CLIMATE AND CULTURE.

The Main Reason Why Some Countries Get the Emergency…and Others Don’t.

Most things that nations do, such as making war, structuring their economies in a particular way, or managing the needs of their people, may look like the results of political, economic or social policy decisions, but they really are the result of something much deeper. Essentially, most things that nations do are driven fundamentally by their culture, the invisible DNA of the place, which, in turn, determines the political, economic and social decisions that are made. A nation’s culture is not the result of political, economic or social decisions; it’s the other way around: these decisions are the result of its culture. And this includes any nation’s response to the climate emergency that the world faces today.

A nation’s position on climate change is not the result of what their politicians, business leaders or policy wonks say; in fact, in an upside-down kind of way, politicians, business leaders and policy wonks are, like the rest of us, merely agents of what a nation’s culture, to a significant degree, pre-determines their position to be. So if we want to understand any nation’s position on climate change, we need to look not only at what it says and does, but also at what it is. Since it’s usually not a successful strategy to try to change someone else’s culture (and certainly not an effective strategy for achieving climate goals), if we want to get the cultures of the world on board with doing their part to solve the climate crisis, we need to make the reasons for doing…