Shaun Chamberlin



Shaun Chamberlin is an author and activist, based in London, England. He is the author of The Transition Timeline, co-author of several other books including What We Are Fighting For, chair of the Ecological Land Co-operative, and was one of the earliest Extinction Rebellion arrestees.

He is also known for his collaboration with the late David Fleming, having brought his award-winning lifework Lean Logic to posthumous publication, drawn from it the paperback Surviving the Future, and served as executive producer on Peter William Armstrong's 2020 feature film about Fleming's legacy - The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?

Quotes

 * All our thoughts and beliefs are somehow hollow until they find expression in action.
 * The Transition Timeline: for a local, resilient future, (2009), p. 167


 * Accusations of hypocrisy themselves tend to be rather hypocritical — if no hypocrites were permitted to hold opinions, there would likely be no opinions at all.
 * "Confessions of a Hypocrite: Utopia in the Age of Ecocide" Kosmos (2016)


 * Failure to live up to a truth doesn’t make it any less true, less worth striving for, or less worth defending.
 * "Confessions of a Hypocrite: Utopia in the Age of Ecocide" Kosmos (2016)


 * Our globalised world finds itself caught on the horns of a seemingly impossible dilemma – either cease growing, and so collapse the economy on which we all depend, or continue to grow until we overwhelm and destroy the ecosystems on which we all depend.
 * "The Sequel: Life After Economic Growth", Tikkun (2018)


 * I always thought economics wasn’t the be-all and end-all of life. Now I realise it might be the end-all.
 * Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2018)


 * Put starkly, most of the wild nature that was here fifty years ago is gone. And still we seek to grow the human economy, and cheer when that growth accelerates.
 * "The Sequel: Life After Economic Growth", Tikkun (2018)


 * The only economic system that has ever truly worked – the system upon which all others have depended – is Nature.
 * "Realists of a larger reality", Dark Optimism (2019)


 * Have you noticed how over recent decades, our expectations of the future have gradually shifted? How maybe we used to quietly assume that life for the next generation would be better than ours, and now quietly assume the opposite?  That is not the mark of a civilisation that is making good choices.  That is not a show that we need to get back on the road.
 * "My coronavirus dilemma – weighing crises against each other?", Dark Optimism (2020)


 * The threat to our way of life is a consequence of our way of life. That's what unsustainability means.
 * Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2020)


 * It is hopefully not too controversial to note that unsustainable things end. There are two possibilities from here – we dramatically change direction or we end up where we are headed. Either way, we are on the cusp of radical change.
 * "Humanity – not just a virus with shoes", Dark Optimism (2019)


 * There’s a really interesting thing about despair, I think. It has a spark in it of deep motivation. I think despair can be described as looking at every possible scenario and seeing no hopeful one. But what that means is, if you can present someone in despair with one scenario that looks hopeful – that looks like a real possibility – then there’s this immense wealth of motivation to drive toward it, because despair is not a nice place to be.
 * Kosmos interview on grief, Dark Optimism, aliveness and activism (2014)


 * It’s demonstrably not ‘simply human nature’ to annihilate all around us. No, it’s the nature of this particular human culture. Human potential is so much more, and that’s why conflating the two is so toxic.
 * "Humanity – not just a virus with shoes", Dark Optimism (2019)


 * Whatever you do will change the world. If you take the most default option, you follow the most mainstream, down the line, ‘just keep your head down and get on with what they’re telling you to do’, approach, then that’s the world that you’re helping to create. There is no way that you can not change the world.
 * Kosmos interview on grief, Dark Optimism, aliveness and activism (2014)


 * No system can ever relieve us of our personal responsibility, and it is essential that we all recognise the need to change the way we live.
 * What We Are Fighting For: A Radical Collective Manifesto (2012)


 * The more one learns about Earth and her Earthlings, the more paradoxical the notion of a *Universal* Declaration of *Human* Rights appears...
 * Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2023)


 * Resilience isn't predicting the correct future and preparing for it; resilience is acting in ways that make sense across the widest range of possible futures.
 * Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2021)


 * It has become impossible to be simultaneously realistic about both the political climate and the science of climate. The two stubbornly refuse to reconcile, so we are forced to decide which carries more weight, and then be profoundly unrealistic about the other.  To take present policy seriously demands a total rejection of the science.  To take the science seriously demands a total rejection of the policy on the table.  And so grassroots movements like the Extinction Rebellion and Climate Mobilization are emerging – the realists of a larger reality.
 * "The Sequel: Life After Economic Growth", Tikkun (2018)