Dr. Elizabeth Sawin

How many breaking crises ago was the IPCC report?

Exhibit Number "I lost count" about not designing feedback into a system.https://twitter.com/JeffreyRMillman/status/1427791412154802185 …

Ever notice how much that is justified as progress (i.e. to benefit future generations) actually makes them less secure? Weird.

Kinda wild to be able to use the singular to talk about covid cases, hmm?https://twitter.com/NZMorningReport/status/1427700644996026368 …

What good is back to normal if normal is making a planet unlivable though.

Now Susan, in another 30 years you are going to want to notify folks to be on the lookout for symptoms like coastal erosion in New Jersey and could you make a note to call the Amazon in around 2052 to check in with that rare orchid which might be suffering from drought?

How about contact tracers for every ton of coal? Those folks would be watching prevailing winds and checking in with people's lungs. And given the lifetime of CO2 they'd have to keep training replacements and replacement for the replacement so the original team could retire.

Do you ever think about how contact tracing is a job that maps just how interconnected we are? And that's just one type of physical interconnection. How about contract tracers for policy impacts? Investment decisions?

"The declaration triggers cuts in water supply that, for now, mostly will affect Arizona farmers." - being a noted systems thinkers I would add, "and eaters." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/climate/colorado-river-water-cuts.htm …

It's easy to get spellbound by the unfolding tragedies. but never forget that they have come from decisions and those decisions have funding streams, and we have enormous wealth and power that *just* needs to be aimed differently.

If that were the simple organizing principle? As much energy as is going into destruction could be going into repair?

Can you imagine the possibilities, not just for change, but for joy, if every human life were aligned in the support of life and thriving?

When it seems we can't find the time, money, energy to save ourselves one obvious place to start is to use the time, money, energy that is making things worse. Which is substantial since that is most of the freakin' economy.

But here's the thing, all that misaligned energy is a lot of energy, and creativity and wealth. "Divest--> invest" applies to way more than mutual funds.

Trying to use fossil fuels to solve problems created by fossil fuels and weapons to solve problems created by violence.

And then even more energy goes into trying to do things that aren't working any more, if they ever were. Trying to make electricity from a dried out river. Trying to do education the same old way but in the third school year of a pandemic that is newly more dangerous to children.

Some of the misaligned energy goes into not feeling, to distracting, to not looking while also not being able to look away. A weird feeling of stasis in the face of escalating rates of change.