A Boeing 737-800 BCF (Boeing Converted Freighter) is marked "Prime Air" as part of Amazon Prime's freight aircraft during the 53rd International Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, France on June 22. Mustafa Yalcin / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
It's Prime Day! The day when thousands of increasingly absurd items are discounted so deeply that you suddenly need items you never knew existed. Yes, I do need a hotdog shaped toaster next to me while I watch this Fast & Furious seven movie box set! And I need it in my house today!
<p>The demand for faster and faster delivery times reveals the dark side of summertime's Black Friday. </p>
<p>And, it's not just Amazon getting in on the action and promising absurdly quick deliveries. Walmart, eBay and Target are all offering unbelievable bargains on fast, free shipments.</p><p>"The time in transit has a direct relationship to the environmental impact," said Patrick Browne, director of global sustainability at UPS, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/business/fast-shipping-environmental-impact/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a> reported. "I don't think the average consumer understands the environmental impact of having something tomorrow vs. two days from now. The more time you give me, the more efficient I can be."</p><p>But UPS trucks are headed the wrong way on emissions. As <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/business/fast-shipping-environmental-impact/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a> reported, UPS <a href="https://sustainability.ups.com/media/ups-pdf-interactive-2017/index.html" target="_blank">disclosed</a> in 2017 that the e-commerce boom decreased the number of packages it dropped off per mile, leading to more trucks on the road and higher greenhouse gas emissions.</p><p>If shippers had more time, they could consolidate packages, which would reduce the number of cars and trucks required to deliver them. Warehouses could also cut down on packaging waste. The uptick in planes, trucks and packaging material in the name of one-day or same-day shipping has added congestion to cities, pollutants in the air, and cardboard to landfills, according to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/environmental-impact-of-amazon-prime" target="_blank">Buzzfeed News</a>.</p><p>If UPS and other delivery chains could consolidate products and deliver them on one route to a bunch of homes, then buying from home could be a green way to shop. In fact, a University of Washington <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9c47/0d0384c43ee436ba112ed0b77f20f8f21042.pdf" target="_blank">study</a> published in the Journal of Transportation Research Forum found that grocery delivery could cut between 80 percent and 90 percent of carbon emissions compared to consumers driving to the store to shop for their items.</p>
<p>Yet, the efficiency changes immediately if items have to travel long distances and arrive immediately, according to the study's lead author, Anne Goodchild, as CNN reported. Then there are few opportunities for putting a batch of deliveries together.</p><p>"The efficiency and those benefits of delivery came from consolidation and sharing a big vehicle," Goodchild said. "And as we move away from that, if we move towards basically paying someone to make a trip for us, a lot of those benefits are eroded.</p><p>So far, customers don't seem to care. Amazon Prime's signature benefit is fast and free shipping — a perk that has ushered in more than 100 million subscribers who pay an annual $119 membership fee.</p><p>"The concept of Amazon Prime pushes us towards more emissions," said Dan Sperling, a professor at UC Davis, told <a href="https://grist.org/article/on-amazons-prime-day-the-environment-gets-a-raw-deal/" target="_blank">Grist</a>. "It makes the marginal cost of purchases very small, so you have motivation to buy more. And of course, that's what Amazon wants."</p><p>The low-costs and free returns also create an efficiency paradox — people not only start to consume more when prices are low, but they will buy 10 pairs of shoes and return nine of them, using more and more plastic foam, tape, and boxes, as <a href="https://www.ozy.com/immodest-proposal/now-lets-limit-amazon-customers-to-one-delivery-a-month/94570" target="_blank">Ozy</a> reports.</p><p>While Amazon won't end prime day or next day deliveries or even same-day deliveries in select cities, they have acknowledged the impact of their practices and started several campaigns to reduce their emissions. It offers "Free No-Rush Shipping," which lets the consumer choose a slower delivery option and receive rewards on future purchases or an immediate discount towards eBooks, movies or Prime Pantry groceries. That option allows Amazon and its distributors to pack trucks more efficiently.</p><p>Earlier this year, Amazon also announced its <a href="https://blog.aboutamazon.com/sustainability/delivering-shipment-zero-a-vision-for-net-zero-carbon-shipments" target="_blank">Shipment Zero</a> plan, which is "Amazon's vision to make all Amazon shipments net zero carbon, with 50% of all shipments net zero by 2030," according to its own press release.</p><p>Yet, Amazon is far from environmentally friendly. After all, it recently bought 20,000 trucks that run on fossil fuels and never announced plans to move towards electric vehicles, as CNN reported.</p><p>"I would not say [Amazon is] pretty environmentally friendly," said Miguel Jaller, the co-director of the Sustainable Freight Research Center at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis, as CNN reported. "I would say <em>less </em>environmentally bad than others."</p>
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Implementing new policies could improve transparency and sustainability in North Pacific fisheries. The Pew Charitable Trusts
By Grantly Galland
The North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC) works to ensure that high-seas fishing for Pacific chub mackerel, Pacific saury, two squid species and other stocks across the north Pacific Ocean is legal, transparent and sustainable. The Pew Charitable Trusts shares those goals and will for the first time attend the commission's annual meeting, July 11-18 in Tokyo, as a formal observer.
<p>Pew's international fisheries work spans the globe and includes advocacy with regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) and related bodies. These efforts center on promoting science-based fisheries management, modern enforcement mechanisms and biodiversity protection.</p><p>As one of the world's youngest RFMOs, the NPFC has an opportunity to base its policies on the most modern practices in fisheries management. To do that, and help achieve its goals, the commission can take these four steps during its Tokyo meeting:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><strong>1.</strong> Commit to greater transparency in the fisheries management process by making all meeting documents — including draft conservation and management measures submitted by members, and annual compliance reports — publicly available on the NPFC website.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><span></span><strong>2. </strong>Follow standard RFMO practice by requiring that all vessels engaged in fishing activities — including those that transship NPFC-managed species — are registered (flagged) to an NPFC member government. That would mean that more vessels operating in these waters are subject to commission rules. Alternatively, the commission could develop a system in which cooperating non-members are recognized by the commission when they have fleets operating in the region.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><span></span><strong>3. </strong>Adopt a centralized <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2016/05/tracking-fishing-vessels-around-the-globe" target="_blank">vessel monitoring system</a> to enhance the collection and reporting of ship location data for scientific purposes and contribute to NPFC monitoring, control, and surveillance programs.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><span></span><strong>4.</strong> Combat illegal fishing by advancing the establishment of a compliance monitoring scheme to help NPFC members better adhere to commission policies, with the aim of adopting that scheme in 2020 or soon after.</p><p>By taking these steps, the NPFC could make significant strides toward preventing illegal activity from undermining its conservation and management efforts. These accomplishments would also clear the way to develop <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2016/08/harvest-strategies" target="_blank">harvest strategies</a> for Pacific chub mackerel and other north Pacific stocks, implement <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2017/11/best-practices-for-transshipment" target="_blank">best practices for transshipment</a>, and adopt policies in line with the <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2014/11/port-state-measures" target="_blank">Port State Measures Agreement</a> — three priorities for several NPFC members that could be addressed in 2020 and beyond.</p><p><em>Grantly Galland is an officer with Pew's international fisheries team.</em></p>
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Environmental activists and campaigners from several organizations gathered in Parliament Square to protest against the governments lack of action on the climate change and destruction of the environment on May 1 in London. Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Media / Getty Images
<p>
Today is the day on which we would have exhausted Earth's resources for the year if everyone lived like residents of the European Union (EU), according to a new <a href="http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_eu_overshoot_day___living_beyond_nature_s_limits_web.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> from <a href="https://www.wwf.org.uk/" target="_blank">WWF</a> and the <a href="https://www.footprintnetwork.org/" target="_blank">Global Footprint Network</a>. The report, the first to focus on the EU specifically, calculated that if everyone consumed as much fuel, food, fiber, land and timber as Europeans, it would take 2.8 planet earths to sustain us all, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/09/biocapacity-eu-outright-dangerous-in-its-use-of-natural-resources-says-wwf" target="_blank">The Guardian reported</a>.
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Climate protesters read a newspaper as they stand with the Extinction Rebellion boat in the center of Oxford Circus on April 17 in London. Leon Neal / Getty Images
By Jeremy Lent
Facing oncoming climate disaster, some argue for "Deep Adaptation" — that we must prepare for inevitable collapse. However, this orientation is dangerously flawed. It threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy by diluting the efforts toward positive change. What we really need right now is Deep Transformation. There is still time to act: we must acknowledge this moral imperative.
<p>Every now and then, history has a way of forcing ordinary people to face up to a moral encounter with destiny that they never expected. Back in the 1930s, as Adolf Hitler rose to power, those who turned away when they saw Jews getting beaten in the streets never expected that decades later, their grandchildren would turn toward them with repugnance and say "Why did you do nothing when there was still a chance to stop the horror?"</p><p>Now, nearly a century on, here we are again. The fate of future generations is at stake, and each of us needs to be prepared, one day, to face posterity — in whatever form that might take — and answer the question: "What did you do when you knew our future was on the line?"</p><p>Unless you've been hiding under a rock the past few months, or get your daily updates exclusively from Fox News, you'll know that our world is facing a dire climate emergency that's rapidly reeling out of control. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report" target="_blank">issued a warning</a> to humanity that we have just twelve years to turn things around before we pass the point of no return. Governments continue to waffle and ignore the blaring sirens. The pledges they've made under the 2015 Paris agreement will lead to 3 degrees of warming, which would <a href="https://owlcation.com/stem/Mark-Lynass-Six-Degrees-A-Summary-Review" target="_blank">threaten the foundations</a> of our civilization. And <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/4/30/17300946/global-warming-degrees-replace-fossil-fuels" target="_blank">they're not even on track</a> to meet those commitments. Even the IPCC's dire warning of calamity is, by many accounts, too conservative, failing to take into account tipping points in the Earth system with reinforcing feedback effects that <a href="https://climateextremes.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/What-Lies-Beneath-V3-LR-Blank5b15d.pdf" target="_blank">could drive temperatures</a> far beyond the IPCC's worst case scenarios.</p><p>People are beginning to feel panicky in the face of oncoming disaster. Books such as David Wallace-Wells's <em>Uninhabitable Earth</em> paint a picture so frightening that it's already feeling to some like game over. A strange new phenomenon is emerging: while mainstream media ignores impending catastrophe, increasing numbers of people are resonating with those who say it's now "too late" to save civilization. The concept of "Deep Adaptation" is <a href="https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-03-05/rethink-activism-in-the-face-of-catastrophic-biological-collapse/" target="_blank">beginning to gain currency</a>, with its proponent Jem Bendell <a href="https://jembendell.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/hope-and-vision-in-the-face-of-collapse-the-4th-r-of-deep-adaptation/" target="_blank">arguing</a> that "we face inevitable near-term societal collapse," and therefore need to prepare for "civil unrest, lawlessness and a breakdown in normal life."</p><p>There's much that is true in the Deep Adaptation diagnosis of our situation, but its orientation is dangerously flawed. By turning people's attention toward preparing for doom, rather than focusing on structural political and economic change, Deep Adaptation threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, increasing the risk of collapse by diluting efforts toward societal transformation.</p>
<p><em>Jeremy Lent is author of <a href="http://www.jeremylent.com/the-patterning-instinct.html" target="_blank">The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning</a>, which investigates how different cultures have made sense of the universe and how their underlying values have changed the course of history. He is founder of the nonprofit <a href="http://www.liology.org/" target="_blank">Liology Institute</a>, dedicated to fostering a sustainable worldview.</em></p>
Our Headlong Fling Toward Disaster
<p>I have no disagreement with the dire assessment of our circumstances. In fact, things look even worse if you expand the scope beyond the climate emergency. Climate breakdown itself is merely a symptom of a far larger crisis: the ecological catastrophe unfolding in every domain of the living Earth. Tropical forests are <a href="http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm#.Wz6H5thKjUI" target="_blank">being decimated</a>, making way for vast monocrops of wheat, soy and palm oil plantations. The oceans are being turned into a garbage dump, with projections that by 2050 they will <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/01/20/by-2050-there-will-be-more-plastic-than-fish-in-the-worlds-oceans-study-says/?utm_term=.4299cfb53950" target="_blank">contain more plastic</a> than fish. Animal populations are being <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/living-planet-report-2016" target="_blank">wiped out</a>. The insects that form the foundation of our global ecosystem <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/20/insectageddon-farming-catastrophe-climate-breakdown-insect-populations" target="_blank">are disappearing</a>: bees, butterflies and countless other species in free fall. Our living planet is being ravaged mercilessly by humanity's insatiable consumption, and there's not much left.</p><p>Deep Adaptation proponents are equally on target arguing that incremental fixes are utterly insufficient. Even if a global price on carbon was established, and if our governments invested in renewables rather than subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, we would still come up woefully short. The harsh reality is that, rather than heading toward net zero, global emissions <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/05/brutal-news-global-carbon-emissions-jump-to-all-time-high-in-2018" target="_blank">just hit record numbers</a> last year; Exxon, the largest shareholder-owned oil company, proudly announced recently that <a href="https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/02/09/exxonmobil-gambles-on-growth" target="_blank">it's doubling down</a> on fossil fuel extraction; and wherever you look, whether it's air travel, globalized shipping or beef consumption, the juggernaut driving us to climate catastrophe only continues to accelerate. To cap it off, with ecological destruction and global emissions already unsustainable, the world economy is <a href="https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gdp-long-term-forecast.htm" target="_blank">expected to triple</a> by 2060.</p><p>The primary reason for this headlong fling toward disaster is that our economic system is based on perpetual growth — on the need to consume the Earth at an ever-increasing rate. Our world is dominated by transnational corporations, <a href="https://patternsofmeaning.com/2017/11/30/ai-has-already-taken-over-its-called-the-corporation/" target="_blank">which now account</a> for 69 of the world's largest 100 economies. The value of these corporations is based on investors' expectations for their continued growth, which they are driven to achieve at any cost, including the future welfare of humanity and the living Earth. It's a <a href="https://patternsofmeaning.com/2017/12/19/what-will-it-really-take-to-avoid-collapse/" target="_blank">gigantic Ponzi scheme</a> that barely gets a mention because the corporations also own the mainstream media, along with most governments. The real discussions we need about humanity's future don't make it to the table. Even a policy goal as ambitious as the Green New Deal — rejected by most mainstream pundits as utterly unrealistic — would still be insufficient to turn things around, because it doesn't acknowledge the need to transition our economy away from reliance on endless growth.</p>Deep Adaptation ... or Deep Transformation?
<p>Faced with these realities, I understand why Deep Adaptation followers throw their hands up in despair and prepare for collapse. But I believe it's wrong and irresponsible to declare definitively that it's too late — that collapse is "inevitable." It's too late, perhaps, for the monarch butterflies, whose numbers are down 97 percent and <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/monarch-butterflies-extinct-1302838" target="_blank">headed for extinction</a>. Too late, probably <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/coral-reef-bleaching-global-warming-unesco-sites/" target="_blank">for the coral reefs</a> that are projected not to survive beyond mid-century. Too late, clearly, for the climate refugees already fleeing their homes in desperation, only to find themselves rejected, exploited and driven back by those whose comfort they threaten. There is plenty to grieve about in this unfolding catastrophe — it's a valid and essential part of our response to mourn the losses we're already experiencing. But while grieving, we must take action, not surrender to a false belief in the inevitable.</p><p>Defeatism in the face of overwhelming odds is something that I, perhaps, am especially averse to, having grown up in postwar Britain. In the dark days of 1940, defeat seemed inevitable for the British, as the Nazis swept through Europe, threatening an impending invasion. For many, the only prudent course was to negotiate with Hitler and turn Britain into a vassal state, a strategy that nearly prevailed at a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1940_War_Cabinet_Crisis" target="_blank">fateful War Cabinet meeting</a> in May 1940. When details about this Cabinet meeting became public, in my teens, I remember a chill going through my veins. Born into a Jewish family, I realized that I probably owed my very existence to those who bravely chose to overcome despair and fight on in a seemingly hopeless struggle.</p><p>A lesson to learn from this — and countless other historical episodes — is that history rarely progresses for long in a straight line. It takes unanticipated swerves that only make sense when analyzed retroactively. For ten years, Tarana Burke <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarana_Burke" target="_blank">used the phrase</a> "me too" to raise awareness of sexual assault, without knowing that it would one day help topple Harvey Weinstein, and potentiate a movement toward transformation of abusive cultural norms. The curve balls of history are all around us. No-one can accurately predict when the next stock market crash will occur, never mind when civilization itself will come undone.</p><p>There's a second, equally important, lesson to learn from the nonlinear transformations that we see throughout history, such as universal women's suffrage or the legalization of same-sex marriage. They don't just happen by themselves — they result from the dogged actions of a critical mass of engaged citizens who see something that's wrong and, regardless of seemingly insurmountable odds, keep pushing forward driven by their sense of moral urgency. As part of a system, we all collectively participate in how that system evolves, whether we know it or not, whether we want to or not.</p><p>Paradoxically, the very precariousness of our current system, teetering on the extremes of brutal inequality and ecological devastation, increases the potential for deep structural change. Research in complex systems reveals that, when a system is stable and secure, it's very resistant to change. But when the linkages within the system begin to unravel, it's <a href="https://patternsofmeaning.com/tag/tipping-points/" target="_blank">far more likely to undergo</a> the kind of deep restructuring that our world requires.</p><p>It's not Deep Adaptation that we need right now — it's Deep Transformation. The current dire predicament we're in screams something loudly and clearly to anyone who's listening: If we're to retain any semblance of a healthy planet by the latter part of this century, we have to change the foundations of our civilization. We need to move from one that is wealth-based to once that is life-based — a new type of society built on life-affirming principles, <a href="https://patternsofmeaning.com/2018/10/10/we-need-an-ecological-civilization-before-its-too-late/" target="_blank">often described as an Ecological Civilization</a>. We need a global system that devolves power back to the people; that reins in the excesses of global corporations and government corruption; that replaces the insanity of infinite economic growth with a just transition toward a stable, equitable, steady-state economy optimizing human and natural flourishing.</p>Our Moral Encounter With Destiny
<p>Does that seem unlikely to you? Sure, it seems unlikely to me, too, but "likelihood" and "inevitability" stand a long way from each other. As Rebecca Solnit points out in <em>Hope in the Dark</em>, hope is not a prognostication. Taking either an optimistic or pessimistic stance on the future can justify a cop-out. An optimist says, "It will turn out fine so I don't need to do anything." A pessimist retorts, "Nothing I do will make a difference so let me not waste my time." Hope, by contrast, is not a matter of estimating the odds. Hope is an active state of mind, a recognition that change is nonlinear, unpredictable, and arises from intentional engagement.</p><p>Bendell <a href="https://jembendell.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/hope-and-vision-in-the-face-of-collapse-the-4th-r-of-deep-adaptation/" target="_blank">responds</a> to this version of hope with a comparison to a terminal cancer patient. It would be cruel, he suggests, to tell them to keep hoping, pushing them to "spend their last days in struggle and denial, rather than discovering what might matter after acceptance." This is a false equivalency. A terminal cancer condition has a statistical history, derived from the outcomes of many thousands of similar occurrences. Our current situation is unique. There is no history available of thousands of global civilizations bringing their planetary ecosystems to breaking point. This is the only one we know of, and it would be negligent to give up on it based on a set of projections. If a doctor told your mother, "This cancer is unique and we have no experience of its prognosis. There are things we can try but they might not work," would you advise her to give up and prepare for death? I'm not giving up on Mother Earth that easily.</p><p>In truth, collapse <a href="https://patternsofmeaning.com/2017/09/14/the-climate-catastrophe-were-all-ignoring/" target="_blank">is already happening</a> in different parts of the world. It's not a binary on-off switch. It's a cruel reality bearing down on the most vulnerable among us. The desperation they're experiencing right now makes it even more imperative to engage rather than declare game over. The <a href="https://grist.org/article/cyclone-idai-lays-bare-the-fundamental-injustice-of-climate-change/" target="_blank">millions left destitute</a> in Africa by Cyclone Idai, the communities <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/puerto-rico-year-maria-recovery-remains-slow-180920230214958.html" target="_blank">still ravaged</a> in Puerto Rico, the two-thousand-year old baobab trees <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/climate-change-is-killing-these-ancient-trees-but-thats-just-part-of-the-story/" target="_blank">suddenly dying en masse</a>, and the countless people and species yet to be devastated by global ecocide, all need those of us in positions of relative power and privilege to step up to the plate, not throw up our hands in despair. There's currently much discussion about the devastating difference between 1.5° and 2.0° in global warming. Believe it, there will also <a href="https://owlcation.com/stem/Mark-Lynass-Six-Degrees-A-Summary-Review" target="_blank">be a huge difference</a> between 2.5° and 3.0°. As long as there are people at risk, as long as there are species struggling to survive, it's not too late to avert further disaster.</p><p>This is something many of our youngest generation seem to know intuitively, putting their elders to shame. As fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg <a href="https://youtu.be/HzeekxtyFOY" target="_blank">declared in her statement</a> to the UN in Poland last November, "you are never too small to make a difference ... Imagine what we can all do together, if we really wanted to." Thunberg envisioned herself in 2078, with her own grandchildren. "They will ask," she said, "why you didn't do anything while there still was time to act."</p><p>That's the moral encounter with destiny that we each face today. Yes, there is still time to act. Last month, inspired by Thunberg's example, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/19/school-climate-strikes-more-than-1-million-took-part-say-campaigners-greta-thunberg" target="_blank">more than a million</a> school students in over a hundred countries walked out to demand climate action. To his great credit, even Jem Bendell disavows some of his own Deep Adaptation narrative to put his support behind protest. The <a href="https://rebellion.earth/who-we-are/" target="_blank">Extinction Rebellion</a> (XR) launched a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/14/earth-death-spiral-radical-action-climate-breakdown" target="_blank">mass civil disobedience campaign</a> last year in England, blocking bridges in London and demanding an adequate response to our climate emergency. It has since spread to 27 other countries.</p><p><span></span>Studies have <a href="https://rationalinsurgent.com/2013/11/04/my-talk-at-tedxboulder-civil-resistance-and-the-3-5-rule/" target="_blank">shown that</a>, once 3.5 percent of a population becomes sustainably committed to nonviolent mass movements for political change, they are invariably successful. That would translate into 11.5 million Americans on the street, or 26 million Europeans. We're a long way from that, but is it really impossible? I'm not ready, yet, to bet against <a href="http://steps-centre.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/How_Did_We_Do_That.pdf" target="_blank">humanity's ability to transform itself</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/natural-world-climate-catastrophe-rewilding" target="_blank">nature's powers of regeneration</a>. XR planned <a href="https://rebellion.earth/get-active/international-rebellion-a-guide-for-participants/" target="_blank">a global week of direct action</a> that began April 15, as a first step toward a coordinated worldwide grassroots rebellion against the system that's destroying hope of future flourishing. It might just be the beginning of another of history's U-turns. Do you want to look your grandchildren in the eyes? Yes, me too. I'll see you there.</p>
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Humanity 'Sleepwalking Towards the Edge of a Cliff': 60% of Earth's Wildlife Wiped Out Since 1970
30 October 2018
Animals
A hippo in Okavango Delta National Park, Botswana. Buena Vista Images / Stone / Getty Images
By Julia Conley
Scientists from around the world issued a stark warning to humanity Tuesday in a semi-annual report on the Earth's declining biodiversity, which shows that about 60 percent of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been wiped out by human activity since 1970.
<p>The World Wildlife Fund's <a href="file:///Users/juliaconley/Downloads/lpr2018_full_report_spreads.pdf" target="_blank">Living Planet Index</a> details how human's uncontrolled <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/overconsumption">overconsumption</a> of land, food and natural resources has eliminated a majority of the wildlife on the planet—threatening human civilization as well as the world's animals.</p><p>"We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff," Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity-wiped-out-animals-since-1970-major-report-finds" target="_blank">told</a> the<em> Guardian.</em> "If there was a 60 percent decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done."</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="51a62" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="IBY9J21576662284"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1057156563914407936" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">#BREAKING: 60% global wildlife declines show nature needs life support. We're living beyond the planet's means and… https://t.co/NBugPHSb7j</div> — WWF-UK (@WWF-UK)<a href="https://twitter.com/wwf_uk/statuses/1057156563914407936">1540880740.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p></p><p>Killer whales were named as one species that is in grave danger of extinction due to exposure to chemicals used by humans, and the Living Index Report highlighted freshwater species and animal populations in Central and South America as being especially affected by human activity in the past five decades.<br></p><p>"Species population declines are especially pronounced in the tropics, with South and Central America suffering the most dramatic decline, an 89 percent loss compared to 1970," reads the report. "Freshwater species numbers have also declined dramatically, with the Freshwater Index showing an 83% decline since 1970."</p><p>Destruction of wildlife habitats is the leading human-related cause of extinction, as people around the world are now using about three-quarters of all land on the planet for agriculture, industry and other purposes, according to the report.</p><p>Mass killing of animals for food is the second-largest cause of extinction, according to the report, with 300 mammal species being "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/19/worlds-mammals-being-eaten-into-extinction-report-warns" target="_blank">eaten into extinction</a>."</p><p>"It is a classic example of where the disappearance is the result of our own consumption," Barrett told the Guardian.</p><p>The report stresses a need to that shift away from the notion that wildlife must be protected simply for the sake of ensuring that future generations can see species like elephants, polar bears and other endangered animals in the wild.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODc4MjEwNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTQ0MDQ5NH0.57LPz5FCHZ-srKPm_1DudFKXKZ3k4BsuJ_TmS2ARu-4/img.jpg?width=980" id="4ea7b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a73d105084c4256f7d88e6cde72625aa" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Underwater Polar Bear in Hudson Bay, Canada.</small>
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Paul Souders / Stone / Getty Images</small></p><p>Rather, the survival of the planet's ecosystems is now a matter of life and death for the human population, according to the WWF.<br></p><p>"Nature contributes to human wellbeing culturally and spiritually, as well as through the critical production of food, clean water, and energy, and through regulating the Earth's climate, pollution, pollination and floods," Professor Robert Watson, who contributed to the report, told the<em> Guardian.</em> "The Living Planet report clearly demonstrates that human activities are destroying nature at an unacceptable rate, threatening the wellbeing of current and future generations."</p><p>"Nature is not a 'nice to have'—it is our life-support system," added Barrett.</p><p>Many scientists believe that studies like that of the WWF demonstrate that a sixth mass extinction is now underway—a theory that would mean the Earth could experience its first mass extinction event caused by a single species inhabiting the planet. The loss of all life on Earth could come about due to a combination of human-caused effects, including a rapidly warming planet as well as the loss of biodiversity.</p><p>"The Great Acceleration, and the rapid and immense social, economic and ecological changes it has spurred, show us that we are in a period of great upheaval," reads the study. "Some of these changes have been positive, some negative, and all of them are interconnected. What is increasingly clear is that human development and wellbeing are reliant on healthy natural systems, and we cannot continue to enjoy the former without the latter."</p><p> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/30/humanity-sleepwalking-towards-edge-cliff-60-earths-wildlife-wiped-out-1970" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em><em></em></p>
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By Jeremy Lent
We need to rein in the destructive power of corporations and billionaires before it's too late. These five ideas would do that, while leaving global capitalism intact. Ultimately, only a complete transformation of our economic system will save our future, but these proposals could set changes in motion that might eventually take us there.
<p>Transnational corporations have become the dominant force directing our world. Humanity is accelerating toward a precipice of overconsumption, and the large transnationals are the primary agents driving us there. We're rapidly losing the Earth's <a href="http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm#.Wz6H5thKjUI" target="_blank">forests</a>, <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/living-planet-report-2016" target="_blank">animals</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/20/insectageddon-farming-catastrophe-climate-breakdown-insect-populations" target="_blank">insects</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2015-09-16/half-marine-life-lost-in-40-years/6779912" target="_blank">fish</a>, even the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/" target="_blank">topsoil</a> we require to grow our crops. The Earth is becoming denuded of its bounty as every living system is ransacked for resources—not to mention the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/mar/18/welcome-to-the-climate-emergency-youre-about-20-years-late" target="_blank">looming emergency</a> of climate breakdown. As a result, 20,000 scientists have <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/warning-to-humanity-scientists-2544973158.html">recently issued</a> a public warning to humanity, while prominent academics consider the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2845" target="_blank">collapse of civilization</a> this century to be a serious threat.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Transnational corporations are driving humanity to a precipice of overconsumption.</small></p><p>Changes in our personal consumption patterns are important, but are ultimately inconsequential compared with the impact of the transnationals that have come to dominate our global economic and political system. Of the world's hundred largest economies, <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/corporations-not-countries-dominate-the-list-of-the-world-s-biggest-economic-entities/" target="_blank">69 are now corporations</a>. Political parties in many of our so-called democracies are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/05/american-elections-battle-billionaires-civic-inequality" target="_blank">funded in large part</a> by billionaires, while government cabinet positions are <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2017/06/21/nearly-70-percent-trumps-picks-top-administration-jobs-have-corporate-ties" target="_blank">staffed by corporate executives</a>. International bodies setting global policy are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/01/fossil-fuel-companies-undermining-paris-agreement-negotiations-report" target="_blank">infiltrated by corporate agents</a> so successful at entrenching corporate power that even those governments that still prioritize their people's needs can no longer make autonomous decisions without <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/badge/globalsupercourt" target="_blank">risking crippling lawsuits</a> from the transnationals whose interests they threaten. Meanwhile, countries and cities compete with each other to beg their corporate overlords for investment dollars, even it means <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/big-tech-desperate-cities" target="_blank">undermining public services</a> and legal protections for their own populations.<br></p><p>Environmental groups, recognizing where ultimate power resides, try to pressure corporations to improve practices through the threat of public shaming, with <a href="https://www.ran.org/campaigns" target="_blank">some appreciable results</a>. However, these attempts are necessarily constrained by the very structure of big corporations, which exist to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-goal-that-changed-corporate-america/2013/08/26/26e9ca8e-ed74-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html?utm_term=.bee6f69c0bd1" target="_blank">enrich their shareholders</a> regardless of the consequences. The common goal of corporations around the world is to monetize human activity and what's left of nature's abundance as rapidly and efficiently as possible. The overriding purpose of the world's powerful institutional force is thus directly at odds with a flourishing Earth or a viable future for humanity.</p><p>Having spent the first part of my career in the heart of the capitalist system, consulting to major international banks and corporations, I developed a sense of the underlying forces that direct the centers of financial power. These ideas are my distillation of what I believe could be effective levers for humanity to take back some control from the increasing hegemony of corporations and billionaires.</p><p>If we are to avoid disaster, our global economic system with its gaping inequities and deranged consumption will eventually need to dismantled and replaced by one <a href="http://davidkorten.org/home/ecological-civilization/" target="_blank">based on life-affirming principles</a> rather than wealth maximization. These suggestions, even in aggregate, wouldn't do that. They represent mere tweaks in a system that ultimately needs to be completely transformed. But like a modest trim tab that helps <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/val-jon-farris/the-power-of-trimtabs-wha_b_5863520.html?utm_hp_ref=impact&ir=Impact" target="_blank">redirect an ocean liner</a>, perhaps they could begin to curb the destructive force of transnationals and redirect their enormous power toward a more sustainable path.</p><h2>1. Triple Bottom Line Required for Corporate Charters</h2><p>A fundamental reason for the rapacious behavior of transnational corporations is their drive to maximize shareholder value above anything else. While there is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits" target="_blank">no explicit requirement</a> for this in the standard corporate charter, <a href="http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2012/05/case-law-on-the-fiduciary-duty-of-directors-to-maximize-the-wealth-of-corporate-shareholders.html" target="_blank">a century of case law</a> has entrenched this principle into the behavior of large corporations to the point that is has become the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/a-duty-to-shareholder-value" target="_blank"><em>de facto</em> standard of operation</a>. As a result, if corporations were people, <a href="https://patternsofmeaning.com/2017/11/30/ai-has-already-taken-over-its-called-the-corporation/" target="_blank">they would be considered psychopaths</a>, utterly devoid of any caring for the harm they cause in the pursuit of their goals.</p><p>It is easier, however, to change a corporation's values than those of a human psychopath. All you need to do is change the legal basis of their charter. Instead of pursuing shareholder interests alone, they could be re-chartered with the explicit purpose of achieving a triple bottom line of social and environmental outcomes as well as financial—sometimes known as the "triple Ps" of people, planet and profit.</p><p>This alternative corporate value system is already available through chartering as a <a href="http://benefitcorp.net/" target="_blank">benefit corporation</a> or <a href="https://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps" target="_blank">certifying as a B-Corp</a>, and has been adopted by more than 2,000 corporations in over fifty countries around the world—including <a href="http://www.bcorporation.net/become-a-b-corp/how-to-become-a-b-corp/multinationals-and-public-companies" target="_blank">several multibillion-dollar transnationals</a>. My proposal is that, instead of being a voluntary step taken by a select few, this would be a requirement for all corporations above a certain size.</p><p>Overnight, the intrinsic character of the corporation would be transformed. Currently, CEOs and corporate boards are faced with continual pressure to grow their earnings at all cost. If they chose to make a humane decision, such as not to exploit a copper mine because of the consequent pollution, they could expect to be sued by shareholders, and possibly acquired by a more ruthless competitor. However, if they were legally required to achieve a triple bottom line, they would weigh up decisions in a more balanced way, as a rational person might. With the board responsible for all three bottom lines, they would have to consider the risk of being sued if they caused excessive pollution, or if they were callous to the needs of the communities where their plants were located.</p><p>Currently, large corporations boast of their <a href="https://hbr.org/2015/01/the-truth-about-csr" target="_blank">corporate social responsibility</a> departments that are supposed to care about issues such as employment practices of their suppliers, sustainability of their raw materials, environmental impact of their packaging, gender balance and ethnic diversity in the workplace, and investments in local communities. Suddenly, they would have to stop paying mere lip service to these issues and take them as seriously as marketing costs, revenue growth and distribution channels—the things that CEOs actually worry about when they go home at night.</p><h2>2. Charter Renewal Required Every Five Years</h2><p>Changing the corporate charter requirement might not, however, be enough by itself to halt the relentless pursuit of profits by large transnationals. After all, executive pay packages consist of dollars rather than goodwill, and those dollars are linked directly to the share price, which is driven by shareholders' expectation of financial returns. If they could get away with it, they might continue their rapacious practices, while trying harder to look like they're meeting the other two bottom lines.</p><p>That's the reason for my second proposal, which is to require that corporations, which currently enjoy what's known legally as a "<a href="https://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/incorporation-and-legal-structures/what-does-it-mean-that-corporations-have-perpetual-existence.html" target="_blank">perpetual existence</a>," get their charters renewed every five years. If they failed to meet pre-established criteria on their two non-financial bottom lines, they would not be permitted to continue in business. Currently, if a company can't meet its financial obligations, it's forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and the value of its stock generally tanks to zero. Under my proposal, executives would also have to consider the risk of declaring "social bankruptcy" or "environmental bankruptcy" as they made their business decisions.</p><p>As in currently regulated industries such as banking, the final step of losing their charter would not have to be immediate. If a corporation failed to meet its basic parameters, it could be given a warning, with a time period set to fix things. However, the mere threat of this happening would lead corporate executives to make sure they were well above the criteria required to keep their charter.</p><p>Corporations are, of course, highly adept at using their financial resources to influence regulatory bodies through bribes and other mechanisms. To avoid this, panel members responsible to renew the charter would be representatives of the communities and ecosystems covered in the company's scope of operations. Their task would be to weigh up the findings of experienced independent auditors on the company's performance. To minimize corruption, the panel could be chosen by a process of random selection called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition" target="_blank">sortition</a>, just a like a trial jury is chosen in our legal system.</p><h2>3. Tax Stock Trades Based on the Length of the Holding Period</h2><p>Powerful as they are, even corporations have their masters: their shareholders. But don't think of the typical shareholder as a Warren Buffet type, sitting back in his leather armchair perusing his holdings. Instead, corporate stocks are subject to the frenetic activity of financial markets, where split-second computer algorithms govern much of the trading. Investment firms spend hundreds of millions of dollars enhancing their computing networks to shave <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/everything-you-need-to-know-about-high-frequency-trading/360411/" target="_blank">as little as three milliseconds</a> off the timing of their trades. The hyper liquidity of global markets means that investors are obsessed with short-term market trends, which leads corporate CEOs, forever anxious about their stock price, to focus their time horizon on the next quarterly earnings report. Financial valuations apply discount rates to future earnings, which means that an investment paying off thirty years in the future can be worth as little as five percent of its future payoff in the present. Under these conditions, why would any CEO care about the state of the planet—or even their company—thirty years from now?</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">The financial markets' hyper liquidity drives the short-term orientation of corporate CEOs.</small></p><p>During the 2016 U.S. election campaign, Bernie Sanders proposed a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/bernie-sanders-takes-it-t_b_7438808.html" target="_blank">Financial Transaction Tax</a> to pay for free college tuition, setting the rate at 0.1 percent of the transaction. In Europe, <a href="https://www.bna.com/eu-restart-financial-n57982091709/" target="_blank">discussions are under way</a> to apply a similar EU-wide tax. My proposal increases the tax rate by orders of magnitude, and differentiates based on the length of the stock holding. For example, the tax rate might look like this:<br></p><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>10% if the stock is held less than a day</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>5% if less than a year</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>3% if less than 10 years</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>1% if less than 20 years</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Zero if more than 20 years</li></ul><p>The effects of this single step would be enormous. The financial services industry would be transformed overnight. High frequency stock trading and same-day traders would disappear. The short-term orientation of the stock market would be replaced by carefully considered long-term investment decisions. A typical mutual fund, which in the U.S. currently turns over its portfolio at <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/mutualfund/09/mutual-fund-turnover-rate.asp" target="_blank">the rate of 130 percent a year</a>, could no longer afford to do so, and would have to change its investment decision-making based on sustainable returns. The tax could be waived for individuals experiencing a life-changing event or for simple hedging techniques where, for example, farmers need to lock in the price of their produce at a future time.</p><p>The result would be a massive shift away from destructive extractive industries and toward sustainable businesses. For example, the fossil fuel industry is recognized to be vastly overvalued as a result of its "<a href="https://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Unburnable-Carbon-Full-rev2-1.pdf" target="_blank">unburnable carbon</a>": the amount of fossil fuels in the ground that can never be burned if the world is to keep climate change below the 2° rise agreed at COP21 in Paris. A recent study estimates the overvaluation <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0182-1" target="_blank">as high as $4 trillion</a>. Investors, however, play a game of musical chairs, hoping they won't be the ones left holding the stranded assets. This proposed transaction fee would incent them to dump fossil fuel investments immediately for opportunities in renewable energy with longer-term payoffs.</p><h2>4. Cap on Billionaire's Assets Over $5 Billion</h2><p>As corporations have taken increasing control of the global system, they have catapulted founding shareholders and their heirs to previously unimaginable pinnacles of wealth. The combined wealth of the world's 2,754 billionaires is now $9.2 trillion, an amount that has <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire" target="_blank">doubled in the past six years</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires" target="_blank">increased tenfold</a> since the beginning of this century. The magnitude of this wealth is difficult to conceive. The top six billionaires <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/richest-men-in-the-world-2274065153.html" target="_self">own as much</a> as the lower half of the entire world's population. Taken together, the world's billionaires would represent the third largest economy in the world, behind only China and the U.S., with wealth equivalent to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)" target="_blank">GDP of Germany and Japan</a> combined.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">These six men own as much wealth as half the world's population.</small></p><p>There is no legitimate rationale for this outrageous concentration of such wealth in a few individuals. The argument that the founders of Microsoft, Amazon or Facebook deserve such excessive wealth is no more valid than the belief of the ancient Egyptians in the divinity of their Pharaoh, or the Medieval notion of the divine right of kings. Mark Zuckerberg, aged 33, currently owns more than $70 billion. If someone had singlehandedly miniaturized the transistor, developed the logic for computer code, invented the PC, and come up with the internet, then maybe they'd deserve having close to that amount as a reward for the value they created. But all Zuckerberg did was figure out a way to connect people up in a network that became a bit more popular than other networks, and because of the internet's scale effects, he was the lucky one who hit the jackpot. Zuckerberg merely took advantage of all the other infrastructure work that led to the internet, painstakingly pieced together by millions of people over decades, which has been the real value creator for the world.<br></p><p>In response to this excess, my proposal is to cap billionaires' wealth at, say, $5 billion. It's an arbitrary amount, still obscenely high and presumably more than enough for those who argue that people should receive ample financial rewards for success. Beyond a certain level of wealth, however, what drives these people is power and prestige. This could be tapped by requiring them to donate their excess wealth to a trust over which they could retain some influence.</p><p>Such a trust, however, would need to have some strict criteria. While the billionaire could influence the trust's priorities, he would not have control over its activities. The current Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, while a step in the right direction, is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation" target="_blank">under the total control</a> of the Gateses and Warren Buffet. The foundation set up with much fanfare by Mark Zuckerberg is viewed by experts as little more than <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/12/02/zuckerberg-charity/" target="_blank">a fancy tax dodge</a>.</p><p>Each trust would need to avoid interference in a country's political system and be dedicated to life-affirming activities, the scope of which could be based, for example, on the <a href="http://earthcharter.org/discover/the-earth-charter/" target="_blank">principles of the Earth Charter</a>, a framework for building a just, sustainable and peaceful global society endorsed by more than 6,000 organizations.</p><p>The positive impact that these trillions of dollars could have on human and natural welfare would be prodigious. Imagine a country the size of Germany and Japan combined dedicated entirely to serving human and natural flourishing. It would have the resources to <a href="https://www.visionofearth.org/economics/ending-poverty/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-extreme-poverty-in-the-world/" target="_blank">end extreme poverty</a>, increase regenerative agriculture to <a href="https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/food/regenerative-agriculture" target="_blank">more than a billion acres</a> worldwide, educate <a href="https://www.globalpartnership.org/funding/education-costs-per-child" target="_blank">hundreds of millions of girls</a> through the Global South, disseminate <a href="https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/food/clean-cookstoves" target="_blank">up to a billion clean cookstoves</a>, and much, much more.</p><p>The billionaires of the world, meanwhile, would continue to enjoy enormous wealth, and when they <a href="https://www.verdict.co.uk/wef-2018-davos-year-super-rich-dwarf-worlds-elite/" target="_blank">jet to Davos</a> to hobnob with other luminaries for the annual World Economic Forum, they could finally have something worthwhile to boast about.</p><h2>5. Declare a Crime of Ecocide at the International Criminal Court</h2><p>Even with all these constraints, the powers of transnational corporations would remain enormous, and there would still be times when, through willful negligence or intentional bad faith, corporate action causes massive environmental damage. A UN study, which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/18/worlds-top-firms-environmental-damage" target="_blank">remained unpublished</a>, found that the world's largest companies had caused more than $2 trillion of environmental damage, which would cost a third of their overall profits if they were forced to pay for it. Because of their extensive political influence, even their most damaging activities go unpunished. This leads to my final proposal: to declare a crime of ecocide at the <a href="http://www.coalitionfortheicc.org/explore/international-criminal-court" target="_blank">International Criminal Court</a> (ICC).</p><p>The ICC is an independent judicial body set up by international treaty, the Rome Statute, in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, genocides, and crimes against humanity. While it continues to <a href="https://www.opencanada.org/features/despite-recent-achievements-many-challenges-ahead-international-criminal-court/" target="_blank">face serious challenges</a> to its enforcement powers, it has had the effect of putting tyrants everywhere on notice that they can no longer act with impunity. If ecocide—the loss, destruction or severe damage of an ecosystem—were declared a crime by the ICC, this could have a similarly daunting effect on those corporate tyrants who currently know they can get away with devastating the world's "sacrifice zones" where they are pillaging the Earth's resources for profit.</p><p>There is a campaign, <a href="http://eradicatingecocide.com/" target="_blank">Eradicating Ecocide</a>, already under way to make this happen. A <a href="http://eradicatingecocide.com/the-law/the-model-law/" target="_blank">model law</a> has been drafted, and an <a href="https://www.missionlifeforce.org/" target="_blank">Earth Protectors Trust Fund</a> has been set up to permit common people everywhere to become legal Earth protectors. If a two-thirds majority of the Rome Statute signatories were to approve this as an amendment, it would become enforceable globally. Suddenly, corporate boards and CEOs everywhere would realize they are no longer above the law.</p><p>––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––</p><p>There is a strange paradox to consider about these proposals. One the one hand, notice how limited they are in scope. Even if they were all implemented overnight, the global system would not be overturned. People would still go to work and get paid, food would still be on the shelves of the grocery store, the same governments would still be in power, and the internet would still work. The gaping structural inequities of our current world order would continue unabated, and we'd still be consuming far more than our planet can sustain. Ultimately, we need a complete transformation of our global system if our civilization is to survive intact through this century.</p><p>On the other hand, it doesn't take a political genius to realize that these ideas are so far from mainstream thinking that they have virtually no chance to be adopted any time soon. They would be considered too radical for even the most progressive mainstream politician to endorse. What does this tell us about our current political dialogue? To me, it suggests that our conversations are too severely constrained by what we're "allowed" to think in terms of how our system works. We need to cast our gaze outside the norms that our billionaire-controlled mainstream media permits us to consider.</p><p>Imagine a world where these ideas (or others like them) began to be seriously entertained. How would they even be enforced? The only way corporations could be brought to heel, or billionaires compelled to give up their excess billions, would be a concerted effort led by the U.S. in conjunction with the European Union, and joined by the preponderance of other countries.</p><p>This, of course, could only happen if grassroots demand for these ideas spread so powerfully that politicians had to take notice. This is not such an unrealistic scenario, given the worldwide disavowal of the dominant capitalist model: most Europeans have a <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/02/23/british-people-view-socialism-more-favourably-capi/" target="_blank">higher opinion of socialism</a> than capitalism, and even in the U.S., the overwhelming majority see <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/11/03/majority-of-americans-dont-like-capitalism-yougov-poll/" target="_blank">big business as unethical and unfair</a>.</p><p>Then, there is the potential <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/val-jon-farris/the-power-of-trimtabs-wha_b_5863520.html?utm_hp_ref=impact&ir=Impact" target="_blank">"trim tab" effect</a> of adopting these ideas. Even though these proposals alone wouldn't fundamentally transform our system in the way that's needed, they might set changes in motion that could eventually take us there. There may be other ideas more effective than these, and of course each proposal contains within it complications that would need to be worked out carefully. However, my hope is that these ideas invite a new mode of political dialogue, along with a recognition that even in the darkest times, realistic pathways exist toward a thriving future for humanity and the natural world.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">The next Occupy movement will need clear demands that lead to specific deliverables.</small></p><p>When the Occupy movement failed to achieve its initial promise, many people pointed to its lack of specific demands as a reason for its demise. If and when the next radical grassroots movement emerges, which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/11/america-left-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-new-york-primary" target="_blank">may be sooner than you expect</a>, let's make sure they have an array of ideas such as these in their quiver to focus public opinion on actual political deliverables.<br></p><p>There are very few people who really want to see our civilization collapse. If these proposals eventually did get implemented, perhaps even the executives of the transnational corporations might sleep better at night, knowing that they can become part of the solution rather than a force of destruction.</p><p><em>Jeremy Lent is author of <a href="http://www.jeremylent.com/the-patterning-instinct.html" target="_blank">The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning</a>, which investigates how different cultures have made sense of the universe and how their underlying values have changed the course of history. He is founder of the nonprofit <a href="http://www.liology.org/" target="_blank">Liology Institute</a>, dedicated to fostering a sustainable worldview. For more information visit <a href="http://www.jeremylent.com/" target="_blank">jeremylent.com</a>.</em></p><p><em>Originally published in <a href="https://patternsofmeaning.com/2018/07/12/five-ways-to-curb-the-power-of-corporations-and-billionaires/" target="_blank">Patterns of Meaning</a>.</em></p>
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Throughout history, cultures have created different patterns of meaning. | Honghe Hani Rice Terraces in Yunnan Province, China. Jialiang Gao / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
By Jeremy Lent
What do all these ideas have in common—a tax on carbon, big investments in renewable energy, a livable minimum wage and freely accessible healthcare? The answer is that we need all of them, but even taken together they're utterly insufficient to redirect humanity away from impending catastrophe and toward a truly flourishing future.
<p>That's because the problems these ideas are designed to solve, critical as they are, are symptoms of an even more profound problem: the implicit values of a global economic and political system that is driving civilization toward a precipice.</p><p>Even with the best of intentions, those actively working to reform the current system are a bit like software engineers valiantly trying to fix multiple bugs in a faulty software program: each fix complicates the code, leading inevitably to a new set of bugs that require even more heroic workarounds. Ultimately, it becomes clear that the problem isn't just the software: an entirely new operating system is required to get where we need to go.</p><h3>Searching for a Foundation of Meaning</h3><p>This realization dawned on me gradually over the years I spent researching my book, <a href="https://www.jeremylent.com/the-patterning-instinct.html" target="_blank"><em>The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning</em></a>. My research began as a personal search for meaning. I'd been through a personal crisis when the certainties on which I'd built my early life came crashing down around me. I wanted my life going forward to be truly meaningful—but based on what foundation? I was determined to sort through the received narratives of meaning until I came across a foundation I could really believe in.</p><p>My drive to answer these questions led me to explore the patterns of meaning that different cultures throughout history have constructed. Just like peeling an onion, I realized that one layer of meaning frequently covered deeper layers that structure the daily thoughts and values that most people take for granted. It was a journey of nearly ten years, during which I dedicated myself to deep research in disciplines such as neuroscience, history and anthropology.</p><p>Finally, I discovered that what makes humans unique is that we—to a greater extent than any other species—have what I call a "patterning instinct:" we are driven to pattern meaning into our world. That drive is what led humans to develop language, myth and culture. It enabled us to invent tools and develop science, giving us tremendous benefits but also putting us on a collision course with the natural world.</p><h3>Root Metaphors Underlie Cultural Frames of Meaning</h3><p>Each culture tends to construct its worldview on a root metaphor of the universe, which in turn defines people's relationship to nature and each other, ultimately leading to a set of values that directs how that culture behaves. It's those culturally derived values that have shaped history.</p><p>Early hunter-gatherers, for example, understood nature as a "giving parent," seeing themselves as part of a large extended family, intrinsically connected with the spirits of the natural world around them. When agriculture first emerged about twelve thousand years ago, new values such as property, hierarchy and wealth appeared, leading early civilizations to view the universe as dominated by a hierarchy of gods who required propitiation through worship, ritual and sacrifice.</p><p>Beginning with the ancient Greeks, a radically new, dualistic way of thinking about the universe emerged, conceiving a split cosmos divided between a heavenly domain of eternal abstraction and a worldly domain polluted with imperfection. This cosmological split was paralleled by the conception of a split human being composed of an eternal soul temporarily imprisoned in a physical body that is destined to die. Christianity, the world's first systematic dualistic cosmology, built on the Greek model by placing the source of meaning in an external God in the heavens, while the natural world became merely a desacralized theater for the human drama to be enacted.</p><p>The Christian cosmos set the stage for the modern worldview that emerged in seventeenth century Europe with the Scientific Revolution. The belief in the divinity of reason, inherited from the ancient Greeks, served as an inspiration for the scientific discoveries of pioneers such as Galileo, Kepler and Newton, who all believed that they were glimpsing "the mind of God."</p><h3>The Flawed Operating System Underlying Modern Culture</h3><p>But the worldview that inspired these breakthroughs had a darker side. The Scientific Revolution was built on metaphors such as "nature as a machine" and "conquering nature" which have shaped the values and behaviors of the modern age. The entailments of a dualistic cosmos inherited from the Greeks have defined our received beliefs, many of which we accept implicitly even though they are based on flawed assumptions.</p><p>We are told that humans are fundamentally selfish—indeed even our genes are selfish—and that an efficiently functioning society is one where everyone rationally pursues their own self-interest. We accept technocratic fixes to problems that require more integrated, systemic solutions on the premise that nature is just a very complicated machine—one that is entirely separate from humanity.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption..."> The "selfish gene" is just one of the pervasive—and deeply flawed—metaphors of our modern age.</small></p><p>Continued growth in Gross Domestic Product is seen as the basis for economic and political success, even though GDP measures nothing more than the rate at which we are transforming nature and human activities into the monetary economy, no matter how beneficial or harmful it may be. And the world's financial markets are based on the belief that the global economy will keep growing indefinitely even though that is impossible on a finite planet. "No problem," we are told, since technology will always find a new solution.<br></p><p>These underlying flaws in our global operating system stem ultimately from a sense of disconnection. Our minds and bodies, reason and emotion are seen as split parts within ourselves. Human beings are understood as individuals separated from each other, and humanity as a whole is perceived as separate from nature. At the deepest level, it is this sense of separation that is inexorably leading human civilization to potential disaster.</p><h3>Connectedness as a Foundation for Human Flourishing</h3><p>However, the same human patterning instinct that has brought us to this precipice is also capable of turning us around and onto a path of sustainable flourishing. We have the capacity to build an alternative worldview around a sense of connectedness within the web of life—a sense shared by indigenous cultures around the world from the earliest times.</p><p>I've seen this idea disparaged as a New Agey, kumbaya-style mentality even by otherwise progressive thinkers. However, modern scientific findings validate the underlying connectedness of all living beings. Insights from complexity theory and systems biology show that the connections between things are frequently more important than the things themselves. Life itself is now understood as a self-organizing, self-regenerating complex that extends like a fractal at ever-increasing scale, from a single cell to the global system of life on Earth.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzQ3MjA5Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MDU3NDM5MH0.vUrvGxwJ5yNBWhzKXPeo5JxAxVjj2SAgjWooTk5Upxg/img.jpg?width=980" id="fc9b3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="19279e8a37ef069949bfb270a16ec698" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption..."> Nature as fractal: river in Malaysia.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit..."><a href="http://paulbourke.net/fractals/googleearth/" target="_blank">Paul Bourke / Google Earth Fractals</a></small></p><p>Human beings, too, are best understood not by their selfish drives for power but by cooperation, group identity and a sense of fair play. In contrast to chimpanzees, who are obsessed with competing against each other, human beings evolved to become the most cooperative of primates, working collaboratively on complex tasks and creating communities with shared values and practices that became the basis for culture and civilization. In the view of prominent evolutionary psychologists, it was our intrinsic sense of fairness that led to the evolutionary success of our species and created the cognitive foundation for crucial values of the modern world such as freedom, equality and representative government.<br></p><p>Just as the values of previous generations shaped history, so the values we collectively choose to live by today will shape our future. The cognitive patterns instilled in us by the dominant culture are the results of a particular worldview that arose at a specific time and place in human history. This worldview has now passed its expiration date. It is causing enormous unnecessary suffering throughout the globe and driving our civilization toward collapse.</p><p>Rather than trying to transcend what we are, our most important task is to peel away this received worldview, reach within ourselves to feel our deepest motivations as living beings embedded in the web of life, and act on them.</p><p><em>Jeremy Lent is author of <a href="http://www.jeremylent.com/the-patterning-instinct.html" target="_blank">The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning</a>, which investigates how different cultures have made sense of the universe and how their underlying values have changed the course of history. He is founder of the nonprofit <a href="http://www.liology.org/" target="_blank">Liology Institute</a>, dedicated to fostering a sustainable worldview. For more information visit <a href="http://www.jeremylent.com/" target="_blank">jeremylent.com</a>. </em></p><p> <em>Originally published in <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/jeremy-lent/culture-shift-redirecting-humanity-s-path-to-flourishing-future" target="_blank">Open Democracy | Transformation</a>, March 20, 2018.</em></p>
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My parents were born in Vancouver—dad in 1909, mom in 1911—and married during the Great Depression. It was a difficult time that shaped their values and outlook, which they drummed into my sisters and me.
"Save some for tomorrow," they often scolded. "Share; don't be greedy." "Help others when they need it because one day you might need to ask for their help." "Live within your means." Their most important was, "You must work hard for the necessities in life, but don't run after money as if having fancy clothes or big cars make you a better or more important person." I think of my parents often during the frenzy of pre- and post-Christmas shopping.
<p style="">We moved to Ontario after the Second World War. We were destitute. (As Canadians of Japanese descent, we had been treated as enemy aliens and lost everything, including all rights as Canadian citizens). I needed a coat for the cold eastern winter, so my parents purchased a new one—a big expense for farm laborers. Unfortunately, I was 11 and going through a growth spurt and quickly outgrew the coat, so it was passed on to my twin sister, Marcia. She wore it for longer but also outgrew it and gave it to our younger sister, Aiko. My parents boasted that the coat was so well made, "it went through three children." It's been a long time since I've heard durability as a positive attribute of a product. In today's fashion-obsessed world, how many children would accept hand-me-downs from siblings?</p><p style="">How did "throw-away," "disposable" and "planned obsolescence" become part of product design and marketing? It was deliberate. Wars are effective at getting economies moving, and the Second World War pulled America out of the Great Depression. By 1945, the American economy was blazing as victory approached.</p><p style="">But how can a war-based economy continue in peacetime? One way is to continue hostilities or their threat. The global costs of armaments and defense still dwarf spending for health care and education. Another way to transform a wartime economy to peacetime is consumption. <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN18.html" target="_blank">Adam Smith</a>, the father of modern economics, wrote in 1776, "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production."</p><p style="">Seized upon by the <a href="http://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/869764" target="_blank">Council of Economic Advisers to the president</a> under Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, consumption was promoted as the engine of the economy. Retailing analyst <a href="http://sustainablesociety.com/social/consumerism#.Wk0vv1WnG70" target="_blank">Victor Lebow</a> famously proclaimed in 1955: "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate."</p><p style="">Now, we are no longer defined by our societal roles (parents, churchgoers, teachers, doctors, plumbers, etc.) or political status (voters) but as "customers," "shoppers" or "consumers." The media remind us daily of how well we're supporting continued economic growth, using the Dow Jones average, S&P Index, price of gold and dollar's value.</p><p style="">But where is the indication of our real status—Earthlings—animals whose very survival and well-being depend on the state of our home, planet Earth? Do we think we can survive without the other animals and plants that share the biosphere? And does our health not reflect the condition of air, water and soil that sustain all life? It's as if they matter only in terms of how much it will cost to maintain or protect them.</p><p style="">Nature, increasingly under pressure from the need for constant economic growth, is often used to spread the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/overconsumption">consumption</a> message. Nature has long been exploited in commercials—the lean movement of lions or tigers in car ads, the cuteness of parrots or mice, the strength of crocodiles, etc. But now animals are portrayed to actively recruit consumers. I'm especially nauseated by the shot of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoyWNoZP4O0" target="_blank">penguin offering a stone to a potential mate</a> being denigrated by another penguin offering a fancy diamond necklace.</p>
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<p style="">How can we have serious discussions about the ecological costs and limits to growth or the need to degrow economies when consumption is seen as the very reason the economy and society exist?<br></p>
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By Jeremy Lent
For a moment, the most important news in the entire world flashed across the media like a shooting star in the night sky. Then it was gone. Last month, more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries issued a dire warning to humanity. Because of our overconsumption of the world's resources, they declared, we are facing "widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss." They warned that time is running out: "Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory."
<p style="">This is not the first such notice. Twenty-five years ago, in 1992, 1,700 scientists (including the majority of living Nobel laureates) sent a similarly worded warning to governmental leaders around the world. In ringing tones, they called for a recognition of the Earth's fragility and a new ethic arising from the realization that "we all have but one lifeboat."</p><p style="">This second warning contains a series of charts showing how utterly the world's leaders ignored what they were told 25 years earlier. Whether it's CO2 emissions, temperature change, ocean dead zones, freshwater resources, vertebrate species or total forest cover, the grim charts virtually all point in the same dismal direction, indicating <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/chomsky-trump-doomsday-clock-2342419463.html">continued momentum toward doomsday</a>. The chart for marine catch shows something even scarier: In 1996, the catch peaked at 130 million tonnes and in spite of massively increased industrial fishing, it's been declining ever since—a harbinger of the kind of overshoot that unsustainable exploitation threatens across the board.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
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<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit..."> Charts from "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice"</small></p><p style="">Along with their warning, the scientists list a dozen or so examples of the kind of actions that could turn humanity's trajectory around. These include indisputably necessary strategies such as halting the conversion of native habitats into farmland; restoring and rewilding ecologies; phasing out fossil fuel subsidies; and promoting dietary shifts toward plant-based foods. With the future of humanity at stake, why aren't we already doing these things? What will it really take for our civilization to change course and save itself from destruction?<br></p><p style=""><strong>Ignoring Climate Breakdown</strong></p><p style="">We can begin to answer that simply by looking at the media's reception to this warning. With 15,000 scientists—including Jane Goodall, E. O. Wilson and James Hansen—declaring a potential catastrophe at hand, you might think this would make headlines everywhere. Think again. While it led to a few short articles in select publications around the world, with the one <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/14/health/scientists-warn-humanity/index.html" target="_blank">commendable exception of CNN</a>, it was virtually ignored by American mainstream media. </p><p style="">This should hardly come as a surprise. In fact, global climate breakdown—perhaps the greatest existential threat faced by our civilization—is barely considered newsworthy on American television. In 2016, the hottest year on record, when the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement">Paris agreement</a> was signed and presidential candidates held widely differing opinions on climate change, the entire year's climate coverage by all network news services in the U.S. amounted to <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/03/23/how-broadcast-networks-covered-climate-change-2016/215718" target="_blank">less than an hour</a>: a paltry 50 minutes, representing a 66 percent drop from the previous year. </p><p style="">How could that be? One reason is that, as a result of decades of massive industry consolidation, the U.S. media is <a href="https://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart" target="_blank">controlled by</a> a few large corporations. Like all shareholder-owned companies, their overriding concern is making profits, in this case from advertising dollars. The news services, once considered a hallowed responsibility administered for the public good, have been reduced to <a href="https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/next-system-media-urgent-necessity" target="_blank">just another profit center</a>—and it was decided that climate change news isn't good for advertising revenue, especially since a big chunk of that comes from the fossil fuel and agribusiness companies responsible for much of the problem.</p><p style=""><strong>The Largest Ponzi Scheme in History</strong></p><p style="">Which leads us to some of the underlying structural changes that need to occur if human civilization is to avoid collapse. The fundamental problem is brutally simple: Our world system is based on the premise of perpetual growth in consumption, which puts it on a collision course with the natural world. Either the global system has to be restructured, or we are headed for a catastrophe of immense proportions that has never been experienced in human history. However, the transnational corporations largely responsible for driving this trajectory are <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/12/03/ai-has-already-taken-over-its-called-corporation" target="_blank">structurally designed</a> to prevent the global changes that need to take place.</p><p style="">Something that is only dimly understood outside financial circles is that the vast bulk of the wealth enjoyed by the global elite is based on a fabrication: a belief in the future growth in earnings that corporations will deliver. For example, the <a href="https://seekingalpha.com/article/4128836-s-and-p-500-p-e-ratio-cause-concern" target="_blank">current P/E ratio</a> of the S&P 500 is about 23, which means that investors are valuing companies at 23 times their earnings for this year. Another way of looking at it is that less than 5 percent of the wealth enjoyed by investors relates to current activity; the rest is based on the dream of future growth.</p><p style="">Historically, investors have been richly rewarded for this dream. The world's economic output is roughly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product" target="_blank">20 times greater</a> than it was in 1950, and market valuations have increased accordingly. But this is the same growth that is driving our civilization to collapse. Today's market values are based on a belief that the world's economic output <a href="https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gdp-long-term-forecast.htm" target="_blank">will triple</a> from its current level by 2060. That implies three times as much pillaging of the world's resources than the rate that has led to the scientists' dire warning to humanity. Something has to give.</p><p style="">Like any Ponzi scheme, this global growth frenzy is based on maintaining the illusion for as long as possible. Once it becomes clear that this rate of growth is truly unsustainable, the whole house of cards will come tumbling down. We saw in the 2008 financial meltdown a relatively tame dress rehearsal for what a full-scale financial collapse would look like.</p><p style="">This is what the global power brokers don't want anyone to think about. It's ultimately why <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/07/climate-change-media-coverage-media-matters" target="_blank">the media obsesses</a> with Donald Trump's latest tweets rather than the devastation caused by climate breakdown-induced hurricanes. Like passengers moving deckchairs on the Titanic, much of the world's population has been hypnotized by a daily onslaught of celebrity spats and political feuds—anything to avoid the realization that we are all heading for collapse in order to keep the affluent in luxury. It is a testament to their success so far that, in the words of Slavoj Žižek, it is "easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."</p><p style=""><strong>Imagining the End of Capitalism</strong></p><p style="">However, the only thing that will truly avert collapse will be a radical restructuring of the economic system that is driving us ever more rapidly to that precipice. This will only come about when enough of us are ready to jettison the consumer values that pervasive mainstream culture foists on us. In their place, we need to find other sources for meaning in our lives: growing the quality of our experiences rather than our consumption, building our communities together and reconnecting with the natural world. </p><p style="">On that basis, we'll be better equipped to join in the struggle to save humanity—and the rest of the Earth—from the plundering envisaged by the perpetual growth frenzy of global corporate capitalism. There are plenty of alternative paths available to us—we just don't hear about them because they never get the media's attention. Most Americans, for example, are completely unaware that the little country of Costa Rica, with a GDP per capita less than one-fifth of the U.S., boasts a higher average life expectancy and <a href="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-11-22/averting-the-apocalypse-lessons-from-costa-rica/" target="_blank">scores far higher</a> in levels of wellbeing—while producing 99 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. </p><p style="">There is valuable work being done around the world in <a href="https://thenextsystem.org/systems" target="_blank">visualizing a future</a> based on <a href="https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/" target="_blank">different principles</a> than the current Ponzi scheme. Well-developed plans to avert climate breakdown include a state-by-state and nation-by-nation pathway to reach <a href="http://thesolutionsproject.org/why-clean-energy/" target="_blank">100 percent renewable energy by 2050</a>, and a <a href="https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/our-plan" target="_blank">Climate Mobilization Victory Plan</a> to restructure the U.S. economy in a manner similar to what FDR accomplished after Pearl Harbor.</p><p style="">There are radically different ways for a society to function effectively that could apply to nations around the world if given half a chance. A flourishing future might involve more <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/" target="_blank">cooperative ventures</a>, protection and expansion of <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2016/12/15/the-fortifying-commons/" target="_blank">the commons</a>, and enhanced global governance with <a href="http://eradicatingecocide.com/" target="_blank">strict penalties</a> for those who destroy ecological wellbeing. Collapse isn't the only future in store for humanity—it's merely the one we're headed for unless and until we change course. Since the mainstream media isn't going to get the word out, it has to be up to each of us who cares about the future of the human race. So, let's get to it.</p><p style=""><span></span> <em><a href="https://www.jeremylent.com/" target="_blank">Jeremy Lent</a> is author of "<a href="http://www.jeremylent.com/the-patterning-instinct.html" target="_blank">The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning</a>," which investigates how different cultures have made sense of the universe and how their underlying values have changed the course of history. He is founder of the nonprofit <a href="http://www.liology.org/" target="_blank">Liology Institute</a>, dedicated to fostering a sustainable worldview.</em></p>
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BY Connor McGuigan
REI will once again shutter its doors on Black Friday as part of its #OptOutside campaign, which encourages people to forgo bargain-hunting and spend America's busiest shopping day outside. The outdoor retailer will also suspend online sales and provide all 12,000 employees with a paid day off to enjoy the outdoors.
<p style="">#OptOutside began in 2015 when REI executives began questioning their corporation's involvement in the annual bargain bacchanal. Each year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Americans generate one million extra tons of waste, a good portion of which can be attributed to Black Friday shopping. </p><p style="">REI decided to offer a different narrative for Black Friday—one that runs counter to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/overconsumption">consumerism</a> and the environmental harms it generates. "We think that Black Friday has gotten out of hand and so we are choosing to invest in helping people get outside with loved ones this holiday season," said president and CEO Jerry Stritzke in the letter first announcing #OptOutside in 2015.</p><p style="">During that first #OptOutside campaign, REI partnered with 170 organizations to help get the word out and arranged for 1,000 state and local parks to waive entrance fees that day. #OptOutside resonated widely—more than 1.4 million people posted on social media with the #OptOutside tag. Ad Age called the campaign the "future of marketing." </p><p style="">After another successful campaign in 2016, REI has sought to widen the reach of #OptOutside this year with an "<a href="https://www.rei.com/opt-outside" target="_blank">experiential search engine</a>" designed to make it even easier for people to get outside. The search engine compiles thousands of photos depicting outdoor adventures that people have posted on Instagram with the hashtag #OptOutside. You can scroll through photos organized by activity, or search for outings in a particular area. If you find a photo that piques your interest—say a landscape in your area that you've never seen—you can click on the photo to find more information, including the name and location as well as the difficulty level of trails.</p><p style="">CEO Jerry Stritzke believes the search engine unites outdoor enthusiasts in an unprecedented fashion. "We have captured the experiences of the outdoor community and organized them in a way that no one has done before," he said in a press release announcing the #OptOutside 2017 campaign and search engine. "Right now, I think people are looking for a moment to take a breath, reground themselves, and come together."</p><p style=""> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/rei-urges-customers-optoutside-black-friday" target="_blank">SIERRA Magazine</a>.</em></p>
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Clothes swapping party in Hannover, Germany hosted by Greenpeace. Michael Loewa / Greenpeace
By Gabriele Salari
The fashion industry is considered to be one of the most polluting in the world. Its material-intensive business model relies heavily on our addiction to overconsumption and feeds the destruction of the planet.
There is one way to solve the problem: slowing down fashion. We need a model that doesn't compromise on ethical, social and environmental values and involves customers, rather than encouraging them to binge buy ever-changing trends.
<p>At Milan Fashion Week this year, <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/italy/it/" target="_blank">Greenpeace Italy</a> decided to give the podium to the pioneers of sustainable fashion, who are changing the way we wear our clothes. These are the companies behind some of the examples from the <a href="http://www.greenpeace.de/" target="_blank">Greenpeace Germany</a> report <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/Campaign-reports/Toxics-reports/Fashion-at-the-Crossroads/" target="_blank"><em>Fashion at the Crossroads</em></a>.</p><p>We chose to highlight the three most important ways to create clothes that don't harm the planet: Make it last, Make it right, Make it different.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="99ebac4ff804be79deec164870d0f6a6"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UqsqtJOO8kg?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span></p><h3>1. Make It Last</h3><p><strong>Hilke Patzwall from <a href="https://www.vaude.com/en-GB/" target="_blank">Vaude</a></strong></p><p> "One of our key problems is too much consumption. It's important to inform consumers about all the consequences of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fast-fashion">fast fashion</a>, but it is even more important that the industry takes on their responsibility. As a brand, we need to make products with a physical and emotional durability, and provide the infrastructure so that consumers can live up to slowing the loop."</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMTYwNTgxNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTE5MjIyNH0.cn4g7x_q5zpVjH5cK3Kh-lab2IbOTHE_8mhpjJEY4Pw/img.jpg?width=980" id="08f85" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7b759622d02596344be2d2f8ac86dd70" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><small placeholder="add caption..." class="image-media media-caption">Eliina Brinkberg and Hilke Patzwall at the event in Milan.</small><small placeholder="add photo credit..." class="image-media media-photo-credit">Greenpeace</small></p><p><strong>Eliina Brinkberg from <a href="https://www.nudiejeans.com/" target="_blank">Nudie Jeans</a></strong><br></p><p>"At Nudie Jeans, we encourage our customers to wear their jeans longer by offering free repairs. We're so happy to be brought up as an example of being on the right track and we share Greenpeace's belief that prolonging the life of our clothes is one of the most important ways of slowing down the flow of materials in the fashion industry."</p><p>"By appreciating true craftsmanship, learning to love and care for our clothes and by buying less and wearing longer, we can create a more sustainable textile industry."</p><h3>2. Make It Right</h3><p><strong>Andrea Cavicchi, part of the <a href="http://www.consorziodetox.it/?lang=en" target="_blank">Italian Detox Consortium</a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMTYwNTc3Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTY0MDgyN30.i8bRK9bryYSJKvfQrk1PobAs77RXhbe-6Iqc0N0gQD8/img.jpg?width=980" id="cecd4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c59b8e4dec1b92c7a7337be51ff00572" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><small placeholder="add photo credit..." class="image-media media-photo-credit">Greenpeace</small></p><p>"In the Prato area of Tuscany, we've been making sustainable fabric since the 12th century. We use production techniques where wool fibres are reused to produce new fabrics, allowing the recovery of fibres and textile waste materials. Used clothes that would normally be thrown away are reintroduced into the production cycle as raw materials. The first manufacturing companies to sign up to Greenpeace's Detox Commitment were in the Prato textile district."<br></p><p>"Now the Italian Detox Consortium is applying the Detox approach to the virtuous process of recycling textile fibers by promoting an investigation of the chemical contamination of regenerated articles and finding out what we can do to solve it. We ensure the traceability of the recycled textile material with their certification and by working with an international authority."</p><p><strong>Enrica Arena from <a href="http://orangefiber.it/en/" target="_blank">Orange Fiber</a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMTYwNTc1OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5ODU1NzIzMH0.Z9yORAP3CXeKwXGhWn9Wd9d3MssjoDskUP2U9H7JwE8/img.jpg?width=980" id="6f30c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b709e323586c8425fcc13d7f48084a72" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><small placeholder="add photo credit..." class="image-media media-photo-credit">Greenpeace</small></p><p>"We believe that a sustainable and ethical business model—one which considers the environmental and human costs of manufacture to be as crucial as profit—together with a circular approach to material sourcing and design, are the keys to closing the loop in the fashion industry and taking our world beyond the next season."<br></p><p><span></span>"We're faithful to our motto, 'the future is not a place we're going to, but a place we create,' and continue to research new raw materials and develop ways to improve our manufacturing process. People who wear a dress made out of our fabrics are not just consumers, but contributors to a more sustainable future. This is the contemporary way to construct an ethical and sustainable lifestyle; one that looks further than status and considers the future of our world."</p><h3>3. Make It Different </h3><p><strong>Pola Fendel from <a href="https://kleiderei.com/" target="_blank">Kleiderei</a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMTYwNTcyNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MDg1MjcxMn0.G4w0Lo_ai9zceEsNvm2Ht-gu0mYiKgnzsrrdwOfXdW0/img.jpg?width=980" id="91782" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="738a5db42f4851194be2eca4d8607f85" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><small placeholder="add photo credit..." class="image-media media-photo-credit">Greenpeace</small></p><p>"Society is definitely shifting. Consumers are starting to question more. The amount of people who want to buy less and choose quality over quantity is growing. The projects and companies represented on Greenpeace's <em>Fashion at the Crossroads</em> panel all feed into this change in society whilst shaping and broadening it. We are increasing attention to this topic and providing much needed alternatives to fast fashion and overconsumption."<br></p><p><strong>Arielle Lévy from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/LHerbe-Rouge-154674483878/" target="_blank">L'Herbe Rouge</a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMTYwNTcxOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzQ2ODg4N30.iP-OFCJpeNwe--uRv054UNQTjBMFGZlF5SIZDJoLtXQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="2fa0a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7046f6cd937408b0578bb1dd14718c9a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><small placeholder="add photo credit..." class="image-media media-photo-credit">Greenpeace</small></p><p>"Sustainability is a state of mind. The stakes are high for fashion. I believe that we have to inspire the economy by showing the success of new business models, especially post carbon initiatives. This is the only way our highly polluting industry can protect people, consumers and the planet."<br></p><p>"As far as the L'Herbe Rouge business model is concerned, our four pillars have proved that <em>une autre mode est possible,"</em> (another fashion is possible):</p><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>Coherence of Chain of Value: Eco design, eco production, eco distribution.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>Eco Frugality: Minimize resources and maximize added value (product and service).</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"> <li>Innovation: In order to find new answers and create local jobs and autonomy for companies.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Affordable Quality: Fair and accessible prices, direct selling, no intermediary, democratization through slow wear.</li></ul><h3>Shifting Mindsets</h3><p>How do we thank the marvelous people working so tirelessly to change fashion for the better? We chose to give the final word to a Greenpeace ally:</p><p><strong>Orsola de Castro from the <a href="http://fashionrevolution.org/" target="_blank">Fashion Revolution</a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMTYwNTY2OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MzEzNzE3NH0.XROrr4BT6PuwH6tsWQCn2g-p1M9fHsf6-3FE-KrzT04/img.jpg?width=980" id="eca90" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="af410f6451b1b93053a1de13fb7a37ed" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><small placeholder="add photo credit..." class="image-media media-photo-credit">Greenpeace</small></p><p>"Before technology and the advancement of the circular economy will save us, we have to slow down mass production and accelerated consumption."<br></p><p>"Now that consumers are asking questions, and an increasing number of brands are beginning to understand that tomorrow's loyalty will demand sustainable innovation, we need to encourage a culture where people are encouraged to challenge brands to be more ethical."</p><p>"If we increase the visibility of smaller slow-fashion brands we can make the fashion industry much more biodiverse. Small really is beautiful!"</p><p>Our next challenge is changing people's minds.</p><p><em>Gabriele Salari is the Communications Specialist for the Detox My Fashion campaign in Greenpeace Italy.</em></p>
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