The author is a founder of the RainforestAction Network and consultant at the World Future Council founded by Jacob von Uexküll: 50 eminent global change-makers from governments, parliaments, civil society, academia, the arts and business. This position paper is re-posted with the author's permission from Foundation Earth, his new "ecological economy" thinktank.
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| Over the next century communities worldwide will experience an unprecedented shift of weather instability. Extreme weather events are ecological spasms often driving economic spasms and regional collapses. Concerned citizens and opinion leaders need to prepare before these eco-spasms proliferate. Far from being prepared, most leaders and power brokers are not mindful of the rethinking that is required. This working paper and appendix offers a brief economic vision, a set of economic principles, and list of problematic trends to help respond to the challenges as we work for a better day. –Randy Hayes |
If
I had a lot of money, I couldn’t afford to live as well as I
do. – Mike
Roselle, grassroots organizer and a founder of Earth First
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| A True-Cost Economy serves society and respects the environment |
Foundation Earth’s Strategic Response
It would be foolhardy to think that restructuring the global economy for long-term deep sustainability is an easy task, but we aren’t the type of people to give up. We will make this meaningful shift or we will go down fighting. Foundation Earth will put forth its solutions as thoughtfully and powerfully as we can, given our humble resources. Together we can help ensure that nature’s life support systems are healthy and that biological diverse systems, particularly large wild areas, are protected. Such systems are key to humanity’s wellbeing and the entire web of life.
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| Cheater Economics |
There is indeed an “invisible hand”
which left to its own devises promotes general good. That hand turns
out to be nature’s ways – nourishing all things. The industrial
economic invisible hand could best be called “Cheater Economics”
(externalizing pollution costs). We call for a “True Cost Economy”
based on nature’s ways.
This campaign can be thought of a
twenty-five year process to help foster such a shift... the known
unknowns and the unknown unknowns present sizable difficulties.
Nature has a non-linear way of being. Will the soft landing of a
semi-elegant twenty-five year economic transition be possible?
Certainly not if we are headed to a four degree world. It will more
likely be mini-collapses and rebuilding. We will prepare for both
scenarios as best we can.
Nature’s “invisible hand” left to
its own devices may indeed promote general good, but our collective
campaign for a better world will need an active and visible hand.
Please let us know what else you think we should be looking at and
how you might help to enact this vision. Additional information on
the model and the context of this work is in Appendix I.
The Vision Starts with an Integrated
Set of Goals
In this “age of plenty” vast
numbers experience a deep spiritual hunger. Our current global
economic system is achieving insufficiently and desperately needs to
be changed. The goals of a better society aren’t so hard to
imagine. In a simple straightforward sense we want highly
educated/ecologically astute people, high levels of political and
spiritual freedom, low infant mortality, low impact/low throughput
lifestyles, clean environment with wild beautiful natural places, and
a small gap between the greater and least financially well off
people. We want to live in a close and proper relationship to nature,
our communities, and the institutions we create. Arguably this would
mean a rapid transition to a smaller primarily regional economy with
less production and consumption, while improving likelihood of
dignified and happier lives. It starts with selecting where you want
to grow (wisdom, art, culture…) and where you want to degrow
(pollution, industrial workaholic lives, intolerance…).
Picturing the New Era
A smaller economy tingles with vitality
while producing and consuming less. Businesses respect the laws of
nature and integrate principles of ecology. Systems function well
within the carrying capacity of regional and global ecosystems.
People value the fundamental cycles of life, understanding that
nature supports all life, now and in the future. No one exports
problems to other societies or to future generations. Everyone faces
the reality of a true cost economy and benefits from it. If anyone
pollutes, they pay the true cost of the hazards and damages.
Conserving stuff, along with the inclination to consume less,
lightens the true cost. In the new era, everyone appreciates that
natural resources cannot be owned. They cannot be exploited – not
for very long. There are no “corporate socialists in free market
clothing” receiving subsidies. Market capital gravitates to
sustainable solutions.
Yes, all this boils down to economic
details. We exercise financial discipline. We balance budgets. We
maintain financial reserves. We leverage debt with caution. We
interact with other economies as partners – actually, as family
members. There are still markets, mostly local, and we still seek to
profit, but we internalize ecological and social costs through a
truly transparent balance sheet of assets and liabilities. Yes, we
seek increased prosperity, but we don’t attach this sense of
wellbeing to the growth of stuff. We tie our sense of wellbeing to
infinite possibilities in a finite physical world.
Central to the new era we will see that
exploding populations will have stabilized and in fact declined
dramatically. Via our numbers and by our commitment to future
generations, natural systems rejuvenate beneath our reduced
footprint. Food and agricultural systems will be much more focused on
bioregional economies. Picture continental networks of more
self-reliant local economies. Most of what is traded at the global
level is art, culture, and ideas.
Effective governing requires informed
people and a commitment to a set of just and wise principles. That is
not where we are starting from yet we must shoulder our
responsibility to work for the continuance of all life. Some believe
that an economic paradigm shift from unaccountable exploitation is
not only necessary, but unavoidable. What set of principles might
this be built from? Here is a starting point that needs your help to
improve.
12 Key Principles Guiding a Holistic
Economy include (no particular order):
Interdependence
- Responsibility - Carrying Capacity - True Cost -
Non-commodification of Nature - Precautionary Technology -
Compassionate Local Self-Reliance - Prosperity for All - Ecological
Literacy - Public Governance - Zero Waste - Self-Correcting Feedback
1. Interdependence
A societal recognition that nature
nourishes all things is a higher value then human self-interest. The
economic rules reward solving problems together over personal
aggrandizement. Any market system is subservient to nature’s laws.
Cooperation not competition is the social doctrine and basis for the
new economic order. Industrial advance crushing nature’s ways for
the sake of capital is a thing of the past.
2. Responsibility
Each generation leaves less and less of
an ecological footprint, despite the population size, consumption
rates, or technology choices. Every human has the duty to protect
diversity within the whole. Nature has an inalienable right to exist,
flourish, and evolve. Hard work to personally get ahead would still
have a place in the system, but beyond sustainable consumption
levels, family education, and retirement security most of any
economic proceeds would need to support broader values.
3. Carrying
Capacity
(sometimes called Planetary
Boundaries): Free markets are not free from ecological limits. The
economy and society must work to keep population, rates of
consumption, and technologies in synch with (below) global,
continental, and bioregional carrying capacity limits. The carrying
capacity of a biological region needs to rule its human economy.
Institutions of educational research and public governance need to be
set up to better understand, and communicate appropriate operating
spaces.
4. True Cost
When pollution externalities are
internalized into the price you pay for goods and services, the
“ecologically cleanest is the cheapest”. Wind and solar would be
cheaper than dirty coal. Organic tomatoes or cotton would be cheaper
than toxic tomatoes or cotton. When that is achieved we have more of
a “True Cost Economy” and a more level business “playing”
field. In a True Cost Economy the search for a bargain works for us
instead against us. Dumping pollution into the river or sky is a form
of “Cheater Economics” and has to stop. The True Cost Principle
is analogous to the Polluter Pays Principle or the Internalization by
Design approach. While everyone likes a bargain, it needs to be an
honest bargain.
5. Non-commodification
of Nature
Non-renewable resources (soil, water,
land, primary forests etc.) aren’t to be treated as a commodity. Of
the three basic categories of economic relationship include
ownership, stewardship, and partnership the third one is to be
emphasized in the general economy. Stewardship still implies some
patriarchy (ex: I will steward you…), while partnership shows a
more authentic reciprocity.
6. Precautionary
Technology
When the consequences are possibly
cataclysmic (such as cancer death) employ a “when in doubt play it
safe” approach. This is what a mother does when raising her child
and what we should do regarding the planet we live upon. The “burden
of proof” lies with the initiator. Problem shifting is
unacceptable. There are times when policies and laws should buffer
nature from the market. This should especially be employed with all
new technologies (see quote at end of this section). Envision the
precautionary principle as a major part of technology policy.
7. Compassionate
Local Self-Reliance
Employing the “Small is Beautiful”
approach. Community-based, local production for local markets;
trading within and among communities; new-style bartering without the
traditional growth concept inherent to today’s money; and trading
values for values, satisfying real needs, while helping others,
rather than inventing new ones will be the approach of this economy.
Maximize local, regional, and continental self-reliance, while
actively helping other adjacent regions or elsewhere on the planet
maximize their self-reliance (foreign aid policy). This is the care
economy not the personal profit economy. Adhere to the subsidiarity approach,
while valuing place & community.
| Subsidiarity is an organizing approach or principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. |
8. Prosperity for
All
The economic system is set up to help
all (now and the future) earn and enjoy financial and food security,
success, or good fortune. Greedy individual advance at the expense of
others would not be tolerated.
9. Ecological
Literacy
Wild nature, operating according to its
own laws, is our principal teacher. Nature’s laws are immutable and
a higher order then human laws. Members of public governance are
responsible to understand the principles of biosphere ecology and to
help all constituents to understand nature’s ways such that all can
support the whole. There is no economic development or social justice
on a dead planet.
10. Public
Governance
Employing ecological literacy with
other humanistic values, society must debate the legitimate functions
of public governance and then fund it to fulfill those functions in a
thoroughly competent manner. This includes deciding the level of the
social safety net. Government regulation is not the enemy.
Appropriate government regulation is key to protect the whole for
this and future generations of the entire web of life. As E.F.
Schumacher clarified, a sensible political economy fits nature and
human nature.
11. Zero Waste
The economy needs to essentially be a
zero waste, closed loop, sustainable production and consumption
system. This is especially true for non-renewable resources.
12. Self-Correcting
Feedback
Every living system must have accurate
feedback to self-correct. Note the distorting effects of many current
measures of progress and welfare such as the Dow Jones Index or GDP.
Accurate and holistic measures need to be employed such that people
see what they need in a timely manner (i.e. some items weekly,
monthly, quarterly, annually, by decade, by century, etc.) to make
mid-course corrections. The new parameters will measure levels of
public health and education, standards of nutrition, housing, gender
equality, use of renewable resources, use of non-renewable resources,
the degree of local self-reliance, and the success a closed-loop,
zero-waste sustainable production and consumption system. There will
be indicators of preventative health, ecological restoration,
society’s capacity to resolve conflicts, and more.
| All of our current environmental problems are unanticipated harmful consequences of our existing technology. There is no basis for believing that technology will miraculously stop causing new and unanticipated problems while it is solving the problems that it previously produced. – Jared Diamond |
Problematic Trends
As we ponder an economic transition,
what trends should we be cognizant of?
- The Age of Irresponsibility: the last
sixty years of the industrial revolution (late 1700s to now)
...fostered a misguided vision of unbounded consumer freedoms
along with adding billions of people. This has shredded much of the
planet’s web of life and weakened our life support systems.
- There is strong evidence that the
IPCC, with its thousand scientists, significantly underestimated
the speed and momentum of greenhouse gas-driven ocean heating and
biospheric stresses. We are faced with the need to make rapid and
dramatic changes in the way we do nearly everything.
- It may be necessary to reduce GHGs by
80% by 2020 (8 years from 2012) to stay below 2 degree centigrade
average temperature rise even though a two-degree rise is risky to
life, as we have known it. Solutions commensurate with the scale
and timing of the biospheric problems are not in popular dialog.
- A
sense of what to do in the short, medium, and long-term isn’t
broadly understood. Structural solutions leading to a new
economic model won’t likely be popularized in time to lead to any
semi-soft landing.
- The earth’s capacity to support
life will decrease. Extreme weather events will increase. The
biosphere will spasm. Declining natural systems re linked to greater
social inequity.
- The Living
Planet Index reports that 1/3 of the natural world has been
obliterated. The rate of destruction is increasing in most sectors.
Our home planet is fast becoming uninhabitable.
Industrial agriculture is degrading or
destroying the soil of one third of all land. Resource abuse
of those life support systems may be a bigger problem than climate
change.
- Floods and droughts from
extreme weather events will disrupt food production such that the
planetary population in 2100 could be less than at the beginning of
the century.
- Disease will be more prevalent
when antibiotics quit working.
- Eighty percent of the people in
industrialized countries currently live in big cities. By 2050 the
80% megalopolis will be worldwide. There are about a ¼
million more people a day to feed and a ~¼ billion women who want to
plan their families, but lack access to such planning services.
- The current economic problem was not
brought on by Wall Street financial excesses, though there were many.
Nor is it because of the commitment to growth, though that
exacerbates problems. At its core the crisis is brought on by an
ongoing lack of understanding and respect of the ecological
principles that effectively are the operating system for the
planet.
- Most elected officials and key
agencies are subservient to big business; hence we don’t have
“public governance”. For instance, US Treasury Dept. is too
much of an arm of Wall Street. A few decades of incremental efforts
to fix problems have little to show for the effort.
- Virtually all social change
movements in the US are not involved in electing wiser, committed
people. [Exceptions in environmental movement, at the national level,
include Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, and Defenders of
Wildlife.]
- Americans, left largely uneducated
about ecological/economic realities and unorganized, are
relatively helpless and will do little but watch the decline until
that changes.
- Regarding the current global economic
malaise, a return to... a flourishing economy with strong growth is
not at all a likely option. One may see slow growth for a while with
high unemployment, but it cannot get back (at least not for long) to
“business as usual”
Author's note: Additional information on the
model and the context of this work is included in Appendix I.
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