Some ideas & provocations...

 
Sustainability.   "My chief reservation about sustainability is that it can mean so many things to different interest groups. For one protagonist, sustainability may demand a massive redistribution of resources and wealth, coupled with radical reassessments of consumer values and economic practice; for another, it involves no more than modest adjustments to what we already do in order to accommodate a few of the most urgent ecological imperatives. As with Climate Change, then, there’s no overall consensus concerning the precise shape sustainability will take. ‘Sustainable forest’ can mean a rich and ancient woodland drawn upon occasionally but left mostly to its own devices, or it can be a perpetual pine plantation supplying wood pulp and with practically zero biodiversity in it. That’s why I’ve chosen mercury as a metaphor for sustainability. It challenges any assumption we might have that sustainability takes a uniform or consistent form among those considering it. The image of mercury scurrying across a surface is familiar to most people, and is apt here because it allows us to better grasp the current ungraspability of sustainability. Sustainability is a fraught and fugitive issue, beset by political and personal evasions and manoeuvrings. What’s more, the way in which sustainability can be made to adapt shape is both weakness and strength. On the negative side, if mercury is mishandled it becomes a toxic nuisance; likewise, sustainability can be distorted, misrepresented or misapplied, either through ignorance or cynically, to allow damaging practices to continue beneath a veneer of acceptability. On the positive side, if put to proper use in a careful and structured way, and if its complex nature is understood and worked with, sustainability also provides an extremely valuable, if not life-saving, tool. Mercury can communicate what the weather’s doing outside, or signal the degree of fever in the human body; sustainability, too, could be harnessed to monitor and sustain the wellness of our species in relation to its environment. Either that, or we can let the concept mess with our brains and slip through our fingers."   2011 Commission with The Ashden Directory project: 'New Metaphors for Sustainability'

Civilisation.   "The difference between civilization and destruction? When building a civilisation, citizens will do £3000 of work for £30. When ushering in social disintegration, people reluctantly do £30 of work for £3000. It's not cost-effectiveness that keeps the world going, but a communal willingness to embrace effective costs."

Eco-Apathy.   "It would be fascinating, were it not so tragic, to study how it is that we can motivate entire nations in national, but not in ecological, defence. The global crisis facing us now requires collective and individual mobilisation on a scale of both World Wars. We seem able to impel ourselves against an adversary (however diffuse and illusory) but not towards a friend. Perhaps that's what we've missed in Environmentalism: that, for all its contradiction and counterproductiveness, there'd probably be a stronger public response if ecology were framed in terms of a war! What on earth does that say about us, if the only way to get something done is to make Gaia the ultimate enemy?"

True Debt.   "Perhaps our most terrifying debt, in current times, is not an economic one at all. It may be our 'Reality Debt' that we should be most worried about. This concerns our remarkable ability to deny, throughout the majority of our systems and in our daily practice, what we know is more than likely going to terminate our civilisation as we now understand it. Who, or what, will bail us out with the massive reality cheque (those trillions of realities we now need to collectively reinvest in our individual minds and hearts) that will stabilise and harmonise our ecologies, psychologies, societies?"

Growth.   "Our modern conception of economic growth is folly. The way we've arranged things, when one aspect of economy 'grows' something else usually has to shrink (fossil fuel reserves, fish stocks, forests). There's still tremendous capacity for growth, but not quite in the sense we now (mis)understand it. Our version of 'growth' has become a knee-jerk desire, a dangerous and skewed addiction. What an economy, a culture, must do is evolve."

Oil.   "Crude oil. A sticky, magical, malodorous miracle - billions of tiny benthic carcasses crushed into an elixir, a potion, a brimming black lamp of possibilities. And we're drunk on it - bewitched by it. We just had to rub that lamp to flare up the dark. Now that the genie's utterly out, what is our last wish?"

"The saying goes: 'We are what we eat'. Perhaps it ought to be: 'We are what we burn'. Oil: rocket fuel for the collective ego."

'Unaccounted Positive Feedback'.   "A classic illustration of Unaccounted Positive Feedback can be found in e-mail and the paperless society. E-mail reduces resource use, right? But is that really so, when the total picture is taken into consideration? E-mail has led to widespread shifts in user expectations and a vast increase in traffic - some of it useful, much of it pretty pointless. Given that the printing out of e-mails isn’t uncommon, and that the e-mail ethos may also help to entrench and expand a high-turnover, quick-click mentality (thus supporting indirectly, perhaps, other forms of consumption and waste), it isn’t at all clear yet whether e-mail will effect an overall brake (negative feedback) on resource use or an acceleration (positive feedback). On paper at least, it seemed like a good Green idea; but if, eventually, e-mail proves to have increased our ecological impact overall, that would be a case of Unaccounted Positive Feedback."

Wake-Up Calls.   "Wake-up call this, wake-up call that. I'm absolutely tired of hearing about wake-up calls. Here we are, utterly lost to the world in our celebrity-and-consumerism-induced stupor, snoring right through the ballgame at half past four in the afternoon, industrial ear-plugs firmly inserted, while the half-dead receptionist has been ringing us since dawn at 10-minute intervals, the alarm clock set for 8am is twittering beside us like a dying bird as its batteries finally give out, the hotel porter's knuckles are bleeding from rapping so loudly at the door we've wedged shut with a chair, the hotel itself has just caught fire and a variety of airborne species, blinded by the smoke, are smacking themselves raucously to death at the glass... and still we sleep on. Wake-up calls? How many, exactly, do we need?"

Nouns tell us where our minds are.   "For an indication of where our modern collective attention resides, simply Google "100 most common nouns". The list I looked at had 'time', 'thing', 'school' and 'country' in the top 20; but 'cloud', 'sky', 'tree' and 'grass' were entirely absent. No animals or plants, no creatures, cliffs or outdoor vistas. No soil or sea. True, 'water' was 34 and 'air' crept in at 97; but 'car' claimed 65 and 'money' 38. 'God' was nowhere to be found."

Mobile Phones.   "Mobile phones - an invention designed to make the entire world Porlock."

Eco-Activism.   "What to do, then, eco-politically? Use that falsity of an imagined future as leverage for the less-false Now."

We need more Resources!   "More money for this; more money for that. The solutions to our ills aren't always about 'resources'. They're also about resourcefulness."

Life and Death?   "The reward for life is more Life. [Join the dots for death.]"

Escuela Contemporánea de Humanidades (Ecological talk, with British Council: Madrid 2011)

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TWO ECOLOGICAL/ CLIMATE CHANGE SONGS co-written by Mario...       

'LOVER EARTH', an Ecological song by Nyjon & Mario.

'BLUE', a Climate Change song by Nyjon & Mario.

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copyright mario petrucci 2001

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