Roger Renaldi
We recently added to our video collection (keyword phrase, beliefs and attitudes) the CBS news story by Steve Hartman about the NY photographer Roger Renaldi and his project, Touching Strangers. It got me to thinking how often we think of sustainability solely in the context of environmentalism, ignoring the social element of sustainability and most particularly the values and beliefs we carry with us that blind us to our own humanity and interconnectedness. We often ignore our artists and musicians as sustainability advocates because they are addressing culture and consciousness – a major category of social sustainability encompassing keyword phrases such as beliefs and attitudes, conservation, consumerism, and spirituality.
I think Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large-format photographs of industrial landscapes, expresses this shift from an “ism” to sustainability and the importance of consciousness very clearly in a radio interview:
“Well, I don’t know if I’m technically an environmentalist. I see myself more as an advocate for sustainability and that does include looking after the environment but also includes looking at the fact that we have employment, that our economy is in shape, that we
Edward Burtynsky
have a good judiciary that’s there, that’s part of the sustainable movement, it just isn’t environment, if you don’t have those two other components then environment doesn’t come into play.” He goes on to add, “I think it is interesting as an artist to create dialogue to bring these issues into consciousness…” Listen to the entire interview, The Scale of It All.
However, many environmental leaders aren’t that different from artists if we listen closely and even if they don’t actually use the S word. As an example, environmental advocate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. noted in a recent video interview, “When I started doing environmental advocacy I understood that first of all we are not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and birds so much as for our own sake because we recognize that nature is the infrastructure of our communities.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Seek out and advance our visionaries, wisdom keepers, and leaders with the ability to direct our attention to the elements of people, planet and prosperity and represent them as nested together rather than as columns or pillars and, most importantly, as connected to the unifying principle of sustainability eloquently expressed by Mr. Kennedy in the same interview, “to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment and prosperity and good health as the communities that our parents gave us.” A guiding principle of sustainability nearly everyone can understand and embrace and a good response to the question, What is sustainability?
Kumi Naidoo
In the same vein, I recently listened to the Bill Moyers’ interview of Kumi Naidoo, environmental and human rights activist, now heading up Greenpeace International talking about the urgency of climate change. Mr. Nadoo says he constantly in his conversations with the leaders of fossil fuel companies says to them, “…put your children and your grand children’s future in the middle of our conversation. I think history is going to judge this generation of adult leaders extremely harshly…there is no excuse for not taking bold, urgent action, and do it in a creative way that gives us a win for the climate, jobs and addressing things like economic development.”
HRH Prince Charles reiterates the same underlying principle when addressing climate change deniers at a conference, The Road to a Low Carbon Prosperity (2011).
Prince Charles
“I ask how these people are going to face their grandchildren and admit to them that they actually failed their future. That they ignored all the clear warning signs by passing them off as merely part of a cyclical process…that they had refused to heed the desperate calls of those last remaining traditional societies throughout the world who warned consistently, consistently of catastrophe, because they could read the signs of impending disintegration in the ever more violent extreme aberrations of the normal patterns of nature.” You can hear his comments in this video.
A shift in our thinking and language towards representing sustainability as nesting elements, rather than columns or laundry lists of issues and programs, coupled with integrating the guiding principle of seven generations into our conversations, would go a long way in breaking down the sectors, silos, realms, disciplines, and “isms” that have become polarizing forces. The negative impact of our unconsciousness and disconnectedness should not be minimized, but like the future for our children, moved front and center into our conversations, speeches, and presentations. The highly commercial laden language of the status quo tinted green should not be confused with that of sustainability.
Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, October 18, 2013, Portland, Oregon.