, but it’s not good.\u00a0 I love the warmer weather so here in Ireland it’s almost as warm as Hong Kong in the winter; you can go …
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