Evolution’s Edge – Graeme Taylor:

  • If global civilisation is to survive, it must evolve into a completely new type of societal system. A consumer society cannot be transformed into a conserver society without structural change. (What are these structural changes?)
  • The corporations and governments that have fought the hardest against limiting atmospheric pollution are the ones with the most to lose from programs that encourage conserving energy and using alternative fules – eg. ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy etc.
  • In the words of Achim Steiner, the chief of the United Nation’s Environment Program, “The missing link is universal political action”. Will the world’s leaders be prepared to put conservation above consumption?
  • The cost of solving the problems will be much less than the cost of doing nothing.
  • Sufficient resources exist to solve all the world’s major problems, but the global system has been designed to increase productivity and profits, not to redistribute wealth or protect the environment.
  • The reason why industrial capitalism is unsustainable is because it is organised by a belief system that does not recognise the need for limits – limits on environmental exploitation, limits on economic competition and limits on social inequality. Industrial capitalism is like a car that has an accelerator but no brakes.
  • The world system is designed to reward success, not morality. Whatever the values of their owners might be, companies must be able to successfully compete and make profits in order to survive, which means that any business that makes the welfare of its employees and the public more important than its bottom line risks commercial failure.
  • Structural inequality – the world is composed of very unequal social structures (eg. At the very top there are thousands of billionaires who control many of the world’s largest corporations. At the very bottom there are tens of millions of labourers, child slaves etc.) The richest 20% of the world’s population enjoy 75% of the total global income while the poorest 20% have to live on only 1.5%.
  • While technological advances will improve efficiencies and reduce waste, they will not change the societal values and structures that promote limitless consumption and growing inequality. Technological advances can postpone environmental collapse, but only social advances can transform an unsustainable consumer society into a sustainable conserver society.
  • New technologies can allow us to utilise lower quality resources and to use resources more efficiently, but they cannot create new materials out of nothing. They can postpone the collapse of an ever-expanding economy, but they cannot prevent it. (Similar to Al Bartlett’s Titanic analogy)
  • The consumer society is the product of the mechanistic and materialistic worldview of the industrial system, which believes that the universe is made up of discrete objects rather than inter-related systems. From this perspective, humans, animals, plants, mountains and rivers have no connection to each other and no intrinsic value – they only exist to be manipulated and used for personal gain. This worldview creates an economic system in which natural capital is converted into manufactured and financial capital without taking into account environmental or social costs.
  • The obstacles to change are not technical, but social – the need to change the views, values and habits of governments, businesses and consumers.
  • Instead of treating the environment as external to the economy and as a place where we extract raw resources and dump waste – we will have to recognise that the economy is a subsystem of the environment. This involves changing our worldview: in reality the environment is not outside and separate from the economy; the economy is inside of and a part of the environment
  • Sustainability requires individual, corporate and governmental accountability and responsibility.
  • Although societies are living systems with dynamics and structures that individuals do not have, because they are collections of individuals they exist to serve human needs. When we talk about societal change we are talking about changes in the views, values and behaviours of many individuals.
  • The global movement for change has serious weaknesses – it is largely uncoordinated and still lacks the political and economic power to prevent the destruction of nature and civilisation. We need a clear, unifying vision of “sustainability”.
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