Meetings like Rio+20 are doomed to fail — David Suzuki

“We’re going backwards”

No 511 Posted by fw, June 25, 2012

“A meeting like this is doomed to fail because we haven’t left our vested interests outside the door and come together as a single species and agreed what the fundamental needs are for all of humanity. So we’re going to sacrifice the air, the water, the biodiversity all in the sake of human political and economic interest. They’re doomed too.” —David Suzuki

What follows is my abridged transcript of Amy Goodman’s interview today with David Suzuki, covering the climate crisis, the student protests in Quebec, his childhood growing up in an internment camp, and his daughter Severn’s historic speech at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 when she was 12 years-old. My abridged transcript focuses solely on Suzuki’s reflections on the Rio+20 summit.

To access the complete transcript and see the original interview, click on the following linked title. My transcript appears below a 16:46-minute You Tube clip of the interview.

David Suzuki on Rio+20, “Green Economy” & Why Planet’s Survival Requires Undoing Its Economic Model, Democracy Now, June 25, 2012

TRANSCRIPT

Canada is a laggard. We are a global outlaw, renegade country. But, overall, the science is in, the planet is in terrible shape.

We’re going backwards. Certainly from the standpoint of my country, Canada, said that it was playing a leadership role at Rio ’92. Here there’s just been no question, Canada is a laggard. We are a global outlaw, renegade country. But, overall, the science is in, the planet is in terrible shape.

Meetings like this are doomed to fail because we are sacrificing all for the sake of political and economic interests

The difficulty is that meetings like this are doomed to fail because we see ourselves at the center of everything. And our political and our economic priorities have to dominate over everything else. If we do not come together and say, look, let’s start with the agreement that we are biological creatures, and if you do not have air for more than three or four minutes you are dead, if you don’t have clean air you are sick, so surely, air, the atmosphere that provides us with the seasons, the weather, the climate, that has to be our highest priority before anything economic or political. That has to be the highest priority. But what you’re getting is a huge gathering, as we saw in Copenhagen two years ago, a huge gathering of countries trying to negotiate something that does not belong to anyone to through the lenses of all of the political boundaries and economic priorities, and we try to shoehorn nature into our agenda. It simply is not going to work. A meeting like this is doomed to fail because we haven’t left our vested interests outside the door and come together as a single species and agreed what the fundamental needs are for all of humanity. So we’re going to sacrifice the air, the water, the biodiversity all in the sake of human political and economic interest. They’re doomed too.

We have to find a mechanism to hold leaders legally accountable for what they do/don’t do

You can charge people who are at a scene, where someone is being murdered, and if you do not do anything to try to help that, you can be charged with criminal negligence. If something is going on that you should know about and you ignore it deliberately, then that is called willful blindness. That is a legal category for taking people to court. I think what we have to also find is a mechanism to judge people and to make them accountable for the implications of what they do or do not do for future generations. That is, there should be a category of intergenerational crime. You come here 20 years later, how many of the political leaders that were here in 1992 are now here again? Very, very few, if any. So, these guys come, they make a lot of nice words and they say, we care about this, we’re going to do that. Nobody holds them accountable because they go out of office, they go on to become billionaires or whenever they do. But who is accountable for the lack of any kind of profound activity?

Corporations are calling the shots and Obama is held hostage by a dysfunctional congress

You know, Obama was signaled sea-change in the American politics in the United States. Unfortunately, he’s held hostage and he made some fundamental opponents right from the beginning that were fantastic, really top-notch scientists heading NOAA, heading the Energy Department. This was a sea-change. You think of a Nobel Prize winner being appointed the minister, or whatever you call him, secretary of energy. These are huge changes. The reality though, is he is held hostage by an absolutely dysfunctional congress. And he is held hostage by the corporate agenda, which is still a primary obligation that politicians have, even though has been very successful at getting that grassroots support. The fact is that corporations hold a huge hammer over the heads of our elected representatives and they are calling the shots. The economic system is the driving force that is destroying the planet, but now it is the corporations that are setting the direction and they’re calling the shots. I think that it is not that Mr. Obama is like George Bush, because he is definitely not, but he is held hostage by the same system within which Bush operated.

There is huge support in the US right now for parties that want to return to the past

I think in the U.S., you’re in deep trouble right now because of the huge support for parties that want to take us back to the past, the Tea Party and all of that are taking us away from having an opportunity for civil society to really contribute.

Britain’s leading scientist says the odds are only 50/50 that humans will survive to the end of this century

I think we are really in a crisis when Sir Martin Rees, one of the leading scientists in Britain, the Royal Astronomer, was asked on BBC, what are the chances that human beings will survive to the end of this century? This is whether we will still be around. His answer was, 50/50. 50/50 that human beings will avoid extinction? I mean, surely to goodness we ought to be on an absolute crisis mode and getting off all of this rhetoric being fostered by the fossil fuel industry and nuclear industry and get on to a truly sustainable path.

The “green economy” in the US is a system built on the need to continue to expand and grow

The green economy will simply allow the corporations to make a shift. You can see it in Exxon. Exxon, one of the companies that have spent tens of millions of dollars denying climate change, denying any responsibility, taking government subsidies on a massive scale, now their ads are all about, we want a clean future, we’re looking at clean energy and all that stuff. Sure, the green economy is just about being more efficient, being less polluting, being less energy intensive, but still it’s a system built on the need to continue to expand and grow. The true economy has got to come back into balance with the very biosphere that sustains us. I think a lot of people just see the green economy as a different way of allowing the corporate agenda to continue to flourish.

We have to change the corporations and the economy because “greening” is totally destructive

We have got to change the economy and we have to do what we did in 1944 when governments came to Bretton Woods in Maine, and said we have got to develop an economic system for a post-war world. And they designed, they instituted GATT, the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade. They invented the World Bank, the IMF. They tied world currency to the American greenback. But they left out the environment. It’s time for a Bretton Woods II. We have got to overhaul the economy. You cannot change nature, but you can change our inventions like corporations and the economy. They have got to change. So, greening the economy that is itself a totally destructive system because it is bent on exploiting resources unsustainably and growing forever, that is got to be overhauled, it doesn’t work.

*****

America’s right-wing agenda has undermined scientific credibility

It’s astonishing to me because I want to remind your viewers that in 1992, an American president had declared himself — well, in 1988, he said, if you vote for me, I promise I will be an environmental President. That was George H.W. Bush. There wasn’t a green bone in his body but the American public had put the environment at the top of its agenda. He had to say that. Many people say, George Bush came to Rio in 1992 so he should be recognized for that. George Bush was not going to come to Rio unless they watered down the climate convention. They were aiming at the original plans, were for a 20% reduction in greenhouse emissions in 15 years. George Bush said, I am not going, until he got a much watered-down target of stabilization of 1990 levels by the year 2000, and he came down and signed that. But, his actions were predicated on American concern about the environment. Since then, of course, we have gone into recessions. But, I think we have not recognized that we’ve got people like the Koch brothers, you got these right-wing think tanks, Competitive Enterprises Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Institute, that are all now pushing a radical right-wing agenda funded by fossil fuel industry and rich people to say, this is not true. Which is undermining scientific credibility.

Although we are facing an absolute crisis right now, North Americans assume everything is OK

June 7, this year, Nature is filled with articles from scientists who have looked at the ecosystems of the planet. We are in deep trouble. We are facing an absolute crisis now. But countries like Canada and the United States, which are endowed with huge resources, can float by on the assumption everything is OK. We don’t see the crunch coming as poor countries like [in] Europe are seeing. They do not have the kind of resource plenty that we have in North America. And so they are seeing it and leading the call for change. But, we have the illusion that the economy is the source of everything that matters and we have got to keep that growing at all costs. It’s at all costs to the future for our children and grandchildren.

We need to shift our beliefs and values from the earth is ours to exploit to “we are part of a vast web of interconnected species dependent on Mother Nature”

Well, the thing we hear over and over again is that we need a paradigm shift. It has become a cliché. But, I absolutely believe this is a critical change, that all of the stuff that goes on will not achieve anything unless we ultimately see the world in a different way. You see, our beliefs, our values shape the way we look out at the world and the way we treat it. If we believe that we were here, placed here by God, that all of this creation is for us, it’s for us to go and occupy, dominate, and exploit, then we will proceed to do that. That is the paradigm we now exist within. We’re driven then by that sense that it’s all there for us. We need to shift that to a better understanding that we are part of a vast web of interconnected species, that it is the biosphere, the zone of air, water, and land, where all life exists. It’s a very thin layer around the planet.

[Earth] is home to ten to thirty millions other species that keep the planet habitable. And if we don’t see that we are utterly embedded in the natural world and dependent on nature, not technology, not economics, not science — we are dependent on Mother Nature for our very wellbeing and survival. If we don’t see that, then our priorities will continue to be driven by man-made constructs like national borders, economies, corporations, markets…. If we do not make that fundamental shift, then we will just go on, oh we got to be more efficient we got to have a green economy, and all that stuff, but we haven’t fundamentally changed in our relationship with the biosphere.

The minute you accept that we are biological creatures, then our highest priorities become absolutely clear. That means stop all release of any kind of human created material into our surroundings until we learn ways to recycle that in mimic nature in how we create and then degrade those things.

We need to work toward creating strong families and supportive communities. We need full employment, we need equity and justice and freedom from war, terror, and genocide. To me, those are my issues, because if you don’t have that kind of society, you cannot have a sustainable environment. Hunger and poverty are my issues, because a starving person who finds an edible plant or animal, is not going to say, I wonder if this is an endangered species? They kill it and eat it. I would. And you probably you would too.

How can we create an economy that will allow these fundamental needs that we have to be protected? How do we construct a way of living as a species, protecting these values? But if we don’t see what the primary needs are, then I just think that we’re just playing at the edges and we’re not being serious about reaching a truly sustainable future.

*****

David Suzuki, Canadian author and environmental activist, perhaps best known as host of the long-running CBC program, “The Nature of Things,” seen in more than 40 countries. In 1990, he co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation which focuses on sustainable ecology. In 2009, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award. His latest book: Everything Under the Sun: Toward a Brighter Future on a Small Blue Planet.

MY COMMENT: Now if we only knew how to get from where we are to the visions that Suzuki (in this post) and William Rees (in the previous post) have laid out for us.

Fair Use Notice: This blog, Citizen Action Monitor, may contain copyrighted material that may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material, published without profit, is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. It is published in accordance with the provisions of the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling and its six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing

Roadmap to Survival 2100 by Prof. Wm. Rees

Introduction to the kinds of policies implicit in a Survival 2100–type project

No 510 Posted by fw, June 25, 2012

“…sustainability does, indeed, demand what many scientists (and even politicians) have been asserting for decades. We are engaged in a genuine paradigm shift—the abandonment of the beliefs, values, assumptions, and behaviors underpinning the status quo and their replacement by an alternative development paradigm. The good news, of course, is that the alternative offers a more economically secure, ecologically stable, and socially equitable future for all than does staying our present course. The bad news is that there will be strident resistance from those with the greatest stake in the status quo…” —William Rees

UBC Professor William Rees has a place of honor on this blog – the 13-part series of posts based on his talk, Is Humanity Inherently Unstable? is far and away the most visited.

What follows is a slightly modified version of Rees’ latest contribution to popular understanding that “a great changes in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.” I have added subheadings to facilitate browsing of this lengthy article and added inline links in place of endnote references. To read Rees’ original piece, click on the linked title.

The Way Forward: Survival 2100 by William Rees, Post Carbon Institute, June 22, 2012

It’s not as if we haven’t been warned

It’s not as if we’re unaware of the problem. Symptoms were already so persistent two decades ago that a proclamation by many of the world’s top scientists warned that “a great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.” This assertion was echoed a dozen years later by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment’s no less urgent warning that “human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of the earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.”

Leadership effort so far has been “feeble”

One might think that humanity’s best science would be enough to stimulate a decisive policy response, but the feeble effort so far has done little to stem the cumulative cascade of dismal data. No national government, no prominent international agency, no corporate leader anywhere has begun to advocate in public, let alone implement, the kind of evidence-based, visionary, morally coherent policy responses that are called forth by the best science available today.

Earth may be experiencing fastest climate change in 34 million years

On the climate front, the first six months of 2010 were the warmest ever recorded, and 2010 tied with 2005 and 2008 for hottest year in the instrumental record. (This while we should have been experiencing modest cooling—the world is just emerging from the longest solar minimum in decades.) Earth and paleoclimate scientist Andrew Glikson posits that the world may be experiencing the fastest climate change in 34 million years. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are rising at 2+ parts per million by volume per year (ppmv/yr) and the rate is increasing. Already, at 392 ppmv CO2 and 470 ppmv CO2 equivalent (CO2e) (read: a level of greenhouse gases equivalent in climate forcing to 470 ppmv of CO2), the atmosphere/ocean system is just below the 500 ppmv CO2e upper stability limit for the Antarctic ice sheet.

Reconcile economic growth with unprecedented rates of decarbonization or face planned economic recession

Some climate scientists are now stepping into the policy arena. Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows argue that the world will be hard-pressed to stabilize greenhouse gases at 650 ppmv CO2e, which implies a 50 percent chance of a catastrophic 4°C increase in mean global temperature, the desertification of much of the world’s habitable land mass, dramatically rising sea levels, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees by the end of the century. Indeed, unless we can reconcile economic growth with unprecedented rates of decarbonization (in excess of 6 percent per year), avoiding this increase will require a “planned economic recession.”

Rapacious global community is living beyond its ecological means

Of course, climate change is just one symptom of generalized human ecological dysfunction. A virtual tsunami of evidence suggests that the global community is living beyond its ecological means. By one measure, the human “ecological footprint” is about 2.7 global average hectares per person (gha/capita), yet there are only 1.8 gha/capita on earth. The human enterprise has already overshot global carrying capacity by about 50 percent and is living, in part, by depleting natural capital and overfilling waste sinks.

Humans are well equipped to confront this self-made crisis

In theory, Homo sapiens is uniquely equipped to confront this self-made crisis. Four critical intellectual and emotional qualities distinguish people from other advanced vertebrates. Humans have

• an unequaled capacity for evidence-based reasoning and logical analysis;
• the unique ability to engage in long-term forward planning;
• the capacity to exercise moral judgment; and
• an ability to feel compassion for other individuals and other species.

But we are stymied by cognitive and behavioral barriers to change

As noted above, despite decades of hardening evidence, mainstream global society nevertheless remains in policy paralysis, stymied by cognitive and behavioral barriers to change that have deep roots in both human nature and global society’s culturally constructed economic growth fetish.

If our hand were forced, how might we respond to save the planet?

But what if mounting public pressure (think Occupy Wall Street) or a series of miniclimate catastrophes finally overwhelms these barriers? Assume the world community becomes fully motivated to deal effectively with biophysical reality. Now the question becomes: What would truly intelligent, forward-thinking, morally compassionate individuals do in response to available data, the historical record, and ongoing trends?

Roadmap to Survival 2100

Establish the institutional and procedural basis for a worldwide “Survival 2100” project

In a more rational world, political leaders might come together in a special forum to acknowledge the nature and severity of the crisis and to establish the institutional and procedural basis for a worldwide “Survival 2100” project. This initiative would formally recognize

(a) that unsustainability is a global problem—no nation can achieve sustainability on its own;

(b) that unsustainability springs, in part, from the failure of a global development paradigm that is based on integration and consolidation of the world economy (globalization), deregulation, and unrelenting material growth;

(c) that the failed paradigm is a social construction, a product of the human mind; and

(d) that this is good—it means that the model can be deconstructed, analyzed, and replaced. In effect, the metagoal of Survival 2100 would be to rewrite global society’s cultural narrative to achieve greater social equity and economic security in ways that reflect biophysical reality.

Engineer the creation of a dynamic, more equitable steady-state economy

The major elements and themes of the new story are, in some respects, self-evident. The practical goal of Survival 2100 would be to engineer the creation of a dynamic, more equitable steady-state economy that can satisfy at least the basic needs of the entire human family within the means of nature. (“Steady-state” implies a more or less constant rate of energy and material throughput compatible with the productive and assimilative capacities of the ecosphere. Contrary to simplistic criticisms, a steady state is anything but static. Innovation will be more necessary, and necessarily more creative, than ever.)

Policy shift from getting bigger faster toward equity and qualitative development

Clearly the economic policy emphasis would have to shift from efficiency and quantitative growth (getting bigger faster) toward equity and qualitative development (getting truly better). Indeed, the steady-state economy would be a smaller economy. Eliminating overshoot requires a 50 percent reduction in global fossil energy and material throughput. And to address egregious inequity, wealthy countries will have to reduce their consumption by up to 80 percent to create the ecological space necessary for justifiable growth in developing countries. Implementing an equity-oriented planned economic contraction in turn requires that the underpinning values of society shift from competitive individualism, greed, and narrow self-interest—all sanctioned by the prevailing narrative—toward community, cooperation, and our common interest in surviving with dignity.

Global change is a collective problem requiring collective solutions

The emotive rationale for such a developmental about-face is captured in the last phrase above. Global change is a collective problem requiring collective solutions. Individual actions produce inadequate, even trivial improvements; no individual, no region, no country can succeed on its own. Perhaps for the first time in history, individual and national interests have converged with the collective interests of humankind. Governments and international organizations must therefore work with ordinary citizens to devise and implement policies that serve the common good on both national and global levels. Evidence abounds that failure to act in ways that reflect humanity’s shared interest in survival with dignity will ultimately lead to civil insurrection, geopolitical tension, resource wars, and ecological implosion.

Magnitude of the required value shift is daunting

The magnitude of the required value shift is daunting but manageable given sufficient resources. The world community will have to agree to fund worldwide social marketing programs to ameliorate “pushback” and bring the majority of citizens on board. Public reeducation is necessary both to inform ordinary citizens of the nature/severity of the crisis and to advance a positive vision for the future that will be more attractive than the future likely to unfold from maintaining the status quo. (Those who dismiss such broad-scale social learning as social engineering should remember that the denizens of today’s consumer society already represent the most thoroughly socially engineered generation of humans ever to walk the planet, and billions are spent every year to ensure that they remain wedded to the status quo.)

Essential Steps Forward

1/ Build sustainable conserver societies that would also abandon cult of consumerism

One thing that has passed its “best before” date is the contemporary cult of consumerism. The material ethic is spiritually empty and ecologically destructive. A sustainable society, by contrast, will cultivate investment and conserver values over spending and consumption.

A sustainable conserver society would also abandon predatory capitalism with its unbridled confidence in markets as the wellspring and arbiter of all social value. Unsustainability is quintessential market failure. Society must relegitimize public planning at all levels of government. We need selective reregulation and comprehensive extramarket adaptation strategies for global change.

2/ Internalize ecological and social costs of goods and services so that prices tell consumers the truth

A necessary first step would be to acknowledge that globalization encourages the externalization of ecological and social costs (think climate change). Many goods and services are therefore underpriced in the marketplace and thus overconsumed. As any good economist will acknowledge, government intervention is legitimate and necessary to correct for gross market failure. Indeed, resistance to reform makes hypocrites of those who otherwise tout the virtues of market economies. Truly efficient markets require the internalization of heretofore hidden costs so that prices tell consumers the truth.

Consistent with the concept of true-cost economics, Survival 2100 would recognize the need to

• end perverse subsidies to the private sector (e.g., to the fossil fuel sector, the corn ethanol industry, and private banks “too big to fail”);
• reregulate the private sector in the service of the public interest;
• introduce scheduled ecological fiscal reforms—tax the bads (depletion and pollution) not the goods (labor and capital)—which might require a combination of pollution charges/taxes on domestic production and import tariffs on underpriced trade goods; and
• tie development policy to the “strong sustainability” criterion (i.e., maintain constant, adequate per capita stocks of critical natural, manufactured, and human capital assets in separate accounts).

This final point requires that we learn to live on sustainable natural income, not natural capital liquidation. Society must therefore

• implement “cap-auction-trade” systems for critical resources such as fossil fuels (i.e., place sustainable limits on rates of resource exploitation, or waste discharges; auction off the exploitation rights to available capacity; and use the rents captured to address subsequent equity issues);
• revise systems of national accounts to include biophysical estimates of natural capital stocks and sinks in support of such a system; and
• replace or supplement gross domestic product with more comprehensive measures of human well-being.

3/ Develop deglobalization plans favoring relocalization

Survival 2100 would also require that society unravel the increasingly unsustainable eco-economic entanglement of nations induced by globalization. Without becoming isolationist, nations should strive for greater self-reliance. In the service of “efficiency,” unconstrained trade allows trading regions to exceed local carrying capacity with short-term impunity, while increasing the risk to all by accelerating waste generation and depleting remaining reserves of natural capital. In the process, this creates mutual dependencies that are vulnerable to accelerating global change, energy bottlenecks, and geopolitical instability. The world and individual nations should therefore revise or abandon World Trade Organization rules and similar regional trade treaties (e.g., NAFTA). In place of these agreements, we instead need economic plans and accords that also foster local economic diversity and resilience. “Trade if necessary, but not necessarily trade” is a suitable mantra. Nations should therefore

• develop deglobalization plans to reduce their dependence on foreign sources and sinks (i.e., reduce a nation’s ecological footprint on other nations’ ecosystems and on the global commons);
• simultaneously relocalize (i.e., reskill domestic populations and diversify local economies through import displacement);
• generally increase national self-reliance in food, energy, and other essential resources as a buffer against climate change, rising scarcity costs, and global strife; and
• invest in rebuilding local/regional natural capital stocks (e.g., fisheries, forests, soils, biodiversity reserves, etc.) using revenues collected from carbon taxes or resource quota auctions.

4/ Renew the social contract and repair holes in the social safety net

Economic contraction and massive structural change inevitably have adverse social effects. Consistent with the principles of community solidarity and cooperation, as well as society’s shared interest in the peaceful resolution of the sustainability conundrum, Survival 2100 would explicitly renew the social contract and repair holes in the social safety net. This would include

• a return to more progressive taxation policies encompassing income, capital gains, and estate and corporate taxes;
• recognition that a negative income tax may be necessary to assist low-income families through the transition;
• using the tax system and related policies to promote a cultural shift from private capital accumulation to investment in public infrastructure (e.g., transit, community facilities) and human development;
• designing and implementing new forms of social safety nets to facilitate peoples’ transition to the postcarbon economy in which obsolete, unsustainable “sunset” industries are phased out (e.g., coal-based electricity generation);
• implementing job-training and job-placement programs to equip people for employment in emerging “sunrise” industries (e.g., solar energy technologies);
• capitalizing on the advantages of a shorter work week and job sharing to improve work-life balance (self-actualization); and
• implementing state-assisted family-planning programs everywhere to stabilize/reduce human populations.

Conclusions: Can Survival 2100 Fly?

Good news/Bad news

The forgoing is only an introduction to the kinds of policies implicit in a Survival 2100–type project, but it is sufficient to show that sustainability does, indeed, demand what many scientists (and even politicians) have been asserting for decades. We are engaged in a genuine paradigm shift—the abandonment of the beliefs, values, assumptions, and behaviors underpinning the status quo and their replacement by an alternative development paradigm. The good news, of course, is that the alternative offers a more economically secure, ecologically stable, and socially equitable future for all than does staying our present course.

The bad news is that there will be strident resistance from those with the greatest stake in the status quo, from people who reject global change science, from extreme libertarians, from those who worship at the altar of the marketplace, and from anyone who regards regulation and government—particularly in the international arena—as the spawn of the devil (e.g., factions of the U.S. Republican and Tea Parties who “repudiate sustainable development and describe the global effort to achieve it as ‘destructive and insidious’” and who regard UN agencies and various NGOs as anti-American conspiracies). More generally, planned economic contraction hardly resonates with the times. Indeed, if the basic science of global change is correct, resistance to change may well be the greatest threat to the future of global civilization and overcoming it a more difficult task than implementing the transformation itself.

Consequences of failure – Collapse on a global scale

And failure is possible. As anthropologist Joseph Tainter reminds us, the most intriguing thing about complex societies is the frequency with which their ascent to greatness is interrupted by collapse. Collapse on a global scale, however, would be unprecedented. Should H. sapiens fail in efforts to implement something like Survival 2100, evolution’s great experiment with self-conscious intelligence will have finally succumbed to more primitive emotions and survival instincts abetted by cognitive dissonance, collective denial, and global political inertia.

But if we succeed … !!

*****

William Rees is Professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) He is the originator of ‘ecological footprint analysis.’ He is a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute and a Founding Fellow of the One Earth Initiative.

Fair Use Notice: This blog, Citizen Action Monitor, may contain copyrighted material that may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material, published without profit, is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. It is published in accordance with the provisions of the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling and its six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing