Sometimes you like to think that this time it won’t be a trite meaningless array of media speak when you bring it to them. Draw attention to what is coming, how things could go bad, how they need to prepare.
But then you yet again have to listen to the canned corporate response. That representation of 20th century thinking. That belief in the status quo being all powerful, unchallengeable, and impregnable to the forces of the universe
Disasters, plagues, famines, mean nothing to the denial at the centre of their world of constant commerce, their belief that things will always keep going the way they always have, despite so many failures, so many stumbles requiring extraordinary economic and political intervention.
Their insular world view, often times born out of a business school or two, adhering to an established orthodoxy that cannot be challenged, cannot be questioned, despite the mounting evidence that it could all fall down with a simple change in the weather.
The seem like reasonable people. They seem like they would listen to reason, to facts, to figures from their own world, own systems, own processes.
But they believe in the religion of commerce for commerce’s sake, and can’t see past that. Won’t see past that.
They are the people who believe in a system that has made them who they are today.
And they have lived in the house of cards for so long, it’s inconceivable that it could ever fall down.
Sometimes you hope for better, but like a leopard changing its spots, evolution can only go so far.
Leilani Cowern - Comments at Enviromental Summit