EXAMINING PERCEPTIONS

Faulty perception is at the root of our suffering and of much of the trouble in the world.  If we can correct this perception the world will radically change.

We need to examine ourselves, the filter through which we perceive the world.  This leads to recognition of our fundamental interdependence with each other and the biosphere.

The Tabula Project: Examining Thought  

In order to focus our minds on what matters we need first to observe our thinking.  This involves examining assumptions governing our understanding of the world, how we perceive ourselves in relation to others, and how we relate to the world around us.

A key question is whether the assumptions underpinning decision making on climate change are fit for purpose.   When basic facts cannot be relied upon, decision making becomes flawed.

A central theme of The Tabula Project is the sanctity of truth.  The ability to separate fact from fiction is an essential prerequisite both for a healthy mind and a healthy society.  This imperative comes into ever sharper focus with the rise in populism, where opinions are increasingly based on emotions and beliefs rather than facts.

Separating fact from fiction

The increasing politicisation of the net zero agenda is an issue of great concern.  The world is on a trajectory of 3.1°C warming[i] which would have catastrophic consequences and must now deliver drastic emissions reductions in the context of a growing backlash against climate policies.

There is a gulf between the rhetoric of some of the world’s politicians and reality of the world economy.  Despite the US climate rollbacks under President Trump, for corporate America net zero signifies a race to secure future markets, investments and jobs.   The green economy is the fastest growing sector globally behind only the tech sector[ii].  Clean energy receives twice as much investment as fossil fuels[iii].

The Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has pledged to scrap the Climate Change Act and replace it with a “cheap energy strategy”.  However, it is reliance on fossil fuels that has caused recent energy price spikes as demonstrated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which sent oil and gas prices soaring.

The unravelling of the UK’s once strong cross-party consensus on net zero is hugely regrettable and flies in the face of the evidence and national interest.  It was the Climate Change Act gave investors the confidence to back the UK economy and is the reason why UK emissions have halved since 1990 whilst the economy grew by 80%[iv].

Thinking is inextricably linked to identity

Too often the lens through which we perceive distorts what we see.  How we think is inextricably linked to our sense of identity, which is a product of our history, of our individual and collective experience.

What we choose to focus our attention on reveals as much about ourselves as it does about the object of our attention.  As anthropologist Gregory Bateson put it – very few people understand the enormous theoretical power of the distinction between what “I see” and what is actually there[v].

Thomas Kuhn said to understand knowledge, we need to know the special characteristics of the groups which create and use it.  He introduced the concept of the paradigm[vi].  Alfred Korzybski put forward the idea that “the map is not the territory, no map shows all its presumed territory – and crucially it leaves out the map maker[vii].

The limitations of a rationalist view of the world

Our understanding of the world is heavily influenced by prevailing paradigms.  Our society and its predominant structures originate from a time when the individual was understood to be separate from the world we inhabit.  This mindset has led to the development of economic systems which unsustainably plunder finite resources. Climate change exposes the shortcomings of a rationalist view of the world.

We have become hard wired to focus on that which will serve our immediate self-interests.  Bateson described this as “purposive consciousness” a shortcut device to enable us to get what we want.  Whilst this might be an effective means of satisfying our immediate urges and desires, it leads ultimately to a lack of systemic wisdom and is putting massive strain on our ecological system^[viii].

Climate change has been described as the greatest and widest ranging market failure the world has ever seen (Stern)[ix].  We are using too much carbon to fulfil socially and culturally constructed needs and desires.  The root cause of the problem is the price of fossil fuels that produce the energy we consume and the political and economic structure that keep us addicted to them.

The need for a radical realignment

We need a radical realignment of how we perceive ourselves in relation to others and the environment on which we depend.  Climate change is often mischaracterised as an exclusively environmental issue when it is a broader system threat to the global economy, the financial system, public health and national security.

We need to think and act in global context with a long-term horizon.  Decision making is flawed when it ignores our interdependence with each other and the biosphere.  We need a massive shift to clean technologies, but we must also reduce energy demand.  This will challenge some of the predominant forms of consumerism and impact on lifestyles.  The politics of implementing demand reduction policies are very difficult.

Achieving growth whilst simultaneously decarbonising the economy is a central policy challenge.  Pressures from climate change impacts will make growth ever harder to achieve.  Tim Jackson argues that whilst green growth is obviously better than harmful growth, the speed with which we are able to decouple carbon from output is nothing like what it needs to be^[x].

Greater honesty and self-awareness

We need to become more self-aware and honest about the rationale for our decision-making.   We are part of the problem if we persist with the illusion that ‘business as usual’ will achieve net zero.

George Marshall describes climate change is a “wicked problem” which we are poorly evolved to deal with as it exposes our tendency to see selectively only what we want to see based on our own values, assumptions and prejudices.  Everyone converts climate change into stories that embody their own values, assumptions and prejudices, disregarding what they would prefer not to know^[xi]

Margaret Hefferman shows how we tend to avoid looking at inconvenient truths. “Wilful blindness begins not in deliberate choices to be blind, but in a skein of decisions that slowly but surely restrict our view.”^[xii]  It is exacerbated by ideologies; narrow mental models that insist on simple solutions; excessive focus on pay; steep hierarchies, deep inequalities, ornate bureaucracies; targets, KPIs, whole managerial toolkits aimed at managing people like machines makes them as unthinking as machines.

These are some of the key themes to be considered at the EXAMINING PERCEPTIONS roundtable discussion on Tuesday 14^th October 10:00-12:00.  We will be joined by 

• The Rt Hon the Lord Deben, former Chair of the Climate Change Committee and Chair of Sancroft International
• Alex Sobel MP, Chair of the Net Zero All Party Parliamentary Group
• Fiona Howarth, Founder & Director, Octopus Electric Vehicles
• Professor Jillian Anable, Chair in Transport and Energy, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ATTEND THIS EVENT PLEASE VISIT THE REGISTATION PAGE HERE 

[i] https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2024

[ii] https://www.esgtoday.com/green-economy-outperforms-global-market-over-past-10-years-second-only-to-tech-lseg/

[iii] https://www.iea.org/news/global-energy-investment-set-to-rise-to-33-trillion-in-2025-amid-economic-uncertainty-and-energy-security-concerns

[iv] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-half-way-to-net-zero

[v] Gregory Bateson, Sacred Unity: Further steps to an ecology of mind, Harper Collins, 1991

[vi] Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Science Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1962

[vii] Alfred Korzybski, Science & Sanity, Fifth Edition, Institute of General Semantics, 1994

^[viii] Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972, University of Chicago Press, 2000

[ix] The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, Nicholas Stern Cabinet Office – HM Treasury, 2006, published as a volume by Cambridge University Press 2007

[x] Tim Jackson, Post Growth: Life after capitalism, published by Polity Press, 2021

[xi] George Marshall, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, Bloomsbury USA, 2014

[xii] Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious, Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2011