That’s crazy!

Disbelief and disappointment, that’s the sentiment of those working in sustainability. Three years in the works and talks deadlocked at the UN Global Plastics treaty. Even after a 24-hour extension, even with the majority of participants agreeing that a reduction in plastic production needed to be mandated. Efforts were scuttled by a powerful few.

There’s a sense of how is this possible? When all the evidence points to increasing plastic production as a major part of the problem. When there’s proof that recycling alone has no hope of solving the problem.

How can companies and organizations not see the harm that they’re doing?

Then a week-old post pops up in my feed. The head of an African energy organization talking against the Plastics Treaty, saying it is modern colonialism, meant to keep nations oppressed by limiting the extraction of fossil fuels and production of materials. The treaty, they said, aims to stop economic empowerment.

How could this person really believe that the Plastics Treaty is oppression? Were they so unaware of the massive plastic pollution problem? Did they not understand why the negotiations were happening in the first place?

A polar perspective, and a realization:

Maybe that really is what the other side believes?!

And until we hear it and try to understand it, we will always be deadlocked. They won’t listen to the arguments, or the evidence, or be willing to look at the bigger picture, because their focus remains on their loss.

We say that the aim of slowing plastic production is to reduce plastic pollution and all of its impacts.

They say that the aim of slowing plastic production is to deny economic opportunity.

Two different perspectives, neither incorrect, but also so completely removed from one another that there will never be any kind of alignment or agreement.

That’s the other side.

That’s the reason talks stalled. Two sides with completely different objectives.

Working from this example, the question is: do we even want to understand the other side of the argument? Probably not. Most of the time people will either dismiss opinions as idiotic, block or unfollow the people they don’t agree with.

Here’s a thought:

Nothing’s going to change going head-to-head. What if listening to the other side, without prejudice or feeling the need to convert, leads to insight. What if that insight leads to conversations and eventually finding common objectives or a different way to reach objectives?

What if that opens the opportunity for change?