Coming home from town yesterday, I came across a poster for the far-right party in Belgium. In a fit of frustration I tore it off the wall (it took ages, it was stuck on).😤 What did this achieve? Not a lot but I felt calmer afterwards. Doing something, anything. Last week I was in Spain for the International Degrowth Conference. It was very academia-heavy 🐌 We talked intensively. About ways of thinking and ways of being and about degrowth and justice and community, all the intangible yet crucial things we try to protect without being able to define. 📚 Usually the discussions were full of life and ideas and then someone would raise a good point about a problem with that particular method or theory and we would all nod and say that more thinking is needed. We love to talk and read and think. They are some of the most destabilising things you can do to a government 🔥 There’s a reason repressive regimes try to attack academia, science and free speech. But I wonder how many ideas have been stalled at the idea phase. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the roads to both freedom and annihilation are paved with good ideas. The difference is whether we embrace the potential of an imperfect idea, or whether we stay discussing forever in pursuit of the perfect theory, perfect new system. I’m not here to criticise academia or to dismiss justified critiques of movements. But system disruption needs action and implementation alongside ideas 💡 So much of the world is already trying to prevent us from breaking out of the status quo. And then we compound it and hold ourselves back from the futures we want until we are sure our plan is perfect and that we are perfect too. We can stand to bank a lot more on the potential of an idea, without proof of its infallibility. We learn through talking but we also learn by doing. In today's edition of The Green Fix we chat about imperfection and also interview the Belgian farmer taking TotalEnergies to court for its climate impact 🔥 https://lnkd.in/dmvApUre #TheFarmerCase #Degrowth #ESEE2024 #PostGrowth #ClimateAction #BeyondGrowth #ClimateWriting #ClimateJustice #SystemChange
Chris Venables
3mo
Wholeheartedly agree with this! - great post, thanks.
Malcolm Hebron
3mo
The perfect is the enemy of the good (Voltaire)
Climate communications consultant || Facilitator & speaker || Barista
3moThank you Alexandra Vázquez Mera for the Focus piece, and Issy Pountney for the midnight proofreading! And to Los Angeles Times Deutsche Welle Carbon Brief FairPlanet Democracy Now Magazine Inc. Le Monde FIAN Deutschland FIAN Belgium Euronews ClientEarth Milieudefensie Farm For Good Greenpeace Belgium Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) European Environmental Bureau ICLEI Julia Steinberger Black Earth Podcast International Water Association Research & Degrowth International The Erline Bradshaw Foundation Friends of the Earth Tipping Point UK Shit You Should Care About for the resources that went into this newsletter!