Albert Einstein, considered to be the smartest human who ever lived–so far, said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.”
But the reality is, that’s what we continue to do. Every year, thousands of people participate at international conferences, forums and expositions, television shows are created, documentaries are shared, books are written—all which rarely solve anything because they continue creating conflict by discussing the problems without looking at the root cause of why so much is going wrong with so many good people and knowledge available to world leaders the failure of system design.
Allan, there’s been more than 50 years of Earth Days starting in 1971 and now leaders and activists and protestors are planning to participate in COP 29 in another event that in many cases will solve very little.
Why are we constantly in crisis mode and what can be done about it to ix the problems and prevent future problems
Well, the reason we’re in crisis mode is because at every COP meeting at every Davos meeting at every International Conference what people are discussing are almost all identifiable as symptoms of global biodiversity loss, desertification megafires fueling climate change, and you’ll find people are constantly
discussing symptoms. Obviously when you never even discuss the cause of the problem, which is just common sense, you can expect no other result than we’re seeing –ever mounting chaos at conference after conference and that will continue till COP 100.
Have the media been negligent in coverage and if so, why?
Yes, absolutely negligent! At COP 26 I was invited to give a 12-minute talk at a small side show on agriculture which any alert reporting in the media could have picked up. In that I talked about the cause of the greatest problem facing humanity, rather than its symptoms. And I said nobody at the conference would even talk about it. Which proved true.
I predicted many people would be demanding action from political world leaders, but nobody would be giving them help, and they would get nothing but chaos and conflicting advice and never any constructive help or advice.
And I said we need to be helpful to these leaders by showing them there is an underlying root cause, which I proceeded to do. Basically, I pointed out that after years of denial from many, recently I believe we can say that every sane scientist now acknowledges that humans are causing climate change.
Now science is logical, and although you can have several things aggravating a problem, there is always only one root cause. So, if humans are causing climate change, then logically livestock and fossil fuels – that we most blame – are not causing it.
“It is how we manage resources including livestock and fossil fuels that is the cause.”
So, we need to be discussing the management and nobody at any of these conferences is doing so.
You’ve written books and manuals on holistic management, so could you provide the public and the people who write policies with a brief description so that they will understand what they mean.
As you know, for over 60 years I’ve been focusing on, and writing and speaking, about the management leading to the loss of biodiversity and desertification taking place even in National Parks, because understanding this beginning of the breakdown of
our life-sustaining environment is crucial. Much is explained in my textbook and the discovery in the 1960’s of how to reverse desertification I described in a TED Talk viewed by almost 9 million people.
But at that COP 26 meeting which the media ignored I pointed out that when you only say management is the cause that’s not helpful to global leaders. This is because it in societies, and institutional (political party) belief and understanding is that we manage millions of things. For this reason, in that very brief talk I pointed out that no we do not manage millions of things we produce millions of things.
We produce grain, meat, wine, cheese and food in many forms, music, art, smart phones, buildings, bombs, computers, cars, planes and everything making city-based civilization, every business and economy possible.
All these are things we produce, we do not manage them. All can be produced independent of one another and stop if we stop producing, none can self-organize, most are complicated, but none are complex.
Humans only manage three things:
- We manage our lives, families and small communities and at scale organizations or institutions.
- We manage economy – having to finance ourselves, and organizations/
- And through these we manage Nature (our life-supporting environment) from which we produce everything.
All three we do not produce, they do not stop even in catastrophe but re- organize in changed form, all are totally interdependent and cannot be managed independent of one another.
As I said, it is this management causing biodiversity loss, desertification and climate change we need world leaders to focus on, and then I also pointed out that when we look at this management, we have two scales:
What I call the human scale; you and I and everybody managing their lives, communities or small family farms, businesses to the best of our ability.
And then we have the institutional scale. Everything we manage at large scale we do through organizations/institutions.
It is at this institutional scale of management where the major part of the problem lies. It’s not a lack of goodwill;
not a lack of good people; not a scientific but a management problem.
I cannot think of a single management issue at scale not done through an organization – environmental, agricultural, religious, marketing, media, political parties, dictatorships, universities, corporations, Etcetera.
Organizations, and none more so than political parties (even dictatorships), manage through policies leading to laws, regulations and permeating everyone’s live in any nation. And at the scale of degradation of our human environment that we are witnessing, the root cause is the universal way in which ALL governments, environmental, and other organizations develop policies.
Society, academia, policy and management schools and our world leaders believe that we have a great many ways of developing policy- scientifically, dictatorially, democratically. Etcetera.
This, as a large body of resource management professional working with me discovered in 1983, is a false belief. Policy, universally, if we peel the onion to it’s core, is and always has been only developed in one basic way.
Whether a mega-environmental organization, dictatorship or a multi-party democracy all develop policy in exactly the same way and it is that way in which policy is developed that is causing the problems
Well right now in media and while they have ignored the problems that we’re facing consequences of failed decision making, without pointing the finger or blaming people how can businesses, communities and every level create the necessary changes that are necessary?
The first thing people and small businesses can do is address the cause at the human scale. How they manage their lives. And we can touch on that later.
But when we come to any corporate businesses, they are very much part of the problem, because we produce almost everything we do today, even a toothbrush through organizations. Most people can’t produce a pencil or toothbrush, because it’s made by corporations.
Here, lies the heart of the problem at scale – we cannot manage at scale without organizations and have to have them for efficiency, but history and science inform us that once formed organizations do not behave as any normal human would. They take on a life of their own and to manage their financing will even go against their very purpose. The classic case is religion. If we look at but one – Christianity – although many millions of good people can, and do, lead lives of loving and caring. However, since religion was taken to scale Christianity alone has, I believe well over 2,000 organizations (churches) that have been warring for centuries and harboring pedophile priests going against their very purpose – love, caring and protection of the innocent. Individuals are not being bad or evil it is how institutions behave.
Because they are not human, they do not behave like a human and they are virtually incapable of Common Sense, morality, empathy and other emotions, and will (political parties, universities and environmental organizations, corporations, etcetera), go against their purpose to finance themselves. They as organizations cannot change their behaviour – however the citizens within them can begin to do something, as will happen when policy is developed differently in the interests of citizens rather than institutions.
Here in America our very own Constitution is written in a way that provides for the endless consumption of more and more and favors businesses over the needs of the people or the rights of nature. So the way out of this is looking at the way we manage things?
The way out of it is to address the cause – changing the way governments (political parties) develop policy. As Churchill so famously said “Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge” To change from developing policies in the context of addressing problems, to developing policy in the context of citizen needs tied to their life-supporting environment providing everything making any economy, business or aspect of civilization possible (what is called a holistic context ) is not only faster, simpler and more harmonious, but avoids most unintended consequences of current reductionist policy development. However, this is entirely new and thus subject to what research and history inform us about institutional change.
We only currently know one normal way of such change occurring throughout history. In that the public view gradually changes as more and more information gets out about new discoveries in management, such as we are discussing, and eventually that becomes accepted by institutions.
But when the discoveries, be they in science, management or anything else —fly in the face of pre-existing human beliefs of society, we know from both history and from research that the change in institutions will not happen under 100 to 200 years. Now so far, I’ve been 60 years at it and we’ve made minimal change, although we’ve increased our knowledge of what we need to do greatly.
But actual change hasn’t occurred yet and being realistic we can expect at least another century for institutional acceptance. I do not believe future generations enjoy this luxury of time given the current rate of environmental destruction – the destruction of human habitat on this Earth.
So, at COP 26 I suggested that we try a new approach never before tried in history. Help world leaders by taking one case in one small country one sovereign state, take one policy and have that nation’s president, prime minister or dictator develop their agricultural policy differently with the process open to all and media attention so that every world leader can see there is a constructive way forward applicable to every nation and policy.
I suggest agriculture because it plays such a major role in biodiversity loss, desertification and climate change that even if we stop all fossil fuel use tomorrow, climate change will continue almost unabated because of agriculture.
So we could take a policy like that just get one person in charge, a prime minister, a president, a governor of a state to act in a statesmanlike manner, not take any risk because they’re politicians and they can’t.
And work with us, the Savory Institute and let us help them and their own officials of their institutions together with their citizens and let them develop policy in a different way, as we learned to do in 1983. Just do this and have it openly observed by world leaders and media. And then accept it or not.Now the downside of doing this, if it failed to produce harmony and a policy the nation dreams of, is that we would waste maybe a year, maybe a couple of million dollars which is trivial.
If it succeeds—and there’s over 95% chance it’ll succeed I believe from results when we’ve done this with lawmakers and their bureaucrat advisors – we will not be able to put a price to it because we will save billions of lives and save civilization as we know it
We will save billions of lives because right now as we speak institutionally developed policies are destroying Human Habitat and no species including humans can live without habitat. In fact we can live longer without food and water than we can without habitat.
So the downside of it is almost nothing; the upside is beyond measure economically, humanely and environmentally.
So, I’m suggesting that and if we can get public support for that idea particularly from young climate activists most concerned with the future, I believe it can happen. Because this is the greatest problem and danger facing humanity I have no monopoly on ideas and I invite anybody in the world, any Nobel laureate to come up with another and better idea or tell me where that idea is silly or shouldn’t be tried.
At my age of 89 I find myself more concerned than ever with the future we are creating, and I believe if we do what I suggest we have a fighting chance to offer young people and future generations much more hope than they have in one conference after another discussing the symptoms in increasing global chaos.
If today, you were to advise is a leader in government anyone who can Inspire this to put into Policy what would that look like?
We pretty well know because of experiences I have had. While I was working this out as an ecologist, I was also leader of a political party in opposition to the racial government of Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe) and I was also an army officer for 20 years in the war. And in the army we have something called TEWTS: (Tactical Exercise Without Troops) where you can’t experiment with something, you can’t fight a battle experimentally first, but you can rehearse and do it.
So, we’ve done this in America we’ve done this in India in Lesotho in Zimbabwe and every time we get the same results. When the same officials that develop policy the way they do today are helped by facilitation and develop policy in what we call A National Holistic context the result is entirely different:
For example: What do the citizens of that country want based on their culture and their way of life tied to their behavior and life-supporting environment, sustaining them centuries from now? This, once developed, becomes the context for any policy addressing a problem, as all do, When we make the policy in that context with the same people we get totally different results.
In the United States when I came over here as an exile and was commissioned by the USDA Soil Conservation Service to put 2,000 professional people through training in the work I was developing we discovered how to do this.
For over two years I trained 2,000 officials and academics in groups for a week at a time. As one of those groups concluded (and I published this in in first edition of my textbook):
“We now recognize that unsound resource management is universal in the United States”
That statement is dramatic and not a single person in the media has picked it up in 40 years.
When all of your policies are unsound and your own officials can discover that in in a week of training we need to pay attention. But because institutions are not human and do not behave like a human being, the same agency the USDA then banned all further training. Now that defies commonsense, morality, humanity and decency and is why I say institutions are part of the problem, not the people.
Most people are good and the I think a lot of people get this. So, let’s take the example I used earlier of the Catholic Church. There are millions and millions of Catholics around the world who are good people and they’ve been good people for thousands of years. But despite this we’ve had centuries of the church policy to protect pedophile priests and not the innocent and the children.
Now if the citizens had developed that policy with the priests and church it would be very different because the same people produce different results as I have found over and over again. In training exercise for 35 lawmakers in Zimbabwe in one day they came up with a nucleus of an agricultural policy the world would dream of, and every bit of knowledge we needed was in the room all we needed was a different way of doing it.
I think it was COP 24 that was held In Poland, a young girl from Sweden got the world’s attention when she held power to account and started to “How dare you! How dare you!” Yet, still the complaints, the crises continue, there have been ongoing protests, marches, campaigns—all ending with the same results…. AsEinstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.”
What would you tell the Youth of today who are protesting and activists who continue to protest but rarely solve the problem?
There are so many sincere, young people like Greta. And I recently watched a group of young Americans giving Congressional testimony, and they were incredibly bright and sincere. But all they did was the same as Greta, demanding action when nobody knows what to do.
That’s like demanding that world leaders fly before the Wright Brothers knew how to fly!
You can keep demanding as much as you like, and all you do is create conlict.
And we’ve got enough conflict! And conflict is relentlessly increasing; so, what you have to offer is a constructive solution — a way forward – so I ask young people to just talk to me!
There’s such a constructive way forward.
When I made that suggestion at COP 26, I couldn’t get Sir Adrian Smith of the Royal Society to even talk to me. Now if a thousand or a million young people demanded that the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Science who have no Solutions at least talk to me instead of just vilifying me for over 50 years it would begin to happen.
And if I’m wrong, then I’m more than willing to accept whatever anybody offers, but nobody is offering any way forward. Just more of the same and demanding; that we stop using fossil fuels, demanding that we make artificial meat or become vegan, and none of this address the cause of the problem. And in fact, and I will stake my life on this – some are going to make it worse.
What we need is a small group of thinking people, not a big conference, a small group of the youth leaders. A group of young activists and if they’re determined to have a better future, then just talk to me and we can sensibly discuss how to bring this about without conflict and in harmony uniting people in our hour of need.
One of the main features in the Holistic Management I suggest is that conflict dies the moment we start talking about how everybody wants their lives to be tied to their life supporting environment.
At the moment everyone today is making their conscious decisions for one of three reasons with reason and context virtually the same:
- To meet a need
- To meet a desire or
- To address a problem
Now those always have been, and always will be, the reason for our actions, to improve our lives but they cannot be the context in what is realistically a holistic world in which our lives, economies and life-supporting environment are inseparable and complex.
So when, as it is today, in policy the reason is solely to address a problem by non-human institutions it invites conflict and endless costly measures to enforce policy most people don’t see as even making sense.
Now the moment we get people together and say let’s not discuss the problem because it’s a symptom of how we make management actions.
Let’s first discuss what every human wants at that point you have complete agreement and now you go forward and say now let’s listen to all the points of view, all science and sources of knowledge, and see what aligns with that context and you get amazingly different results.
Right now, as I said, I am more worried about the future than I’ve ever been in my life, and I literally have spent my life since I was 20 dedicated to trying to solve this problem. If I had only one last wish it would be that a group of serious young people just talk to me nothing more.
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