SUSTAINING OUR PLANET

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

MOTHER: I have one final question. To the readers of Mother Earth News, your vision may seem kind of pessimistic. Do you have anything to say about your outlook for the next couple of years?

PH: Yes. I'm not pessimistic at all. I do think you have to be realistic; otherwise any optimism-or for that matter, pessimism-you may have is basically ill informed. The reason I am optimistic is because I believe that we are on the verge of an economic transformation that is as big and great as was the industrial revolution. Only this time, in many ways, the values and the principles that underlie it will be inverted.

Imagine an economy that has eighty percent less materials but that has more jobs, more security, and more work. The future world that I'm talking about is a world that is far more compelling and interesting than the one we live in now.

Eight Ways to Sustain the Earth

Reduce absolute consumption of energy and natural resources in the North by 80% within the next half century. In material terms, this amounts to making things last twice as long with half the resources.
Provide secure, stable, and meaningful employment for people everywhere. Moving toward sustainability and not addressing job creation will exacerbate economic hardship and further degrade resources. Asking people to reduce consumption without increasing employment would only be destructive.
Be self-actuating as opposed to regulated or morally mandated. Some believe the rate at which we're losing life on earth calls for the imposition of higher "rights" than those constitutionally recognized in democracies. Even if we agree that we should put aside certain human liberties for a greater good, there is still a flaw in this argument. Government has a critical role to play, which must coincide with humans desire to flourish and prosper. But the government will eventually reject any tactic that interferes with these desires.
 Honor market principles, No "plan" to reverse environmental degradation can be enacted if it requires a wholesale change in the dynamics of the market. We have a strong instinct to shop and buy products of comparable quality at the lowest price. We can't just ask people to pay more to save the planet. They won't do it in some cases—and can't in most.
8e more rewarding to ourselves than our present way of life. We need to invite people into a world that delivers the goods, not subtracts them; that intrigues without threatening; in which they can participate, enjoy, and create. Present-day limits need to become opportunities.
Exceed sustainability by restoring degraded habitats and ecosystems to their fullest biological capacity. The dirty secret in environmentalism is that sustainability is an insufficient objective. Habitats can endure over millennia, but it's practically impossible to calculate the sustainability of specific fisheries, tracts of land, and actual forests. We have also probably passed the point where present planetary resources can be relied on to support the population of the next 40 years. Any viable economic program must turn back the resource clock and devote itself actively to restoring deteriorating systems-restoration is far more compelling than the algebra of sustainability,
Rely on current income. Sustainable human communities should act like natural ones, living within a natural ebb and flow of energy from the sun and plants. This means redesigning all industrial, residential, and transportation systems so that everything we use springs easily from the earth and returns back to it.
Be fun and engaging; strive for aesthetic income. A sustainable society will only come about through the accumulated effects of daily acts of billions of eager participants. Good design can release humankind from its neurotic relationship to absurd acts of destruction. The urge to create beauty is an untapped power, and it exists in commerce as well as in society.
 —-Excerpted from The Ecology of Commerce. (HarperBusiness; 2993). Call 800/242-7737.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print