20 Years On....

Severn Suzuki - an old soul in a young body - laid it on the line in 1992...

 

This young woman is now 31... and really, nothing has changed for the better in the two decades since she made that impassioned plea to the United Nations for the grown-ups to get real and responsible...

If we kill the earth, we kill ourselves... 

So it would seem logical that we ought not to kill the earth, that we ought to nurture her, care for her, protect her, nourish her, VALUE HER...

But some of us, it seems, know the cost of everything and the value of nothing... 

Instead of having stars in our eyes, too many of us are blinded by dollar signs... 

And that short-sighted vision can't see value in any form other than profit and loss columns...

I wonder how many zeros you'd need

and how wide the column would have to be,

to measure the loss of the earth

and all that lives on, in and above her?

There Is Another Way...

Well, there's more than one way to live better than we currently are doing under capitalism...

Here's just one set of ideas.... 

It's not all fantasy either...

From Wikipedia's entry on Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983):

"Buckminster Fuller was one of the first to propagate a systemic worldview, and he explored principles of energy and material efficiency in the fields of architecture, engineering and design.

 

He cited François de Chardenedes' opinion that petroleum, from the standpoint of its replacement cost out of our current energy "budget" (essentially, the net incoming solar flux), had cost nature "over a million dollars" per U.S. gallon (US$300,000 per litre) to produce. From this point of view, its use as a transportation fuel by people commuting to work represents a huge net loss compared to their earnings.   An encapsulating quotation of his views might be: "There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance."

 
Fuller was concerned about sustainability and about human survival under the existing socio-economic system, yet remained optimistic about humanity's future. 

 

Defining wealth in terms of knowledge, as the "technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth needs of life," his analysis of the condition of "Spaceship Earth" caused him to conclude that at a certain time during the 1970s, humanity had attained an unprecedented state. 

 

He was convinced that the accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with the quantities of major recyclable resources that had already been extracted from the earth, had attained a critical level, such that competition for necessities was not necessary anymore.    Cooperation had become the optimum survival strategy. "Selfishness," he declared, "is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable.... War is obsolete."

 

He criticized previous utopian schemes as too exclusive, and thought this was a major source of their failure. To work, he thought that a utopia needed to include everyone."

And Robert Theobald, (1929-1999), also saw another way out of the capitalist trap.   

 

Robert was a private consulting economist and futurist author.   In economics, he was best known for his writings on the economics of abundance and his advocacy of a Basic Income Guarantee.

 

He was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution in 1964, and later listed in the top 10 most influential living futurists in The Encyclopedia of the Future.

 

Robert said: "My goal is to create a situation of full unemployment--a world in which people do not have to hold a job. And I believe that this kind of world can actually be achieved."

Can you say the current paradigm is working well for you, all the other humans with whom we share this world, and the planet herself? 

If we're not one of the comparative handful of people holding all the power and control currently, what have we got to lose in trying something different?

Triple Bottom Line Accounting in Socially Responsible Businesses

Speaking of old paradigms... there are some 'socially aware' businesses around the world who have adopted the Triple Bottom Line operating and accounting philosophy of PPP, which stands for People, Planet, Profit...

Now, in my opinion, they've still got the focus wrong: It should be PLANET, PEOPLE, PROSPERITY....

As a species we are merely one variety of life in the ecosphere; we seem to have developed the arrogance of
thinking the planet is our playground and we can do what we want to it, regardless of the rights of other species....

None of the beings on this planet can live within a damaged ecosphere, so our first responsibility is to the PLANET...

And I think the word PROFIT ought to be replaced by PROSPERITY... profit still implies exploitation and benefit only for some, while prosperity implies benefit for all...