Session 1: Is There True Pessimism?

The first pod of Day One has come and gone and there was no lack of drama. A beautiful, haunting opening with 11 yr. old Ta’Kaiya Blaney gracing the stage with her gorgeous voice. She sang “Oh Canada, our home is native land”, and then a stunning version of Amazing Grace in the Sliammon language. She then treated the ideacity audience to a composition of her own, “Shallow Waters”, along with it’s urgent environmental message against big oil pipelines and their destruction of her ancestral land and the resources on which we all depend. This lovely and wise little girl nicely set the stage for the speakers to come – the ‘pessimists’ – who gave us the dire facts about the state of the world, but mostly left us with messages of hope.

Next came enthusiastic conspiracy theorist Richard Syrett, opening with the dramatic claim that he would be talking about “the total annihilation of everything” and citing the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. True to his word, Syrett delivered a comprehensive round-up of end-of-the-world prophecies and scientific possibilities that suggest we are facing imminent doom. But despite the depressing evidence for doom, Syrett ended with the view that 2012 may just be a reset. He argued that we have imposed our own linear view of time on the Mayan calendar and thus misinterpreted it, and that “the end” may well be a self-fulfilling prophecy that depends on our own attitudes.

Jeff Rubin may be the best person in the world to speak about peak oil, and the ideacity audience heard from him about his views on growth. Claiming that “every major recession since 1970 has oil’s fingerprints on it”, Rubin waxed philosophical on the need for a major paradigm shift in our attitudes, and suggested that we can have the world we want if we are willing to let go of the world we have. Settling for less seemed to be the theme of the pod.

Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace and environmental crusader also had an intentionally mixed message. Directing his talk towards the question of just how bad the environmental situation is, Weyler laid out some very pessimistic-sounding data. This both in terms of degradation of the natural environment (we lose a species every 20 minutes) and in terms of human injustice (the 85% of the world’s people who are poor have to make do with 15% of the planet’s resources). Weyler made the powerful claim that we are destroying our real wealth – rivers, forests and diversity – for the false wealth that is money. Despite the pessimism of the data, Weyler claimed to be a natural optimist, and although he suggested that “hope is a great frame of mind, but not a strategy”, he left us with the sense – again – that it is up to us to bring an optimistic attitude to the real work of changing our relationship with nature.

The audience poll indicated that after the pessimists pod, the audience was still 81% optimistic. It seemed right given the overwhelming sense of optimism even from the pessimists! Does this mean there is no true pessimism?