Reforming Environmentalism

There are plenty of wars left to be won but, environmental activists can take a moment to pat themselves on the back: in just a few short years pipelines have gone from being a non-issue to front-page news. And the big players in the pipeline industry are NOT happy about it.

In a spirit of open collaboration, IDEO created their Patterns series to capture and share some of the common insights and exceptional success stories they see bubbling up across projects and out in the world. By tapping into collective intelligence, they have created a platform for "elevating insights to the level of cultural impact."

In a recent interview with The Hill Times, vice-president of engagement at Canada’s Public Policy Forum in Ottawa and author of Rescuing Policy: The Case For Public Engagement, Don Lenihan discusses the growing complexity of public policy issues and need for governments to respond with greater citizen engagement. 

"Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar."