by Joe Mancini
Published in September 2020
This week, Globe & Mail headed its new Climate Change section with the statement, “We knew this was coming.” Increasingly, people and institutions are getting the picture. It is not just the four major hurricanes that have recently made landfall in North America, nor that California is suffering under drought conditions in the midst of a heat wave producing extended 50° C temperatures. Nor is it the scale of dramatic wild fires, or the fear of the smoke filled toxic air that is filling cities up and down the North American west coast.
This past month has demonstrated how climate change will deliver intense shifts in weather patterns that are forceful and disruptive. The path of destruction that these temperature fluctuations are causing, confirms the fears many have for our future if we do not change how we use the resources of planet Earth.
Again, in the past week, 560 major worldwide companies with 4 trillion in revenue have called for governments to do more to reverse the accelerating destruction of the natural world and to support broader efforts to fight climate change.
The scale of the change ahead means that we have to consider widely what the transition to a sustainable economic model looks like. How can we all live productive lives while drastically reducing the amount of energy and resources we use? This is the challenge, how to take seriously the need to use less of what we take for granted.
The transition to a sustainable society is multifaceted. One aspect is to rethink how economics affect the structure of our society. Since the Great Recession of 2008, a breakthrough of sorts has been taking place. Old assumptions are not holding and in their place is developing a new understanding about how human societies can live sustainably on this earth. Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, reflects this coming together of new thinking:
Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth. The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world.
A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor…
Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations.
One way to engage this new thinking is to consider the ideas of public thinkers who have explored the intersection of economy, consumption, and regenerative ways of living. These authors add a wide texture of opinion and approach while thinking directly about how Climate Change will impact us. These authors are all activists in the public sphere. They have all developed a unique message by working their ideas through organizations, institutions, and governments as they seek to root their work in a community of support.
Kate Raworth has a brilliant model for rethinking economics. She challenges all of us to redraw our economic assumptions. What is the difference in our mindset between ‘rational economic man’ compared to ‘socially adaptable humans’? The answer is that our economic systems would evolve differently if we fully recognized our shared humanity compared to only individual gain. This suggests that if our model of economic growth is both regenerative and distributive, then the picture of our economy would change for the better. Raworth’s work is summarized nicely in her YouTube Ted Talk, A Healthy Economy Should Be Designed to Thrive Not Grow.
Juliet Schor has been teaching and writing since the 1980’s, critiquing the structure of work with books such as The Overworked American and The Overspent American. In True Wealth, Schor describes a slowly evolving transition that moderates the hours that we work and replaces them with ecologically and community-oriented restorative activities that strengthen the fabric of our economy and democracy.
Jeremy Rifkin has engaged the public for 40 years by linking the economy to sustainability thinking. His recent successes with the European Union have focused on designing and rolling out wide scale green energy projects. A helpful overview summary is Vice Media’s The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy.
These books and authors are a good starting point, as all of them address the challenge of rethinking how our economy produces and consumes resources. As the new reality of Climate Change influences our choices, these books help us build a new dialogue forward.
