…apart from narcissistic reasons.

Here I am, typical millenial having recently joined the workforce and turning to the Internet to solve issues I can’t deal with in the big, scary, real world. Blogging is something I have long considered as an openly narcissistic version of writing a personal diary, or just an opportunity to reinvent yourself freely while in reality being the poor guy bullied at school, uni or work. Anyway, not something a dude in his mid-twenties would be proud of openly sharing with his friends.

Although part of me still thinks this is true, my experiences during my engineering degree also showed me the benefits of confronting your ideas with others (C-O-M-M-U-N-I-C-A-T-I-O-N skills, much wow!). Scientists (sorry purists if I count us poor engineers in that lot) and academics in general have to develop their concepts based on proofs, facts and references. While we can be bloody happy they do this, it also tends to make them less outspoken and clear-cut on their ideas, as they learn to appreciate the meaning of standard deviations, probabilities, errors and uncertainties. Easy to say that they have no chance to be listened to on a TV debate or a Facebook joust against the loud pathos-filled claims of far-right (or -left) demagogues.

This is the point one my professors was making as well: we need more scientists involved in policy. People who understand numbers, but most of all who understand the uncertainty and errors behind these numbers. And this requires scientists to get engaged in debates, develop their rhetorical skills and get out of their bubbles where large consensus reigns. Getting likes from LinkedIn contacts is easy; getting your message across to someone from a totally different background is something else.

This problem of opinion entrenchment is something that has affected me as well, as I realised that my diverse social media networks were agreeing on most topics, and that the dialogue that was so desperately needed was not happening.

And so this blog is for me the opportunity to try out another platform to reach out and discuss. I therefore will focus on making my posts as accessible as possible, and cover varying topics related to sustainability (you will quickly see that pretty much everything is) to get discussions going, using a simple blog format worthy of the dawn of Internet in the 90s, when the vision of the WWW was still that of uniting people to strive for common goals together. A bit of naive optimise never hurts 😉

Another challenge this blog is aiming to address is to change the perceptions on sustainability (whatever this word means, anyway). The never-ending debates on the topic seem to be either apocalyptic, utopist or simply dried-up from churning out the same concepts over and over again. Either way, nothing you can talk about too long around the Christmas turkey before plates shatter, old conflicts surge up or smartphones pop up from beneath the table to end the conversation in a painful statement of disinterest.

And whenever someone has been interesting himself for the topic a bit, a sheer sense of overwhelm is the standard reaction leading to the I-give-up step before efforts haven’t even started.

I therefore think that despite the urgency of the situation in front of us, it is high time we desacralise the sustainability topic and make it fun (again!). Make people realise that it affects everyone, everywhere, all the time, and that general policy questions shouldn’t just be discussed amongst public authorities in educated circles. I’m not talking about indoctrinating everyone into the “every little counts” movement, which is merely a (dangerous) way of salving our conscience: if everyone reduces their emissions by 1%, total emisions will be reduced by … 1% ( provided double-counting is avoided, the whole IS the sum of its parts in this case). No, what I would like is people to be more interested in a variety of subjects, even those that don’t affect them directly.

Indeed, if change is to also come from the consumption side, then the overall population must be educated on the global picture as well. With sustainability, the era of task specialisation is over. This call for multidisciplinary is not necessarily a call for further academic education or intellectual hegemony, but an invitation to be interested in many topics, be open-minded and ready to see problems from different perspectives. On a side note, these are also prerequisites for a healthy democracy, but we’ll get to that point later on I’m sure.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to meeting, interacting and debating with as many people as possible to open up my and your perspectives on the greatest and most exciting challenge of our time.