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Finding Nature
Introducing: The Encroaching Apocalypse or A Glorious New View
Today I’m launching and introducing to you the listener and the reader over on the Finding Nature Substack a project titled The Encroaching Apocalypse or A Glorious New View.
Like all things Finding Nature I feel compelled to examine and imagine what could be possible, but I want to know more about the barriers and the blockers of the present moment. I’ve spent the past few years working almost exclusively in the baffling world of climate risk management - the science of climate, the efforts to convince people that benign historical data is no indicator of a future we’ve never experienced as a civilisation, the visible progressive degradation caused by more frequent and intense disasters - often in new and expanded locations, but also the invisible progressive decline of how financial institutions are working out how to manage their enterprise risk and the types of restrictions or barriers they’re placing on access to the fundamental products people and businesses require to operate in an economy. The lack of action on changing building codes, the complacency of leadership, the sticking of heads in sand, the mindsets and incentives of the present and what those need to evolve to to avoid total calamity.
Watching the recent LA fires play out I couldn’t help but feel struck by how apocalyptic the scenes from Pacific Palisades and other parts of the city looked. I’ve visited and run on those now ashen trails and suburbs. Another city hit by something unprecedented. It struck me that these fires were just the latest disaster ground zero. The apocalypse another step closer, encroaching. Just this week North Queensland here is going through the downpour of all downpours. Yet life keeps moving on. CEOs do talks. Balance sheets seem unaffected. Politicians scramble for snippets.
Beyond the doomerism though I want to know what to do, but also why we’re so stuck. Where is the creativity, where is the novelty, where is the madness and the anger and the resistance and the outright petulance? What else do we need for that awakening at both individual and societal levels? More of the same that got us here will just result in more of the same. ESG surveys and benchmarks, time wasted lamenting disingenuous and disinforming politicians, another beige home energy assessment portal - this time with added AI, more AI for good. I want to go beyond that and explore intervention options, choice points, the invisibility of progressive decline, the potential imagery and metaphors by which to build new stories and make hope out of, to understand the relevance of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun in this day and age.
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