Educated in a school insisting students had the power to change the world, I was fed guidelines that would save us all. We should consume less plastic, bike more, and eat less meat to limit our carbon footprints. The “important single agent” concept struck me as a movement without the solution to the issue: the menacing drought of climate change would drain the water from our glasses and the life from our skins. It would throw some from their homes and into war both with one another and the sea. Some would be engulfed in high tides while others parched to death. We would die disparately because the inevitability of extinction does not unify nor equalize; it highlights inequities and social sicknesses already entrenched. Class genocide of the global poor would ensue. People en masse had to act: not to save our species, but to save our souls. And I should eat kale?
That self-empowering sentiment went straight to the garbage-processing plant nestled in my frontal lobe. (It would be best if it was solar-powered like the rest of my brain, but unfortunately, our rhetoric still runs on trash – not very sustainable.)
That’s why I’m enchanted with Systems Theory. In “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System,” Donella Meadows’ words capture my heart: “control measures these nice, liberal folks are talking about…are PUNY!!!”. Meadows notes that 99% of our attention goes to parameters like regulatory standards, the least effective way to intervene in a system. Transcending existing paradigms is most effective. I, my bike, and my tofu couldn’t change the world, but collective ideologies can. To transcend one paradigm and foster another also demands cultural change, and values evolve slowly unless legislatively prompted to adjust. Thus, parameter change is essential but only effective as a collective endeavor toward value reformation.
