John,<\/p>\n
The big shift in thinking about our impacts you suggest looks to me to have some interesting features. What seems hard for me, though, is finding an inviting way to lead people into thinking about the problems their solutions will later create.<\/p>\n
Finding \u201csolutions\u201d usually results in there no longer seeming to be a problem (!) so we solidify our emotional connections to it and take the issue \u201coff our to-do list\u201d. Once you arrive at a \u201csolution\u201d revisiting it is itself a problem, but that\u2019s just when nature begins her own continuous revisiting of it.<\/p>\n
I think that points to a fascinating aspect of how deep our problem is and why we\u2019re having such difficulty. We\u2019re having to learn how nature resolves things.<\/p>\n
What we\u2019ve been using is an ancient practice of \u201cfix it and forget it\u201d. \u00a0It’s what we used since we were hunter-gatherers, as our standard planning model, and it\u2019s failing.<\/p>\n
The apparent reason is the present scale of our intrusions into natural systems, and our having followed a \u201cfix it and forget it\u201d plan to continually add to the scale of our intrusions at increasing rates for centuries.<\/p>\n
If solutions have become the problem, we really can\u2019t take them off our to-do lists any more. \u00a0We’d need to provide stewardship for them to their natural end, learning to do what nature used to do for us but is now no longer able to.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure what would make it attractive to people. \u00a0One good approach is to think of the life cycle of an intervention as it\u2019s natural end, and define that as a new planning horizon.<\/p>\n
That both expands the scope of questions and limits them by defining a new boundary for \u201cfix it and forget it\u201d. \u00a0Any effective intervention begins small and multiplies, but that\u2019s when it\u2019s impacts really begin.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s natural end is then whether it leads to stabilizing or collapsing the natural systems it takes part in. \u00a0To start doing what we have relied on nature to do for us we’d learn to look \u201cover the hill\u201d to a natural end of any innovation’s effects.<\/p>\n
When people are scheming solutions they don\u2019t generally do that, at all. That\u2019s what leads me to my \u201cbomb thrower\u201d metaphor. \u00a0What we normally think problems are solved solved by is planting a seed of multiplying changes, a bomb thrown into our environment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John, The big shift in thinking about our impacts you suggest looks to me to have some interesting features. What seems hard for me, though, is finding an inviting way to lead people into thinking about the problems their solutions will later create. Finding \u201csolutions\u201d usually results in there no longer seeming to be a … Continue reading Ending \u201cfix it and forget it\u201d?<\/span>