We can’t get There from Here
On December 4th 2024, CUHF Senior Fellow Bayo Akomolafe joined Paul Hawken in conversation for the 44th Annual E.F. Schumacher Lecture, We can’t get There from Here: Carbon, Climate and the Call to Wonder.
The event was hosted by The Schumacher Center for Local Economics, where Bayo also serves as the W.E.B. DuBois Scholar in Residence for Trans-public Intellectualism.
Today, in the ways institutions and climate activisms around the world articulate planetary problems, seek out solutions, and imagine futures beyond our troubling moments, one might say they are actively attempting to move from ‘here’ to ‘there’. The problem, however, with drawing a straight line between ‘here’ and ‘there’ lies in the occlusion of what ‘here’ is—and what ‘there’ signifies…
In a relational world that moves, sighs, and sings, prospects of neat arrivals hint at our faithfulness to world-denying performances, which force an aesthetic of emergency, of technobureaucratic mastery, and of reductionistic applications.”
As Bayo says: In order to find our way, we must start by losing it. The first step involves letting go of where we thought we were in the first place.
