22 So It Begins
The Fall of the Berlin Wall becomes today's metaphor for unexpected and wide-ranging change coming our way. As big money starts looking for the next Big Profits, it inadvertently becomes a potential force for good in this emerging new world. We dwell in the disruption, the abandonment, the fleeing, then embrace what is regenerative - seeing positive influences in Microsoft’s magnanimous carbon gestures, a clause called ‘fiduciary duty’, and one UWA physics professor’s determination to tune the next generation into the strange and wonderful imaginings of Quantum Physics… or how the world really operates.
We now know that the universe is alive and indeterminate. Right? and that everything, everywhere is in constant non-linear flux. But we’ve come to the limits of what we can do within a worldview that doesn’t match the way the world actually works. With the acceleration of change the need to constantly adapt and innovate in a creative economy requires that we start going with the grain of the universe.
This from Gwen Gordon, in Matters Journal Jan 31, 2018 and she is not talking about Climate Change.
But she could be.
REGENERATIVE AS A CONCEPT
Gwen’s words work for me in any capacity, even though she is talking about the creativity in an article called the Future of Work is Play.
Within the context of change I have been thinking about the word ‘Regenerative’. It has become for me a bit of a hold all term for whatever is coming, as the old models give way to something else. And it is coming to a tipping point isn’t it?
THE WALL AND THE METAPHOR
This week I pulled together, and was sent information related to reactions to Climate Change. I connected them to an ABC radio show on the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The last in this series was called ‘The Year No-One Saw It Coming’ https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/why-the-cold-war-still-matters/the-year-no-one-saw-coming/11599886 Sarah Percy Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland
Here’s how the events unfolded:
THE TINY BIG MISTAKE
The spark that lit a bomb under the wall (so to speak) occurred at a press conference held on November 9, 1989 when a Communist party apparachek, Gunther Shabowski, fronted the press, after a State conference held a month into a new look East German Politburo. He read from a press release written for him and until then not sighted, outlining what was meant to be a minor loophole allowing disgruntled citizens freedom to travel.
These changes had been hastily created and legislated to make it easier for the thousands of East Germans who had sought refuge in West German embassies in Eastern Europe to migrate to the West – and the idea was to release and deny return to these most annoying of complainants. But there was enough ambiguity in the statement that it was heard by a stunned group of reporters as direct permission for all citizens to travel freely through the wall, this freedom to be implemented immediately.
Within minutes of this news hitting the airwaves, a few dozen people arrived at a key checkpoint with their passports, demanding to pass through. As the word spread, the crowd swelled until there were 10,000 people on foot, in cars, on bicycles, and they kept on coming.
The senior Passport Controller, a Mr Harald Jaegar a longtime and loyal member of the Stasi, was frantic. Already shell-shocked by what he had heard on the news, he rang and kept ringing his superiors looking for direction – it was reported that over the four hours these events unfolded, he rang his superiors 30 times. He was told repeatedly and unhelpfully that nothing had changed and he was to repel all comers. It was business as usual.
In the face of an excited and entitled mass of citizens, Herr Jaegar, at his wit’s end, eventually decided to allow a handful of people through, cleverly directing his men to stamp the passports in such a way that they would recognise these most eager of leavers and deny them re-entry. But things didn’t work out like that. Within 4 hours of Shabowski’s words, the few became a flood and the wall was swept away. Miraculously, no-one was hurt, no shots were fired.
No-one predicted this, in no-one’s wildest dreams was this going to happen. It was a miracle of accidental happenstance.
THE WALL IN CONTEXT
The wall fell within a context of seismic shifts of the superpowers. Gorborchov was a different kind of leader, the first to contemplate a restructuring of the Soviet Bloc; willingly engage in relationships with the West, and with an unwillingness to repress the dissent growing behind the Iron Curtain.
Hungary and Poland, facing their own internal problems, followed their leader. East Germany and Czechoslovakia, appalled by the developments set in motion by Gorbochov, maintained a hard line. Meanwhile the demands from citizens calling for freedom to travel were escalating, from peaceful, candle-lit demonstrations at a church in Leipzig to violent demonstrations in Dresden, a shift was taking place that would feed into the events of that extraordinary November night.
THE MICRO INFLUENCE
And from the political to the personal Herr Jaegar’s situation was a factor in the unfolding drama. The night the wall came down he was waiting for news of medical tests he had undertaken to see if he had cancer. The combination of the weight of numbers, lack of direction and perceived disrespect from his superiors, plus it must be thought, his own precarious mindset, was enough for him to throw off the habit of obedience developed over 25 years of blameless service. He stepped aside and allowed East Berliners to cross into West Berlin.
As a corollary – most of them came back - because the kids were at home in their jamies, their fridges were full of food – because they had work the next day - because they just wanted to have a look. And as it turns out, Herr Jaegar, didn’t have cancer and is still alive today,
AND YOUR POINT IS?
Why am I talking about this? Because I see parallels to today. Things are moving so fast, the feeling of events out of control with fires literal and metaphoric are precipitating enormous economic and environmental change - enough to feed the sense of a tipping point.
Here’s a quick rundown of recent reporting under the loose heading of Climate Change.
‘The future of coal has already been decided in boardrooms around the globe’ This, a headline from 28 Jan gleaned from an online ABC news report by Ian Verrander, and I am both quoting and paraphrasing to keep it snappy:
Early last month (December 2019), as fire swept across large parts of the east coast and South Australia … a major bank revealed it had formulated a plan to shed 75 per cent of their thermal coal loans within the next four years.
ANZ, the country's biggest lender to the coal industry, were bringing themselves into line with the Commonwealth and the National Australia Bank.
In mid-December 2019, investment bank Goldman Sachs, in one of the strongest positions from any American financier, ruled out future thermal coal financing, either for new mines or power stations globally. Then, I January 2020, the world’s biggest investment house BlackRock, announced it was drastically reducing its exposure to thermal coal.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
And this isn’t about activism or environmental thinking: the reason global financiers are turning their backs on coal is because there's no longer a buck in it.
From Mr Verrander: Given Australia is one of the world's biggest coal exporters, shipping about $30 billion of thermal coal a year and around the same in metallurgical coal, the stakes are high.
THEN THIS
Recently the Bank of International Settlements, the governing body of the world's central banks, including our own Reserve Bank, put out a paper entitled Green Swan, warning central banks that bad loans on power stations and mines could spark the next financial crisis. Blah blah it goes on…..
CLIMATE CONTAGION
Here is some commentary from independent writer and adviser on sustainability, Paul Gilding’s paper Climate Contagion 2020-2025’ released in Dec 2019 https://paulgilding.com/2019/12/13/climate-contagion-2020-2025 Again, I am cutting and pasting to the chase, using Mr Gildings info about investment in Queensland and WA as a case in point about what big capital is thinking:
Sweden’s central bank Riksbank announced in November 2019 that to manage the economic consequences of climate change it will reject bonds that have (in inverted commas) a “large climate footprint”. As a result, bonds issued by the Canadian province of Alberta and the Australian states of Queensland and Western Australia were sold.
Mr Gilding gives us a quick rundown on the Swedish Bank’s thinking re: Queensland: Queensland’s economy is heavily focused on coal mining (which is now in global decline), Agriculture (which is suffering successive droughts),Tourism around its natural wonders including the Great Barrier Reef (which may not survive) and tropical rainforests (now burning). Lastly, a warm, beach-front lifestyle that is highly attractive to retirees (but whose water front property is now threatened by sea-level rise and could be slashed in value and become uninsurable)
Paul’s conclusion: Queensland – Beautiful One Day, Too Risky the Next.
So, it begins…
MICROSOFT THE GOOD NEWS
Now for some really good news, not about fleeing the dangers, but turning and facing them head on. In January, as in very recently, the Microsoft’s Carbon Program Manager, Elizabeth Willmott, announced that not only is Microsoft in alignment with the IPCC directive (the International Panel of Climate Change) to be carbon negative by 2030 – they will also remove their historical emissions from 1975, the year the company was formed, a carbon debt calculated to be 24 million tonnes.
Microsoft, will be working to help stimulate the carbon economy looking at engineered and natural climate solutions – the latter meaning the carbon drawdown that Regen types like me favour: soil sequestration, reafforestation, mangrove/wet lands restoration.
Ms Willmott said, and I quote: that she is ‘both thrilled and sobered’ by the executive decision handed down from Microsoft’s management. They are clearly prepared to go above and beyond the legislated requirements to really making a difference. And let’s face it. These huge tech companies need to be on board – one, they are buoyant enough financially to go there. And two, if the lights go out, so do they. If you can’t plug in a tech gadget, they won’t work, and puff go all the billions and all that sneaked, money printing data….you get where I am going with this. It is becoming self-defeating not to do a 180 or some other kind of swing toward the carbon economy if you are in business in these troubling times.
FIDUCIARY DUTIES
Microsoft won’t be the first big company looking closely at the environmental and economic changes rattling our planet. These two words – fiduciary duties - have quietly appeared and taken their rightful place in the courts. A fiduciary duty, words so new to me I can barely pronounce them, is a central tenet for all corporations handling other people’s money and is defined as, thank you Wikipedia: the “legal obligation of one party to act in the best interest of another. The obligated party is typically a fiduciary, that is, someone entrusted with the care of money or property.
All of a sudden the idea that corporations have a legal obligation to their investors and shareholders to mitigate the economic risks being exposed by environmental threats are starting to seem like actionable problems.
MARK AND GOLIATH
Here’s something else – let’s call it Mark and Goliath – found on the Environmental Justice Australia website ‘https://www.envirojustice.org.au/
In August 2017, in a world first, 23-year-old Mark McVeigh, filed a legal action alleging the trustee of his retirement fund, which is R.E.S.T., the Retail Employees Superannuation Trust, breached the fiduciary duties owed to him by failing to adequately consider climate change risks.
Mark, like all working Australians, must contribute money to superannuation, but he is having trouble finding out exactly what is being done to protect his money by the trustees of this 50 billion dollar fund’. The trial is listed for July this year and this landmark case is expected to set a climate risk precedent that will determine the duties of superannuation trustees over climate change and reverberate around the globe. https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/climate-change-lawsuits-are-on-the-rise-20191209-p53i2r
https://www.envirojustice.org.au/ ( Environmental Justice Australia)
BRINGING IT HOME WITH ELMORE
You are getting my drift by now. The Berlin Wall reminds us how the most impregnable of barriers can crumble through a random set of factors no-one can predict or invent.
And if the wall didn’t work for you as a great analogy for big change, how about some of the twisty plots of one of my all-time favourite crime writers Elmore Leonard, sadly dead now. He specialised in moving characters around on the page in random, unexpected directions. A guy leaves a briefcase full of money at a designated place; it gets picked up another bloke who wants a briefcase for reasons that have nothing to do with that bad guy or that money….and sets in motion a chaotic chain of events.
So there, you have it - the mechanistic universe, cracks forming all over the joint. Now let’s start creating life based on the understanding that the universe is – as I mentioned to begin with - alive, indeterminate where everything, everywhere is in constant non-linear flux. Gwen Gordon, Muppet creator and generally alive person continues
‘In a mechanistic universe, it makes sense to run businesses with a focus on efficiency, performance and productivity. But we’ve come to the limits of what we can do within a worldview that doesn’t match the way the world actually works.’
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS?
The funny thing is that this is not what we are teaching our kids.
I know this because I heard a David Blair being interviewed on the radio. He is a UWA professor and physicist working on methods for the detection of gravitational waves. He has been developing a curriculum that will introduce children to the concepts of Quantum or Eisenstein physics, the very stuff that informs Gwen Gordon’s rich approach to life.
This alerted me to the fact that current curriculum’s must be tuned into old world physics and what would that be doing to our children’s minds? Talk about misdirection! It is like enforced obsolescence, the opposite of education.
I rang Professor Blair up and we had a chat. I wanted to know how hard it would be to get the concepts of Quantum physics across to adults….I was half attracted to an educative event he is offering to teachers to get them on the same page re: a new curriculum. https://www.einsteinianphysics.com/what-is-einsteinian-physics
He answered without hesitation: ‘Really hard, compared with how quickly kids pick it up.’
There you have it. Change, happening on every level, helping the good ship Planet Earth and all who sail on her to find ways of being that start going with, rather than against, the grain of the universe….
NB Prof David Blair’s teach the teachers event is coming up at UWA in mid Feb.
Contact: Carolyn Maxwell, Research Assistant & Project Coordinator, Einstein-First Project School of Physics,The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Nedlands WA 6009 Email: carolyn.maxwell@uwa.edu.au
Office: +61 8 6488 8527 Mobile: +61 408729100
