15
2009
Today is Blog Action Day 2009 & the topic is climate change.
“Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.
Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.”
As a somewhat sceptical individual I’m not bought into the idea of global warming nor of a coming ice age. But as a rational thinker it seems prudent to be a good steward of the place where we live & which sustains us.
While I do not want us all to return to hunter-gatherer times and eschew modern conveniences, it does seem like a good time to direct our substantial collective intelligence towards find better ways of doing things.
In Australia we are already seeing the effects of climate change. The recent devastating bushfires in Victoria appear to be a mere harbinger of what is to come. We can expect to inhabit a much dryer and more fire-prone environment in some parts of the country. While in other parts of the country we are seeing increasingly bad storms and cyclones.
To me this seems like a very big problem. But all very big problems seem daunting unless they are chunked up. This is a great case to apply the old maxim
Think global! Act local!
Here are some simple things some friends & I have done:
- tweet about Blog Action Day 2009 on Twitter – use the hashtag #BAD09
- leave the car at home whenever public transport is viable
- carpool with friends when going out
- plant a vegetable garden
- try to eat locally produced food & support initiatives like Live Local #livelocal
- lobby my local member of parliament to support action on climate change
- write a blog post about Blog Action Day 2009
- talk to people about Blog Action Day 2009
- start debates with the people at work about climate change
- start a neighbourhood project & blog about sustainable living like my friend Inderjeet & his Healthier Neighbourhoods – A Community Project to Reduce Carbon Footprint
- sign the petition asking President Obama to act on climate change
06
2009
I recently experienced how easily one can disrupt a stable ecosystem. And I learned the hard way how difficult it can be to re-stabilise that same ecosystem!
We have two dogs and one of them likes to socialise around the neighbourhood, and to this end she will dig amazing tunnels or climb over the high fences in our back yard. To keep her in safely we have laid various bricks and paving stones around the perimeter of the yard.
Not long back I moved one brick from one part of the perimeter to another. Several months of chaos, escapes and tunnel digging ensued.
Just one little brick gave Trotsky the idea that escape was viable and she turned her considerable energy & intelligence to that end. The ecosystem of my backyard suffered for months following the removal of just one brick.
It’s all sorted out now. But this got me thinking about how we often cannot see the pattern that keeps an ecosystem strong and stable. Just one little thing that looks almost irrelevant can pull the whole thing asunder.
This is precisely the kind of thing that we are seeing in the traditional marketing ecosystem with the impact of social media and social networking.
Businesses are grappling with this problem. They are continuing to execute the old faithful marketing plans and see them deliver less telling results than before. Debates are happening in board rooms about the importance or otherwise of the web. And many business people think that it is all a fad that will pass like so many others.
People are using & consuming media and technology in new ways – for example a recent Nielsen study showed users want to use TV and internet simultaneously. The change is deep, and it is important because it is a social phenomenon. It is also impacted by the convergence of web and mobile phones that see traditional ways of consuming internet changing – this Pew report gives some indication of these changes.
Luc Vallee sums it up nicely in the title of his recent blog post: Moore’s Law x Metcalfe’s Law = Chaos? It all reminds me of Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
Time will ensure that we work out how to deal with the changes in our business ecosystem that arise from the changes in people and their use of technology. But it is these in-between times that challenge us and create fear, uncertainty and doubt.