Greetings!   

In Getting to Maybe, social innovators ask, "When will hope and history rhyme?"  It is this intersection, the crossroads of hope and history, where social change is found according to Frances Westley. 

In her research Westley points to great social innovators Bob Geldof, Candy Lightner (MADD), and others and explains that history always plays a role.  Put another way, "nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come". 

When Hope and History Rhyme

So will "hope and history rhyme" with the announcement of the Obama Climate Change Plan announced last week.  The Obama government says it will:

• Cut Carbon Pollution in America by- 
  • Increasing Fuel Economy standards
  • Develoing and Deploying Advanced Transportation Technologies
    Preserving the role of Forests in Mitigating Climate Change

    Obama's Climate Change Plan- Full Speech

• Prepare the United States for Climate Change
  by -
• Conserving Land and Water Resources
• Maintaining Agricultural Sustainability
• Managing Drought
• Reducing Wildfire Risks
• Lead International Efforts to Address Global Climate Change by -
• reducing emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.

I know much is missing from this list, but the Administration says it will use its Executive Powers to move this agenda forward making it a more serious commitment than past responses.

This is a decision propelled by history.  A June 13th NOAA report said that 2012 saw 11 weather and climate disaster events each with losses exceeding $1 billion in damages. This makes 2012 the second costliest year since 1980, with a total of more than $110 billion in damages throughout the year.

This comes with insurance losses of $35 billion, a sum that is likely to become the second or third-biggest in U.S. history after 2005, when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast, costing some $70 billion in insured losses. 

Canada's Response?

Several years ago Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper pledged to match US climate change targets and align the two nations' climate policy.  And with recent floods, droughts and wildfires across Canada action seems inevitable.  There hasn't been a formal response from the Harper government to date.  Increasingly Canada's federal government looks like one of the last holdouts, left behind nearly every other developed nation on the planet. 

Convergence

But the writing is on the wall for all.  Hope and history are converging. President Obama made it clear that he will not tolerate inaction (hopefully among his best trading partners as well).

"I don't have much patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real," he says. "We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it's not going to protect you from the coming storm. And ultimately, we will be judged as a people, and as a society, and as a country on where we go from here."

According to Westley, transformational learning is characterized by "relatively sudden breakthroughs when multiple systems or scales align in a cascade of novelty".  Let's hope that the Obama Climate Change plan is the shifting of another system. We have already seen a shift in the planet's climate systems and a shift in the hearts of millions of social innovators who are trying to co-create a better world.  I hear the rhythum of hope and history -  they are starting to beat to the same drum.

Kathryn

Kathryn A. Cooper 

President & Chief Learning Officer

Sustainability Learning Centre 

[email protected]