When you get right down to it, nature operates on an incredibly simple principle.
All living organisms ADD to the earth’s ability to support life rather than reduce its ability. Except Humans.
Man, at least industrial age man lives on the premise that the earth’s natural ability to support life is a god given right that we have free access to use at will without contributing to the planets ability to support life.
In order to guarantee man’s sustainability, survival and long term standard of living we have to change our fundamental operating principle.
Talk to your friends or family today and ask them if they think conserving the environment is important and you most likely will get the answer, YES, for sure! That is a big shift versus say the beginning of the 60’s. We have made progress towards changing our operating principle in that we now have awareness that we need a change.
However, question them about what they are doing about it and you get a lot of very small (but important as a sign of intent) incremental improvement actions that they are taking. What they will most likely say is what bigger things they think we should all be doing, but their actions will show that they are not doing those bigger things.
What we want and desire, does not equal what we need to survive.
For instance, the first step towards a more responsible way of consuming would be if we all committed to live at least carbon neutral. To do this would require most families in the US to pay a sum in the region of $25,000 to $100,000 to repay their effects from the past and then probably at least $1-5,000 a year to reduce their footprints to zero. That annual amount is within the realm of the possible for most families if we understood the consequences with sufficient clarity. They are not unlike other payments that we all have to make for mortgages, cars, utilities etc. I believe there is great hope for us achieving a carbon neutral state within the next generation. The numbers vary widely because not all families consume the same, so please take them as a guideline for illustration rather than hard facts for this conversation.
How do we make the next steps in our progress towards a sustainable way of living? We have to consider the basic laws of economics, supply and demand. A lot of the conversation today centers on the work that conservation organizations are doing to understand the supply side of the equation. How much resource have we got left, divided by the projections for population growth would at least give us a good idea of our ability to provide resources for the next generation. Some calculations are starting to indicate that we are on a more critical path than perhaps the general population would like to acknowledge. Meaning things are starting to get quite pressing on the supply side. So who has influence over the supply side that could make a difference? Governments. Therefore conservation agencies are working with governments or government related agencies to highlight the importance for conserving the environment and specifically the environments ability to support life (through the provision of fresh water, food, clean air). On the supply side the problem is becoming quite clear and the requirements quite quantifiable. Conservation agencies such as Conservation International have started to link their message to economic progress. It cannot be stated enough how enormous that progress is. Just forty years ago we were all trying to grasp Rachel Carson’s insight that there may be limits to our growth (if we continued to develop along the present industrialization path) and today, we are becoming capable of describing what those limits will be per country and therefore as a follow on per member of the population!
The principles of economics are that demand and supply are inextricably linked and that a reduction or limitation in supply versus demand would cause an increase in price. Well, we clearly know that demand for the output of our industrialization is going to keep accelerating as more and more of the world strives to live at the quality of life of the top ten percent of the developed world. Continuing on our present path, there are still at least two options, open more of the natural resources of a country to development, or limit them and allow prices to increase. Conservation efforts are starting to gain traction as governments thinking longer term than commerce are keen to protect their countries ability to support life for their future generations.
Manufacturers on the demand side have no economic problem with higher prices! And rising prices are an even better scenario for wealth generation than falling process. So there is not much incentive here for them to change their operating principles within this scenario.
How might we create a scenario that both lowers the price of manufactured goods and services and increases the planets ability to support life? This would enable us to contribute to improving the planets ability to support life and continue to raise living standards for the world’s population.
Lowering the price of manufactured goods is the way that manufacturers are able to effectively meet the growing demand for goods. However, todays pricing model is faulty as it does not include the cost of the environment. Who or how is that going to be paid? That is the central question to address as we gradually arrive at the actual cost. Will it come in the form of an environmental protection tax, a consumption tax, or innovations that enable us to produce goods and services that contribute back to the system more than they take from it? Do we address it on the supply or the demand side? That last point is so far from a realistic thought today as to be almost unimaginable within the next 50 years.
HOWEVER, it is precisely that thought that we have to take action on to align demand and supply in a good way for the long term sustainability of the planet.
Where do we begin? iPhones that remove carbon dioxide from the air? Houses that generate cleaner water than they take in, cars that generate more electricity than the energy that they consume, clothing that contributes nutrients to soil?
William McDonough’s notion that industrial products should be like a tree, giving back more than they take from nature is of course spot on. How to make that shift though?
We have to start with a clear framework and a development roadmap on the demand side that could help commerce understand the vision of where it needs to go so that all those clever innovators within corporations will know what to focus their energy on and how that would contribute to the creation of wealth for the corporation.