Author Paul Gilding: The Great Disruption

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World by Paul Gilding

Chapter 1: An Economic and Social Hurricane

The earth is full.

Our human society and economy has grown so large that we have now passed the limits of our planet’s capacity to support us. There can be no further growth following the current model without tipping the system we rely upon for our day-to-day lives – for our present and future prosperity – over the cliff. This in itself presents a major problem. It becomes a much larger and more urgent challenge when we consider that billions of people are living desperate lives in appalling poverty and need their personal “economy” to rapidly grow to alleviate their suffering.

What this means is things are going to change. Not because we will choose change out of philosophical or political preference, but because if we don’t transform our society and economy, we face social and economic collapse and the descent into chaos. This science on this is now clear and accepted by any rational observer. While an initial look at the public debate may suggest controversy, any serious examination of the peer reviewed conclusions of leading science bodies shows the core direction we are heading in is now very clear. Things do not look good.

These challenges and the facts behind them are well known by experts and leaders around the world and have been for decades. But despite this understanding that we have passed the limits, it has been continually filed away to the back of our mind and the back of our drawers, with the label “Interesting – for consideration later” prominently attached. Well later has arrived.

This is because the passing of the limits is not philosophical but physical and rooted in the rules of physics, chemistry and biology. These are not preferences, these are strict laws set in science and not changeable. So now that we have broken the rules there are consequences – serious, significant and far reaching consequences.

If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees. If you put additional nitrogen into a water system you change the type and quantity of life that water can support. If you thicken the earth’s CO2 blanket, the earth gets warmer. If you do all these and many more things at once, you change the way the whole system of planet earth behaves, with social, economic and life support impacts. This is not philosophy, nor speculation, this is high school science. We’ve now passed the limits, so we need to get ready for what’s coming.

In all this, there is a surprising case for optimism. As a species, we are good in a crisis and passing the limits will certainly be the biggest crisis our species has ever faced. Our backs will be up against the wall, and in that situation we have proven ourselves to be quite extraordinary. As the full scale of the imminent crisis hits us, our response will be proportionally dramatic. This is why I don’t despair in the face of the science – it is precisely the severity of the problem that will allow us to realise our next great evolutionary potential, and that will drive a response that is overwhelming in scale and speed and will go right to the core of our societies.

This is the story we will tell here. It is a story that starts in the past, passes through the present and then extends into the future. The past is the story of warnings issued, and decisions made. The present, the story of today, is the factual result of our failure to heed those warnings. But rather than a platform for issuing recriminations, our present situation is the foundation for our future story, a story of great challenges and comparably great opportunity.

By coincidence this story spans my lifetime, having been born in 1959. However, this story is not about me but about us. It is about our world, what has been happening in it, the state it is currently in and what is going to happen next. It is not however a passive commentary about the world we live in. It is more a call to arms, a statement that we all now need to engage – to decide what kind of world we want to live in and what kind of contribution we can each make to define that. It is about a future we must choose.

(Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.)

Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson

Tim Jackson is Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and Director of the ESRC Research Group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE). Funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the aim of RESOLVE is to develop a robust understanding of the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment, and to provide evidence-based advice to policy-makers seeking to influence people’s lifestyles and practices. Tim also directs the newly-awarded Defra/ESRC Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group (SLRG).

[...]Tim Jackson states the challenge starkly: "Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must." And that is the core mission of this perfectly timed book. Had he published it before the financial crisis, he would probably have been dismissed as another green idealist, at best. But in the wake of the crisis, more people are questioning the primacy of growth at all costs. President Sarkozy, the Nobel-prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz and elements of the Financial Times's commentariat are among those now arguing that prosperity is possible without GNP growth, and indeed that prosperity will soon become impossible because of GNP growth. A new movement seems to be emerging, and this superbly written book should be the first stop for anyone wanting a manifesto.

Jackson, who is economics commissioner on the UK government's Sustainable Development Commission, skilfully makes the relevant economic arguments understandable to the lay reader. He is not slow to simplify where that is warranted: "The idea of a non-growing economy may be an anathema to an economist. But the idea of a continually growing economy is an anathema to an ecologist."

This is the core of the debate. Endless growth is a ridiculous notion to the typical ecologist because we live on a planet with finite resources, the mining and use of some of which is undermining our planet's life-support systems. But the typical economist believes we can "decouple" GNP growth from resource use through the increased efficiency that tends to be intrinsic to capitalism: that we can grow our economies and reverse environmental degradation too. Tesco, as it were, can keep building more stores for ever, provided they are increasingly resource-efficient.

(Written by Jeremy Legget )

Gaian Economics

4Keys - Gaian Economics

Publication type: Guide

Author:

Editors: Jonathan Dawson, Helena Norberg Hodge, Ross Jackson

Summary:

Living well within planetary limits - This anthology explores not only ways of reducing our consumption to levels that are within planetary limits, but how this can be done in a way that permits a high quality of life, for all.

Published: 2010

Published by: Permanent Publications

Description:

This is the second volume in Gaia Education’s Four Keys to Sustainable Communities series. It is a core text for Ecovillage Design Education, is endorse by UNESCO and is an official contribution to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The first volume is Beyond You and Me edited by Kosha Joubert and Robin Alfred.

“The challenge that lies before us today as a global civilization is to find a way of living well within our means. This will require us to reorientate our values away from consumerism and towards life-affirming sustainability; to make do with less and to make much better and more efficient use of what we have; and to create systems that help us live and stay in harmony with our planet.

“This publication provides a wealth of views and perspectives. Containing contributions from some of today’s most eminent theorists and most effective activists, it represents an overview of cutting edge thinking and practice in the evolution of an economy that serves the needs of people and planet. We hope that this reader will both inspire and empower people to learn their way to sustainability.”

From the Foreword by Mark Richmond Director, Division for the Coordination of UN Priorities in Education UNESCO Education Sector

The 4Keys are available for free for personal or institutional use only, i.e. not for resale at a profit (Copyright © Gaia Education). Buy a hard-copy at http://www.green-shopping.co.uk.