Tikkun Magazine, September/October 2009
by Graeme Taylor
Sustainability and Ethics
We can't separate the issue of sustainability from ethics. The reason why the global system will inevitably collapse is because it is organized by destructive values.
A culture that values shopping over survival is doomed.
In the world today the dominant view is that reality is a hierarchy of separate objects, rather than a holarchy of interrelated systems. In this alienated reality, competition for power and resources is viewed as the natural state of existence, as is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. The popular media accept that it is normal for billionaires to hoard wealth in a world full of hungry children, and for weapons of mass destruction to be developed in tandem with the mass extinction of species.
The industrial system has improved living standards for much of the world's population, but at the cost of ruined cultures, communities, and ecosystems. We now have more but belong less. Many people feel alienated from their families, from their work, from nature, and from spirituality. Because emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs can only be satisfied through actions that develop community, creativity, and faith, a life of consuming will always leave people feeling empty and incomplete. And people who are alienated from themselves and each other will never feel satisfied and will never stop consuming.
In our materialistic age, the majority of people place more faith in money than in God. As a result, criticizing the accumulation of wealth has become a modern form of heresy. Politicians, business leaders, and teachers who speak against the consumer society are putting their careers at risk. All the material resources and scientific knowledge needed to resolve the major problems on the planet have been available for decades, but the will to change the political and economic priorities of society has not. So increasing global wealth has been accompanied by increasing global poverty.
We will only be able to prevent global collapse if global resource consumption is kept within sustainable limits. Businesses and consumers are not able to determine these limits because markets are mechanisms for determining economic prices, not ecological sustainability. It will only be possible to reduce total resource consumption if consumer values and behaviors change, and if markets are provided with clear regulatory and financial guidance.
Regulating economic activities is neither a new nor a radical idea. Because our societies recognize that not everything can be efficiently managed by market forces, governments already build and operate roads, schools, and emergency services. They also regulate every type of business, from railways to restaurants. Every society considers that wars and natural disasters are too important to be left to private interests and markets. With the future of humanity at stake, we now need to ensure that markets serve the interests of society and not the other way around.
Our economic and accounting systems are a part of the problem rather than the solution. Accounting systems that value existing material wealth but not the future of our children are both dangerous and flawed. Their failure to value other life forms puts the survival of our own species at risk. Their failure to place any value on love, trust, justice, faith, and sacrifice robs us of the vision to avert disaster and preserve life on earth.
Choosing Life and Hope
The challenges we face are enormous, but not insurmountable. Although time is not on our side, the accelerating pace of change works both ways. Not only is there increasing destruction, but also growing awareness and more and more constructive innovation. New system-based views, values, social structures, and technologies are emerging all over the planet. The process of transformation has already begun.
However, it will not be easy to make the transition from economic growth based on increasing resource consumption to economic growth based on increasing efficiencies. This enormous technological and cultural transformation will require the mobilization of entire nations and the reorganization of the global economic system. But this type of effort has succeeded before.
Americans have not always taken the easiest path. In World War II our parents and grandparents didn't ask whether the war would cost too much, or wait for the rest of the world to join the fight. Then Americans simply agreed that losing the war was not an option, no matter what sacrifices needed to be made. If our children are to have a future, we must act with the same courage and commitment now.
But we must act now. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says: "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."
Graeme Taylor is the coordinator of BEST Futures (www.bestfutures.org). His book Evolution's Edge: the Coming Collapse and Transformation of Our World won the Independent Publisher's 2009 Gold Medal for the book "most likely to save the planet."
