Thinking Short And Long – Changing How We Think About Climate Solutions
- Apr 24, 2024
- 4 min read
Dain Dunston is a master coach who focuses on radical self-awareness for leaders. An award-winning author and speaker, he is the founding partner of Reservoir LLC, a consulting company with deep resources for leaders.
There is a beautiful valley in the hills outside of Austin, Texas, where the local Watershed Association has been fighting to prevent rampant over-pumping of groundwater in what is one of the three fastest growing counties in the United States. We're fighting old laws and old attitudes. We're fighting big money. And we're having some very important wins.
The Association had been instrumental over more than three decades in helping protect water resources in central Texas and, in particular, seven sacred springs that supplied the indigenous people of the region for more than 15,000 years. But in the last few decades, development and over-pumping have brought local aquifers down to dangerously low levels, so low that in two recent droughts local wells began to dry up. So the groundwater organization had been focused on stopping the drilling.
But that’s not enough. We need solutions for the future that are based on better thinking. What would it look like if we redesigned the way we use water in our homes, in our businesses, in our towns and cities. What could we do to build a future where we have enough clean fresh water for our needs, both human and planetary?
The science fiction model
That’s what we at Reservoir, our coaching and advisory company, call Thinking Short and Long. We have to deal with what’s in front of us: in this case, that people in the valley aren’t aware of what’s happening to their watershed and what it means for their future. Thinking short is how we work on solving today’s problem. Thinking long, however, is imagining ways of dealing with our resources that few of us have had to think of before. It focuses on an almost science-fiction model of designing the future.
The key is to think both how to stop the old ways and also how to start the new ways of living – and thriving – with less. And we’re seeing that happening today in clean air action, in redesigning resources, in groundwater, in all the ways we can provide for what humanity needs by using less and finding that less can actually be all we need and more.
Interested in learning how your organization can learn to Think Short and Long? Reach out to me here.
The future is already here
Here’s just one example: While working to get local businesses and residents to use less water, the Watershed Association and the local water conservation agency convinced the school district to build an elementary school using what's called the One Water plan, in which 90% of the school’s water needs come from rainwater and recycling. It's been so successful, that they are now working on a hillside housing development that will use One Water for a neighborhood of 80 new homes , where rain would provide most of the water, with supplemental needs supplied by the local water company. Greywater and waste water will be used for watering lawns and flushing toilets. And waste water from toilets is treated onsite to provide safe, nutrient-rich irrigation for landscaping. If constructed, this may be the first such subdivision in the United States. And thinking farther ahead, they may soon bring together a group of connected subdivisions as a new kind of ‘One Water’ township that uses vastly less water than any other community in the developed world and serves as a blueprint for the future.
The cyberpunk author William Gibson once said, “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” So Thinking Short and Long has us working on imagining future states and then looking around to see where we might find existing versions of those futures.
A clockwork future
Since 2013, we’ve worked with Ocean Exchange, an organization that invites innovators from all over the world to present climate and ocean sustainability solutions at their annual conference in Florida. Picking from hundreds of submissions, they select 20 or more new technologies to compete for three $100,000 prizes.
The first year I went, I walked into a room where tables were set up for finalists to display their solutions. There was only one team there, Mairi and Martin Wickett from England. I said hello and then looked at what they had. It looked like some kind of Victorian clockwork device but when they showed what it did, I was astonished: it gathers energy from motion and converts it into electricity. It is called WITT and it was so elegant that even though I hadn’t seen any of the other solutions, I knew it would win the prize and it did. And today these devices are used to provide electricity to offshore buoys in ports.
I had seen the future and it was brilliant.
When I was starting out in business, I had a mentor named Carl Cimino who ran a car dealership in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One day, when I mentioned my concerns about our environmental future, he told me he wasn’t worried.
“We had the intelligence to create the things that caused the problem,” he said. “And I bet we will have the intelligence to create the things to solve it.” At the time, I wasn’t sure he was right, but now I know he was.
Because I’m seeing that intelligence in play everywhere I look.
Whatever problems you’re trying to solve, from the future of the workplace to the future of your business, Reservoir offers deep resources to help you. Make those resources yours and be the reservoir for your team and your dream. Reach out to me here and let’s put our heads together.
Dain Dunston, Author, Speaker, Teacher, Coach
Dain Dunston is a storyteller, future-finder and CEO-whisperer who has been fascinated with the concept of elevated awareness and consciousness since he was in college.
Dain grew up in a family surrounded by literature, art, and music, from Prokofiev to Bebop to Blues. His mother was a reclusive painter and his father was on the fast track to becoming a CEO by the age of 45. From his earliest memories, he found himself fascinated by two fundamental philosophical questions: “Who are we?” And “Why are we here?”
