Vision
of Hope
Richard
Sanders – Quest 2025 Founder and Executive Officer
Introduction
As I
contemplate our tiny island of life floating in the unimaginably vast, hostile
reaches of space, I’m filled with awe. Awe that every atom of our being
(except hydrogen) was forged in the nuclear fires of stars, most when stars
exploded as supernovae. Awe that this stardust has evolved through the eons of
time into conscious, sentient beings inhabiting our tiny island of life.
And yet we
humans - the conscious, sentient beings that inhabit this planet - are
unintentionally destroying the earth’s life-support systems.
Is it our
destiny, our fate, that stardust evolves into consciousness, knows itself
briefly, and then extinguishes itself?
Spaceship
Earth is like Apollo 13
The earth
is in very deep trouble. Few of us realise that humanity is in an emergency
situation like that of the Apollo 13 astronauts whose spaceship suffered an
explosion that severely damaged their life-support systems as they were hurtling
towards the Moon. For the next six days, their survival hung in the balance as
their life-support ebbed away.
Similarly,
the ecological systems and processes that constitute the life-support systems
of ‘spaceship earth’ are in rapid decline as a result of the scale and impact
of human economic activity. Specific examples of unsustainable human impacts
include global warming, massive soil degradation and loss, declining quantity
and quality of drinkable water, fisheries in decline, and ecosystems being destroyed
and degraded. There is strong evidence that we have somewhere between 30 and 70
years before the situation becomes untenable for the continuation of human
civilisation as we know it. Although this extreme emergency is largely
invisible, we are in the midst of it right now.
Window of
Survival
Just as
Apollo 13 had to pass through a very small ‘window’ in space to return safely
to earth, so humanity’s challenge is to pass through a narrow ‘window of
survival’ defined by ecological conditions that must be met if spaceship earth’s
life-support systems are to continue to function.
Spaceship
earth is currently heading in the wrong direction. We need to make a very
significant course correction if we are to pass through the narrow window and ensure
the survival of our civilisation.
Flawed
Worldview
Humans
are unintentionally
destroying the earth’s life-support systems because of an outmoded view of the
world. In this worldview, total human activity is small and insignificant in
comparison to the size of nature. However, in recent decades, this view has
been shown to be flawed (see the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Reports).
We are rapidly approaching the capacity limits of nature’s life support systems
and resources to withstand the impacts of human activity.
The
flawed worldview has been beneficial in encouraging the development of material
comforts for many now living (predominantly in developed countries) but it is
now outmoded and has become the instrument for the destruction of nature’s life
support systems. We need a new worldview – ecological sustainability – that
recognises the ecological limits of our finite planet.
Ecological
Sustainability Worldview
Ecological
sustainability is about having a viable material relationship between
human and ecological systems. Life (nature’s economy) creates order using
solar energy and photosynthesis to concentrate, structure and organise
dispersed matter from the environment into plants, animals, mineral ore bodies,
fossil fuel reserves, ecosystems and ultimately, the intricate web of living
and non-living ecological relationships that constitutes the biosphere. Life
(together with geological processes) makes matter useful and human economic
systems survive by consuming useful matter or ‘usefulness’. The catch is that
‘usefulness’ is used up or degraded by modern economic activity.
Prior to
the current industrial age, humans had a viable relationship with the global
ecological system. Then suddenly human consumption of ‘usefulness’ increased
exponentially as industrial production fuelled by vast stores of fossilised
solar energy took off. Consequently, the ecological and material basis of our
existence, which consists of ‘usefulness’, is disappearing.
Ecological
sustainability requires humans to consume ‘usefulness’ no more quickly than nature’s
economy produces it.
Sustainable
Development is not the Answer
Unfortunately,
the popular model of sustainable development (from the 1987 UN report Our
Common Future (better known as the Brundtland Report)) is not the answer to
the sustainability crisis. While the necessary conditions set out in the
sustainable development model (living within ecological limits, equity within
and between generations, participatory democracy, and rebuilding community and
serving the common good) are valid, the means proposed to achieve these
conditions are not. The primary means to achieving sustainable development
are economic growth and a reliance on poorly-regulated markets – the very forces
that are driving us along an unsustainable path.
A New
Economic System is Required
Our
survival depends on developing a new and very different socio-economic system
that is consistent with the necessary conditions for ecological sustainability,
which define the ‘window of survival’ through which we must pass. At the very
least, the financial system must be modified (fortunately, the necessary
changes are not technically difficult) and market forces need to be constrained
and channelled to explicitly serve the common good.
The
Current Economic System is Incompatible with Ecological Sustainability
The
global economy has trebled in the past 30 years and is now putting great
pressure on the ecosystems on which it depends. At current rates of growth, the
global economy will double again before 2030. However, the earth is not
increasing in size. In fact, the ‘usefulness’ available from nature has been
consumed by humans at a much faster rate than nature can recreate it.
It is
this ‘usefulness’ produced by nature’s economy that is true wealth. It is
extremely important to understand that economic systems do not produce wealth.
They actually consume wealth! What the modern economy produces is money and
money is not wealth; it is simply an entitlement to consume wealth. Since
under the current financial system the quantity of money grows exponentially,
the demand for ‘usefulness’ is also growing exponentially and exceeds nature’s
capacity to supply. The current financial system is driving us towards
ecological collapse.
The
financial system locks us into exponential material growth which is a long-run
impossibility on a finite planet, and market forces (particularly when poorly
regulated) powerfully promote both behaviours and outcomes that are ecologically
unsustainable and inequitable.
Envisioning
the Ecologically Sustainable Alternative
The
current economic system is incompatible with ecological sustainability. An
economic system compatible with ecological sustainability would consume
‘usefulness’ no more quickly than nature’s economy produces it. Currently we
are consuming a ‘flood of usefulness’ at an unsustainable rate.
The most
feasible way to move to ecological sustainability is to build a new solar powered
physical infrastructure that is highly durable and will provide a flow of
services for the community (rather than private monetary income).
The new
economic system should be predominantly solar powered because this mimics nature’s
economy and is the cleanest source of energy with the least ecological impacts.
(This includes wind energy which is an indirect form of solar power). There
would also need to be a shift from owing ‘physical things’ such as cars, light
bulbs and power stations to the provision of the services of transport,
light and energy that the physical things provide. The physical things required
to provide these service would need to be highly durable so as to drastically
reduce the current consumption of fossilised fuels and natural resources.
To ensure
an equitable sharing of the limited ‘usefulness’ available from nature, the solar
powered physical infrastructure (the physical things) needs to be owned in
common to meet the fundamental sustainability condition of equity.
Solar Infrastructure
As an
example of what could be done, existing fossil fuelled power stations could be
retrofitted to solar thermal where one square kilometre of mirrors concentrate
sunlight onto a boiler and large vacuum flasks store molten salt to allow
almost continuous electricity generation (including at night or under other
low-sunshine conditions).
Transitionary Path
This vision
provides a crude compass to point us towards ecological sustainability. While the
‘free market’ (Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’) has provided a direction towards
material progress in the past, in its current form it is incompatible with
ecological sustainability.
What is
envisioned is a transitionary path of intense social and economic activity for
the next 25 years or so as we build the physical and social infrastructure of the
ecologically sustainable society. The level of activity required will ensure
that this is a period of full employment as current high levels of individual
consumption in developed countries are progressively reduced and the mass
production economy is superseded by an ecologically sustainable society.
The
transition will necessarily have many facets or dimensions. From a cultural perspective,
it will be about cultivating and encouraging the more cooperative qualities of
human nature. From a material perspective, it will be about building new
physical infrastructure that is highly durable and meets our material needs
with minimal ecological impact. It will also be necessary to repair the
ecological damage of the past 200 years as best we can.
Making it
happen
The real
obstacle to making the necessary transition happen is the power of the current
flawed worldview and the institutions in society (including political parties,
big business and the media) that uphold and reinforce this worldview.
The only
force that is powerful enough to overcome this obstacle and steer our society
in a sustainable direction is informed people power. The conditions for change are
ripe, with people increasingly concerned about globalwarming and other
ecological problems.
As
well a concern about the state of the environment, the other necessary
conditions for change are a vision of an ecologically sustainable world and a
way of achieving that goal.
The
main features of an ecologically sustainable world have been described above.
Together with the
survival imperative, this vision can inspire and motivate people across the
planet to work cooperatively to achieve that goal.
Likely Change
Process
In his paper ‘The New Political Compass’, American
sociologist Paul H Ray identifies a group he calls ‘the new progressives’.
These are people who have a significant level of dissatisfaction with the way
society is going. They regularly experience a disturbing level of dissonance
between their worldview and that presented to them by current political and
corporate leaders and by the mainstream media.
Ray says of these people that they ‘care
deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about relationships, peace and
social justice…’ Demographically, they can’t be readily pigeonholed except that
they are more likely to be female. They are estimated to make up some 15 – 20%
of the population in the 'first world'.
This is
the group that needs to mobilise as a movement to change the currently dominant
worldview and to really begin the transition to an ecologically sustainable
future. As the imperatives of ecological sustainability are better understood,
others from the broader community will join the movement.
The
Role of Quest 2025
I
founded Quest 2025 to be a catalyst for the transition to ecological
sustainability. Its objectives are:
- To educate the
public about the imperatives of ecological sustainability in order to conserve the
natural environment;
- To facilitate
community-wide discussion on how to achieve ecological sustainability;
- To conduct research,
public forums, publishing activities, community capacity building,
practical projects and consulting activities in order to conserve the
natural environment; and
- To provide
necessary information, resources, tools and expertise to enable all
citizens to act in an informed way on ecological sustainability issues.
Quest
2025 Website
The Quest
2025 website (www.quest2925.net) will be a hub for educating the public and organising
the growing movement for an ecologically sustainable future.
The
website has the capability of hosting forum discussions, coordinating events and
making available papers on various aspects of ecological sustainability.
National
Conversation Day
An
important part of the educational role of Quest 2025 will be to promote a
series of Australia-wide community discussions on the imperatives of ecological
sustainability to be held on a given day every two months (the ‘National
Conversation Day’). Anybody wanting to organise a National Conversation Day meeting
in their community (whether it’s around the kitchen table or in the city hall)
will be able to download meeting information from the National Conversation Day
website to guide the meeting. In that way, meetings with the same focus can be
held across the country.
It will
be vital to have the National Discussion Day process endorsed by community
leaders so as to encourage a growing number of people to participate.
Feedback from these discussions will be posted to the
National Conversation Day website to ‘mirror back’ to participants and the
wider community that the paradigm shift to ecological sustainability has already started.
According to sociologist Paul Ray, the ‘new progressives’ imagine they are ‘almost
alone’ – because there are no ‘mirrors’ in the media to show them ‘their own
face.’
Collective
Community Action
The
transition to an ecologically sustainable future will require the community to
act together, i.e. through government action. As public opinion shifts,
politicians will follow or they will be replaced by others who are attuned to
the emerging ecological sustainability worldview.
As more
and more elected representatives are convinced of the imperatives of ecological
sustainability, the transition to an ecologically sustainable future will
accelerate.
Challenge
and Opportunity
While the
transition to an ecologically sustainable future is a huge challenge, it is
also an opportunity to rebuild community in common purpose. With consumption by
necessity being far less significant, human life will become more social than
economic in its focus.
This is
not to say that we will be reduced to a ‘caves and hairshirts’ existence. If we
act cooperatively, the basic material needs of all people around the world can
be provided for. A very big plus is that there will be much more time for
cultural and social attainment when economic growth is no longer the main
driver of human activity. In this regard, it is worth noting that Shakespeare did not require today's level of material consumption to produce his great works.
Urgent
Action Required
Spaceship
earth is in very deep trouble.
Humanity
is in an emergency situation.
We need
to act now.
Contact Quest
2025 to be part of our earth rescue team.
