Visioning the future in a full earth
For some years it has been clear that environmental
doom-saying, because it is a poor motivator, is a dead end. However true the
prediction of global overheating, climate chaos, resource wars, pollution and
disease (with consequent mass death or displacement), it leads most people to
despair and denial rather than hope and resilience. Only a spiritual and
emotional grounding (a transformation) gives humans the power to change our
ways. This not only moral teaching, but sound neuroscience.
The "full earth" invalidates all previous human
experience. No longer can we migrate or innovate our way out of the dilemma
posed by infinite economic growth on a finite planet. A number of the planetary
boundaries have already been breached. The "developed" world of our
generation is eating its way through the equivalent of 3 1/2 earths. If pond
scum doubles every hour, at the last hour (when we could intervene) the pond
still seems half clear. Apparently, not a problem.
And a peculiar limit of the human mind makes it harder to
develop an overall vision of future, than to recall an (often imaginary) past
Eden. Hard, but not impossible. Some of the worlds' best scientists,
eco-activists, ethical thinkers and artists have been doing just that. This is
a rough guide to their work.
One slogan should be discarded: "sustainable
development", still a staple of United Nations and business thinking. But its
elements are self-contradictory. A necessary compromise in the UN's Our Common
Future, the 1992 Rio and subsequent Kyoto treaty, it is now outdated. Infinite
growth is not sustainable. Quality of life, climate justice and right sharing
are. The much-touted "green economy" of Rio+20 failed because it
proposed to build the future on commodifying the Earth's commons; in fact it
would finance climate action, and better life for the world's poor, by selling
licenses to pollute.
The new watchword is "resilience", the ability of
biodiversity to repair the web of life. In time it may become overused and
shopworn, but at this point it is a helpful guide.
Eco-economics was invented by Herman Daly (and others)
emphasizing that production should serve social need, and human society within
the planet. This blog has reported the astonishing variety of eco-economic
thought (tagged EE) that has developed in event decades. Much was simply a
critique of standard economics -- a critique of which Adbusters and Occupy have
now made a protest movement. But some has been positive and transformatory.
Among these are David Korten's "great turning",
Vandana Shiva's "earth democracy", Via Campesina's fight for food
sovereignty, Blue Planet Project's concept of water as a human right, the
knowledge (and rights) of indigenous peoples partially recognized in UNDRIP,
World Future Council's call for an Ombudsman for future generations. All of
these show a significant move toward human inclusiveness -- ecojustice, to use
the current term. Desirable, but still incomplete. In the long view, planetary
ecojustice involves a spiritual, "cosmic" relationship that is also
scientific and natural: the commonwealth of all life.
Key overall visions have begun to emerge in the last decade.
Almost all include not only a set of proposals but a human process.
Earth Charter
Initiative, the earliest and most abstract;
Peoples
Sustainability Treaties, a bottom-up coalition emerging from the wreckage of
Rio+20; its process is described in the Widening Circle;
Climate Justice
Now! network of NGOs
the CBD Alliance
for biodiversity – see its 2010 Declaration;
the Transition
Town movement;
international
Degrowth conferences;
the World Social
Forum's creation of altermondial networks;
the World Council
of Churches' June 2012 Bogor call -- itself based on six years of AGAPE
consultations by WCC and various churches,
other ecumenical
and interfaith bodies; Confucian, Hindu, Islamic and Sikh green movements
Joanna Macy's
Buddhist-inspired "work that reconnects";
collaborative
publications such as New Economics Foundation's Other Worlds are Possible Yes!
Magazine, Orion magazine's Thirty Year Plan, and the Post-Carbon Institute's
Post Carbon Reader.
Concepts
Full earth: not
only in the sense of population, but of human (over)use of resources. The
concept is Herman Daly's; further developed by Robert Costanza and others.
Similar concerns are shown by those speaking of climatic tipping points; the
nine planetary boundaries of Johan Rockstrom et al demonstrate that human
appropriation is breaking limits of nature's resilience.
Resilience is a
term from ecology, applied in the Transition Town movement to human recovery
from oil dependency, and Via Campesina's principle of ; in both cases,
“localization” – local control – assures adaptability. Vandana Shiva's “earth
democracy” shares the assumption that local control is scientifically and
socially preferable to an uncontrolled world market.
The title of
Korten's 2006 book, fundamental to collaboration by Yes! authors And BALLE
green capitalists. Other thinkers such as Gus Speth, Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben
call for ecosocial transition: see the US site greattransitionstories and NEF
The Great Transition (2009).
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