Blessed Unrest

"This is a movement for sustainability and a movement for the planet and for social justice. It is very small scale, which is why for the most part it is largely unseen. Of course there are larger groups that are involved in these kinds of actions. Hawken is one of the liveliest, most admired and inspirational leaders of the worldwide sustainability movement. And what he noticed, as he travelled around the world speaking and interacting with groups that are working on these issues, is how many hundreds of thousands of organisations had recently sprung up to heal the planet and the people on it. He likened it to a kind of immune system response to an ill body. It is a different kind of political movement than we would have thought about decades ago. In those days movements were much larger and more centralised. This is the case if we think of the most powerful movements of the 20th century, such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Labour Movement. Absolutely, and his argument is that they will begin to converge almost as a kind of collective intelligence. So it is a sort of Internet moment. I do think that the old-style movement model is not working and that is one of the reasons why I find his account so interesting."