I had a very interesting conversation the other day with a Republican activist--a true Republican, not a Tea Partier. I was explaining relocalization from a political perspective, and she replied that this was a message that Republicans needed to hear, as it tends to resonate with traditional Republican values (think Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt).
She was also wondering if I had any thoughts on how Tea Partiers in general could so willingly accept statements that had no basis in any aspect of reality that pertains to the known universe we spend our daily lives in, and if there was some core defect in that particular political demographic.
Now, I don't generally have a problem with being thought of as a lefty, at least along what is generally accepted as the political spectrum today. Even though I prefer to think of myself as neither left nor right, but out in front (definitely NOT the middle), I had to point out that the left today exhibits the same defective cognitive tendencies in accepting utter nonsense as if it were truth.
The example I used to make my point was the increasing "disappointment" with Obama policies now that the hopium has just about worn off, even though the rabid core of the Democratic Party continues to mindlessly defend him.
Let's honestly examine the facts known before the 2008 general election. Obama is an Ivy League lawyer (not a show-stopper in and of itself, of course, just look at Van Jones. But let's connect some more dots). His campaign received major donations from BigEnergy (hmm, this should start raising some red flags over allegiances as well as ideologies). Finally, he was vetted by the center-right Democratic Leadership Council--over Hillary Clinton, no less--before he was allowed to win the Democratic primary. As this latter fact is the real show-stopper, why would people be disappointed that Obama was doing exactly as he was trained, and is expected, to do?
The left, and especially the liberal elite, rather staunchly refuse to address the fact that we have less freedom today, fewer social liberties, and a larger and more powerful police state under the US's first African-American president than we did under the presidency of Ronald Reagan--and we can no longer blame it all on bush jr. Our overall greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise as fast as the rhetoric of a green energy economy. Corporate welfare is further entrenched with the insurance industry's disease care medical model and the left accepts it as health care reform.
For pure comedic value, though, Tea Partiers do take the prize. Keep your grubby gum'mint hands off my Medicare. The tendency of the radical right to accuse Obama of being a socialist fascist--a contradiction in terms which displays their ignorance of both political terminology and history--is every bit as ignorant as the left claiming Obama has progressive tendencies. Calling Obama a socialist is somewhat mind-boggling when you consider that no actual socialists think that Obama has a single socialist bone in his body. He is a corporate stooge and staunch defender of the status quo Kleptocracy and their agenda of free-market imperialism.
A reality based politics would have today's right embracing Obama much more enthusiastically than the left does, and I'm far from the first to make this observation. But we find ourselves in the rather depressing situation where a carnival freak show has been substituted for rational political discourse, very few seem to have noticed, and even fewer seem to care. What's there to worry about? Wal-Mart is still discounting cheap toxic plastic crap from Asian sweatshops and local governments still give them millions in tax breaks and exemptions for the privilege of covering the health care costs of their minimum wage part-time workers--and this is the economic "normal" both right wings of the Corporate War Party want to return to as the minions on both sides cheer them on.
So, which end of the political spectrum is the most delusional? It sure looks like a toss-up to me.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Monday, April 25, 2011
Friday, June 13, 2008
Setting the Agenda
A recent e-mail from On Day One informed me they were co-sponsoring an on-line five-day debate with Grist.org's Gristmill and UN Dispatch to set the agenda for the 44th president. They asked people to send in ideas on energy and climate, with the best ones to be reviewed by their panel of experts. <http://www.ondayone.org/node/add/idea?source=blogad&issue=climate>
Of course, they expect you to do this in 500 characters or less, so that automatically leaves me out -- I couldn't even do it in that few words. But, here's what I wrote to send to them before discovering this limitation.
How can the next President solve our global warming crisis and reduce our dependence on foreign oil? By honestly taking on the special interests behind the growth economy and helping dispel the myth that a continuously rising GDP is necessary for progress and prosperity. By helping people understand that regarding the Earth as both an endless supply of resources and a bottomless pit for wastes is highly irrational to the point of insanity because it defies the laws of physics and the other natural sciences. That addictively increasing consumption of material goods is not an acceptable substitute for psychological and spiritual health and well-being. That despite a rising standard of living (conveniently confused with quality of life) America comes in 149th out of 150 countries on the happiness scale. That despite a doubling of gross domestic spending, people aren't twice as happy as their grandparents.
There are some other basic facts that must be injected into a very necessary national, and global, conversation.
The promise of technology is to provide more leisure time. Instead, Americans spend one billion working hours per year in order to buy more leisure wear.
About half of the electricity we currently produce is lost in long distance transmission. Decentralizing the national grid would greatly reduce the supposed need to find replacement energy sources.
One third of the global population produces everything consumed by the entire world. This means we should have full global employment while working two thirds less.
Further, 99% of all that stuff is in a landfill or gathering dust in a closet within six months. Relearning the benefits and value of sharing would go a long way in both building mutually supportive community relationships and in reducing the energy and resources required to build one each of everything for everyone.
We could start producing stuff to be more efficient, to be built to last, and to be easily repairable instead of expending so much time and energy on making people feel unworthy or that they are a failure as a human being if they don't have the latest model in the current color.
About half of the oil America consumes goes to the military so they can fight wars to secure more oil so they can fight more wars. Maybe if we were to quit stealing other people's resources and exploiting their communities for stuff we don't want and that doesn't make us happy anyway, global terrorism would shrink drastically.
It is finally becoming more widely acknowledged that cancer is an environmental disease. If we quit allowing the chemical companies to turn our water, air, and soil into global Superfund sites simply so they can increase profit margins, not only would less energy be required and expended, but quality of life would improve by an order of magnitude and the medical industry would see its energy needs shrink.
The American standard of living has brought us to the point where infant mortality rates are rising, lifespan is decreasing, and about 50% of the American population requires one prescription drug a day, with 20% requiring 3 or more prescriptions to either make it through their day or to be able to tolerate their day. And this doesn't include alcohol and other self-prescribed recreational drugs. This is not a sign of a healthy society, or a shining example of a society to be emulated by the developing world.
By honestly addressing these inconvenient truths (and dozens of others, such as the shallowness of urban sprawl, our forced addiction to automobiles, and the damage inflicted on the web of life's food chain by paving over massive swaths of it), we would discover that we can meet our actual energy needs with currently available renewable energy technologies. But, none of this protects and supports a growth economy, where profit is taken to be more important than people or planet.
The alternative to this paradigm of destruction and disease, however, does not entail stagnation, nor is it a primitivistic call to return to the cave and start chopping wood and carrying our own water. Just as a healthy ecosystem reaches a point of maturity and then stops growing physically larger, it doesn't stop developing and supporting the natural tendency of each of the organisms within it to self-organize and fully contribute toward the health of the whole.
Relocalization, the process to create a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom, social justice and economic equity, provides a systemic alternative to the status quo of domination and exploitation that enriches a very few at the expense of all others. Relocalization addresses food and energy security by embracing steady-state local economies, bioregional governance, and redesign of cities based on permaculture principles, all while adhering to the ecological reality of carrying capacity. It helps us overcome our separation from the natural world, which of course means each other as well. By using the models and metaphors amply supplied by the natural systems principles sustainable ecosystems use to remain healthy, vibrant, and resilient, it also brings out and amplifies those positive aspects of human nature that support the basic life-affirming direction of nature -- compassion, cooperation, creativity, and nurturance.
If the presidential candidates are wanting to be serious about actually doing something to mitigate catastrophic climate destabilization and the steady, and currently inexorable, depletion of polluting fossil fuels, instead of the typical sleight of hand that sounds good while really only ensuring continuing riches to their buddies in industry, then they are most welcome to use the above as a foundation for their campaign platform. Otherwise they should just be honest and admit they're only running for the paycheck and status, ask us to vote for whoever we think is sexiest, and we can all hold hands and watch the world go to hell in a handbasket together.
Of course, they expect you to do this in 500 characters or less, so that automatically leaves me out -- I couldn't even do it in that few words. But, here's what I wrote to send to them before discovering this limitation.
How can the next President solve our global warming crisis and reduce our dependence on foreign oil? By honestly taking on the special interests behind the growth economy and helping dispel the myth that a continuously rising GDP is necessary for progress and prosperity. By helping people understand that regarding the Earth as both an endless supply of resources and a bottomless pit for wastes is highly irrational to the point of insanity because it defies the laws of physics and the other natural sciences. That addictively increasing consumption of material goods is not an acceptable substitute for psychological and spiritual health and well-being. That despite a rising standard of living (conveniently confused with quality of life) America comes in 149th out of 150 countries on the happiness scale. That despite a doubling of gross domestic spending, people aren't twice as happy as their grandparents.
There are some other basic facts that must be injected into a very necessary national, and global, conversation.
The promise of technology is to provide more leisure time. Instead, Americans spend one billion working hours per year in order to buy more leisure wear.
About half of the electricity we currently produce is lost in long distance transmission. Decentralizing the national grid would greatly reduce the supposed need to find replacement energy sources.
One third of the global population produces everything consumed by the entire world. This means we should have full global employment while working two thirds less.
Further, 99% of all that stuff is in a landfill or gathering dust in a closet within six months. Relearning the benefits and value of sharing would go a long way in both building mutually supportive community relationships and in reducing the energy and resources required to build one each of everything for everyone.
We could start producing stuff to be more efficient, to be built to last, and to be easily repairable instead of expending so much time and energy on making people feel unworthy or that they are a failure as a human being if they don't have the latest model in the current color.
About half of the oil America consumes goes to the military so they can fight wars to secure more oil so they can fight more wars. Maybe if we were to quit stealing other people's resources and exploiting their communities for stuff we don't want and that doesn't make us happy anyway, global terrorism would shrink drastically.
It is finally becoming more widely acknowledged that cancer is an environmental disease. If we quit allowing the chemical companies to turn our water, air, and soil into global Superfund sites simply so they can increase profit margins, not only would less energy be required and expended, but quality of life would improve by an order of magnitude and the medical industry would see its energy needs shrink.
The American standard of living has brought us to the point where infant mortality rates are rising, lifespan is decreasing, and about 50% of the American population requires one prescription drug a day, with 20% requiring 3 or more prescriptions to either make it through their day or to be able to tolerate their day. And this doesn't include alcohol and other self-prescribed recreational drugs. This is not a sign of a healthy society, or a shining example of a society to be emulated by the developing world.
By honestly addressing these inconvenient truths (and dozens of others, such as the shallowness of urban sprawl, our forced addiction to automobiles, and the damage inflicted on the web of life's food chain by paving over massive swaths of it), we would discover that we can meet our actual energy needs with currently available renewable energy technologies. But, none of this protects and supports a growth economy, where profit is taken to be more important than people or planet.
The alternative to this paradigm of destruction and disease, however, does not entail stagnation, nor is it a primitivistic call to return to the cave and start chopping wood and carrying our own water. Just as a healthy ecosystem reaches a point of maturity and then stops growing physically larger, it doesn't stop developing and supporting the natural tendency of each of the organisms within it to self-organize and fully contribute toward the health of the whole.
Relocalization, the process to create a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom, social justice and economic equity, provides a systemic alternative to the status quo of domination and exploitation that enriches a very few at the expense of all others. Relocalization addresses food and energy security by embracing steady-state local economies, bioregional governance, and redesign of cities based on permaculture principles, all while adhering to the ecological reality of carrying capacity. It helps us overcome our separation from the natural world, which of course means each other as well. By using the models and metaphors amply supplied by the natural systems principles sustainable ecosystems use to remain healthy, vibrant, and resilient, it also brings out and amplifies those positive aspects of human nature that support the basic life-affirming direction of nature -- compassion, cooperation, creativity, and nurturance.
If the presidential candidates are wanting to be serious about actually doing something to mitigate catastrophic climate destabilization and the steady, and currently inexorable, depletion of polluting fossil fuels, instead of the typical sleight of hand that sounds good while really only ensuring continuing riches to their buddies in industry, then they are most welcome to use the above as a foundation for their campaign platform. Otherwise they should just be honest and admit they're only running for the paycheck and status, ask us to vote for whoever we think is sexiest, and we can all hold hands and watch the world go to hell in a handbasket together.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Doing What Comes Naturally: Responses to Systemic Crises
Global warming is becoming the rallying cry of many environmental and social justice organizations. As can be expected, they each insist that solving their particular issue is the best solution, or the best place to start, as we begin work to shift demand to renewable energy sources. None, however, mention reducing demand. Of course, we must also remember that these groups all find themselves firmly enmeshed in triage situations of a system that has become normalized; that we legitimize.
For example, a recent Oxfam e-mail action alert starts out by listing aspects of the dire situation global warming is creating; a particular species going extinct, disappearing ice caps, more destructive storms. Then they say what's missing from the global warming debate is the effect on the world's poor. And to a certain extent, that's very true.
However, it seems that what's really missing from the debate about global warming is questioning what the true underlying cause of this crisis is. Nor are the intimately interconnected aspects of the equally devastating crises of energy depletion, mass extinctions, overpopulation, and biospheric toxicity often mentioned. Of course, we can also throw all the deteriorating quality of life indicators into the mix as well as we contemplate what 'dire' really means.
Might there be some overlooked connections between global warming and poverty that run deeper than coastal flooding?
From nearly every vantage point, when you closely examine any of these crises, you quickly uncover one or more aspects of the excess of economic growth and exploitation, which provide the commonality for these issues through their requirement for a never ending quest for more producers, consumers and natural resources. The crises and their secondary manifestations all lay very close to the diseased root of materialism which encourages usury, celebrity status of financial wealth, and materialism's addictive substitution for psychological and spiritual health and well-being.
It's not just poor people, but the 90-95% of the world's population outside of the power and control structure who will, at least initially, suffer the brunt of any negative changes to the environment and to their livelihoods. Meanwhile, those at the top of the control hierarchy--the ruling elites in our Plutocracy (or more accurately, Kleptocracy)--hold fast to their fantasy of having security in troubled times because their credit rating assures them of acquiring the latest technologies. Technology is thought to meet the economic dictum of perfect substitutability.
We don't need poison free food, air, or water. We don't need fossil fuels for the Industrial Growth Society. Atmospheric carbon can increase to 550 PPM and the planet can warm six degrees... or even more. We've got technology!
I call this the techno-rapture. These are the people who will be the most devastated, by being the least aware of and prepared for, the consequences of business as usual.
Being honest about what the problem really is the necessary first step in formulating responses to these systemic crises that will be both effective and lasting.
Capitalism is a system that has failed--dangerously. Fortunately, there is an alternative that just happens to be both life affirming and capable of improving quality of life. The alternative is relocalized steady-state economies and embracing sustainability, especially its carrying capacity aspect. But this alternative is discounted by the system that is threatened by it. Centralized control and power over have no role in this alternative system. We are told any alternative to the status quo is unrealistic or worse, utopian. If this doesn't work to scare people away, we're warned that it's communist. Therefore, no meaningful discussion can take place, as it would be an idealistic or unpatriotic waste of time.
As the various social change groups lobby for change, they all point out the U.S. is the world's largest polluter. It's this abstract other that is the villain. But... the U.S. is us. You and me with our hybrid cars and our solar powered 10,000 sq. ft McMansions filled with our energy-star rated products that use more energy, like 42" plasma screen TVs, than their predecessors did. But, we assure ourselves that everything's really ok because we switched to compact fluorescents and we reuse our shopping bags. We've allowed the system to convince us that discrete individual actions to redecorate our staterooms as the ship of Western culture continues steaming toward the rocks is the best we can do.
What we must realize is that we can simultaneously work to alleviate the symptoms of dominator hierarchies and the economic cannibalism of unfettered free-markets--symptoms such as poverty, oppression, inequity, privatization (piratization) of the commons, and separation from the natural world, each other and our own inner nature--as we create a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice.
Embracing a common goal of sustainability would lay the foundation for a democratic culture of peace. This would be in keeping with the life affirming principles of natural systems. It would, therefore, actually be easier than all the effort we're currently putting into maintaining and enhancing a system at odds with these principles. It wouldn't, however, increase GDP.
So, the first decision we must make as we grapple with what to do about global warming is: Which is more important, profit... or people and planet?
If we decide for the latter, let's see of we can agree on a foundation for a sustainable future.
A first point would be recognizing that a healthy ecosystem is the master of sustainability. It is the best place to examine the principles that create the mutually supportive relationships that keep an ecosystem healthy, vibrant, and resilient. Each organism has an abundance of opportunities to find fulfillment within carrying capacity constraints, which include being part of the food chain.
A second point is recognizing that humans come from the Earth. Whatever created natural systems principles used them to create us as well. We do, after all, have over half of our DNA in common with a banana. (And if this isn't cause for humility, I don't know what is.) We naturally embody the ability to be sustainable, and can look to healthy ecosystems for the models and metaphors we need to create sustainable lifestyles, organizations, and communities.
The best way I've found to express this is to start with the four core principles of natural systems: mutual support and reciprocity, no waste, no greed, and increasing diversity. These combine to keep an ecosystem sustainable. The prime activity of living systems in expressing these principles is to self-organize mutually supportive relationships that create more life. It must also be noted that living systems at all scales grow to maturity, and then continue to develop and contribute to keeping the system healthy and in harmony.
From this we can also develop a legally defensible definition of sustainability that has environmental, moral, and scientific aspects. The defense of this definition and what it means to human societies can be founded on a strong constitutional argument that is based in Supreme Court jurisprudence dating back to the beginning of the U.S. It protects property rights by providing a foundation to base property rights on. The definition I propose is:
Sustainability: integrating our social and economic lives into the environment in ways that tend to enhance or maintain ecosystems rather than degrade or destroy them; a moral imperative to pass on our natural inheritance, not necessarily unchanged, but undiminished in its ability to meet the needs of future generations; finding, and staying within, the balance point amongst population, consumption, and waste assimilation where watersheds and bioregions maintain their ability to recharge and regenerate.
If we can agree that the above points are reasonable, we can use them to start analyzing an issue like poverty from a fresh perspective.
We can start by removing the requirement for economic growth in any response developed. We should also take a close look at what human enterprise has made available to us. It's instructive to note that in the overall global economy, 1/3 of the population creates everything that is consumed on the entire planet. What this means is that we should all be working 2/3 less and have full global employment. Then we can start increasing this ratio even more by looking at increasing efficiency, environmental constraints, quality and craftsmanship, and doing away with throw-away consumerism by helping people discover and remember that being more fulfills in a way that having more never can.
We can quit running people off their land and provide the knowledge to plant and harvest a wide diversity of ecosystem adapted crops instead of a single luxury export crop that requires unsustainable inputs. We can make sure basic nutrition and medicine is available and reduce infant mortality and the need for large families. We can provide honest family planning education that is culture sensitive and return elders to their respected mentoring roles as valuable community members. We could very quickly stabilize global population and start allowing it to drop to a sustainable level, estimated by many to be about 2 billion.
None of this is particularly radical, it's all perfectly feasible, and there are functional examples of each aspect we can draw on. We have both the necessary wisdom and the technology available today. This has been the promise of science, technology, and religion all along. People will not turn into layabouts, but will gain the time to find the fulfillment they've been seeking instead of using shopping or sitting captive to mindless entertainment as a substitute.
The above factors would combine to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, decrease demand, increase personal security and satisfaction, and the need for war greatly diminishes or disappears. If people's natural expectations for fulfillment are being met, poverty would no longer be a symptom of a system seriously out of balance.
And of course all of the above is relevant in other contexts. Democracy advocates, some of whom express their goal as being the desire to experience democracy in their own lifetimes, will focus on an issue like campaign finance reform as being the cure. But this is just another symptom whose root is the same paradigm of domination as the other global crises. If activists of various stripes would concentrate on cooperating to change the root, using their prime issue of concern as a guide for their actions, the branches on the co-evolving tree of life would be different instead of coming out diseased in a different location on the trunk.
What this all comes down to is agreeing on a common goal--sustainability; guided by a set of values such as those in the Earth Charter--respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, social and economic justice, and democracy, nonviolence and peace; and developing a willingness, and accepting the responsibility, to become fully human.
It's in our nature to do so. It is a rational choice that also just happens to feel good.
There are numerous tools we can use on the journey to a sustainable future. A few of the effective ones include a process from applied ecopsychology, Dr. Michael Cohen's Natural Systems Thinking Process, that can both empower us and reconnect us to all aspects of nature--personal, social, and environmental. There's a project known as relocalization that provides a new blueprint for our social and economic development. The Green Party provides a political platform that deeply embodies these concepts. And there are a number of social studies that show widespread support is available and growing (Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson's Cultural Creatives), that rapid change is possible (Paulo Freire's work with illiteracy in indigenous tribes and Marian Diamond's work with enriched environments), and that a partnership society is both functional and provides a precedent for balanced cooperation between the natural world and human society (Riane Eisler's Partnership Way).
Let's get busy.
For example, a recent Oxfam e-mail action alert starts out by listing aspects of the dire situation global warming is creating; a particular species going extinct, disappearing ice caps, more destructive storms. Then they say what's missing from the global warming debate is the effect on the world's poor. And to a certain extent, that's very true.
However, it seems that what's really missing from the debate about global warming is questioning what the true underlying cause of this crisis is. Nor are the intimately interconnected aspects of the equally devastating crises of energy depletion, mass extinctions, overpopulation, and biospheric toxicity often mentioned. Of course, we can also throw all the deteriorating quality of life indicators into the mix as well as we contemplate what 'dire' really means.
Might there be some overlooked connections between global warming and poverty that run deeper than coastal flooding?
From nearly every vantage point, when you closely examine any of these crises, you quickly uncover one or more aspects of the excess of economic growth and exploitation, which provide the commonality for these issues through their requirement for a never ending quest for more producers, consumers and natural resources. The crises and their secondary manifestations all lay very close to the diseased root of materialism which encourages usury, celebrity status of financial wealth, and materialism's addictive substitution for psychological and spiritual health and well-being.
It's not just poor people, but the 90-95% of the world's population outside of the power and control structure who will, at least initially, suffer the brunt of any negative changes to the environment and to their livelihoods. Meanwhile, those at the top of the control hierarchy--the ruling elites in our Plutocracy (or more accurately, Kleptocracy)--hold fast to their fantasy of having security in troubled times because their credit rating assures them of acquiring the latest technologies. Technology is thought to meet the economic dictum of perfect substitutability.
We don't need poison free food, air, or water. We don't need fossil fuels for the Industrial Growth Society. Atmospheric carbon can increase to 550 PPM and the planet can warm six degrees... or even more. We've got technology!
I call this the techno-rapture. These are the people who will be the most devastated, by being the least aware of and prepared for, the consequences of business as usual.
Being honest about what the problem really is the necessary first step in formulating responses to these systemic crises that will be both effective and lasting.
Capitalism is a system that has failed--dangerously. Fortunately, there is an alternative that just happens to be both life affirming and capable of improving quality of life. The alternative is relocalized steady-state economies and embracing sustainability, especially its carrying capacity aspect. But this alternative is discounted by the system that is threatened by it. Centralized control and power over have no role in this alternative system. We are told any alternative to the status quo is unrealistic or worse, utopian. If this doesn't work to scare people away, we're warned that it's communist. Therefore, no meaningful discussion can take place, as it would be an idealistic or unpatriotic waste of time.
As the various social change groups lobby for change, they all point out the U.S. is the world's largest polluter. It's this abstract other that is the villain. But... the U.S. is us. You and me with our hybrid cars and our solar powered 10,000 sq. ft McMansions filled with our energy-star rated products that use more energy, like 42" plasma screen TVs, than their predecessors did. But, we assure ourselves that everything's really ok because we switched to compact fluorescents and we reuse our shopping bags. We've allowed the system to convince us that discrete individual actions to redecorate our staterooms as the ship of Western culture continues steaming toward the rocks is the best we can do.
What we must realize is that we can simultaneously work to alleviate the symptoms of dominator hierarchies and the economic cannibalism of unfettered free-markets--symptoms such as poverty, oppression, inequity, privatization (piratization) of the commons, and separation from the natural world, each other and our own inner nature--as we create a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice.
Embracing a common goal of sustainability would lay the foundation for a democratic culture of peace. This would be in keeping with the life affirming principles of natural systems. It would, therefore, actually be easier than all the effort we're currently putting into maintaining and enhancing a system at odds with these principles. It wouldn't, however, increase GDP.
So, the first decision we must make as we grapple with what to do about global warming is: Which is more important, profit... or people and planet?
If we decide for the latter, let's see of we can agree on a foundation for a sustainable future.
A first point would be recognizing that a healthy ecosystem is the master of sustainability. It is the best place to examine the principles that create the mutually supportive relationships that keep an ecosystem healthy, vibrant, and resilient. Each organism has an abundance of opportunities to find fulfillment within carrying capacity constraints, which include being part of the food chain.
A second point is recognizing that humans come from the Earth. Whatever created natural systems principles used them to create us as well. We do, after all, have over half of our DNA in common with a banana. (And if this isn't cause for humility, I don't know what is.) We naturally embody the ability to be sustainable, and can look to healthy ecosystems for the models and metaphors we need to create sustainable lifestyles, organizations, and communities.
The best way I've found to express this is to start with the four core principles of natural systems: mutual support and reciprocity, no waste, no greed, and increasing diversity. These combine to keep an ecosystem sustainable. The prime activity of living systems in expressing these principles is to self-organize mutually supportive relationships that create more life. It must also be noted that living systems at all scales grow to maturity, and then continue to develop and contribute to keeping the system healthy and in harmony.
From this we can also develop a legally defensible definition of sustainability that has environmental, moral, and scientific aspects. The defense of this definition and what it means to human societies can be founded on a strong constitutional argument that is based in Supreme Court jurisprudence dating back to the beginning of the U.S. It protects property rights by providing a foundation to base property rights on. The definition I propose is:
Sustainability: integrating our social and economic lives into the environment in ways that tend to enhance or maintain ecosystems rather than degrade or destroy them; a moral imperative to pass on our natural inheritance, not necessarily unchanged, but undiminished in its ability to meet the needs of future generations; finding, and staying within, the balance point amongst population, consumption, and waste assimilation where watersheds and bioregions maintain their ability to recharge and regenerate.
If we can agree that the above points are reasonable, we can use them to start analyzing an issue like poverty from a fresh perspective.
We can start by removing the requirement for economic growth in any response developed. We should also take a close look at what human enterprise has made available to us. It's instructive to note that in the overall global economy, 1/3 of the population creates everything that is consumed on the entire planet. What this means is that we should all be working 2/3 less and have full global employment. Then we can start increasing this ratio even more by looking at increasing efficiency, environmental constraints, quality and craftsmanship, and doing away with throw-away consumerism by helping people discover and remember that being more fulfills in a way that having more never can.
We can quit running people off their land and provide the knowledge to plant and harvest a wide diversity of ecosystem adapted crops instead of a single luxury export crop that requires unsustainable inputs. We can make sure basic nutrition and medicine is available and reduce infant mortality and the need for large families. We can provide honest family planning education that is culture sensitive and return elders to their respected mentoring roles as valuable community members. We could very quickly stabilize global population and start allowing it to drop to a sustainable level, estimated by many to be about 2 billion.
None of this is particularly radical, it's all perfectly feasible, and there are functional examples of each aspect we can draw on. We have both the necessary wisdom and the technology available today. This has been the promise of science, technology, and religion all along. People will not turn into layabouts, but will gain the time to find the fulfillment they've been seeking instead of using shopping or sitting captive to mindless entertainment as a substitute.
The above factors would combine to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, decrease demand, increase personal security and satisfaction, and the need for war greatly diminishes or disappears. If people's natural expectations for fulfillment are being met, poverty would no longer be a symptom of a system seriously out of balance.
And of course all of the above is relevant in other contexts. Democracy advocates, some of whom express their goal as being the desire to experience democracy in their own lifetimes, will focus on an issue like campaign finance reform as being the cure. But this is just another symptom whose root is the same paradigm of domination as the other global crises. If activists of various stripes would concentrate on cooperating to change the root, using their prime issue of concern as a guide for their actions, the branches on the co-evolving tree of life would be different instead of coming out diseased in a different location on the trunk.
What this all comes down to is agreeing on a common goal--sustainability; guided by a set of values such as those in the Earth Charter--respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, social and economic justice, and democracy, nonviolence and peace; and developing a willingness, and accepting the responsibility, to become fully human.
It's in our nature to do so. It is a rational choice that also just happens to feel good.
There are numerous tools we can use on the journey to a sustainable future. A few of the effective ones include a process from applied ecopsychology, Dr. Michael Cohen's Natural Systems Thinking Process, that can both empower us and reconnect us to all aspects of nature--personal, social, and environmental. There's a project known as relocalization that provides a new blueprint for our social and economic development. The Green Party provides a political platform that deeply embodies these concepts. And there are a number of social studies that show widespread support is available and growing (Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson's Cultural Creatives), that rapid change is possible (Paulo Freire's work with illiteracy in indigenous tribes and Marian Diamond's work with enriched environments), and that a partnership society is both functional and provides a precedent for balanced cooperation between the natural world and human society (Riane Eisler's Partnership Way).
Let's get busy.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Congrats to the Dems: Part I
Ok, it's been pointed out to me that I should, if not accentuate, at least give due congratulations for what the Democratic Party managed to accomplish yesterday.
Because, on the surface it seems like a good thing. The Republican Kleptocracy was run out of town on a rail, which, of course, is an excellent thing indeed.
But, it sure seems like the only thing the Democrats did was ride the coattails of a popular uprising against a criminal, arrogant, GOPedophile class that the Democratic leaders have pretty much fully backed for six years--except for those times they have publicly stated they could do a better job of it. Bankruptcy bill, cloture, the supremes, Patriot Act, CAFTA, tax breaks for the wealthy, defense spending... all supported by the majority of the Dems. Only one Democratic Senator voted against giving the shrub imperial powers. They did however, thanks to people like Cantwell, keep the oil rigs out of ANWR.
Truth be told, John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters and a small handful of others are the only Democrats who are members of the vertebrate class.
It seems everybody's pissed at the shrub for bringing the stark reality of American imperialism into the light of day. After all, Clinton was so much better at keeping it covered up with NAFTA, the WTO, and his criminal sanctions and weekly bombings of Iraq which were responsible for at _least_ 5 times more Iraqi deaths that what the shrub has been able to accomplish so far. But Clinton knew a much better way to distract the masses, as evidenced by Monica's blue dress. I myself could care less about hummers in the oval office, but how many more people knew where that spot on the dress was than where Bosnia was?
Anyway, let's see what the *Democratic Party* actually offered as an opposition party during the 2006 mid-term elections to the vast majority of the American population so desperately crying out for change.
Their platform on catastrophic climate destabilization was... missing in action. They didn't even have one for global warming, except for a very meager cap and trade system that two or three candidates mentioned in passing.
Their energy plan is what? more nukes? It sure doesn't involve telling the people the truth about Peak Oil and what it means for a future of energy-descent, the end of a growth economy, and what will most likely be massive die-off if a plan for relocalization isn't put into place by, oh, let's say tomorrow.
Their plan to abolish corporate personhood is... shhh... don't bring that up. Their re-election coffers will shrink up tighter than a male's scrotum after jumping into a Minnesota lake in January.
Their plan for election reform is... what? It sure doesn't include IRV or making it easier for third parties to get ballot access. They know where the balance of power would shift if the progressive majority in this country could vote in good faith and had more to choose from than the typical two selected losers.
And what exactly is the Democrat's actual plan for Iraq? Last I heard it was to send more troops in order to do the job "properly."
The current Senate and House minority leaders are on record as saying if the Dems took either house, they wouldn't press for impeachment of a presidency that the _entire_ rest of the world knows is criminal and which your average third-grader could successfully prosecute.
Are they afraid they might make their corporate masters angry?
I'm now supposed to somehow feel better about my and my children's future, and the future of this planet, because the colors changed from red to blue? Based on what evidence exactly, is my question.
So, I hearby offer my hearty congratulations to the Democratic Party for successfully pulling the wool over everyone's eyes with the myth that the overall system is now going to change for the better.
Because, on the surface it seems like a good thing. The Republican Kleptocracy was run out of town on a rail, which, of course, is an excellent thing indeed.
But, it sure seems like the only thing the Democrats did was ride the coattails of a popular uprising against a criminal, arrogant, GOPedophile class that the Democratic leaders have pretty much fully backed for six years--except for those times they have publicly stated they could do a better job of it. Bankruptcy bill, cloture, the supremes, Patriot Act, CAFTA, tax breaks for the wealthy, defense spending... all supported by the majority of the Dems. Only one Democratic Senator voted against giving the shrub imperial powers. They did however, thanks to people like Cantwell, keep the oil rigs out of ANWR.
Truth be told, John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters and a small handful of others are the only Democrats who are members of the vertebrate class.
It seems everybody's pissed at the shrub for bringing the stark reality of American imperialism into the light of day. After all, Clinton was so much better at keeping it covered up with NAFTA, the WTO, and his criminal sanctions and weekly bombings of Iraq which were responsible for at _least_ 5 times more Iraqi deaths that what the shrub has been able to accomplish so far. But Clinton knew a much better way to distract the masses, as evidenced by Monica's blue dress. I myself could care less about hummers in the oval office, but how many more people knew where that spot on the dress was than where Bosnia was?
Anyway, let's see what the *Democratic Party* actually offered as an opposition party during the 2006 mid-term elections to the vast majority of the American population so desperately crying out for change.
Their platform on catastrophic climate destabilization was... missing in action. They didn't even have one for global warming, except for a very meager cap and trade system that two or three candidates mentioned in passing.
Their energy plan is what? more nukes? It sure doesn't involve telling the people the truth about Peak Oil and what it means for a future of energy-descent, the end of a growth economy, and what will most likely be massive die-off if a plan for relocalization isn't put into place by, oh, let's say tomorrow.
Their plan to abolish corporate personhood is... shhh... don't bring that up. Their re-election coffers will shrink up tighter than a male's scrotum after jumping into a Minnesota lake in January.
Their plan for election reform is... what? It sure doesn't include IRV or making it easier for third parties to get ballot access. They know where the balance of power would shift if the progressive majority in this country could vote in good faith and had more to choose from than the typical two selected losers.
And what exactly is the Democrat's actual plan for Iraq? Last I heard it was to send more troops in order to do the job "properly."
The current Senate and House minority leaders are on record as saying if the Dems took either house, they wouldn't press for impeachment of a presidency that the _entire_ rest of the world knows is criminal and which your average third-grader could successfully prosecute.
Are they afraid they might make their corporate masters angry?
I'm now supposed to somehow feel better about my and my children's future, and the future of this planet, because the colors changed from red to blue? Based on what evidence exactly, is my question.
So, I hearby offer my hearty congratulations to the Democratic Party for successfully pulling the wool over everyone's eyes with the myth that the overall system is now going to change for the better.
Post election musing
What's this foreboding feeling I have after the elections yesterday?
After seeing the way the candidate voting went (the shift to the Democrats) and the way the proposition voting went here in Arizona (the support for racism and the special interests destroying the world) the main thing that should be apparent--but obviously won't be--is how miserably the American education system has failed the past five generations.
It seems the majority of people who can read have limited comprehension skills and zero skills in critical thinking and analysis. The average voter bought the lies and spin lock, stock, and barrel and seem quite proud of themselves for doing so. Just read a handful of the comments on Tucson's Arizona Daily Star website in regard to the various proposition's outcomes and see if you don't come to this painful conclusion yourself.
So, Arizona retains its image as a racist state of heartless money grubbers willing to lead the race to the bottom as we tax to death current residents to pave (quite literally) the way for those who don't live here (yet) which will maximize the profits of those wanting to bulldoze half the desert to make it easier to drive bigger cars to ticky tacky sprawl and the other half for golf courses kept green with water we don't have.
When the inevitable whining on the left starts--which should start occurring in less than six months (and across the nation, not just in AZ)--it probably won't do any good to remind them that they elected Democrats whose major campaign promise (Giffords being probably the best local example) was that they'd be better Republicans than those currently serving.
All I can say is I hope I'm proven wrong.
After seeing the way the candidate voting went (the shift to the Democrats) and the way the proposition voting went here in Arizona (the support for racism and the special interests destroying the world) the main thing that should be apparent--but obviously won't be--is how miserably the American education system has failed the past five generations.
It seems the majority of people who can read have limited comprehension skills and zero skills in critical thinking and analysis. The average voter bought the lies and spin lock, stock, and barrel and seem quite proud of themselves for doing so. Just read a handful of the comments on Tucson's Arizona Daily Star website in regard to the various proposition's outcomes and see if you don't come to this painful conclusion yourself.
So, Arizona retains its image as a racist state of heartless money grubbers willing to lead the race to the bottom as we tax to death current residents to pave (quite literally) the way for those who don't live here (yet) which will maximize the profits of those wanting to bulldoze half the desert to make it easier to drive bigger cars to ticky tacky sprawl and the other half for golf courses kept green with water we don't have.
When the inevitable whining on the left starts--which should start occurring in less than six months (and across the nation, not just in AZ)--it probably won't do any good to remind them that they elected Democrats whose major campaign promise (Giffords being probably the best local example) was that they'd be better Republicans than those currently serving.
All I can say is I hope I'm proven wrong.
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