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Are we prepared to change to prevent climate change?

June 10, 2015

Are we prepared to change to prevent climate change?

What is needed to get us out of our comfort zone and fight for our children’s future?

If you ask, let’s say, a seven year old, it’s all pretty clear. If it’s the way we live, consume and produce that causes climate change, why don’t we simply stop it and start doing things differently? And if there are millions of people too poor even to meet their basic needs, why don’t we tell the rich to share a bit of their overflow so that there is enough for all?

We may consider this cute and naïve, we may laugh and say, “Look, it’s not all that easy, there are too many complexities and interdependencies and lock-ins and path-dependencies. It’s OK, when you’re older you’ll understand. Our economy needs to grow for us to keep up the good life. It needs to grow to get more people out of poverty, to secure return on investments, and to create jobs in place of those that fell away due to rationalization. We cannot simply stop the machine for something abstract like climate change: this would lead to recession, social unrest and chaos. We have to keep up our economic system to secure social stability, pension schemes and state budgets”—as if social instability, unemployment and wars on resources were not already well on their way.

Questioning the underlying system logic

These are all robust arguments hardly ever questioned—following the logic of homo economicus that individual profit and competition are the best means to achieve the higher common good. But what if this system logic itself was the root cause of our environmental and social crises—climate change above all—and needed to be replaced by something new to secure our survival on this planet?

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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