SUSTAINING OUR PLANET

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MOTHER: How did you arrive at 20 years as the amount of time needed to phase out the tax system?

PH: Over 20 years a business can look at their plans and say, "Wait a minute. We can see what's going to happen. We can take advantage of this and adapt. We can change. We're not going to be punished economically unless we don't change. We have enough time to do research and to develop the nature of our business from one type to another.

MOTHER: You have great cynicism about the unholy alliance, as you call it, between big government and big business.

PH: Very much so.

MOTHER: Some people-namely the people who have been making lots of money by not paying what they're being charged or what they should be charged—are not going to be very happy about your plan. And they are the ones running the place. How is this going to happen short of a populous revolution?

PH: One of the things I would tell the readers is that they should imagine a major reformation. If you and I wrote down everything that happened between 1985 to 1993, you'd list everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the South African vote to the Israeli—P.L .O. peace treaty-all things you'd never believe could happen seven years ago. I think that in the next 10 or 15 years we're going to see educational reform, political reform, and finally, local ecological reform. However, I don't think we'll see the reforms until we have some experience of what Lester Brown calls an environmental Pearl Harbor.

MOTHER: Do you think that's going to happen?

PH: I have no idea. All I know is that the rate of degradation in geological terms is so rapid as to be astonishing, and within our lifetime there will be feedback from the planet. Something is going to rise 'up from the noise to the level of being a signal.

MOTHER: We love what you say about literacy—that we're incredibly literate about sports events and operating our computers, but most of us don't know the names of the trees growing in our own backyard.

PH: This illiteracy is part of the reason that the existing signals from the environment are not being understood or are being misinterpreted. We're ecologically illiterate. Adults can recognize 1,000 different logos from companies and products, but cannot name ten native plants around their house or even five native birds. There has to be a shift back to a language of biology.

MOTHER: Your proposal to change linear systems to cyclical systems is a concept that we thinkMOTHER readers will feel familiar with. Could you explain your theory?

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