The Great Resignation

...and I don't mean quitting your job...but it relates.

You might have noticed that I have been quiet...no catbird seat newsletter in a while.

I started the newsletter on climate a few moons back because I truly felt we got this. I was excited. I still feel that way in the built environment...about our knowledge and technology that we have...though the scale of implementation and logistics and complexity that come with it are undoubtedly daunting.

I wanted to project that positivity...be contagious and courageous...in a good way...inspire others to be hopeful about a livable future where we all may thrive...

But then, beginning of this year, in looking for positive topics I fell silent. An inexplicable emptiness had taken the place of exuberance and positive projection and action. I listened to my inner voice...nothing.

I stopped. I realized I had just completely stopped...no thoughts, no debates in my head. No motivation, no vision, no thrust forward or backward...empty...motionless.

I have been looking around. Something changed. Climate talk everywhere, on social media platforms, articles in major newspapers, major political action and incentives, at least here in the US, finally...should not all be great? Was that not what I had hoped for? Awareness and action, seemingly, everywhere.

But then there they are, the memory lapses from shock and horror seen first hand, we get used to the burn and the pain and disasters and wildfires and heatwaves and it becomes just another Monday...Monday blues on a long road to how it will be from now on.

And the cycle of grief kicks in. We accept. We resign.

I feel helplessness and a great resignation in the face of the overload of climate news, one more dire than the other, temperatures accelerating as they said they would...major coral reef bleaching upon us due to ocean temperature rises...and the news fall flat. Who hears it?

The great resignation. Mirror neurons...we mirror our environment, I mirror mine. We all hear it loud and clear...this gasping resignation everywhere to a point where it begins to roll back important action already taken (think ESG).

To the systems thinker, that is the sign that a boundary has been reached. It does not mean the road is blocked indefinitely. It means the system has changed (remember The Matrix?) and the assumed path forward has closed temporarily. We can sit down in front of the boulder and lament...or...resign...or we can look for the path around it.

In realizing this I think I am back and I can begin to address it...significant systems change is upon us and I can see, feel it...not necessarily in favor of our mission but also at this point not necessarily against it just yet either.

Let's shake it off...the "Feeling The Frog".

And look at the current circumstances with open eyes, paying close attention to the playing field.

Lets regroup. I need ideas, observations from you to outsmart, redesign, lift up to the next level, overcome the obstacle type thing...the climate defense system we have built so far is not terrible but it has now begun to slow us, if not drag us down.

...if you feel so inclined, please help, think and comment, to prepare to jump the boulder...