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On my last night in Europe after the pilgrimage I went for a walk along the Seine to see the Eiffel tower and stumbled upon an open air exhibition of nature photography from Yann Arthurs Bertrand. I had seen his previous ‘The earth from above’ exhibition in Wellington last year and this was a superb follow up. There were close to one hundred photos of animals from all over the world and each photo was accompanied by some text about current environmental, economic and social problems throughout the world.

The photos were beautiful and every panel of information had an example of positive action that was being taken which was uplifting but the brutal statistics were extremely disheartening. By the end of the exhibition I was skimming the text as I just couldn’t take any more information on the troubles of the world. I’ve often felt that way when reading about similar issues - if you lift the covers for a tiny peek a myriad of misery and sorrow is spewed forth and the easiest emotional response is to flee from it. The return walk through Paris was a sombre and reflective one.

I’ve read a few books and watched a few documentaries on the collection of topics that usually fall under the banner of ’sustainable development’. The topics are far broader than environmental issues and also include things like economics, social policy, group psychology, urban planning, manufacturing, energy and international politics. Every single book and documentary has come to the same conclusion - our current civilisation is flawed and it will fail unless significant changes are made. We have the technologies and the resources to fix the problems but for many reasons most of us choose not to think about it.

Despite a reasonable amount of knowledge on the issues the only real actions I had taken in my own life were to buy reusable shopping bags and vote for the greens. Walking along the Seine that night I decided to change that and the first thing I realised was how little I actually knew. It looked like a little research is in order.

My plan is to use the imagery and information from the Alive exhibition as a starting point to spend a couple of hours reading up on the issues each week. I figured I might as well share the process, hence the continuation of this blog. Feel free to join in with your own findings in the comments and if you haven’t heard from me in a while I’d appreciate a virtual kick

The problems may be immense but so too is the capacity of the human spirit. If we each pull our weight nothing is insurmountable.