Make A Difference

Departing Johannesburg, The Adventure Diaries.

Many people are talking these days about how to make a difference. The problems of Climate Change, poverty, AIDS, deforestation and the wanton destruction of our earth seem insurmountable. How can one person make a difference?

Making a difference is easy. Often it's as simple as just deciding you want to, and then showing up. Those two actions somehow make it possible for all sorts of things to happen. Within the world of journalism at least half the stories I work on are impossible to plan very well. Most of the time I just arrive at the place, and maybe have one or two contacts, and suddenly the whole story opens up in front of me, as if it "expected" me be there. This is so common in journalism that there is even an unwritten rule called the 80% law: 80% of the story is just showing up, being there, and trying to grasp the situation. The other 20% is putting it together so that it makes sense, and then delivering it on time.

Start by saying you want to. Then physically get involved in something. Show up to town meetings when they discuss things like recycling, land use, and any issue you feel strongly about (you will be amazed how few people actually come). Research facts and make it your hobby, your Sunday activity even, to find out all the sides of an issue. Figure out your home energy budget, and calculate your carbon footprint, then take steps to reduce it and and write a blog for your family and friends so they can benefit from your new knowledge. Everyone has a part to play in changing our society into a more healthy, happier, and less destructive system.

On Saturday four of my friends departed on their own voyage of action and discovery. They are driving small delivery bikes 3700 Kilometers up through Africa, from Johannesburg to Dar Es Salam. On the way they are meeting with orphans, planting trees, swimming with dolphins, and camping out underneath the wide open African sky. You can follow their adventures from their site: www.adventurediaries.co.za

They are office workers who have a dream, and they are following it. Along the way they will be posting photos, videos and stories of the people and places they visit and share with, so follow their trip and get inspired!

Everyone can make a huge difference and with the right attitude even have fun in the process. Just show up.

The Drunkard's Walk

Echo Canyon, The Drakensburg South Africa, 2010

Leonard Mlodinow knows something about randomness. He should, he has just written a bestselling book about how it affects our lives, and why it matters. The Drunkards Walk, How Randomness Rules Our Lives is 222 pages of incredible insight.

The most penetrating part of the book is the rolling conclusion that we are in control of how many times we attempt something. This may seem obvious, but when there are literally millions of people out there striving to succeed, what separates those who do from those who do not? Mlondinow makes a very good point. Since so many random factors are at play in our lives, regular success comes not from luck, or from divine intervention, but rather from a hard-headed persistence to simply not quit.

When I was a young trainee scientist on the Juneau Icefield Research Program in Alaska, I was exposed to all manner of odd professors, who taught and fought over research in what must still be one of the world's largest and most innaccessible classrooms. The most irascable and oddly endearing was the founder of the project, Dr. Maynard Malvern Miller. M3 for short. Aside from being the man who wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica entries for Glaciers and Alaska, Dr. Miller is also part of a still-onging study that follows a group of people throughout their lives (Harvard graduates all). One of the many published studies that uses this unique data set aligns itself firmly in in the same thinking as The Drunkards Walk.

Success, they believe, is measurable. The study came up with a rough equation to explain it. Success=X(ability)times Ysquared(how hard you try). So written it looks like this:
S=xy(squared)

I know, algebra was not my strong suit either, but bear with me. lets plug some numbers into the equation. So I am making a movie, and although I am published film maker, lets be realistic, I am say, a 6 out of 10 as far as skills for documentary film making is concerned. But I try really hard, to sell it, to work with the right people, to get it all together. So lets say I am a 9 out of 10 as far as how hard I try. So, it reads like this: X=6, Y=9, so square the nine to 81, multiply it times 6, and I have a success number of 486. Ok, sounds pretty good. 486 out of a thousand (the maximum number I can get). That means I will succeed almost half the time, which is about what my track record reads. But lets reverse it, lets say I am very gifted as a film maker, but not so stunning at working hard to sell it and make it happen. So lets say Ability (X) = 9, and How hard I try (Y)=6. So we plug that into the equation, and we get 324. Thats a pretty shabby score, for a gifted film maker. The less gifted, hard-working film maker will clearly outperform the gifted film maker, simply because he tries harder.

What all this gobbledy-gook means is that it matters twice as much how hard you try than how gifted you are. (Great news for many of us). This is eaxctly what Mlondonow is talking about in his book. In a world full of randomness, success goes to the person who keeps trying. Not every time, but the vast majority of the time. Don't give up.

The Road to Copenhagen

Sliverback Gorilla in the Virungas, Central Africa
By Jeffrey Barbee

Today is the start of my road to Copenhagen, where the COP15 climate congress will happen in December. I have embarked on a trip of discovery of how Carbon Trading works in Africa, who should benefit, who does benefit and what could be done to make it better.

Why here? Why not on my blog at Global Post? In short, I have been bitten by the Jeff Jarvis bug. It's insidious, all-pervasive, and intends to disrupt the inner working of every business on the planet, including mine. (Oops it already has!) Right now, sitting next to my loo, five stories above Johannesburg, South Africa, is his book What Would Google Do? (WWGD) It is gift from my father, the cross-platform international development guru John Barbee, and a road-map to all things googley. He deserves some credit for the launch of this blog, which I hope will become a source for bringing together all the different aspects of what defines my work and how it gets done, starting with The Road to Copenhagen.

I aim to bring as many people as possible on this journey, so invite your friends. I will be sharing some of the on-the-ground realities of Global Warming, Climate Change and most importantly, what we can do about it. Copenhagen is coming. This much-vaunted conference will, if you believe the mainstream media, either doom us all to a world hotter than hell, or will save us from disaster. I will be there to tell the real story as I see it, and presenting, over the next six weeks a series of short videos that will make up a documentary that will be shown to delegates and the public during the conference.

Only by seeing what benefits have already come from the Kyoto Protocol, and where it fell totally flat, will the world be able to re-craft it into something better, something workable, and something that makes a real difference in the lives of people in the developing world.

So in that vein, I am traveling to Copenhagen, through Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa. A circuitous route, to be sure, but in fact the three projects I am profiling in these three countries should be looked at as signposts on the road to a lower carbon future. They may be successful or they may be struggling, but all of them offer a window into the realities of changing our relationship with the natural world, from extraction to custodianship.

I have no illusions. Previous stories like my trip through the Atlantic two years ago, and some of the work I have done with the New York Times, The Guardian, The Pulitzer Center, and Global Post all illustrate the dire straits of our planet's ecology. But we shall be judged in the future not only for what we have done, but also for what we may fail to do. It is this failure I hope to address, for our future is not written in stone, and humanity has an incredible ability to adjust and adapt in times of need. This project aims to show a possible way forward, a chance to change it all around. Maybe our last chance.

I will be watching the sunrise through the forests of Tanzania, talking to the movers and shakers of the carbon markets, visiting the most deforested country on Earth, and much more, so join in, get involved and feel free to send your comments and suggestions in. This is your chance be part of the road to Copenhagen.

I would like to think that if Google were to make an educational and entertaining documentary with this purpose, this is What Google Would Do. So thank you Jeff Jarvis, for a very fine book.
Jeffrey barbee October 26, 2009
Johanesburg,
South Africa