Reply

Re: Economics versus Sustainability

Jan 23 2008 Mike Novak

Mike asks, ‘would I care to share NUMBERS for potential sustainable production etc., and he understands my article may represent a (quasi) “religious utterance etc.       

 

Dr. Ted Trainer; School of Social Work, University of New South Wales, Australia. In his book ‘Saving the Environment’, shows how we are over-producing and over-consuming.   He presents solutions and provides concrete proposals for reshaping Western societies to guarantee a sustainable future.  A sustainable society cannot be driven by the profit motive market forces because the financial-profit-motive is absolutely dependent on the present growth-economy.  “A satisfactory society must have per capita rates of non renewable resource use that are a fraction of those in rich countries today. For the coming century the fraction is probably in the region of 10 per cent.”

 

His books and internet sites on sustainability are well worth a read, Mike.  Ted’s life work is directed toward the sustainability that you haven’t quite yet come to terms with, or so it seems.

The David Suzuki Foundation regularly offers policy proposals that would make Canada a world leader in protecting its rich natural capital.

Check the http:www.davidsuzuki.org/Economy/

Our economic solutions can be found in the following publications:

• Switch Green: How to promote energy efficient appliances in Canadahttp://www.davidsuzuki.org/files/SWAG/Swtich_Green.pdf
• Drive Green: Tax incentives for efficient company cars
• Forever Farmland: Agricultural land-use reformhttp://www.davidsuzuki.org/files/SWAG/DSF-ALR-final3.pdf
• Smart Generation: An analysis of electricity production in Ontario
• Economic Analysis of “closed-tank” fish farms

Our overall goals are contained in the report, Sustainability within a Generation. The report outlines how a long-term national plan with clear targets and timelines would generate less pollution and waste and improve the quality of life for all Canadians.

The policy changes in Sustainability Within a Generation are simple and involve a common theme: making the market work better. For example, Canada still subsidizes polluting industries such as mining and oil exploration. Instead, Canada should use a preventative approach, which is less expensive than cleaning up after environmental degradation occurs. Our recommended legislative changes would make polluters pay and benefit good environmental performers, which would put Canada ahead both environmentally and economically.

The Future of Money (published in January 2001 from http://www.futuremoney.de), illustrating the dramatic changes we face in the near future, by Bernard Lietaer

“The risks are not only financial, some of the emerging money technologies could create a society more repressive than anyone of us thought possible. More importantly major opportunities are also becoming available: now more than ever it has become possible to address some of the most critical issues of our times, such as enabling more meaningful work, fostering cooperation and community, even realigning long-term sustainability with financial interests. None of this is theory, real-life implementations have pragmatically demonstrated such results. Combining these innovations can make available a world of Sustainable Abundance within one generation.”

“The degradation of the environment due to short-term financial priorities can similarly be addressed with pragmatic money innovations. Short-term thinking is shown not to be due to human nature, but to the prevailing money system. It is also possible to reverse this process, by using a currency designed specifically for multinational trade and contracts which would make long-term thinking a spontaneous process, focusing the attention on long-term sustainable solutions without the need for regulations or taxation.”

Chapter 1: Money - The Root of All Possibilities

The Time-Compacting Machine

1.     Age Wave

2.     Information Revolution

3.     Climate Change and Biodiversity Extinction

4.     Monetary Instability

5.     Money at the Core of the Time Compacting Machine

What is Sustainable Abundance?

What Prevents Sustainable Abundance?

 

Mike I don’t quite understand how you see even the possibility of a religious overtone in the ‘Economics versus Sustainability’ article but perhaps if you look further at any of my work my thesis and purpose may become clearer.

 

I’m proposing the need or a 180% about face and paradigm shift in the way we relate to our own species as a global population.  I suggest that the human race not only longs to be but actually is; as potentially caring and nurturing as any mammal. In spite of our financial structure forcing upon us a competitive culture, we have proven our propensity for cooperating. We cooperate, not only with each-other; as in teamwork; but also with nature; shown by the work of ecologist and environmentalists.  Unfortunately, cooperation under our present financial system, can only be used to enable one group to more effectively compete with another group.

What I wish to make clear is that the deplorably destructive acts within our social and environmental demographics are the effects and symptoms of a rectifiable but arbitrarily installed unrecognized and unjustifiable cause.  In other words, those to whom we point the finger of blame are reacting as they must from a reptilian-brain level; the dominant-human-instinct of self-preservation.

Self-preservation is a self-explanatory instinctive human reaction triggered in the primitive brain-stem when we are faced with a threatening situation.  Humanity today is and has been for many decades in this situation.  Originally it was useful in deciding a fight or flight response: a short term adrenaline rush. The threat today however, is ever-present, ongoing and chronic. 

Adrenaline can also have a toxic effect especially if produced by long-term or chronic sub clinical stress.