Personal Imperative

Last week, the  Rockefeller Brothers Fund, who made their fortune in the oil business, announced their intention to pull out of the traditional energy sector, and invest their capital in renewable energy initiatives. They are beginning by walking away from their investments in companies that rely on the most carbon intensive of fuels, such as coal and the oil sands. They are one of many individuals and institutions to make this substantial decision in recent the months,  leading up to the climate change summit at the UN in New York City.

This interview by Jian Ghomeshi with Milton Glaser,  both about rebranding climate change and the role that design can play. How do you appeal to people to get them to act? "Climate change is too benign a term, it's not global warming that is the issue, we want to make people realize it is really global death. The real design question is how do you do this for nothing, how do you embed it into the culture"?

This video describes the labour conditions behind the Thai fishing industry, the biggest supplier of shrimp to four of the biggest retailers through CP. For me, it shows the importance of recognizing scale and limits to what we do, and what we buy.

As I continue to read and write for my forthcoming book, it reminds me of how many people are writing to inform us about all the ways we are influenced, some overt and others covert. This is a fascinating article on how architecture and design can include certain people and deliberately exclude others. Much of my research is on building social capital, network formation and the importance of diversity and inclusion.

Trying to unplug for my holidays is proving difficult, watch this video.

The difference between 'being' and 'becoming', happy.  

I am currently working outside of Ottawa, and it has been bitterly cold the last 3 weeks, -27 degrees and with the wind chill as low as -37 degrees. Just finished two days of interviewing with my wonderful colleague, Rebecca Foon, and getting in and out of the car with the cold was a challenge to say the least. We were interviewing people from the Ottawa Renewable Energy Cooperative, remarkable group of dedicated Board members and volunteers.

A colleague from Carleton University, Andrew Cohen, has just written a very novel analysis about the age of the selfie. Perhaps a cultural emphasis on the individual at the expense of the collective is key to ensuring we keep chasing the false gods of consumption for happiness?

Since my beloved mother died on March 26th, I haven't had the psychological energy to write more on this topic, but this video has spurred me to write. Mother had a catrastosphic stroke a month before she died, and another last one the week before she died. My family unanimously agreed that euthanasia, if available, would have been both her choice and our choice after the second stroke. I am still struggling with forgetting how she had to die, in spite of being in palliative care.

One of my students once asked me what was the most important for sustainable development. I replied, maybe we don't need more science, more information, but we need more kindness, to one another, the planet and to other species. This video by George Saunder's on advice to graduates eloquently discusses what he considers to be his greatest failure, failures of kindness.