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Global problems are rapidly getting worse. The environment is being severely damaged. Resources are being depleted. Third World poverty is increasing. Even in the richest societies the quality of life is falling, cohesion is eroding and social problems are accelerating.
These problems cannot be solved without fundamental change, because they are directly caused by our present socio-economic system.
The basic faults built into our society centre firstly on the demand for high material "living standards" in a world of limited resources. We cannot keep up the present levels of production and consumption and resource use for long, and there is no possibility of all the world's people ever rising to these levels. People in rich countries have these high "living standards" only because we are taking much more than our fair share of the available resources and depriving the majority.
Even though present levels of production and consumption are unsustainable this economic system must have constant and endless increase in output, i.e., economic growth. A sustainable world order is not possible unless we move to much less affluent lifestyles within a steady-state economic system.
Our second major mistake is allowing the market to determine our fate. An economy which relies heavily on free market forces will inevitably allocate most of the world's wealth to the few, produce inappropriate development, destroy the environment, and ignore the needs of the majority. What is done must be determined by what humans and ecosystems need, not by what is most profitablein a market. Yet we are now racing to a globalised economy in which transnational corporations will be increasingly free to determined what is produced and developed, according to what will maximise their profits.
We need much more than change to an economic system that is not driven by market forces, profit and growth (although markets and private enterprise could have a role in a satisfactgory society.) Our values and culture put far too much emphasis on competition, success, individualism, acquisitiveness, wealth and luxury. There must be a value change to much more concern with cooperation, sharing, helping, caring, collective welfare and living more simply.
Technical advance alone cannot solve these problems. It cannot maked a big enough difference to levels of resoure use and ecological impact. It cannot eliminate the need for radical change in our "living standards", values and economy.
2. THE SOLUTION.
We cannot achieve a sustainable and just world order unless we change to,
- Simpler lifestyles, much less production and consumption, much less concern with luxury, affluence, posessions and wealth.
- Small, highly self-sufficient local economies, largely independent of the global economy.
- More cooperative and participatory ways, enabling people in small communities to take control of their own development.
- A new economy, one not driven by profit or market forces, and a zero-growth or steady-state overall economy, that produces much less than we do now.
- Some very different values, especially cooperation not competition, and frugality and self-sufficiency not acquisitiveness and consuming.
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