My friend Logan Muller is a brilliant speaker. He uses appreciative inquiry to move people to a position of wanting to do something to improve the world. As part of this he uses a device of simultaneously looking forward and back. To summarise (and without the eloquence or passion), in 30 years time, your granddaughter is writing a report from school about what it was like in 2008. This was a time with catastrophic extinction, computing was used to fuel a collapse of world markets (etc), what were you doing then granddad?”.
Logan turned up unexpectedly yesterday, on holiday with his kids. The new term starts tomorrow and they were hightailing it back to Auckland, but I thought of Logan last night as we watched Geoff Chapple’s wonderful one-man play Hatch or The Plight of The Penguins.
Stuart Devenie plays Joseph Hatch (ODT report). Hatch was an Invercargill entrepreneur who developed a penguin oil industry on Macquarie Island, running it for 30 years from the 1880s. What is described as “the first international campaign to save wildlife” resulted in Hatch losing his licence and business. The play recreates his lecture tours of 1919-20 to garner public support for his industry.
While we may be horrified at the notion of boiling penguins, calling it “murder” (Communigate calls it “Penguin Auschwitz”), Hatch sensibly asks how it is different to the slaughter of lambs, bobby calves and fish. Hatch firmly believed in his duty to develop the country, the “task of production”.
Back to Logan. I’m not sure how well we would connect with a Hatch of today. I’m sure Hatch would tell Logan’s granddaughter about the roads and schools his oil paid for. He would agree with “sustainable development”, the emphasis firmly on the development. Arguments about sustainability involving resources for the next generation would also have him agreeing – convinced of the strength of penguin populations and a burning desire to develop a viable business for his children.
I would like to think that we could come up with an argument that doesn’t rely on penguins being fluffy and cute.
Both successful orators and entrepreneurs, I’d love to see Logan and Hatch in a room together (fortunately one of them is very much alive).
Other stuff:
Computing for Sustainability 
Sarah Stewart
October 12, 2008
I don’t know, I think ‘cute and fluffy’ is a good enough rationale not to kill something :)
Samuel Mann
October 12, 2008
Except perhaps lambs, because they’re tasty. It also sends the wrong message, we kill sharks because we’re scared of them, eels because we don’t like them etc. I think we need to move to a position of inherent value (not as a resource for now or future).
daveb
October 12, 2008
i used to flat with someone doing her masters in zoology. she was totally enrapt in … it escapes me now, some endangered insect I think? I forget. But it lives in the silver peaks. I remember how angry she’d get at people trying to save some cute and cuddley thing but not giving a stuff about her beloved thing. Shed wander off muttering how things would be different if the insect just had big eyes and fur.
She’s got a point – but maybe hatch did too. Hen’s and sheep aren’t exactly an endangered species. Perhaps penguins would have healthy numbers if he’d got his way [/devils advocate]
Leigh
October 13, 2008
Tim Flannery, in his book The Future Eaters, poses much the same thing – but about whales. Should we look at whales as holy cows, or as a sustainable resource? One thing’s for sure – they have a lot of oil!
seo blog
October 19, 2008
This is an interesting article, your a very good writer,keep it up.