Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Ecological Economy
This is a term that is currently making the rounds and that is the fruit of a considerable history. You will remember that, for quite some time now, the term “sustainable development” has been much in vogue among governments and industry. It is a term coined by the Brundtland Commission back in the 1980s in order to respond to the need for more sensitivity to increasing environmental degradation by industry. The problem with the term is that is contains a contradiction. “Development” is inextricably bound up with an economy of growth and we have learned to our dismay that growth is, by its very nature, unsustainable on a limited planet. The development pursued in policies of “sustainable development” has shown itself to be unsustainable.
There is a further problem with the term “development” that was already well known at the time of the Brundtland Commission. The opposite of “developed” (referring to industrialized countries) was, and often still is in my minds, “underdeveloped,” or “less-developed.” However, as Gustavo Gutierrez already pointed out in the early 1970s, the countries of the so-called “Third World ” were and are not so much “less-developed” or “underdeveloped” as they are oppressed by economic forces that make an equitable distribution of wealth practically impossible. There was and is, from the perspective of oppression, a call to redirect our thinking about economy as such. Some of the reflections reproduced in this blog reflect that effort. “Economy,” as it turns out, is the way we manage our “home,” that is to say the Planet Earth, so that the needs of all its creatures might be satisfied in such a way that the Planet and life on the planet remains healthy. Granted, this is a fairly recent insight and one that has certainly not gained ascendency in the world at large, even though support is growing. Also during these same years, since the 70s, there has been a growing concern about the “environment,” as it was first termed. The problem with the term “environment” is that it is entirely human-centred. The water, air, land are seen as something that “surrounds” humans and that we needed to manage so that it serves our needs. More recently the term “ecology” has gained respect among thinkers and the general public.. “Ecology” is a term that points much more directly to the Planet Earth as such and to the complex ways in which the various elements that constitute it work to maintain a healthy interdependence. So we come to an “ecological economy.” The term has a very large frame of reference: the Planet Earth. It is particularly concerned with those 60 or so kilometres between the depths of the ocean and the stratosphere, where the majority of life forms find their habitat. As an economy it looks to the ways in which these life forms interact in such a way as to maintain a healthy balance. It also recognizes that the human species has, over the centuries, carved out such an enormous place for itself that the management of the health of that ecological balance lies more and more in human hands. In this respect “ecological economy” challenges our received theories about who we are as human beings and also our relationship with other creatures and the Planet Earth itself. It leads us to recognize that we have a responsibility to assure that the health of the Planet, upon which depends our own health as a species, is cared for.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Strategies for Surviving Societal Breakdown
A month ago I presented a reflection on this blog entitled “Societal Breakdown.” It left open the huge question of what to do. I propose now to address this question in slightly more detail. Thomas Homer Dixon, in The Upside of Down, Knopf Canada, 2007, outlines several areas of preparedness for major change: population, energy, food, the environment, finances.
There is no doubt that, at this point, the growth in population itself poses a distinct threat to the equilibrium of the planet. There are varieties of approaches possible here and they are hotly debated. As someone who has worked in international cooperation, I would simply underline the fact, indicated in many studies, that population growth tends to level out as people are given the security that their basic needs for living with decency are met. Even more it is at that precise level (at about $13,000 per person) that the greatest level of happiness in society is attained. Below that, people tend to scramble to survive. It cannot be forgotten that almost half the population of the world lives on $2 a day or less. When income surpasses that equilibrium figure, strangely enough, the happiness dimension in life tends to diminish as more energy is devoted to trying to maintain or increase their level of contentment through “having more.” The best thing that could happen for the planet’s population would be for everyone to be able to find themselves at that level of equilibrium in their part of the world that allows them to find their basic needs satisfied and without enormous disequilibrium between the rich and the poor in any society.
Every civilisation, as noted in the earlier reflection, is based on energy exchange. Energy is absolutely required for a society to exist. The sources of energy have varied over the millennia. Sometimes it was just human labour; other times it was water (and agriculture that produced food), more recently it has been oil and gas. We know that the oil-based world is coming to an end. Increasingly oil will become difficult to provide at a reasonable cost. The nuclear option is out. The proliferation of nuclear reactors as an energy source is too expensive, terribly dangerous to the population, highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks and we still don’t know what to do with the depleted uranium waste.
Alternative energy grids need to be developed based on hydraulic sources, the sun, wind and geo-thermal sources. As Rifkin says, every building on the planet needs to be turned into a power station linked to a continental grid. In this way the population will have an adequate and sustainable source of energy to continue functioning. The problem of course is that this will require an enormous outlay in money and construction in order to transform the whole base for energy sources.
We cannot continue globalizing our food sources. As oil becomes less available the transportation costs will be prohibitive. We need to find ways to eat what is produced regionally, at least as the large base of our diet. This shouldn’t be impossible. Our grandparents certainly knew how to do that and with some of the newer advances in preserving food it should not be a major difficulty—if we are willing to alter our diets.
In this same logic we have to do away with the automobile and trucking industry as we know it. There has to be a major shift to motors that are electric or hydrogen driven. Moreover public transport has to become the major means of moving people.
We are learning more and more to recycle and to compost. However there is still a long way to go toward the reduction of waste. In Montreal practically all plastic, glass, paper and metal is recycled through a city-wide program. There is a plan to introduce industrial composting and compost pick-up by the city. We need to get rid of the manic overuse of packaging of everything we buy.
However, recycling is only the tip of the iceberg. Manufacturing, the airlines, the military and many other major sectors of the economy need to radically reduce their output of pollutants.
Finally the gap between the rich and the poor has become a crime that is destroying our civilization. The wealth and power of a few major corporate leaders and the transnationals they head up are becoming the unnamed government of the world. The idea that the capital they gather from their shareholders is to be used uniquely and solely to advance the interests of those shareholders and the corporation itself has to be definitively abandoned in favour of real social responsibility and that will entail decentralization and strict governmental regulation as outlined by Joseph Stiglitz in this recent book, Freefall, Norton, 2010.
Each of these needs to be addressed if we are to be prepared for an eventual breakdown. The European Union seems to be that area of the world where these concerns are being taken the most seriously and where concrete action is already underway and, in some countries, quite advanced. We can learn from them and with them.
Obviously, as mentioned in the earlier reflection, there has to be a strong, shared, grounded set of values that can take us through. From a purely secular point of view Jeremy Rifkin attempts to address this question in the latter part of his recent book, The Empathic Civilization, Tarcher-Penguin, 2009. In what I consider a deeper way, Thomas Berry addresses the same question in The Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club, 1989 and again in The Great Work, Harmony-Bell Tower, 2000. The development of this “planetary consciousness” and of a sense of empathy with all its (human and other) creatures is fundamental to motivating the enormous effort that an effective response will require. If we take up the challenge, the possibilities for creativity are enormous.
There is no doubt that, at this point, the growth in population itself poses a distinct threat to the equilibrium of the planet. There are varieties of approaches possible here and they are hotly debated. As someone who has worked in international cooperation, I would simply underline the fact, indicated in many studies, that population growth tends to level out as people are given the security that their basic needs for living with decency are met. Even more it is at that precise level (at about $13,000 per person) that the greatest level of happiness in society is attained. Below that, people tend to scramble to survive. It cannot be forgotten that almost half the population of the world lives on $2 a day or less. When income surpasses that equilibrium figure, strangely enough, the happiness dimension in life tends to diminish as more energy is devoted to trying to maintain or increase their level of contentment through “having more.” The best thing that could happen for the planet’s population would be for everyone to be able to find themselves at that level of equilibrium in their part of the world that allows them to find their basic needs satisfied and without enormous disequilibrium between the rich and the poor in any society.
Every civilisation, as noted in the earlier reflection, is based on energy exchange. Energy is absolutely required for a society to exist. The sources of energy have varied over the millennia. Sometimes it was just human labour; other times it was water (and agriculture that produced food), more recently it has been oil and gas. We know that the oil-based world is coming to an end. Increasingly oil will become difficult to provide at a reasonable cost. The nuclear option is out. The proliferation of nuclear reactors as an energy source is too expensive, terribly dangerous to the population, highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks and we still don’t know what to do with the depleted uranium waste.
Alternative energy grids need to be developed based on hydraulic sources, the sun, wind and geo-thermal sources. As Rifkin says, every building on the planet needs to be turned into a power station linked to a continental grid. In this way the population will have an adequate and sustainable source of energy to continue functioning. The problem of course is that this will require an enormous outlay in money and construction in order to transform the whole base for energy sources.
We cannot continue globalizing our food sources. As oil becomes less available the transportation costs will be prohibitive. We need to find ways to eat what is produced regionally, at least as the large base of our diet. This shouldn’t be impossible. Our grandparents certainly knew how to do that and with some of the newer advances in preserving food it should not be a major difficulty—if we are willing to alter our diets.
In this same logic we have to do away with the automobile and trucking industry as we know it. There has to be a major shift to motors that are electric or hydrogen driven. Moreover public transport has to become the major means of moving people.
We are learning more and more to recycle and to compost. However there is still a long way to go toward the reduction of waste. In Montreal practically all plastic, glass, paper and metal is recycled through a city-wide program. There is a plan to introduce industrial composting and compost pick-up by the city. We need to get rid of the manic overuse of packaging of everything we buy.
However, recycling is only the tip of the iceberg. Manufacturing, the airlines, the military and many other major sectors of the economy need to radically reduce their output of pollutants.
Finally the gap between the rich and the poor has become a crime that is destroying our civilization. The wealth and power of a few major corporate leaders and the transnationals they head up are becoming the unnamed government of the world. The idea that the capital they gather from their shareholders is to be used uniquely and solely to advance the interests of those shareholders and the corporation itself has to be definitively abandoned in favour of real social responsibility and that will entail decentralization and strict governmental regulation as outlined by Joseph Stiglitz in this recent book, Freefall, Norton, 2010.
Each of these needs to be addressed if we are to be prepared for an eventual breakdown. The European Union seems to be that area of the world where these concerns are being taken the most seriously and where concrete action is already underway and, in some countries, quite advanced. We can learn from them and with them.
Obviously, as mentioned in the earlier reflection, there has to be a strong, shared, grounded set of values that can take us through. From a purely secular point of view Jeremy Rifkin attempts to address this question in the latter part of his recent book, The Empathic Civilization, Tarcher-Penguin, 2009. In what I consider a deeper way, Thomas Berry addresses the same question in The Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club, 1989 and again in The Great Work, Harmony-Bell Tower, 2000. The development of this “planetary consciousness” and of a sense of empathy with all its (human and other) creatures is fundamental to motivating the enormous effort that an effective response will require. If we take up the challenge, the possibilities for creativity are enormous.
Monday, 3 May 2010
Manifeste de Québec
Ce texte vient de tomber entre mes mains. Je voudrais le partager avec vous..
Manifeste de Québec
Pour un monde sans préjugé ni amalgame
Citoyens de Québec de toutes origines, de toutes générations, de toutes opinions, croyants de religions différentes, agnostiques ou athées, nous nous inquiétons de voir banalisée la résurgence périodique de raccourcis hâtifs conduisant à l’assimilation des termes musulman, arabe, et terroriste.
Nous voudrions d’abord clarifier ces trois notions.
Nous ne reconnaissons pas l’Islam, religion ouverte, tolérante, accueillante et généreuse, dans la parole et dans les actes de ceux qu’on nomme couramment « islamistes » ni dans le discours de certains de ceux qui les combattent. Toutes les églises ont leurs intégristes et connaissent ou ont connu des personnes peu scrupuleuses exploitant à des fins politiques la foi candide des peuples. Les juifs séfarades qu’on retrouve dans les communautés ladino autour de la Méditerranée ont été chassés d’Espagne par l’inquisition catholique, alors qu’ils y vivaient en paix pendant la longue occupation musulmane qui l’avait précédée. Le libéralisme est à ce point admis par l’Islam que les exégètes ne s’entendent pas à définir précisément le « musulman pratiquant ».
Manifeste de Québec
Pour un monde sans préjugé ni amalgame
Citoyens de Québec de toutes origines, de toutes générations, de toutes opinions, croyants de religions différentes, agnostiques ou athées, nous nous inquiétons de voir banalisée la résurgence périodique de raccourcis hâtifs conduisant à l’assimilation des termes musulman, arabe, et terroriste.
Nous voudrions d’abord clarifier ces trois notions.
Nous ne reconnaissons pas l’Islam, religion ouverte, tolérante, accueillante et généreuse, dans la parole et dans les actes de ceux qu’on nomme couramment « islamistes » ni dans le discours de certains de ceux qui les combattent. Toutes les églises ont leurs intégristes et connaissent ou ont connu des personnes peu scrupuleuses exploitant à des fins politiques la foi candide des peuples. Les juifs séfarades qu’on retrouve dans les communautés ladino autour de la Méditerranée ont été chassés d’Espagne par l’inquisition catholique, alors qu’ils y vivaient en paix pendant la longue occupation musulmane qui l’avait précédée. Le libéralisme est à ce point admis par l’Islam que les exégètes ne s’entendent pas à définir précisément le « musulman pratiquant ».
Saturday, 3 April 2010
Societal Breakdown
Many of you have probably read the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, or have seen the movie version. It is a grim tale of a father and his son travelling to the coast after a major disaster has completely destroyed U.S. society.
Of course we have known such tales since we were very young, especially tales of nuclear disaster in the United States. Do you remember the movie The Day After? I took some young people from a shantytown in Lima to see that movie years ago. Afterwards their comment was, “ So… what’s so special? That’s life every day!” In recent weeks I have posted two reflections on the economic crisis we are currently going through and the possibilities of finding our way through it. But the problem is actually much bigger and much more complex than the financial difficulties we are facing. I follow a website called Truthout. It covers news in the U.S. mainly from a progressive stance. Lately there have been several significant reflections on the emergence of the Tea Party and its significance. There is concern that this phenomenon exposes the tip of the iceberg of a major trend in the extreme right to turn to violence to vent their anger at the current U.S. administration. Several books have been published recently that try to outline the crisis of democracy in the U.S. and its implications globally. Among these are Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon Wolin and Democracy Inc. by David S. Allen. In a Canadian context there is Global Showdown by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke. There are significant American political analysts who suggest that American society has become totalitarian in a sense at least as rigorous as that of Germany or Italy in the late 1930s with the significant difference that society is managed so that there is no need for an overwhelming repression of the general public. However, they point out that this model may be reaching its limit as access to resources becomes limited.
In The Upside of Down, Canadian author, Thomas Homer-Dixon, argues that we in North America are reaching a point where there could be synchronous failure, that is to say a point where several major systems that sustain the North American way of life could collapse. These include not only the financial system but also things like social services, electrical grids, energy sources, terrorist attacks, climate change, etc. While the possibility that any one of these could enter into a major crisis is becoming increasingly probable, there is also a possibility that several could occur at once and that we would not currently be prepared to respond adequately. Our whole social structure could collapse.
So far I have been speaking of the situation in North America. What then also about the rest of the world? The region I know best is Latin America. As you are certainly aware, Latin America went through a horrendous period of dictatorships military repression and civil wars between the 1970s and 1990s. More recently there has been a flowering of relatively people-centered governments even as most Latin American countries opened their doors wide to the entry of major transnationals, like Canadian mining companies. Now it appears that, as the people in general become aware of the extent of the damage being done to their territories by these transnationals, a U.S.-based military, juridical and economic response is being implemented. The recent coup in Honduras, the expansion of U.S. military bases in Colombia and the virtual take-over of Haiti by the U.S. military (all protests to the contrary) are significant examples.
This is leading many social activists from a variety of sectors to question the approaches they have been following to social change and to ask themselves whether or not a profound reassessment may not be required. The point is not to become overwhelmed by the immensity or complexity of the current situation but to try to find the cracks and contradictions that will allow us to burrow in and open up paths that allow people to continue living in and building societies of compassion, solidarity and justice.
Is it possible? There are many who think so. Thomas Homer-Dixon is one, Quebec Solidaire; a Quebec-based political party is another. The local, regional, continental and world social forums are still another place where that analysis and mobilization is taking place
This is certainly not the time to be sitting back to “see what happens,” but rather a time to make sure that what we are doing supports a very deep and long-term vision of a path to change.
Of course we have known such tales since we were very young, especially tales of nuclear disaster in the United States. Do you remember the movie The Day After? I took some young people from a shantytown in Lima to see that movie years ago. Afterwards their comment was, “ So… what’s so special? That’s life every day!” In recent weeks I have posted two reflections on the economic crisis we are currently going through and the possibilities of finding our way through it. But the problem is actually much bigger and much more complex than the financial difficulties we are facing. I follow a website called Truthout. It covers news in the U.S. mainly from a progressive stance. Lately there have been several significant reflections on the emergence of the Tea Party and its significance. There is concern that this phenomenon exposes the tip of the iceberg of a major trend in the extreme right to turn to violence to vent their anger at the current U.S. administration. Several books have been published recently that try to outline the crisis of democracy in the U.S. and its implications globally. Among these are Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon Wolin and Democracy Inc. by David S. Allen. In a Canadian context there is Global Showdown by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke. There are significant American political analysts who suggest that American society has become totalitarian in a sense at least as rigorous as that of Germany or Italy in the late 1930s with the significant difference that society is managed so that there is no need for an overwhelming repression of the general public. However, they point out that this model may be reaching its limit as access to resources becomes limited.
In The Upside of Down, Canadian author, Thomas Homer-Dixon, argues that we in North America are reaching a point where there could be synchronous failure, that is to say a point where several major systems that sustain the North American way of life could collapse. These include not only the financial system but also things like social services, electrical grids, energy sources, terrorist attacks, climate change, etc. While the possibility that any one of these could enter into a major crisis is becoming increasingly probable, there is also a possibility that several could occur at once and that we would not currently be prepared to respond adequately. Our whole social structure could collapse.
So far I have been speaking of the situation in North America. What then also about the rest of the world? The region I know best is Latin America. As you are certainly aware, Latin America went through a horrendous period of dictatorships military repression and civil wars between the 1970s and 1990s. More recently there has been a flowering of relatively people-centered governments even as most Latin American countries opened their doors wide to the entry of major transnationals, like Canadian mining companies. Now it appears that, as the people in general become aware of the extent of the damage being done to their territories by these transnationals, a U.S.-based military, juridical and economic response is being implemented. The recent coup in Honduras, the expansion of U.S. military bases in Colombia and the virtual take-over of Haiti by the U.S. military (all protests to the contrary) are significant examples.
This is leading many social activists from a variety of sectors to question the approaches they have been following to social change and to ask themselves whether or not a profound reassessment may not be required. The point is not to become overwhelmed by the immensity or complexity of the current situation but to try to find the cracks and contradictions that will allow us to burrow in and open up paths that allow people to continue living in and building societies of compassion, solidarity and justice.
Is it possible? There are many who think so. Thomas Homer-Dixon is one, Quebec Solidaire; a Quebec-based political party is another. The local, regional, continental and world social forums are still another place where that analysis and mobilization is taking place
This is certainly not the time to be sitting back to “see what happens,” but rather a time to make sure that what we are doing supports a very deep and long-term vision of a path to change.
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