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e198 tim brodhead - later is too late
Season 5 Episode 198
- If we're going to see change happen, it's going to be because people change and that doesn't occur when you preach to them or you evangelize or anything else. It comes because people, in whatever way is appropriate for them, as individuals, begin to reevaluate the way they live, the way their friends live, and make different choices and say to the government, more has to be done. Because what we're losing and what the next generation, our children and grandchildren will lose is immeasurable and we have to act now. Later is too late. So Climate Legacy essentially is trying to identify what are the ways in which you have that conversation with people.
In this episode, former CEO, climate activist and social innovator Tim Brodhead takes us on a reflective journey through his extensive experience in philanthropy and international development.
He shares his evolving perspectives, from initially believing in the capacity of developed countries to aid ‘undeveloped’ nations, to recognizing the often exploitative dynamics at play between wealthy and poorer countries.
This shift has led him to focus on the importance of educating Canadians about the unsustainability of their lifestyles and the need for mutual enlightenment over traditional aid approaches.
When I arrived at Tim home in Metcalfe Ontario, south of Ottawa, I was greeted by a warm, gentle smile and the sweet sound of an antique grandmother clock, whose ticking and bells became a leitmotif throughout our conversation
(Sound of clock)
Tim Brodhead is as accomplished as he is humble. He was president and chief executive officer of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation from 1995 to 2011. From 2013 to 2014, he served as interim president and chief executive officer of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.Prior to joining McConnell, Tim spent 25 years working in international development, mainly in West Africa, South Sudan, India, and Bangladesh. He was the founding executive director of ACORD, based in London, U.K., and in 1975, he co-founded the Canadian development agency Inter Pares which is based here in Ottawa just down the street from my home.
Before our conversation Tim sent me an email with some initial responses to my question about the ‘end of the world as we know it and how to create conditions for new worlds to emerge?’.
He started with a historical perspective :
- Over stretch of a millennium a relatively small community in N-E Europe embarked on some pretty big social experiments: enclosing common lands and the emergence of private ownership as the prime creator of wealth; a splitting of spiritual and material worlds (“Cogito ergo sum”), the conception of private property backed up by State power as the source of personal security, the patriarchal and hierarchical nature of authority, the faith in science and technology as the main drivers of ‘progress’, etc. The experiment unfolded brilliantly for several centuries and material well-being grew by leaps and bounds - along with wars of dispossession, despoiling of the natural environment, yawning inequality in all the markers of human well-being, etc.
He goes on to note some of the failings of modernity :
- But then it emerges that the experiments are failing - the costs outweigh the benefits, the fruits are too unequally divided, the ecosystem is pushed beyond its capacity to assure the essentials of life. The civilization that embodies these experiments begins to undergo a catastrophic failure. This has happened before; civilizations rise and fall. The problem this time is that the process of colonization has produced a global mono-culture. The values, beliefs and institutions
Published on 1 year, 3 months ago