The State of the Planet and Its People

Source: The State of the Planet and Its People, The University of Cambridge Programme for Industry

Synopsis: It is difficult to get an accurate picture of where you’re headed, let alone how to get there, if you don’t know where you are. That is the purpose of this publication. It is based on taking stock of the 5 Capitals Model (capital, in this context, meaning wealth): natural, human, social, manufactured, and financial. The relationship between these, as stated by the publication, is that manufactured and financial capital are products of, and therefore dependent on, human and social capital, which are in turn dependent on natural capital. The obvious connection here is that everything, no matter how many degrees of separation exist, is dependent on natural capital.

For each of these capitals, stock is taken, most often quantitatively. Each has its own measures, and I won’t elaborate on them here, except to note that it involves a lot of statistics, many of which would sound very, very familiar to anybody who listens to NPR. This prompted my first reflection: taken as a whole, The Way Things Are is completely overwhelming. Idealists, take your pick of almost any system, and there are enough areas for improvement to keep you busy for the rest of your life. I’m not sure how I feel about this except I know we need to be careful. I’m optimistic. If I wasn’t, my effort toward this degree would be a sham and a waste, but these problems are so daunting, it’s easy to get discouraged. Discouragement leads to hopelessness leads to regression and escalation. Obviously, later in the semester, we talk about solutions, and it’s at that point that hope reemerges, but if one of our goals is engaging people to embrace sustainable practices, regardless of the context, we need to find the balance between urgency and despondency.

As I stated earlier, much of the information in this paper has been talked about before. There are too many people, too many poor, too many hungry, too much pollution, too large a gap between rich and poor, etc. By the end of the paper, I was skimming for the highlights, most of which were depressing. Because my interests and future are married to technology, the information pertaining to that was more interesting, and caused deeper thinking. The first question is whether or not technology is a positive or a negative. That’s a complicated question, and I don’t have the answer, but it needs to be asked. Furthermore, at least in the short term, technology will be part of the solution. Again, we need to tread lightly. Technology isn’t a panacea. I think the critical point made in the reading is that we need to de-link economic growth from consumption of finite resources, and technology is the best way of doing this. To this end, “a number of prominent scientist” (whatever that means), The Wuppertal Institute, The Rocky Mountain Institute, and the 1994 Carnoules Declaration have called for between 75% and 90% reduction in resource consumption per unit of production. We could spend the rest of the semester picking that apart: what resources, what constitutes consumption, what products, how do we quantify any of it, etc, and I’m sure there are PhD theses being written this very minute doing just that. Again, I agree with reservations. I don’t believe (a word I use sparingly when proof is possible) that any technology will allow us to sustain our current patterns of consumption. We can’t wait for the machines to save us. Thanks for stopping by.