Thread by @SteB777

1) This is fair question and I want to answer how I think we can address the climate and ecological emergency and create a sustainable society. This is a summary of 50 years of deep thinking about how to achieve it. @GeorgeMonbiot @GretaThunberg @ClimateHuman @GreenRupertRead

https://twitter.com/lotfhotb2016/status/1355971037083664385

2) I believe the greatest single obstacle is the culture wide misconception that to achieve this we need to create a great big plan, or even a rough outline. This seems so obvious to most people, but I can't think of a single successful historical precedent for this.

3) Historical precedent demonstrates that all such grand preconceived plans fail, or at least have to be seriously modified or entirely changed. Historical precedent demonstrates that only total commitment to addressing the crisis succeeds, and the solutions emerge from this.

4) Many will dispute this. However, it is easy to deal with this. Cite the examples, the historical precedent for crises being solved by a great big plan, ahead of any total commitment to addressing the crisis?

5) What I'm saying is that all those who challenge and try to dismiss environmentalists by saying, but where is your plan are engaging in a serious logical fallacy because there is no historical precedent for crises ever being solved by this sort of plan in advance of commitment.

6) My proposition is that crises can only be overcome when there is a total commitment to address this crisis, when this crisis is acknowledged as a crisis, and the only option is total commitment to addressing this crisis.

7) That if there is any wavering, any suggestion that capitulation and trying to adjust to the crisis, just letting it happen, there will be no commitment to address the crisis.

8) I am proposing that only when there is total commitment to address the crisis, by seeing it as a crisis, will the successful strategies to overcome the crisis start to emerge - when there are many minds, the best minds focused on this end.

9) I'm not overly keen on war analogies, but the best example of this is WW2. Nazi Germany had swept across Europe in their Blitzkrieg, overcoming allied forces, and the British Army had to be evacuated from Dunkirk.

10) Britain faced a crisis after the evacuation from Dunkirk, did it commit fight on alone against Nazi Germany, or did it sue for peace with Nazi Germany. There were lots of powerful voices in the British establishment urging and demanding we sue for peace.

11) None of the political alliances, the technologies and most importantly, the plans to win the war existed, when Britain made the total commitment to fight on against Hitler's Nazi Germany, and was pretty much alone in it's resistance.

12) In the next few years, new alliances, new technologies, which we take for granted now, emerged out of this total commitment to this course of action, and of course eventually the plans. But these plans did not yet exist, when the total commitment was made.

13) My argument is that addressing the climate and ecological crisis is the same. That currently, our leadership is actually far more committed to business as usual, than it is to addressing the climate and ecological emergency.

14) That the prevailing attitude is that we try to adapt with token gestures and clever plans, rather than trying to avert the crisis. That there is no commitment to the changes in our system, necessary to avert the crisis.

15) When we are at the stage of refusing to acknowledge the full scale of the crisis and what the implications are, there will be little motivation to give up business as usual, to let go of it and to commit to change.

16) This total commitment to addressing the crisis, by whatever means necessary, is far more important than a plan. The idea that commitment will only coalesce around a great big plan is contrary to historical precedent, where this approach never works.

17) Therefore the primary focus at the moment should be on fully acknowledging the scale of the whole crisis (not just part of it, like just looking at climate change, because the crisis is much bigger than this), recognising it as a crisis, and totally committing to resolve it.

18) That only when this crisis is acknowledged, and that we are totally committed to system change to address this crisis, will eventually plans to create the sustainable system to address this crisis eventually emerge, when everyone is focused on it.

19) With total commitment to addressing the crisis and fully acknowledging the scale of the crisis, and many minds focused on it, the successful solutions and strategies will start to emerge. Yes, it is a big commitment, but it is the only way to succeed.

20) This is the only "viable" way to create a truly sustainable system. Do not be misled by those who claim to have cunning plans to address the climate and ecological crisis, whilst maintaining business as usual.