Rabbit Holes đł #28
From rurbanization, to conscious quitting, and playing climate crisis (& action) board games
Rabbit Holes đł
Three perspective-shifting ideas that Iâve come across recently:
#1 đ§âđŸ Rurbanization
âPeople have long stoked an urban-versus-rural rivalry, with vastly different cultures and surroundings. But a burgeoning movementâwith accompanying field of scienceâis eroding this divide, bringing more of the country into the city. Itâs called rurbanization, and it promises to provide more locally grown food, beautify the built environment, and even reduce temperatures during heat waves. Itâs also reversing the longstanding assumption that growing food is straight-up bad for biodiversity because clearing land for agriculture necessitates removing native plants and animals.â
âIn a recent paper in the journal Ecology Letters, Jha and her colleagues showed that urban gardens can actually boost biodiversityâparticularly if residents prioritize planting native species, which attract native insects like bees. âThe gardener actually has a lot of power in this scenario,â says Jha. âIt doesn't matter how large or small the garden is. It's the practice of cultivating the landscapeâand the decisions they make about the vegetation and the ground coverâthat ultimately decide the plant and animal biodiversity there.ââ
âJhaâs team characterized the biodiversity of 28 California urban gardens over the course of five years. Far from the mono-cropped monotony of a wheat field, they found rich ecosystems humming with activity that, in turn, increased species diversity.â
âThis biodiversity is largely due to a strategic trade-off. One of the challenges of urban gardening is that it requires intensive manual labor: You canât drive a combine through a city at harvest time. But that limitation turns out to be an ecological blessing. Because everything is done by hand, urban farmers can grow all sorts of plants right next to each other, packed in tightly to increase yields.â
ââThereâs a take-home message here for everyday gardeners: With relatively minimum effort, you can make a big change,â says Camilo. âYou donât need to be consciously improving the environment. You can just concentrate on your one little thingâwhich is the growth of some foodâand do it in the right way, and you can have significant impacts.ââ
» WIRED | You Can Turn Your Backyard Into a Biodiversity Hot Spot by Matt Simon
#3 â Conscious Quitting Is Just The Beginning
Clover Hogan:
âIn 2022, Deloitte asked leaders what the benefits were of sustainability in business. The #1 response wasnât, in fact, addressing the climate crisisâŠ
It was âbrand recognition and reputation.â
Does this not tell us everything we need to know about why we're failing? Leaders are more concerned with being seen to do the right thing than actually doing it.
Indeed, there is now a plethora of terms to define the nuances of greenwashing: from âgreenhushingâ (deliberately under-reporting) and âgreenrinsingâ (regularly changing oneâs sustainability targets before theyâre achieved; Coca Cola is a regular offender), to âgreenshiftingâ (implying that the consumer is at fault, e.g. BPâs ingenious creation of the carbon footprint calculator).
Thereâs also âwokewashingâ (exploiting social movements like #blacklivesmatter and the LGBTQ+ community), and even âyouthwashingâ (associating with young activists to improve their image).
It should come as no surprise that people distrust businesses; and are increasingly questioning their values. Itâs showing up in where people choose to work.
Paul Polman recently commissioned a survey of 4000 workers in the UK and US to capture how sentiments are changing:
đ 2/3 employees are anxious about the future of the planet and society,
đ 3/4 say a company should take responsibility for its impact, yet
đ 1/2 believe senior leaders donât care, and are only driven by their own gain,
đ 45% of employees in the UK said they would consider resigning from their job if the values of the company did not align with their own, and
đ 49% of Gen Z employees report having already resigned for this reason.
So, while business leaders may be in denial about the #climatecrisis, there is now a threat closer to home: the rise of âconscious quittingâ.
For my parentâs generation, it was normal to split yourself between work and home. For my generation, we donât want to leave our values at the door. And we know that our influence doesnât lie in tweaking our personal carbon footprint â but how we spend the majority of our time, every day.
Our culture has taught us to box ourselves in: weâre âconsumers"; âfollowersâ; âworkersâ. Yet these labels plaster over the most important identity of all: what it is to be human.
Conscious quitting is just the beginning.â
» LinkedIn post by climate activist Clover Hogan
#3 𧩠Playing Climate Crisis (& Action)
âIn the world of board games, most titles involve total victories over adversaries in zero-sum competitions. In the new genre of climate-themed games, creators like Leacock make collaboration the key to success.â
âBoard games and puzzles are an $11 billion industryâone that grew 20% between 2019 and 2021, a boom fueled partly by pandemic-related boredom and digital fatigue, according to market research group Euromonitor International.â
âIn 2020, Wingspan, in which players develop biodiverse bird habitats, was named the best strategy game by the American Tabletop Awards. The game was reviewed by the science journal Nature, in addition to more traditional gaming publications, and sold over 750,000 sets in its first year.â
âLast year, Cascadia, where players compete to create âthe most harmonious ecosystemâ in the Pacific Northwest, won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award as well as American Tabletop Awardsâ best strategy competition.â
âThese games do more than simply entertain, research shows. Simulation games can measurably facilitate learning about international climate politics, according to a 2018 study published in Climatic Change. The authors found that playing a single round of the climate game Keep Cool increased participantsâ sense of responsibility toward the environment and confidence in climate cooperation.â
âA separate 2020 study published in the journal Simulation & Gaming reached similar conclusions. Researchers found that games presented a âsimplified alternative to overcomplicated science communicationâ and that âportraying reality in a highly concentrated and simplified mannerâ helped players conceptualize climate change in tangible ways.â
» yes! magazine | Can We Game Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis? by Zoe Dutton
đ Seen On LinkedIn
Thatâs it for this week!