It's a beautiful day: am I allowed to enjoy it?

A bright, warm, sunny, late October day.

The sky is blue, butterflies are dancing through the air and a fat red dragonfly buzzes us as we walk along the footpath in our T-shirts.

I want to lose myself in how lovely it is, but part of me is saying "We'll be nostalgic about cold cloudy autumn days with proper rain once climate change kicks in".

Curses!  Sustainable development change agents have a hard time of it, what with being so aware of impending ecosystem collapse and the paltry efforts our organisations are making to stop it.

Can't we just enjoy the sunshine and let tomorrow worry about itself?

How do we feel about it? And how do we help ourselves feel effective, empowered and persuasive in the face of the latest information on ice melt, ocean pH and HIV/Aids? This survey of organisational change agents may help you feel less alone.

Take a look at this slide show, that illustrates the results of the same survey and draws some conclusions.

What do you feel about it?

*Update: Jonathon Porritt blogs about optimism and pessimism here.

*Update 2015: Roger Harrabin writes about scientists's tears, and the comments are very telling too.

The greening of Corporate Social Responsibility

Most often, corporate action around sustainability issues is looked at as if the organisation is a single discrete entity, making decisions by itself. While this is convenient for discerning general patterns and for traditional management theory, itʼs not the way it appears to me in my day-to-day work with change agents. For example, Tom Lyon and John Maxwell talk about the usefulness or otherwise of companies including environmental activities under their CSR umbrella. Their post, understandably given their interest in the level of overall society rather than the micro of what happens inside organisations, concentrates on whether voluntary activity by companies might work against a potentially more effective approach of government regulation.  That's an interesting debate and one which I've seen first hand when I was the expert rapporteur for the European Commission's Round Table on CSR.

But I'm interested in the lived experience of individual actors.

So, what if we look at this from the point of the view of the individual change agent?

If I'm in a company, and I'd like to get it to begin shifting towards sustainability, then I'll look around to see where the opportunities might be.

If there's already an active CSR programme of some kind, then I might see this as a useful initiative to piggyback on or link in with.  Perhaps I can build in operational environmental improvements to a CSR programme which currently is little more than philanthropy.  Or perhaps the CSR team would appreciate support in making their community activities more related to organisational strategy.

Getting involved in existing activities gives me the legitimacy to be part of the conversation about how they can be made more strategic, more mainstream and more ambitious.

Being part of the conversation is critical if we're to add tinder to the sparks of positive intent which will be present where people are doing CSR.

Just too depressing to think about

At a gathering of friends, new and old, over Easter, I'm asked, "What is it exactly that you do then, Penny?"  After a few fumbling attempts to explain,  they get it. Their responses, though, are telling:

“Yes, because I just wouldn’t think about climate change at all if I didn’t have to.”

“It’s just too depressing to think about.”

“And too frightening.”

“And you just feel overwhelmed. The more I know, the less I feel able to do anything about it.”

Those are the responses of my friends.  As professionals in our field, however, what is our duty to our clients? What do we do with their feelings of fear, depression and powerlessness?

An 'every-day' response might be to rescue people from their feelings, so as to spare them (and our) discomfort.  "It's OK, I'm sure we'll get through it, there's nothing to get upset about."

But I think that as professionals intervening with our clients, or active citizens helping to run grass-roots activities, that's not sufficient.

The work of people like Joanna Macy and Mary-Jane Rust can help us.  It can help us to understand the causes of despair.  And it can help us to honour it without being disempowered by it.  So we can confront that depressing thought and begin to make a path of our choosing.