Dear Sir/Madam,

 

After reading today's (Tuesday's) editorial, "Feeling the Heat", in which you take the moral high ground on global warming, I'd like to point out that  President Bush's "incorrigible stubbornness" is different only in degree from the stubbornness shown my most of us in refusing to face up to the fundamental non-sustainability of our growth-dependent economy and grossly materialistic lifestyles:

 

SAVING OUR PLANET

To most people the above title will sound ridiculously exaggerated, because they have not yet faced up to the dire situation we are in. Of course, the Earth with its biosphere and human inhabitants will still be here in 100 years time. The question is what condition they will be in. The way things are going at the moment, both will be in a very sad and sorry state.

My interest in the environment and sustainability arose in the early 1970’s and was greatly stimulated by the Club of Rome’s “The Limits to Growth”, the central argument of which was that current social and economic developments were unsustainable. Obviously we would have to change and move towards sustainability. Not doing so would be complete madness, so naturally I assumed we would.

In the meantime I have come to realise that I was badly mistaken. Instead of facing up to the difficult truths broached in The Limits to Growth, we went into collective denial. It took me a long time to understand it: how could those in power and authority be so blind and stupid? After all, their children and grandchildren would also be affected. Eventually I realised that we are all virtually blind to the “Insanities of Normality ”, especially when our own special interests are at stake.

Instead of using our prodigious mental capabilities to face up to the situation, we used (and are still using) them to deny it, and to rationalise our irrational behaviour. The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that there is no contradiction between economic interests and achieving sustainability. Perhaps it is the size of the contradiction that makes it so difficult to see – like the caldera at Yellow Stone Park.

There is overwhelming financial and economic pressure not to face up to the truth. Not just from big business, but also from the interests we ALL have (even ardent environmentalists!) in the status quo (our socio-economic niche, sources of income, lifestyle, material aspirations, etc.). We are dependent on (in some respects, addicted to) a growth-dependent economy and grossly materialistic lifestyles which are fundamentally unsustainable, that are causing us quite literally to plunder our planet and driving us towards catastrophe.

We cannot possibly carry on the way we are. Nature will put a terrible stop to it if we don’t. 

But first we have to face up to the situation - and not PANIC ! (that would only drive us back into denial).

There IS a solution. We can avert, or at least cope with and recover from, the global catastrophe towards which we are heading (and create much happier human societies in the process), but it entails understanding the situation we are in and recognising that WE ourselves (i.e. many of the values, attitudes and aspirations that underlie and drive our economy and way of life) ARE the problem. 

Man is an animal (Earth's Greatest Ape), whose social behaviour evolved over millions of years to serve the survival and advantage of individuals and family groups in the natural environment. There has been no time for it to adapt to the much larger social units of human civilisations. With the development of civilisation this same behavioural programming shifted its focus to the struggle for survival and advantage in the artificial "socio-economic environment ", itself very largely the product of our primitive, "more animal than human " nature. The economy developed and has been honed to exploit it: our animal fears, greed, competitiveness; sex; the desire for a free or cheap lunch, for power, social status etc. This is why in many respects it works so well. Unfortunately, apart from being inherently unjust and inhumane, it is also fundamentally unsustainable.

In the socio-economic environment of the modern world, the struggle for survival and advantage, around which human activity naturally revolves, largely boils down to making money in the local, national or global economies. The consequence is that the economy (the household of man) is given absolute priority over everything else, even over ecology (the household of our planet), upon which ultimately everything depends.

Our dilemma is being completely dependent on an economy and ways of life that are rooted in our “more animal than human “ nature and thus fundamentally unsustainable. By refusing to come out of denial, we are taking an attitude of "I'm alright Jack!" and of total disregard towards our own children and coming generations.

When we do come out of denial, it is no good us trying to overthrow the existing order; history should have taught us that. And trying to reform it towards sustainability is also impossible, because of the combined resistance of the vested interests we ALL have in it. 

The SOLUTION is to create an ALTERNATIVE, sustainable socio-economic order - based, not on our primitive animal nature, as at present, but on our more enlightened, human nature – within but distinct from the existing order. The beginnings (and more importantly, the spirit that created them) already exist, although at the moment they are still just a part of, and very much subordinate to, the existing, non-sustainable order. They include, to a greater or lesser extent, renewable energy, recycling, organic farming, moral investment funds, fair trade, the open-source community, cooperatives, and the like. These beginnings, together with new initiatives that are required across the whole socio-economic spectrum, need a framework that will enable them to develop into a clearly distinct and distinguishable alternative socio-economic order. As this Alternative grows, we will be able to transfer more and more of our activities and dependencies to it - not under coercion, but when each of us is ready (i.e. as we increasingly come out of denial and recognise what is at stake), and at our own pace (notwithstanding the urgency of the matter).

www.spaceship-earth.org