By Peter Bardaglio, Senior Fellow, Second Nature
(This post is part of a weekly series by the Second Nature team about why we do what we do.)
“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas,” John Maynard Keynes has observed, “but in escaping from the old ones.” Nowhere is the truth of this observation clearer than in our continued adherence to an economy based on fossil fuels. As more than one study has determined, we have the means at our disposal to move into a clean energy world in which the power of the wind, sun, water, tides, and other renewable sources is tapped and runaway climate change is averted. The latest of these studies comes from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which earlier this month released a report surveying the already existing technologies that, in combination, could make this happen. The critical missing components are the necessary policies that would drive change in this direction and the political will to implement them.
I get up every day and do the work that I do because I want to help create the public pressure and culture of collaboration that will make these changes occur. I get up every day and do the work that I do because I believe each one of us has the responsibility to be a subject in history and not just an object of history. I get up every day and do the work that I do because there is no silver bullet, no magic wand, that can make the immense problems confronting us go away. The only thing that will work is to escape from the old myths of independence and self-reliance and embrace the truths of interdependence and mutuality.
Understanding these truths and harnessing the power of the network is at the heart of what makes Second Nature so effective. The American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment and Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education are both products of this approach to change. They are collaborative efforts to create the conditions for the emergence of a new paradigm, one that involves a shift from the mechanistic, atomistic solutions of the industrial age to the organic, interconnected web of the digital age. They are part of the largest social movement in all human history, what Paul Hawken calls “the blessed unrest.”
The overturning of the old paradigm will only happen if we intentionally and strategically create what Gibrán Rivera refers to as “the spaces for connection.” Collaboration, inclusivity, and mutual respect make it possible for us to move upstream, where the real solutions are. As Rivera puts it, “By re-inventing the ways in which we come together we begin to live in the world we are trying to build.” Second Nature, together with the generous support of the Park Foundation, have provided me with the invaluable space not only for connection but also experimentation, the opportunity to reinvent myself as a social entrepreneur and explore new models of partnership and change such as the Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative. And for that I will always be grateful.
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