Stop and Start

This is more work in progress, towards a tool for Climate Museum UK. This might be a set of cards, for players to match and discuss. Players might also add more pairs of things they could STOP and START thinking, feeling or doing.

STOP	START
…always turning away from how we feel about threats to life on Earth	…facing and expressing what we really feel about threats to life on Earth
…focusing on small, single issues amongst all the interconnected threats to life on Earth	…learning about the range and complexity of current threats to life on Earth
…describing threats to life on Earth as happening at some indefinable future time	…agreeing that devastating impacts of climate change & damaged ecosystems, are happening now
…asking children to get angry and active about their future on our behalf	…taking responsibility as stewards of life on Earth for the sake of everybody’s future
…asking what I as one person can do	…thinking that I am not one person
…fighting in a growing panic between camps that prefer different solutions	…trying many clumsy solutions, sharing our learning with those with different views
… accusing others of being inappropriate or pessimistic who express their fears or anger about threats to life on Earth	…recognising that grief, fear and anger about threats to and losses of life on Earth are valid emotions.
…delaying taking visible action to halt threats to life on Earth because you expect to be accused of hypocrisy	…taking action that is possible for you as soon as you can, and avoid contributing to a culture in which people accuse others of hypocrisy
…taking a single small action, and not moving on to any other action, feeling that it is enough	…working out how to take actions that are progressively more and more effective to change whole systems
…casting environmental action in terms as if it is about petty-ness, deprivation or meanness	…promoting environmental action as the task of generating ecological wealth
…assuming that every human society has lived by the idea that ‘man must conquer nature’	…seeing that in times when the dominant view has been ‘man must conquer nature’ there has ultimately been suffering and collapse
…side-lining threats to life on Earth to focus on  threats to particular groups of people, without addressing the context of those threats	… seeing that industrial Ecocide, Climate change impacts, and conflicts for land & oil, are major causes of human injustice and suffering
…thinking that political or business decisions are about society, unless they are about the environment	… knowing that every time a political or business decision is made, it impacts on all living beings
…ignoring future threats to life on Earth, or other species, when costing or assessing any project	…accounting for ecological externalities when costing or assessing any project
…justifying any environmental damage involved in a decision or project by saying that it brings ‘jobs and growth’	…asking if a decision or project gives people and other beings the ‘means to thrive’
…having a limited perspective, that sees each issue (or place, or species, or group of people) as separate	…expanding your perspective to think in terms of ecological systems, to develop a greener way of knowing
…ignoring how breaching the limits of the Earth’s operating system impacts on all dimensions of our life	…becoming literate in all the planetary boundaries, and their intersecting impacts on the Ecosphere, not just climate change
..electing representatives who dismiss the environment as a ‘single issue’	…electing representatives who understand that the environment is ‘the issue’ that stands between mass extinction and continued human civilisation
…making short-term decisions and glorifying risk-taking	…making decisions based on the Precautionary Principle (being sure of avoiding future harm)
…assuming that, as Ecocide is generally legal, those profiting from it are doing no wrong	…campaign to make Ecocide an international crime against peace