I had a conversation with a friend not long ago when I told her the story of the Great Turning. I described how future generations might look back on our times as a crucial turning point in their history. Just when humanity seemed headed for disaster, we somehow found the courage, determination and inspired creativity to bring about a remarkable shift, a change of course, an epic transformation. As I told the tale, I felt my eyes sparkle; the energy of possibility sent tingles down my spine. But my friend wasn't so moved. "I can't see that happening", she said. 

The process where a positive vision first grows, but then meets disbelief, may be familiar to you. It can happen within ourselves. It can happen within groups of friends. The process also gets played out within organisations, communities and our wider society. Over the last few decades, the hopeful visionary tendency has taken quite a bashing; on a societal level, disbelief has become the default mode. Yet recent events have powerfully shaken this up. If, two years ago, someone had proposed that the UK government would soon be nationalising banks or that Barack Obama would become the next president of the United States, they might well have met the "I can't see that happening" response. In May 2006, in an article sympathetic to Obama, Time magazine commented: 

"The argument against an Obama candidacy is obvious: he is as green as Kermit the Frog. He is a mere 44 years old and has been a member of the U.S. Senate for less than two years. He sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but he has zero military and national-security experience. He's a very smart guy, a quick learner, but no one is that quick. If he runs and makes a fool of himself, a very promising political career could be suffocated in the crib."

A year later, a column in the Boston Globe implied Obama was a no-hoper, saying:
"the people who've ponied up $4,600 for Obama in this election cycle might as well have piled the money on the kitchen table and set fire to it."

In April this year, a column from the UK Times expressed that same certainty, with a sub-headline proclaiming:
"The Democrats must admit it: Obama would lose to McCain"

The point here is the "I can't see that happening" view can be wrong. Remembering that helps when we doubt our vision. As does reminding ourselves of times we've succeeded in doing things that previously we'd thought were impossible (can you can think of any for yourself?). These memories help anchor in us the deep knowledge that something seeming unlikely at one point in time can happen quite naturally at another. Rather than giving up if the odds don't seem promising, positive changes are brought about when we identify what we'd like to happen, and then become part of the story of making that so.

If you're reading this, it is likely you're part of this story of transforming our world, of participating in the development of a life-sustaining culture and way of life. Important questions when following this purpose are "What helps us rise to the challenge?", "How do we find the courage, determination and inspiration needed?" and "How do we keep ourselves going?" A rich source of nourishment and learning for me, and perhaps many of you, has been the approach of the Work That Reconnects developed by Joanna Macy and colleagues. Developed as a workshop methodology to cultivate empowered responses to global issues, the principles and insights of this approach can be applied in a wide range of settings, not just workshops. It has been used in school classes, as a personal practice, in support or study groups, and as part of community building events. The central plot-line of this work follows a spiral of four elements: gratitude, honouring pain for the world, seeing with new eyes, and going forth. I've found the combination, and sequence, of these elements allows the emergence of something much more than the sum of the parts.

At a talk I gave recently, I asked people to divide in pairs and listen to each other completing the following sentences. 

"Things I love about our world include..."

"Concerns I have about our world include..."

"A perspective I find inspiring or refreshing is..."

"Steps I can take to participate in the Great Turning include..."

This was a short and simple way of moving through these four elements. With two minutes for each sentence, it took about ten minutes each way, yet the process deeply touched many of those present. I've also used these four starts to sentences in my personal journaling, starting a fresh page with each one. Whenever I'm not sure what to write, I just start the sentence again and see what naturally follows. It has been liberating, a time of kindling the spark.

Yet this is just touching the surface of this approach. A good way to find out more is to watch the DVD Joanna Macy produced called The Work That Reconnects. (see 2 below). It offers over four hours of material, and was initially intended as a resource for facilitators. Joanna says at the start "This work is designed and intended to be widely shared, in many voices in many settings."  I take my hat off to Joanna, because as part of that sharing, she's now made the video material from this DVD available for free on-line. Thanks also to Dennis Rivers and Human Development books, who've hosted this on their website. You can watch it at:
http://www.turntowardlife.tv/joanna_macy_workshop_video/about.htm

My personal favourite is the five and a bit minutes on gratitude. 

If you're interested in taking part in a workshop, check out the events page at www.GreatTurningTimes.org or see news about workshops below, from item (19) onwards.

And if you facilitate workshops, please enter details on the events page and see item (18) below about a facilitator directory. 

For UK facilitators or people who'd like to facilitate, please see item (19) about a gathering next spring.

With you in this Great Turning adventure
Chris.

Chris Johnstone
Editor, The Great Turning Times.
email: chris@chrisjohnstone.info
http://www.chrisjohnstone.info
http://www.GreatTurningTimes.org

Many people share the sentiment expressed in the quote above. A BBC World Service Poll (see a) last year of 22,000 people in 21 countries showed 79% saw human activity as a significant cause of climate change, and 65% believed it necessary to take major steps starting very soon. However, a third of Tory MP's who replied to a survey in the UK this year (see b) questioned the existence of climate change and its link to human activity.

A more recent poll in the UK (see c) showed 42% thought the problem might not be as bad as people say, and only 35% saw tackling climate change and reducing their carbon footprint as a normal thing for people to do in their area. There's clearly still a long way to go.

Part of my work is teaching medical students about health behaviour change, and one of the principles I describe is "use teachable moments". The more people link their symptoms to behaviours that contribute to causing them, eg smoking or drinking, the more likely they are to want to change these behaviours. If a heavy smoker consults a doctor about a chest infection, this is a 'teachable moment' where exploring the link between the symptoms and the behaviour can help strengthen the patients motivation to change. In a similar way, if people join the dots between weather disturbances and climate change, they are more likely to want to want to take action on this. Unfortunately, these links are often not made. For example, I carried out a Google news search for articles about Hurricane Ike on 13th September 2008. It showed 79,971 references in the last week. When I added the words "climate change" to the search, the tally went down to just 72 (less than 0.1%). On 21st November 2008, a Google news search for California fires showed 10,988 articles in the last week, adding "climate change" to the search reduced the total to 491 articles (less than 5%). When such a tiny proportion of news coverage mentions any link, is any surprise that many people miss the connection? In the US, after hurricane Katrina in 2005, a poll (see d) showed a majority (54%) saw the hurricane season that year as just one of those things that happens from time to time, vs 39% who viewed it as related to climate change. 

One of the issues here is about how we view cause and effect. Many scientists would find it difficult to say "Hurricane Katrina was caused by Climate Change". In a similar way, if someone who smokes has a heart attack, it is hard to say with certainty that smoking was the cause. After all, non-smokers can also get heart attacks, and hurricanes, even severe ones, happened long before human-induced climate change. One type of cause and effect is direct causation, where A causes B. But another, much more common, type of cause and effect is an indirect one, where A adds to a context that makes B more likely. In my book Find Your Power (see e), I've explored how this way of thinking can open up our sense of being able to influence events. Each of us can add to a context that makes climate change more likely or less likely. And there is strong research evidence that climate change adds to context that makes intense hurricanes more likely (see f, g and h below), that makes severe weather events more likely (see i below) and that makes wildfires more likely (see j and k). Ten years ago, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released a report (see k) that stated: 

"In most cases, climate change would lead to dramatic increases in both the annual area burned by California wildfires and the number of potentially catastrophic fires -- doubling these losses in some regions." 

You can add to a context that helps people become more motivated to tackle climate change by having conversations about the weather. When the pattern of weather changes around you, in a way that can reasonably be linked to climate change, ask other people "do you think climate change is a factor here?". Listen to their responses. And perhaps ask if they have concerns about this (polls show most people are concerned). Then, if appropriate, share your own concerns. This way we help each other join the dots, and voicing our concerns is a way we talk ourselves into addressing them. As a major factor influencing human behaviour is what we see others do, visibly tackling climate change and reducing our carbon footprint strengthens the context that supports others to do this too, in a way that can feed a positive feedback loop of change.

References/Weblinks

(a) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/25_09_07climatepoll.pdf

(b) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/16/climatechange.greenpolitics

(c) http://www.ipsos-mori.com/_assets/pdfs/public%20attitudes%20to%20climate%20change%20-%20for%20website%20-%20final.pdf

(d) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/01/AR2005100101191.html 

(e) http://www.chrisjohnstone.info/book.htm

(f) http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5742/1844

(g) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7051/full/nature03906.html

(h) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7209/full/nature07234.html

(i) http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5452?emc=el&m=152155&l=4&v=82e88cf5b8

(j) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071024103856.htm

(k) http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/climate-cal-fires.html

The World Environmental Organisation has listed its 100 top climate change websites at http://www.world.org/weo/climate

Here's another four offering a wealth of information, insights and links