Sailing provides a great metaphor for the challenge of our age.
When you change tack there is no implication that the tack you were on was not the right choice at the time – it is just that that cliff is getting perilously close!
The industrial revolution, the rise of capitalism and a century of technological innovation have indeed delivered ‘the good life’ for many across the globe. We have gone forth and multiplied and we now have full dominion over the earth. As a society, we now need to change tack.
It is not that we should be abandoning the pursuit of well-being. We simply need to change our approach.
Specifically we now need to acknowledge ecological constraints. This means being a lot smarter in how we achieve our goals.
We don’t need to abandon capitalism. But we do need to address market failure.
Profitability has, up until now, simply been a matter of selling goods/services for more than it costs to supply them. The purchaser gets the item, the supplier makes a profit and they both go away happy. But the rest of us, and indeed the entire biosphere, are all impacted to a greater or lesser extent.
This is the well known Tragedy of the Commons phenomenon. Because they don’t have a dollar price tag, natural and social capital get pressed into service to generate profits. Putting it another way, profits which are regarded by the entrepreneur as the justifiable reward for innovation and enterprise, often incorporate a massive environmental and social subsidy – the cost that we all have to pay to repair the collateral damage caused by the product’s use.
The trouble is, we are now reaching the point where the cumulative damage has pushed the various feedback systems that keep our planet habitable close to, or beyond, their safe operating range.
So how should we respond? Up until now being a good citizen has involved abiding by then law of the land and acting in a morally responsible way in our encounters with others. In this new era we citizens all have an additional imperative.
We need to live Socrates ‘examined life’
In particular we need to inform ourselves of the full social and environmental impact of how we choose to live our lives and reflect on how that impact could be reduced
The information we need may be not much further than a Google search away. Making sense of what we find and grappling with the inevitable trade-offs is not so easy In fact the level of inter-connectedness of our social, political, economic and environmental systems makes it very hard to decide what is the right thing as complex interactions between systems can lead to counterintuitive outcomes. What might appear to be ‘bad’ now may well result in a ‘good’ long term outcome and vice versa. We have to get comfortable with this uncertainty and be prepared to continually review our position as new evidence becomes available. I suppose this is what Socrates meant by his famous ‘examined life’ concept
Imagine how different politics would be if we all lived examined lives. For a start there would be a consensus across all parties that reflected the zeitgeist of the nation – an agreement that our primary goal over the next century was to enhance what I would term our ecological productivity. In other words, to maintain our current level of well-being, while reducing and ultimately reversing, the rate of depletion of social and environmental capital.
The failing of today’s politics lies not with the politicians but with all those vested interests who are doing very well thankyou happily, making profits at the planet’s expense. They have seduced us into mindset of perpetual consumption and they have got us believing it can go on forever. What politician would dare to challenge such an entrenched mindset?.
So that leaves you and me to take on the mindset changing task. To be effective we need to not just live an examined life, but explain to others what we are doing and why we are doing it.
There is a great new website to help kick the process along called OnePersonCan.org. Here individuals can record what changes they have made to their lives as a result of their thinking and reading and conversations with others. Take the survey yourself now and spread the word to others!
I am hopeful that the day will come when a critical mass of Australians will have committed to becoming change agents and will be on OnePersonCan.
How different politics will be then. In response to demand from the electorate, the primary focus of parliament will be national ecological productivity enhancement. Sorting out which policy initiatives, which infrastructure builds, which regulatory frameworks, which education and skills development programs, what forms of global diplomacy and international aid can most quickly diminish planetary risks while maintaining our well-being.
How different business will look then. Companies that in order to make money need to harm human health, pollute the biosphere, waste resources, create social discord or negatively impact innocent bystanders or future generations will go to the wall – shunned by ethically sensitive consumers
If you would like to read further on any of these topics I would recommend the following books. They are all in Mosman or Stanton libraries
The God Species (2011) Mark Lynas (the planet’s ecological limits)
One Very Big Picture (2010) Syd Hickman (the use-by date of mindsets)
The Economics of Enough (2011) Diane Coyle (ecological productivity)
Leverage Points (1999) Donella Meadows (why mindset change is a pre-requisite)
The Biggest Wake-up Call in History (2010) Richard Slaughter (the process of global mindset change)
The Great Disruption (2011) Paul Gilding (how the future might pan out)
Natural Capitalism (1999) Paul Hawken (sustainable business)
