A climate unconference report

The wise Alex Deschamps-Sonsino organised a climate unconference to coincide with COP28. It was a lovely thought-provoking event with a lot of rich conversations, of which more below.

What with this, and Barcamp London a couple of weeks ago, it feels like the indie/punk/grassroots approach to convening is reviving, and about time too. There is a lot going on in the world - on so many fronts - and connecting different folks to explore more radical ideas and catalyse new thinking and work is a great way to bring some positive energy and hope - and hopefully action, too. 

The unconference started off wondering whether we actually need more data. We were hosted in a UCL building - very new, packed with 4000+ sensors, but is collecting all this data worthwhile? Even with BMS (building management system) access the occupants couldn't tell how the building works, and so couldn't make good choices around the heating and ventilation controls for instance. It wasn't clear whether the data could be used to inform policy or operational choices, possibly because of missing skills, but perhaps because there's no clear paths for responsibility here. The building maintenance is outsourced, separate from UCL's net zero commitments, and the architects are long off the scene. They are also gathering data about bat movements, but aren't sure how best to get this to the ecologists who might be interested - their local researchers, if I understood correctly, weren't studying this sort of thing. 

This all reminded me of the challenges to the open data movement some time ago. They fought for access to data and after a while, data was open; it was in accessible formats such as CSV; it was discoverable, for instance, in open government portals. But did this lead to the benefits we'd all hoped for, such as reducing corruption or greater efficiencies? Alas no, because to do that you still need people with the power to make change. When there are strong vested interests in the status quo, it takes a lot of effort to change things. It feels like we may be getting to a similar place with all this building monitoring too (aside from the carbon impact and future ewaste of all the monitoring gear). The building is designed for a 200 year lifespan - that's a lot more than usual! - I wonder if the electronics are, too.

I could also see some links to Dawn Nafus's toot and article about the challenges of using AI to improve air quality - if you have the data, what if it's too complex to really make sense of? (and perhaps you already knew that the pollution was bad, and that the air quality needed to be improved. Would more data actually make a difference? Alex mentioned the first UK death where air pollution made a material contribution. It's not like this is not a known problem.)

We discussed a little about forms of knowledge - data being one way to know things, and perhaps currently held as more important than other ways of knowing. (Someone mentioned an example of academics in a room missing out on the lived experience of a person present.) 

Could the data be useful to some communities, if they could access it? Or is the data really just a MacGuffin? Sometimes local projects already know what they need to know about their work, but are required to gather data to meet the requirements of grant funders.

I talked briefly about Overstory and specifically how pleased I've been to find a business which is doing useful things which can improve climate action at scale. 

this sort of tagline could be used by a lot of businesses that do less than Overstory

Our work does use shiny technologies (machine learning! satellite images!) but connects in a very tangible way every day to literal boots on the ground, the folks who are out there managing vegetation to keep electricity flowing around the world. These are the people who use the vegetation intelligence created by Overstory. 

someone who maintains our power infrastructure by managing the vegetation near it, in a sustainable way

 

Why is this sort of practical change-making so rare (compared to the vast heat and noise around climate finance, carbon accounting, or yet another tree planting venture)? How could we get more designers working with people in niche areas (such as the vegetation managers at utilities, who have the on-the-ground knowledge of the problem area Overstory addresses) to spot opportunities like this? These unusual, little-known interventions are maybe more likely to create sustainable businesses, too. Or maybe it's a lack of marketing of these unusual ventures.

Overstory is not just a "let's reduce carbon now" venture, but addressing a problem which will continue to be an issue whether or not we get to net zero. Whilst we have overground powerlines - and in general there are more of these coming! - and whilst we have trees, there's the risk that these collide and cause devastation through wildfire (or through power outage).  

In the discussion, we wondered whether financialisation of climate action is the only way forward, because we are acting in a highly financialised/capitalised era. Can we have small interventions that help without a financial incentive? For instance, making sure car tyres are correctly pressurised has a notable impact on emissions. Could kids help take local type pressure readings and make sure the neighbourhood's cars running efficiently? Does this require a payment method, so the carbon efficiency payback reaches the kids? We also discussed whether the major financial institutions are taking climate seriously, or not. The room was divided on whether insurers were really stepping up here, and whether the growing set of places where home insurance is now unobtainable, or as expensive as the house rebuild cost each year, would drive change. 

Later, we talked about the paltry Loss and Damage announcement that had just come out. Insurers think about billions at a time; the UAE made a fuss about a 100m contribution to loss and damage, but that's just a rounding error. Probably to insure the global south against climate impacts it's hundreds of billions or more.  Money gets funny at that scale. 

In the other track, Michael Dales talked about how ecologists need interaction design. They need to do large and complex data processing, but the tools available are not helping. (Partnering with computer science folks is also an option.)

How do we become, and stay, informed citizens, when climate issues are so complex and ever-changing? This was a break time conversation. The example was given how one might have read Harari on the surprisingly low cost of fixing the climate, and felt informed; but over the subsequent weeks and months, articles came out by high reputation people which in turn each increased hugely the estimated cost. How can even a smart person keep track of, make sense of, and make decisions based in this sort of situation? We talked about intuition, trying to find good information sources, fact checking, and the information pollution coming now in the wider web from generative AI (on top of the existing 'enshittification' of internet content that we've had in recent years). Since the unconference had such a diverse and interesting set of attendees, I would be fascinated to find out what all our practices are for being informed.

Is risk a good way to talk about climate? We talked about risk vs fear vs hope, in terms of which might be a strong angle for communicating for local authorities who need to engage their communities. Whether or not they have the resource to do this well, or indeed think about anything other than short term cost savings, was less clear. I mentioned MyClimatePlan over in Canada, who are looking at ways to enable people to start preparing for climate impacts on their local communities and households; thinking about ideas like twinning with other communities facing or encountering similar risks (flood, fire, storm etc) and finding ways to make ruggedisation more financially viable (clubbing together in a community to access discount supplies, for instance). We noted that even in areas where the risk is very real - for instance, that are already suffering regular flooding - it seems easy for people to think, well, we dry out again and stay put. Perhaps we need to think about place differently - we used to move homes around; the current Globe theatre is the third one.
 
When we think about throwaway culture, what is 'away'? It varies. Maybe it's away in place (a refuse centre or overseas), or maybe it's away in time (all those old phones sitting in a drawer at home, out of sight and out of mind). Different cultures have different ideas here. We noted that things also come from away, these days - they are made elsewhere. This lets us forget the externalities of mining, of cheap manufacturing and so on. 

We moved on to a conversation about whether non-violence is the right approach for climate action. This was inspired by the contrasts of ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ and ‘Zen and the art of saving the planet.' The non-violent movements of the past often had violent elements within them - so perhaps the wholly nonviolent approach of today's climate movement is limiting its effectiveness? 

Surfers against sewage have been active for more than 30 years; there has been sewage in our waters that long. Only now are they in the public eye. It's a long time to work to get - well, not even impact yet, but at least attention. Of course the environmental movement has had many forms over the decades.

We talked about whether damaging property really counted as violence - if one attacked a data centre, might that have impact? Would it be a violent act?  Already the UK government treats Just Stop Oil, and Extinction Rebellion, as extreme organisations, just for genuinely nonviolent peaceful protest. The definition of 'extreme' has changed, recently. The personal risk of protest or activism has also changed. In 2006 you could still squat in London; in past decades one could be arrested, or have one's photograph taken, without significant long term consequences. But now, the consequences can be bigger and longer term.  The social safety net is diminished; and there is less flexibility in the system, connecting actions to consequences and to individuals long term. You cannot 'get lost' or reinvent yourself now, as you once could. You cannot protest for a bit and then go get a respectable job in say a bank, now.

Activism in the past had different approaches within the same movements. AIDs campaigns included both inside, and outside, strategies.  

Personal violence seems unthinkable now, and yet we are immersed in systemic violence - police, military, etc. The violence we are talking about in a protest sense is against people, and somehow feels worse than the violence being used against us regularly. People are being killed, for instance, by air pollution. Perhaps violence is a catch all term and means too many things.

Maybe there's also a generational gap around how to protest (at least, in the UK and perhaps US). People used to be more exposed to civil disobedience. Unions were more familiar. (Tech workers are only just starting to realise that unionisation is an option, although the scariness of organisers being fired is maybe already having a chilling effect...) Have we lost knowledge of how to protest and make change? Could this be connected with the context of generation and place, for instance here where memories of World War II, and the struggle/discomfort of such times, are fading?  Has progressiveness simply become professionalised? The Black Panthers did not go and work for NGOs. We noted that this is a local thing; activists elsewhere use different tactics and take huge risks. Deforestation activists in Brasil continue to protest in the face of violence and murder.

Finally, we talked about repair skills. We need to be able to repair things, but most knowledge of how to repair electrical and mechanical items is held by old men. This knowledge could soon be lost. Women also have repair traditions - perhaps more visible in fabric, in darning, in keeping a family in clothes.  Could we have more high street repair shops, run by women who repair all kinds of items, supported locally? Or does the continued existence of "the £10 toaster" - cheap items where the externalities are 'away' - mean that repair simply isn't viable? Could repair skills be made cooler or sexier? Or are repair and related traditional practices being claimed by the far right, the 'tradwife' movement and nationalists? We closed with the observation that the Museum of Rural Life does a splendid job of taking an issue which could so easily be a right wing one, and through humour, making it fun and interesting for everyone. 

https://merl.reading.ac.uk/blog/2018/04/history-behind-absolute-unit/

A huge thanks to Alex for making this great day full of fascinating conversations happen! All being well, she is going to organise another unconference for the next COP. We need more things like this! And my sense is that more folks are starting to think this, too :) See you next time.
 
The Art X Climate Gallery is worth a look, too.