Our WorldView
By the time a baby born in the first year of the new millennium reaches adulthood, events will have taken place which will determine whether our species will flourish or whither. The position of a myriad of other forms of life with whom we share this fragile planet is even more precarious. This is the fundamental and all-encompassing issue of the world today, regardless of what may dominate the news headlines at any moment.
The pages posted on the Real World website collectively demonstrate that there is a great and fast growing imbalance between human activities and the capacity of environmental systems to sustain them. Consequently, ahead, lie some of the most critical decisions humankind will ever make. Those choices are both private ones regarding personal lifestyle preferences, not least childbearing, as well as matters of public policy, be it government economic strategy or the regulation of technological innovation.
Some pages critically assess the modern world. Fritz Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful, once compared society's position to that of the doomed Titanic. He chastised those who would do no more than rearrange the deck chairs on board that fatally stricken vessel. They will not face the 'sustainability crunch'. The enemies of sustainability are a varied crew, ranging from the usual suspects on the New Right (sometimes called Neo-Liberals) to the traditional Left, especially its Marxist variants.
The message of what also could be called 'militant cornucopianism' is, crudely, full steam ahead! From their deck on the Titanic, no icebergs can be seen and, if any were to put in an appearance, they maintain the ship is capable of ploughing a passage through regardless.
Others are not so bullish about the future yet they too still refuse to face the realities of life on a finite planet. Their ranks include World Commission on Environment and Development, best known for The Brundtland Report. Various files on this site argue that its slogan of "sustainable growth" is an absurdity. Subsequent substitution of the phrase "sustainable development" amounted to little more than a cosmetic rewording. We are also critical of seemingly radical tendencies which, despitel a plethora of different labels such as 'social ecology', 'ecofeminism' and the 'New Age' movement, nonetheless fall prey to the common fallacy that "empowerment" can cure most ills.
Many pages will be posted which critically examine specific cures for social and environmental ills currently being touted. Though quackery comes in all shapes and sizes, usually its remedies are concocted from the same recipe-more powerful technology. Society generally worships science and technology, foolishly believing that technological fixes will abolish scarcity or even iron out defects not just in crop production but also within human genetic make-up.
Not Waving But Drowning
In their own different ways, the ideologies and social movements outlined above fail to address the depth and breadth of the sustainability crunch. Therefore we aim to post documents designed to show that the true history of recent decades-in terms of both awareness and action-has been, at best, one of one step forward, two steps backwards. Given the expansionist orientation of society, this outcome was inevitable. The reason is given by the theory of 'limits to growth', most critical for understanding what is wrong with the world and how it can be put on a more sustainable footing.
Our site will build up evidence for concluding that, already, society is transgressing the various limits to growth and that the breach is worsening rapidly. There are strong signs of deep unsustainability both 'outside' society-in the crumbling life-support systems of our planet-and 'within', in the form of deepening lesions in the fabric of society. Individual rivers may be a bit cleaner than, say, twenty years ago, and levels of some of the more visible air pollutants have been reduced in a few countries. Yet the long-term trend is towards progressive reductions in the capacity of the Earth to sustain life.
. Modern industrial society in fact shows signs of unsustainability at all levels. Environmental degradation marches in step with social disintegration and cultural degradation (a slice of ugly jargon, 'dumbing down', is, for once, entirely appropriate to describe the decline in intellectual and communication skills). The moral confusion that pervades society needs little comment here. At the level of individual well-being, physical and psychological, there are deep discontents and tensions stalking industrialised countries, despite a scale of personal consumption unprecedented in history.
As social structures crack, economies around the world show signs of long-term instabilities. The seemingly dynamic and fast growing 'tiger' economies of the Far East, for example, are founded upon sand; in no way are they built to last. Rhetoric about the forthcoming 'Pacific century' ignores the signs that bigger changes are under way than a simply a shift in the locus of economic growth. While the economy may be engulfed by a free-for-all, the lives of ordinary citizens are being progressively regimented in ways that merely generate additional strain. Furthermore, today's technological miracles are increasingly turning into technological timebombs, be it in the form of high speed train crashes or the self-reproducing pollution of genetic contamination.
Mention must also be made of the on-going political degradation, epitomised by today's political leadership. With but few exceptions, they fail to give the necessary lead as they jet from one worthless international jamboree to another. As was once said of the Bourbon kings of old, government leaders have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Few business leaders are prepared to propose anything more than cosmetic changes to their enterprises. Far more conspire to block even modest action to halt the slide to ecological disaster.
Once these discrete yet interacting crises are added together, it seems reasonable to conclude that humankind is fast approaching a critical turning point in its destiny without precedent. Overdevelopment, not maldevelopment, is the basic problem, contrary to what is assumed, in different ways, by the various perspectives discussed above.
We set out to examine the sickness underlying such symptoms of unsustainability. It is amazing, for example, just how many people are prepared to deny that human numbers might count and thereby multiply the impact of other forms of human foolishness.
Towards a Sustainable Future
The Real World Web Site also tries to show ways of creating what might be called a 'sustainable Earth society' comprising of all species. We seek to develop and popularise vital concepts such as carrying capacity and explore their implications for governance, economic organisation, technological development and, most importantly, for social values and goals.
We will try to spotlight some current initiatives which show that the ecological alternative-a society sustainably in balance with the Earth's capacities and rhythms-is also one which offers a way of life more satisfying and, indeed, more convivial than the destructive rat race that is the hallmark of contemporary lifestyles. A number of encouraging initiatives have been launched in various parts of the world. Though they are still small in number, nonetheless they give the lie to that well-worn defence for the status quo, namely that there is no alternative.
We believe there are no insuperable technical problems standing in the way of a sustainable social order. In a whole variety of fields-from agriculture to zoo management-there are signs that the ecological vision can be translated into better practice on the ground. We invite users of this site to send us examples of what has been variously called "healing the Earth", "rehabitation", "conservation biology", "wilderness recovery", "design with nature", the "soft technology path", "human scale", "bioeconomics, "steady-state economics", "right livelihood", and so forth.
Though the general outlines of a sustainable society are not difficult to sketch, much work needs to be done on specific policies to attain that goal. We feel sure, however, that the key terrains will be technological and economic. Contrary to the laissez-faire stance adopted by most political parties and other decision-makers, we believe that it is in these areas that more public intervention and regulation is needed. It is in the nature of social and environmental systems that, spontaneously, they tend towards stability. The economic system and the process of technological development must be moulded and guided to facilitate that tendency. (The opposite is true at the moment-there is more and more onerous management of both people and planet to facilitate technological and economic laissez-faire).
There are also some extremely difficult strategic and tactical questions to be resolved about the route from here to there. We will be posting material that addresses such problems, and welcome examples of successful campaigns as well as information illustrating the dead hand of conventional politics. That elusive blend of collective and individual well-being is an issue that we are particularly concerned to explore.
Some words about wording
Given the range of issues covered on this Web Site, some use of specialist terminology is unavoidable. One of the most widely used words, sustainability, itself begs a number of questions-of what? by whose choice? for what reasons? etc.-ones which Real World as a whole attempts to answer. Certainly it should become quickly clear that we take a holistic view. Our perspective is one which looks beyond what might be called 'survivalism'. Perhaps the Earth could sustain a much bigger population if everyone wore Maoist boiler suits and lived in regimented dormitories; but, for us, sustainability is about a good quality of life and, above all else, goodness itself, the living of morally worthy lives.
We use the term 'ecological sustainability' to denote this holistic approach. Of course, there will be those who will attack such terminology as a bad case of the so-called 'naturalistic fallacy', deducing an 'ought' from an 'is'. We are painfully aware that society could adopt-indeed is adopting-an attitude of eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. There is nothing to stop humanity 'enjoying' a spectacular, albeit short, career.
But it seems part of the biological 'is', that we, indeed all life forms, strive to survive. Self-destruction is aberrant behaviour. Yet no-one can function, let alone flourish, in isolation. Not just survival but meaning and fulfilment depend upon others. It is, then, also aberrant behaviour-something against the 'natural'-to trash the communities on which individual well-being inescapably depends. So we deduce many 'oughts' from such facts of life. Of course, such thoughts can only suggest broad principles of living. In specific situations and circumstances, there will be complex choices and trade-offs. But the overall framework, that of ecological sustainability, must remain the touchstone of decision-making.
We reject the limited and often fraudulent concept of sustained yield (one often encountered on labels of paper products which boast of their provenance in 'sustainable forests'). Related land use practices have devastated wildlife, soil and water systems. Sustainability is about whole ecosystems, not just those particular bits which take the human fancy. For this reason, we sometimes refer to 'all-life-support systems',rather than the more familiar phrase of 'life-support'. Extensive use is made of the words 'ecology' and 'ecological', often in preference to 'environment'. The latter is often taken to mean the same as 'surroundings', whereas we want to focus attention upon the patterns and processes that have created the oasis of life here on planet Earth.
Perhaps surprisingly, we try to avoid a word commonly used in discussion of the ecological crunch, that of 'biodiversity'. We prefer 'biocomplexity' since it carries connotations of structure, not just mere numbers and random interactions. After all, for centuries humans have been adding new species to foreign ecosystems, sometimes with disastrous results for indigenous communities. We also make little use of the phrase 'natural world', preferring instead 'the rest of nature', since the former suggests something from which humans themselves are somehow alien.
We also minimise use of that seemingly alarming word 'crisis', preferring instead 'crunch'. The reason is not just that 'crisis' is rather tired cliché. It might be used quite reasonably to describe a collapse in share values on the Stock Exchange, a bout of mass redundancies, or a fatal political split within a government. It is certainly appropriate to use it in the context of famines, potential or actual military conflict, and other such disasters.
Yet 'crisis' also suggests a sudden flare-up, a temporary phenomenon, something that will pass, a product perhaps of purely fortuitous circumstances rather than the inevitable consequence of identifiable actions. The ecological 'crunch' takes the form largely of a slow but steady accumulation of problems, the necessary consequence of past decisions, the cumulative effects of which are likely to long-lasting and all-pervading, the occasion of permanent change. In the war now being waged against Nature, there are likely to be far more losers and few, if any, winners. The word 'crisis' fails to capture the critical nature of the sustainability crunch.
We do use, however, the term 'wilderness'. Many people rightly have observed that traditional tribal peoples had no notion of 'people-free' environments, land disassociated from all human use. Yet wilderness usefully describes areas still free from technological taming. Furthermore, for the foreseeable future, given the nature and scale of the human activity, protection of such lands-and of the role they play in planetary well-being-will require restrictions on all forms of human encroachment.
Another term we use extensively, that of the 'steady-state', should be understood with care. It does not mean the same thing as 'stasis' or 'static'. It denotes something in dynamic equilibrium. Cyclists must obtain such a state or fall over but they do not have to stay still. A healthy human body functions in a steady-state, but, if deviations from a certain range of body temperatures and other parameters become too great, illness and perhaps death result. Lastly, we avoid polluted words like 'heritage' and, for that matter, 'green', for reasons which quickly should become clear.
Taking Precautions?
It might seem strange for us to use the word 'cornucopian' at a time when government exhortations to tighten the national belt are the order of day. Certainly, public spending cuts and general austerity programmes are being implemented in many countries, both inside the European Union, as part of economic 'discipline' in preparation for monetary union, as well as across many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, often at the behest of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Even those embodiments of 1980s-style greed, the champagne-popping yuppies of the world's finance trading rooms, seem to be taking things a bit more carefully these days. Some people on the traditional Left even talk-derisively-of a new 'culture of limits'.
A number of points need to be made. First, belt-tightening usually is applied only to those with the most empty stomachs. The already rich have been and still are getting richer and richer. Second, cutbacks are sold to-and to some extent accepted by-the general public as but a short course of nasty medicine today to secure and unending growth in consumption levels tomorrow and thereafter.
Across society, the vision of affluence-for-all still dominates most perceptions. Most projections-be it of future volumes of air travel or of water requirements-are firmly based on the growth trajectory. This is especially the case in what used to be called the Third World. In China, for example, planners in Shanghai openly proclaim their intention to rid the city of rickshaws and make way for 'modern' motor traffic.
Furthermore, though there is widespread distrust of specific innovations such as genetically engineered foodstuffs, modern faith in the capacity of science to overcome scarcity and abolish obstacles to 'progress' remains unshaken. Witness the popular belief that nuclear fusion technology (or, in greener circles, solar power systems) will soon solve energy problems or that a new generation of non-polluting cars are just around the corner. Many people might live in fear of potential but nonetheless remote risks from, say, muggers and murderers-and demand law and order crackdowns-yet, at the same time, they seem prepared to tolerate actual and much more dangerous perils such as the destabilisation of climatic patterns. The regular slaughter on the roads, which kills and maims far more people, many of them children, than do rampaging psychopaths, generates no outbursts comparable to those after the Dunblane and Hobart massacres in 1996.
When it comes to sacrifices, Mother Earth is the one who has to bear the biggest cuts, like ever more land covered in concrete or rivers and lakes pumped dry of their contents. Most people still want to have their cake and eat it. Perhaps they might not actively seek, for instance, to wipe out wild species but they still demand all those things whose production is eliminating one species after another. Cornucopianism, then, seems a fair description of the dominant vision of today. The alternative, what the American writer Tom Bender once called "sharing smaller pies", so far receives comparatively scant attention.
Problem Points
Our society is one in which critics run the risk of being labelled pessimists and kill-joys. Conversely, there is an almost compulsive search for 'feel-good' factors. Over the summer of 1996, it was reflected in the huge box office success of the film Independence Day which, despite all the destruction by hostile aliens it portrayed, nonetheless offered the reassuring thought that human ingenuity and guts (under American leadership, of course) could overcome the most terrible of threats.
We are not card-carrying Jeremiahs. It is not our intention to dwell on depressing matters out of some perverse pleasure in doom-mongering or crying wolf. We set ourselves a positive task, although one that does involves a certain element of alarm-sounding. If you found someone asleep in the middle of the road, it would be somewhat unkind not to awaken them to the danger of the oncoming traffic. This Site sets out to perform a similar role for society.
Another accusation made against dissenters is that they are professional sectarians who refuse to recognise the value of other people's efforts, let alone work with them. The danger of sectarianism is a real one. Perhaps the most disastrous political act of the twentieth century, for example, was the behaviour of the various Communist Parties, who, dancing to Stalin's tune, refused to co-operate with Social Democrats and others against the Nazi threat. Instead, they stupidly attacked potential allies as 'social fascists', and thereby, in Germany, opened the door to the horrors of Hitlerism.
Certainly, the documents posted on this Site are very critical of the ideas and policies associated with sustainable development. This does not mean that there is nothing of worth in initiatives such as Local Agenda 21 or other projects launched by the Earth Summit. Nor should attention be drawn away from the far worse failings of the New Right. Co-operation, however, should not require a cover-up of real differences nor silence on-going debate. We should never forget that, as an American professor, Gary Coates, puts it in Resettling America, "what appears at first to be merely two paths to shared goals turns out, on closer inspection, to be two separate paths to very different goals".
Pulling No Punches
We are propagandists and polemicists, trying to cut through woolly thinking and challenge complacency. Yet we hope that the case for a 'slimming down' of today's bloated society is based upon hard evidence and robust arguments. In our pages we certainly do criticise many individuals and organisations but we hope that we neither distort their points of view nor paint an unfair picture of their activity.
Sadly, we feel it necessary to refute from the start the shop-soiled stereotype that people like ourselves are 'anti-science' and nostalgic for some bygone golden age, lost in the mists of time. Our criticism is directed against misapplication of the scientific method in areas where it can shed little light. That said, we recognise that modern science has dispelled many pernicious myths and spotlighted many vital features of society and environment alike.
Nor should references to the past be taken as a nostalgic longing to put back the clock. Society can only go forward. In any case, some traditional societies were characterised by grave injustices, cruelty and destructiveness. Yet we can learn from past mistakes and past successes, the latter being of particular significance since they undermine the complacent argument that this or that problem is simply the product of some immutable and flawed human nature. Throughout history, people have displayed all kinds of 'nature' and there is nothing in human genetic make-up that stands in the way of a fairer and more co-operative way of living.
It must be noted as well that we are not 'anti-American'. Certainly many statistics and case studies used on our Site paint a seemingly hostile picture of North America and of the impact its consumption patterns are having on the rest of the world. Our focus simply reflects the political and economic significance of Pax Americana in contemporary global affairs. It also takes account of the more subtle influence of American culture (or, rather, a section of it) upon other people's lifestyles, be it the food they eat or the diet served up on their television, cinema and computer screens. The still common rhetoric about "California todaythe rest of the world tomorrow" by itself suggests that we should look critically at our supposed destination.
We ask readers to note, however, that perhaps the best critiques of industrial society come from North Americans and that much of the best work, at both theoretical and practical levels, on sustainable alternatives also is being done in the USA and Canada. We imagine that quite a few readers will have winced at the image of people around the world waiting from an American call-to-action in Independence Day. In real life, however, some North Americans genuinely are giving a lead. We hope this site introduces more people to that work.
Ideas Matter
In general, then, not only have new battles to be fought, but also many old ones, once thought won, are having to be waged all over again. In the desperately urgent but formidably difficult challenge of changing public consciousness, campaigners will need the strongest evidence and the most compelling arguments. We hope this site is a contribution to the task of developing that necessary base of ideas and information. Persuasion of both the public at large and individuals in key decision-making posts remains a significant weapon in the arsenal of those fighting for planetary well-being.
Many people rightly want to 'do something' now. Some try to change their lifestyles, often by changing what they put into their shopping trolley and, in a few cases, by dropping out of mainstream jobs and switching to simpler and less harried lifestyles. Others rush around from one 'action' to the next. The mid-1990s saw a build-up in the UK and elsewhere of militant protests against new road developments and the export of live animals. Already a significant number of individuals are getting involved in such action. We do not seek to detract from such efforts, but, without a sound guiding theoretical framework, all this energy will be dissipated, to no lasting good effect. That is why we believe that the clarification of values, policies and goals is so important.
Unfortunately, inside many grassroots movements and other radical organisations, a crude anti-intellectualism often manifests itself. A popular terms of abuse in such circles is to dismiss intellectual discussion as an irrelevant 'talking shop'. Yet there is nothing wrong with thinking and exchanging thoughts if good ideas followed by worthwhile action result. It is precisely in this way that the great revolutions of the past came about. So too, we hope, will the replacement of our present disturbed order by ecological sanity.
The Real World website is dedicated to that process of clarification. It is our hope that its users will come away clearer about what is wrong with the world and how its ills can be remedied as well as more committed to the struggle for sustainability.
Sandy Irvine
Alec Ponton
Editors of the Real World website
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