The Next Millennium?

FROM VISIONARY THINKING TO PRACTICAL ACTION!

In the sustainability movement, much has been written about the importance of long-range visionary planning. Indeed, one of the most serious impediments to achieving a sustainable future is the incapacity of many leaders, and citizens, to imagine that their actions have any effect on other lives far away, not only on those living on Earth already, but on the lives of future generations.

Every long-term strategy, put into action, becomes a series of short-term decisions. Yet the complaint we hear most often is: "Sustainability is so enormous an issue; what can I do about it?" With that in mind, we asked some population and environment leaders to share their practical steps to take this year to help build a sustainable world--for now and for the future.

Recently, the world passed a milestone in the steady growth of human population: more than 6 billion people are alive on Earth. Each day, some 356,000 babies are born around the world, 90% of them in countries that are already struggling to meet their people's needs. Also, nearly 600,000 women die each year as a result of pregnancy and inadequate care in childbirth.

But, the news is not all bad, since we now know what works to save lives, ensure better health, and development. Despite the sad numbers, the world today has the means to ensure a decent life for people in need.

National and global actions are launched at the level of the individual. That is why I urge each man and woman to contribute his or her time, energy and money to an organization that is working to save the lives of mothers, their infants, as well as working to empower women and girls. For a small sum of money, relatively speaking, we have the means not merely to save lives, but to transform them. I urge you all, let us do it now.

We all need to ensure a flow of unbiased information and knowledge that helps us to better understand and appreciate the interconnectedness of what we do here with what happens somewhere else in the areas of development, population or the environment. Shared knowledge leads to shared solutions. Whether we work in the community, national or international arena, all action flows from learning

Carefully consider that everything you purchase comes out of the body of the Earth, and will return to the body of the Earth (likely not as compost). More often than not, these things are made by the hands of real human beings, many of whom live in deep poverty to bring you the lifestyle you enjoy

If I had a magic wand to address the environmental threats it would be that henceforth every child would be a wanted child. This one move would improve Earth, our societies, and the conditions of all people. It would improve the physical and mental health of children everywhere. It would emancipate women and lower the pressures on Earth for food, water, living space, and disposition of wastes. An immediate step toward this goal might be to reverse the proportions of money for armaments on the one hand and for health, birth control, and education on the other

I would like to see every PTA throughout the country pledge to establish a habitat improvement project at their local school. Plant trees, create a butterfly garden, grow vegetables, any activity that gets children in contact with the Earth and with real, living things. Then, make sure that the teachers pledge to integrate the use of the garden into their curriculum. Our experience shows school garden projects reap wonderful rewards in community-building, a spirit of generosity and volunteerism; pride in accomplishing wholesome, shared objectives; both children and adults learning how nature works; and authentic teaching and learning.

I would do whatever it takes to get Americans started on the haul to paying the full cost, not just an artifically low price, for their gasoline. If all spillovers were internalized, they would be forking out more like $5-7 per gallon, rather than the piddling price they pay--and protest about!--right now. Americans would then be paying about what we do here in Britain

This Next Year!

What Can I Do to Help Build a Sustainable Future?

The most important step we can take is to elect individuals--at both the local and national level--who understand and believe in a sustainable future and will work honestly to achieve it

What Americans must do in the election year 2000 is to recall that we are citizens and not merely "consumers." We must face the hard truth of our own lazy collusion in a comfortable but grossly wasteful material consumption that is draining the world's natural resources, and has led to the usurpation of our democracy by special interests.

Corporations pay an estimated 80% of all national political campaigns to install their errand boys in office. Corporate manipulations driven by greed and stunted vision are precisely what is not needed for the "leadership" of a great country in a dire time of ethnic conflict, overpopulation, and imminent exhaustion of the Earth's clean air and water.

But alas, our votes in the year 2000 will do little to change matters, since political parties and national elections, supervised by these same patrons, are becoming meaningless abstractions.

We must begin again at the grassroots, working with the revolutionary fervor of the Boston Tea Party, to demand wise long-term government at the local level, using boycott and public protest and voter education of the dramatic kind with which true leaders such as Gandhi and Cesar Chavez were able to effect fundamental change. When the rings from these small pebbles hurled into the pond attract the notice of the media and politicians, the large bottom feeders will turn slow heads toward the source of the commotion. We forget at our peril that the corporations need us to survive, not the reverse

The one concrete step we could take at the national level that would move us furthest toward sustainability would be a thoroughgoing ecological tax reform. This reform would gradually shift the tax burden away from taxing goods (like labor and income) to bads (like destruction of natural capital and ecosystem services). It would completely change the current set of market incentives so that being economically competitive would no longer mean being environmentally destructive, but would actually mean the reverse--being environmentally friendly.

I would combine this ecological tax reform with the institution of a comprehensive, steeply progressive consumption tax. This could be done by simply excluding all savings from income tax and only taxing the remaining consumption (at steeply progressive rates).

Nothing is more insignificant in itself than the passage of time. Therefore, I am determined to have nothing to do with any celebration of the new millennium. Furthermore, I am not interested in anybody's one-step, one-cause program for the improvement of anything. The only answer to any of our problems is a way of life that is not corrupt, violent, wasteful and toxic. That calls for a lot of small, mostly personal and local steps that probably have to be taken one at a time.

*Reprinted with permission from WorldWatch magazine, vol 12 no 6, Nov/Dec 1999.