{"id":8382,"date":"2023-08-09T08:08:50","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T08:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8382"},"modified":"2023-08-09T08:08:50","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T08:08:50","slug":"on-being-provoked-by-john-barry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2023\/08\/09\/on-being-provoked-by-john-barry\/","title":{"rendered":"On being provoked by John Barry"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Barry \u2013 no not\u00a0the <\/em>John Barry the composer \u2013 <\/em>gave the keynote address \u2013 labelled \"a provocation\" \u2013 on the final day\u00a0of the GEEP<\/a> Advisory Group Meeting. \u00a0As I noted yesterday, John <\/a>is Professor of Green Political Economy in the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and\u00a0Climate Action at Queen's University Belfast. \u00a0He is co-chair of the Belfast Climate Commission,\u00a0a member of the Committee on Climate Change\u2019s Economics Advisory Group on\u00a0Adaptation and Resilience, and member of the Sustainable Future Committee of the\u00a0Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. \u00a0As fromage<\/em> goes, he is quite\u00a0grand<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I've heard him before, about 30 years ago at an environmental philosophy and ethics event organised by the late, regretted, Andy Dobson. \u00a0He was a local Green Party politician then and full of enthusiasm and rhetoric for his red\/green future vision. \u00a0It must have been tricky being a Green amidst the febrile politics of Northern Ireland. \u00a0I remember saying to him after his talk that if he ever came to power, and had the chance to implement his policies, there would not be concrete enough in the world to build the gulag he would need to incarcerate dissidents. \u00a0He took it well enough. \u00a0I've always remembered the exchange, and wondered whether he had.<\/p>\n

I also wondered how he had changed over the years.<\/p>\n

Well, he's no longer a politician and looked all the better for it. \u00a0He's got a nice university niche from which to provoke \u2013 and good for him as academics should do this. \u00a0It's clear that he's a popular speaker with a good line in rhetoric and a certain flair for presentation. \u00a0Too many clich\u00e9s for me though, but that's a matter of taste. \u00a0He looks a bit Old Testament, which helps, and always goes down well in Northern Ireland, I'm told. \u00a0One person I met afterwards said how she loved hearing him: \"I could listen to him all day\", she said. \u00a0Fair enough, I thought, but what do you\u00a0do<\/em> as a result? \u00a0I wish I'd asked.<\/p>\n

John's talk was heavy on a diagnosis of the existential crises we all face; I'll not dwell on those as we're all familiar with the arguments. \u00a0I was more interested in the so what? \u00a0What are we to do<\/em> \u2013 especially as educators \u2013 to help build a fulfilling, nature-rich life beyond carbon. \u00a0And all that was a bit thin: apart from overthrowing global capitalism, of course; that's a given \u2013 but not, it seems and as the great Peter Martin was won't to say, before our pensions are paid.<\/p>\n

There were some great sound bites: \u00a0\u201coptimism is a trap, but hope is central \u2013 although it needs agency\u201d. \u00a0Dead right. \u00a0And I particularly liked this: \"If he were here today, what would Jesus drive?\". \u00a0A good trick question for the chattering classes along the Shankill Road I thought.<\/p>\n

But as far as the central question of how we get from where we are now to this fulfilling, carbon-free, nature-rich life, there was no convincing answer. \u00a0John has no hope for capitalism or for technology, and he's not alone in this, of course, although his current well-paid good life is mediated by both. \u00a0He's prone to asking his students why it is that people are more readily able to see the end of the world than the end of capitalism.<\/p>\n

At the end of the talk I proffered an answer which was that people cannot see any alternative economic system because nothing is available as either a compelling model, or a convincing road down which to travel to that end. \u00a0There is nowhere in the world where the non-carbon, nature-rich good life can be glimpsed, even if hazily. \u00a0That, I thought, is his challenge.<\/p>\n

Actually, I think it's all our challenge as it's a low-carbon life that is heading towards us, and only if we are lucky will it be a fulfilling, nature-rich one. \u00a0From the perspective of most people in the room, it was education that has to be key to getting there, and I\u00a0also asked about this. \u00a0Specifically I asked:<\/p>\n

How can education, particularly in schools, help people understand the transition that we need to make and aid them to acquire the skills (viewed broadly) to work collaboratively towards this?<\/p>\n

This is an important question and it is central to what the young people in the admirable Teach the Future say they want. \u00a0They want to\u00a0help<\/em> as well as learn; to be able to play their part in this grand and necessary adventure. \u00a0They see it as both an existential and hopeful challenge. \u00a0The most important we have ever faced. \u00a0It's surely glorious.<\/p>\n

But John had no answer. \u00a0He responded with more of the same (for about 5 minutes) but said nothing about education and what it might do.<\/p>\n

In the end, I thought, provoking people is all too easy but nowhere near enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Barry \u2013 no not\u00a0the John Barry the composer \u2013 gave the keynote address \u2013 labelled \"a provocation\" \u2013 on the final day\u00a0of the GEEP Advisory Group Meeting. \u00a0As I noted yesterday, John is Professor of Green Political Economy in...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}