Capacity: Prerequisites for Meaningful Action on Climate Change

By Carolyn Drugge

In Capacity, systems thinker Carolyn Drugge offers a new and hopeful approach to addressing climate change. Many have argued that new technologies and greater efficiencies will not adequately solve the problem of climate change but few offer actual ways forward. Capacity provides a framework for addressing the issue, not merely the symptoms.

In the space that exists between our desire for a better world and our ability to create it lies a set of under-valued capacities. The good news is that all of these essential capacities exist within each of us. We just need to strengthen them. Capacity takes us on a fascinating exploration of key human competencies that are fundamental to approaching our changing climate in a truly meaningful way. In easily accessible language, Drugge draws from cognitive science, systems design, and 15 years of experience as a sustainability professional, to crystallize the competencies as avenues to move beyond documenting and lamenting the deterioration of our planet. Capacity offers a clear path toward a world in which humanity takes its rightful place on the planet. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Capacitrix Press
• Release date: Nov 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386454441

Carolyn Drugge

Not content with symptom management, Carolyn Drugge takes a systems approach to issues. Drawing from a number of subject matter areas including cognitive science, systems theory, biology, and  behavioural economics Drugge’s mission is to synthesize  coherent approaches to challenges that have multiple and synergistic causes. Drugge’s work as a policy analyst and project manager affords a unique view of how municipal policy and infrastructure design influence our behaviour and reflect and strengthen dominant values. Her experiences with experimental interventions ranging from green infrastructure and public art to dialogue groups have been grounds for recalibration and celebration. She lives and sails in Vancouver B.C.

Book preview

Introduction

GIVEN THE SIGNIFICANT issues of the day, systemic inequality, climate change, and the rapid deterioration of democracies, it is easy to see that we need a new direction, a new way of conceiving our role in relationship to ourselves, each other, and the planet. The planet is changing so rapidly that summer sailors are voyaging through the previously impassable Arctic Northwest Passage - even plants are creeping northward at a rate of 2 km each year[1].

Democratic countries are becoming less and less so; more than one billion of us do not have enough  to eat, and even more have no reliable source of clean water, education, income, or transportation.

In spite of our ever-increasing ability to measure and document the deterioration of our living conditions, we do not yet have a corresponding capacity to stop, let alone alter, the pattern. Scientists, policy makers, non-profit public aid agencies, and others have been working on these issues for many years. While their good works are not lost on the individuals directly helped, we as a whole remain incapacitated when it comes to changing the systemic forces that are causing the problems in the first place.

What is it that keeps us from addressing these issues and moving beyond them to a pattern of living that is not only sustainable but also creative and life-affirming? That question has driven much of my inquiry for the last ten years. My work as a municipal policy analyst tasked with developing, prototyping, and piloting programs to change behaviours toward resource efficiency brought this question to the forefront of my mind every day. As all good questions do, this one sent me down many paths of inquiry and practice. The pursuit was frustrating, rewarding, enlightening, and humbling. It drove me to sources of information and research in both popular or common culture as well as academic. Sources included books, papers, lectures, podcasts, and interviews with professional engineers, planners, and educators. I earned a master’s degree in Whole Systems Design trying to figure it out. The result of this inquiry is the ideas offered here. This book is about some of the work that needs to be done in order to make a shift from a world predicated on destruction to one predicated on well-being for all.

Here’s a simple example of what I mean:

Like many teenagers, when I was fourteen I desperately wanted to play the guitar. I loved the way music made me feel and I loved the idea of making others feel the same way. It didn’t hurt that musicians seemed to be effortlessly and eloquently expressing themselves — what teenager doesn’t long to do that?

I begged my parents to buy me a guitar, and after months of nagging they finally gave in. The first time my thumb stroked the strings I realized it might take a while before the guitar became my primary instrument of expression. Still, I was desperate to play and my desire overrode any logic that might have otherwise have been taking hold in my teenaged brain. I got a book that showed how to form chords and strummed away every day. I was terrible.

It took a while for calluses to build on my tender fingertips, and by the time they did my guitar was so badly out of tune that the family cat would run outside whenever I went near that guitar. I had another book that showed me how to tune a guitar and I copied its instructions to a tee every chance I got with no success. I was certain that I couldn’t hear the tones well enough to match them up.

Then I met Chris — he had real musical ability and was willing to help me learn. One night Chris came over for a jam session and tuned my guitar for me. It sounded better for the next few days until it slowly fell out of tune. He came over again and tuned it up right away.

The third time he came over, he told me how he was tuning the strings. It turned out he wasn’t listening for the tone, he was listening to match the frequency of the vibrations of the tuning fork and the string being tuned. When the two vibrations matched, the string was in tune. It was difficult at first, but after just a few tries I too could hear it and soon I was tuning my guitar every time I picked it up. It was easy once I knew what to listen for and I developed the capacity to hear the vibrations. It was only after developing this capacity that I could take the action that led to achieving my goal.

This story illustrates the underlying premise of this book: that somewhere between desire and ability lies capacity. When we want to make a change or adopt something new to us we often need to develop a capacity that is unfamiliar to us. If we want to become masterful at the new activity we have to practice our new capacities until they become a part of us. It’s just like when we learn to drive (whether it’s a car, bike, wheelchair, or tricycle). At first we aren’t very good at it; the vehicle feels foreign to us, separate from ourselves. After we learn how to operate the vehicle and we get a sense of how it feels, it becomes an extension of our bodies. We become competent, and after a lot of practice we can manoeuvre through traffic with ease. The capacity to drive simply becomes a part of us.

The challenge of effectively addressing, stemming, and adapting to climate change is similar. To date many commentators including Lester Brown, Paul Hawken, and David Orr have given us in-depth analyses of the problem, and offered some new ways to apply our dominant capacities in an effort to send us in promising directions. These approaches include reallocating our resources, redefining the value of natural processes, and creating a built environment that neutralizes its destructive operating needs. But just like with my experience with guitar tuning, no matter how hard I practiced my way I wasn’t going to make any progress; I had to let go of my old way and develop a new capacity. Similarly with climate change, applying our current capacities or modes of thought will not allow us to make meaningful progress on the issue. Developing and integrating existing but under-valued capacities will set us in a new direction. This is important because as the philosopher Lao Tzu said, If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

Developing New Dominant Capacities

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT developing new dominant capacities that are not simply the opposite of the dominant capacities of today, but rather options that reach beyond the false dichotomies that have framed the issues so far.

Just as I had to learn to listen for something different to tune my guitar,