Spill the (Green) Tea with Rob Hopkins
Rob's two most recent books, From What Is to What If and How to Fall in Love with the Future, have made him one of the most distinctive voices in the climate space, not for telling people how bad things are, but for insisting that giving people something to long for is the most radical thing any of us can do.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why cynicism isn't clever, it's just lazy! It feels like intelligence because it's always proved right; you can forever find reasons to despair. But Rob argues it's a self-reinforcing spiral that actively prevents the kind of action that might change things, and that hopelessness isn't a breeding ground for good things.
- "Hoping to" versus "hoping that" —passive hope (hoping that something will happen) is very different from active, grounded hope.
- The cultivation of longing at scale is the biggest task of the climate movement, and the people who know how to cultivate desire aren't scientists, they're artists, poets, and the people who work in advertising.
- The internet as a war on attention, and what that means for green communicators
What emerges from this conversation is both a provocation and an invitation. The future as we currently envision it is dark and scary and we need to create a sense of longing or what Rob calls “memories of the future” for a more positive outcome to give people something to move towards rather than run away from.
More from Rob
Website: https://www.robhopkins.net/
Podcast: https://www.robhopkins.net/podcast/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yoodooright1968
Resources mentioned:
- From What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins
- How to Fall in Love with the Future by Rob Hopkins
- The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh
- 2040 — documentary by Damon Gameau, described as "an experiment in evidence-based dreaming"
- Hurry Slowly podcast hosted by Jocelyn K. Glei
- Screw This… Let's Try Something Else podcast hosted by Maryam Pasha and Matt Golding
- Purpose Disruptors — a network of advertising insiders working to transform the industry to tackle climate change
- Muslim Futures
- NK Tegelwippen — the Dutch national tile-flipping competition
More from Katie
- Green, Not Greenwashed: Get the clarity and con
