SATURDAY, JULY 11, 2020: NOTE TO FILE
Creating a Sustainable and Desirable Future
Insights from 45 global thought leaders 2014: A review
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: WHAT HUMANS WANT, FROM THE WIRES, FOREVERMORE
Abstract: Among those hoping to save the world are elite storytellers considered credible by the intelligentsia who serve the now global industrial hegemon. If we would only (or could) follow their leadership...and then what? It could be that the set of all real solutions that allow for sustainable complex society are outside the set of all envisionable 'solutions' that could be desired by humans of NIMH. What if the only desirable future that modern techno-industrialized humans can envision and agree upon forces them to destroy a planetary life-support system? Bad news for 10 year olds.
COOS BAY (A-P) — The book features selected offerings mostly from the magazine/journal hybrid called Solutions: For a sustainable and desirable future - The leading popular, academic journal (www.thesolutionsjournal.org) by Dr Robert Costanza, founding editor-in-chief of Solutions and Dr Ida Kubiszewski, Managing Editor of Solutions.
About the Contributors
Some articles had multiple authors so the book represents the insights/opinions of 57 global thought leaders and may be viewed of a zeitgeist document by the best and brightest intelligentsia thought leaders whom those in power may consider credible. The short of it: all are insiders who are/were paid to serve the SYSTEM (i.e. are not revolutionaries), though a few have entertained revolutionary ideas, but writing for Solutions, they attempted to frame their offerings within the limits of a 'sustainable and desirable' domain of discourse.
Short resumes of each contributor are given and most wear/wore more than one hat, but to boil it down to better digest:
21 females
36 males
28 served to educate others as professors/academics
22 authors of books
19 served or founded an NGO
9 served government other than as elected officials
8 served industrial society as scientists
3 graduate students
2 served as politicians
1 businessman
I will not review each of the 46 chapters:
Part 1: Introduction
Chapter 1 Why We Need Visions of a Sustainable and Desirable World, Robert Costanza and Ida Kubiszewski
Chapter 2 Envisioning a Sustainable World, Donella Meadows
Chapter 3 Why Everyone Should Be a Futurist?, William S. Becker
Chapter 4 Think Like an Ecosystem, See Solutions, Frances Moore LappéPart 2: Future Histories: Descriptions of a Sustainable and Desirable Future and How We Got There
Chapter 5 What Would a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature Look Like?, Robert Costanza, Gar Alperovitz, Herman Daly, Joshua Farley, Carol Franco, Tim Jackson, Ida Kubiszewski, Juliet Schor, and Peter Victor
Chapter 6 Vision Statement for the Planet in 2050, Ajay Bhave, Silvia Ceausu, Anand Deshmukh, Jessica Jewell, Wayne Pan, and Jana Timm
Chapter 7 Scenes from the Great Transition, Paul D. Raskin
Chapter 8 Environmental History Exam 2052: The Last Half-Century, Les W. Kuzyk
Chapter 9 A Virtual Visit to a Sustainable 2050, Robert Costanza
Chapter 10 Reflections on a Life Lived Well and Wisely, Joshua Farley
Chapter 11 The Great Turnaround: How Natural Capital Entered the Economy?, Ronald Colman
Chapter 12 How New Zealand Became a Green Leader?, John Peet
Chapter 13 The New New York: 2050, Barbara Elizabeth StewartPart 3: Pieces of the Puzzle: Elements of the World We Want
Chapter 14 Sustainability and Happiness: A Development Philosophy for Bhutan and the World, Jigmi Y. Thinley
Chapter 15 Flourishing as a Goal of International Policy, Martin Seligman
Chapter 16 What Else?, Wendell Berry
Chapter 17 Let Us Envision Gender Equality: Nothing Else is Working, Jane Roberts
Chapter 18 Another World: Finally Her(e), Kavita N. Ramdas and Jamie Querubin
Chapter 19 Policy Reform to 350, Bill McKibben
Chapter 20 The Great Transition to 350, Dylan Walsh and Tess Croner
Chapter 21 On Baselines That Need Shifting, Daniel Pauly
Chapter 22 The Future of Roads: No Driving, No Emissions, Nature Reconnected, Richard T. T. Forman and Daniel Sperling
Chapter 23 The New Security, Gary Hart
Chapter 24 Green Accounting: Balancing Environment and Economy, Peter Bartelmus
Chapter 25 A Vision of America the Possible, James Gustave SpethPart 4: Getting There
Chapter 26 The Way Forward: Survival 2100, William E. Rees
Chapter 27 An Integrating Story for a Sustainable Future, Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Thomas Swimme
Chapter 28 It Is Time to Fight the Status Quo, Bill McKibben
Chapter 29 Can We Avoid the Perfect Storm?, David W. Orr
Chapter 30 Sustainable Shrinkage: Envisioning a Smaller, Stronger Economy, Ernest Callenbach
Chapter 31 How to Apply Resilience Thinking: In Australia and Beyond?, Brian Walker
Chapter 32 Endangered Elements: Conserving the Building Blocks of Life, Penny D. Sackett
Chapter 33 Well-Being, Sufficiency, and Work-Time Reduction, Anders Hayden
Chapter 34 Millennium Consumption Goals (MCGs) at Rio+20: A Practical Step Toward Global Sustainability, Mohan Munasinghe
Chapter 35 Happiness and Psychological Well-Being: Building Human Capital to Benefit Individuals and Society, George W. Burns
Chapter 36 Time for a Bold Vision: A New, Green Economy, Van Jones
Chapter 37 A World That Works for All, L. Hunter Lovins
Chapter 38 Fighting Poverty by Healing the Environment, Christine Loh
Chapter 39 Re-Engineering the Planet: Three Steps to a Sustainable Free-Market Economy, Eckart Wintzen
Chapter 40 Raising Gross National Happiness through Agroforestry, Pahuna Sharma-Laden and Croix Thompson
Chapter 41 Building Bridges between Science and Policy to Achieve Sustainability, Katherine Richardson and Ole Wæver
Chapter 42 Bringing Mozart to the Masses: Venezuela’s Music Revolution, Maria Páez Victor
Chapter 43 Creating the Schools of the Future: Education for a Sustainable Society, Peter M. Senge
Chapter 44 A Values-Based Set of Solutions for the Next Generation, Tim Kasser
Chapter 45 Teaching a University Course in Sustainable Happiness, Catherine O’Brien
Chapter 46 The Time Has Come to Catalyze a Sustainable Consumerism Movement, Peggy Liu
I did review the first paragraph of chapter 1 that, with slight rewording, is also the first paragraph of chapter 5.
If some of the titles seem potentially of interest, guess the solutions offered—it's easy if you try. The thinking is well within the domain of a consensus of academic thinking. Garrett Hardin spoke of the wonders of 'mere eloquence', so asking 'What would Garrett have thought about this book?' will reframe to content from the intended—you are supposed to view all contributors as knowing enough to have an opinion. And they do know plenty, vastly more than you or I, but that doesn't mean they actually think well. To quote Hardin (who as everyone knows was a racist who wanted to kill black babies): 'With the coinage of "sustainable development", the defenders of the unsteady state have won a few more years' moratorium from the painful process of thinking.'
You can Google the names of each, and as I don't need to save the world and so have plenty of time, I did. And having plenty of time, I read their offerings.
I'll skip ahead. Of interest is that public intellectuals cannot think about 'real solutions' or if they can, nothing they write that may speak to them is of public 'interest' (fit to be included in books offering thought leadership), i.e. undesirable solutions are not thinkable by the public nor the public intellectuals who tell them tales that they can like (e.g. about a future they will surely desire including that it is sustainable).
William Rees can think about humanity's real condition and about real solutions, but as a public intellectual he can't spell it out. His article starts by quoting the Business Council for Sustainable Development (1993) that by 2040, in 47 years, the industrialized world will need to reduce material throughput, energy use, and environmental degradation by over 90% to fairly meet the needs of a growing world population within the planet’s ecological means. Okay, assume Dr. Rees considers this to still be a likely ballpark guess, and then what? Dr. Rees notes that the steady-state that must come implies a more or less constant rate of energy and material throughput compatible with the productive and assimilative capacities of the ecosphere. Okay, let's just let the reader connect the dots by ignoring all the fine words in the rest of the article and 357 page book, Then they can consider that degrowing the population and economy of globalized humanity to less than 10% of current values in 26 years from time of writing, may be a challenge given that over the last 70 years 'the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed'. He notes that 'failure is possible', but instead of the usual 'happy chapter', or at least happy ending section, he forces himself to end with the obligatory happy paragraph that is admirably short at four words: 'But if we succeed … !!' I'm guessing 99% of readers of this book will be convinced that we have to succeed (and therefore will). You can lead a human to water, but you can't make it drink.
As with normal consensus thinking, social media is all about it's-all-about-us, merely on steroids and far less eloquent beyond belief. All of the authors are pundits, products of a broken educational system that all have served or continue to serve and likely believe in, though some can think outside the consensus and work to skew it towards some grasp of reality. If their progeny end up fighting to see who inherits the rubble, they will lament that humanity hadn't listened to their thought leaders. If only they had.... But unlike fine words, only 'real' solutions may have a different outcome.
And the first paragraph:
'Creating a shared vision of a sustainable and desirable future is the most critical task facing humanity today. This vision must be of a world that we all want, a world that provides permanent prosperity within the Earth’s biophysical constraints in a fair and equitable way to all of humanity, to other species, and to future generations.'
Sadly, Nature doesn't care what we humans want, but does determine what works long-term which defines what we need to 'want' if we are to persist as a species. Those who want what doesn't work pass away. So, adjust your vision to what works, bitches, and embrace the limits of sustainable environmental productivity that no one gets to vote on to determine (naturocracy 101). Hubris Man needs to stand down and adapt like brother cabbage, and otherwise 'seek out the condition now that will come anyway' [H.T. Odum, who, unlike Garrett Hardin, the intelligentsia was able to mostly ignore or marginalize, like Copernicus was for about 150 years].
And in the next chapter:
'...when you envision, that you are trying to state, articulate, or see what you really want, not what you think you can get.... You have to think about what you want. That’s the essence of vision. What is a sustainable world that you would like to live in? That would satisfy your deepest dreams and longings?' —Donella Meadows
As a Donella Meadows fanboy I'm forced to wonder what she was smoking. But I surely must be missing something. As an envisionary I listen to Nature who has all the answers. It (life, the universe and everything) is not all about me or my species. I've always wanted to be a god among the devils of the land and dance naked through the dark of night, but Nature doesn't care what I want or ardently long for. Perhaps Donella basks in the glow of social approbation (like all other eusocial primates) that comes when you tell them what they want/like to hear. Maybe I should give it a try.
And the start of chapter 5 by Robert Costanza, Gar Alperovitz, Herman Daly, Joshua Farley, Carol Franco, Tim Jackson, Ida Kubiszewski, Juliet Schor, and Peter Victor who all concur that:
'The most critical task facing humanity today is the creation of a shared vision of a sustainable and desirable society, one that can provide permanent prosperity within the biophysical constraints of the real world in a way that is fair and equitable to all of humanity, to other species, and to future generations...we cannot break away from this vision [of continued growth] until a credible and widely shared alternative is created.'
And what's not to like? Well, to not quibble I'd have to rewrite a bit:
The most critical task facing humanity today is to design and implement a viable civilization (complex society) within five years that works (as Nature determines) allowing for a long-term prosperity of enough within the biophysical constraints of a watershed management unit's 20 percent (to leave room for Nature) in a way that is fair and equitable to all humans (within a 0.8 to 1.2 range, 0.8 = just enough, 1.0 = good enough, 1.2+ = too much e.g. income/emergy consumption) leaving 80 percent of the land's and 99 percent of the ocean world's environmental productivity to be for the unfair and inequitable support of all other species (except crops, livestock, humans and pets). We are captured and being dragged along by a complex, powerful and remorseless dynamic that automatically thwarts all attempts to stop it (i.e. the required change, any 'real solutions' are not shareable/desirable). If we don’t put time and energy into understanding it, we are doomed to go with it right to the final curtain.
But as I don't know enough to have an opinion and use too many words, words, words, read the book, bitches. Endeavor to think well and to question everything. Our continued persistence on this planet may depend on it. Mere eloquence will not save us from ourselves.
