The world is not on track to keep global heating to the 1.5°C set out in the Paris Agreement. We must reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030[i]. Only drastic reductions on that scale and in that timeframe will give us a chance of being on track for net zero by 2050 and avoiding catastrophic climate impacts. However, emissions continue to rise. Incremental changes won’t be sufficient to bring about the transformational change required.
If we are to succeed, the changes we will need to make are so profound that the way we live our lives in 2050 will be unrecognisably different to today. We need a new approach.
In The Future We Choose, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac argue that change of the magnitude required will not be possible all the while we are informed by the same state of mind that has been predominant in the past. Over time we’ve developed a deeply exploitative ethos as the basis for our actions. We must now adapt to the scarcity of resources we have caused, and the rapidly diminishing space left in our global atmosphere for carbon emissions[ii].
Greener Vision applies insights from The Tabula Project to the challenge of tackling climate change and developing policies to achieve net zero. The project’s overall objective is to provide a new perspective on the mind so we might improve how we think and evolve as a society. The paintings depict states of consciousness and thought, and the development of the project is informed by extensive research across a range of disciplines.
Alfred Korzybski famously 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[iii]. To understand knowledge, we need to know the characteristics of the groups which create and use it. This is a central tenet of Thomas Kuhn’s seminal work The Structure of Science Revolutions. One of the legacies of Kuhn’s work is the concept of the “paradigm”. All knowledge depends on preconceptions which may need to be examined or altered, or even rejected, if one wants to progress in any given field[iv].