Think Slow Act Fast vol.1: What could a sustainable world look like?

Think slow, act fast

volume 1 edition 1

A critical exploration of the environmental crisis and a look to a radically better future Tom Ruddell

This is crowd-funded environmental literature; please donate what you can so that we can do more. Visit paypal.me/pools/c/8if8vqiwZo

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foreword: about the project Some people have been campaigning for decades, others have only recently been pulled into the environmental movement and others still are yet to be mobilised. We’re in a seriously risky situation and it’s become clear that we need everyone on board to steer society back to safety – we can’t rely on the establishment to sort this out for us.

This booklet aims to critically explore the environmental crisis, its political and systemic causes and looks towards the nature of change we need to create. It’s not exhaustive but it’s a quick summary of things as I see them, with plenty of references for further reading.

We need an educated, well informed and politically active environmental movement if we are going to be successful and that’s why I’ve started this project. Please donate what you can to help us reach more ears and have a bigger impact – 100% of donations will go towards publication and distribution costs.

Finally, please get involved and share your comments, suggestions and feedback at @thinkslowactfast (ig) and thinkslowactfast@mail.com.

To a radically better future

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origins of the crisis The Earth’s biosphere and climate is not, never has been, and never will be static. Our world is so incomprehensibly complex, interlinked and dynamic that disruptions caused by significant events have far-reaching implications.

The extinction of the dinosaurs was caused, perhaps, by a colossal meteorite impacting the Earth, the debris from which obscured the sun and caused enough cooling to trigger a mass-extinction event. Similarly, significant volcanic eruptions have been known through history to plunge huge areas into darkness and result in global ‘volcanic winters’.

Other events such as solar flares, orbital cycles and ocean currents all play their part in modifying the climate and historical data shows that temperatures have fluctuated significantly during the Earth’s life. Though simple in concept, temperature changes can exert gargantuan forces on the planet and the life it sustains. The last glacial period (referred to as the Devensian in the UK) retreated 10,000 years ago but left its eternal mark not only on the Earth’s geology; carving valleys, shifting rock, eroding new formations and altering the landscape forever.

The biosphere is far more susceptible to climatic changes, yet it is far from a passive responder and evolution and the persistence of life has wedged it into every conceivable corner, adapted to the specific conditions of each environment. The biosphere, made up of all living things, has proliferated to such a scale that it is in fact a significant force in shaping the Earth’s nutrient, water and carbon cycles. This in turn dramatically influences weather patterns, the climate and the makeup of the Earth’s surface.

Trees and plants photosynthesise and respire, overall converting carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen, transforming the sun’s energy into a form that enables the vast biodiversity of life that we see on Earth. And, incredibly, the

3 antagonistic harmony played out for survival between species at the smallest scales continues to the largest scales and has resulted in a climate equilibrium. This push and pull or symbiosis of the global ecology, in other words, maintains a balanced planet.

We commonly think of humans as evolving from animals to become something superior, with therefore a mandate to dominate the planet. By evidence, this is what we have done. Geographers now refer to the Anthropocene, the age in which humans are the greatest force on the planet. This reflects our ability to exact colossal changes on the biosphere, climate and Earth’s surface; breaking the Earth’s ecological harmony and leaving scars on its surface.

Humans, like any other species, have striven continually to increase their domain. The difference between humans and any other species is, therefore, that we have succeeded to such an extent that our activity no longer exists as part of a complex, interdependent and harmonious web. We instead are master of the planet and our present society poses an existential threat to a significant portion of the biosphere, ourselves included.

As a demonstration of the extent to which we have altered the atmosphere, carbon dioxide levels have fluctuated between 170 parts per million and 300 parts per million for the last 800,000 years1, yet between 1950 and 2019 they increased from 300ppm to 410ppm. To be clear, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have not been this high for approximately one million years, a time in which the biosphere would have looked completely different.

Our power as a species has increased steadily at a compound rate for thousands of years2. Our sources of power were originally ourselves, taken from the chemical energy in the food we ate, later augmented by the development of grazing cattle and agriculture – but ultimately derived from the sun. Burning wood became a source of energy, deployable

4 when required for heating. Technological development led to the use of water and gravity for grinding with mills and paddles.

Similarly, wind was used for both transport and energy.

But the most pivotal development was the discovery of fossil fuels; ancient biomass deposits with extremely high energy densities which could be readily extracted, burnt and with the development of steam power, used to animate all manner of machines. At each stage in our growing dominance over the environment we had more power at our disposal, with which we further extended our strength.

The last half-century was also a departure point for materials science and design. Human design had until recently used only natural, or biodegradable materials for all its purposes, with the key exception of some metals. Our archaeologists struggle to infer the behaviours of past civilisations from meagre remnants of skeletal, ceramic, metal and other collected objects, depending on how well preserved they are.

The difference to that humble position is now vast; barely a minute goes by in our daily lives without interacting with a highly sophisticated and until recently impossible material; many of which are inseparable, artificial, toxic and ‘irreversible’. Should our civilisation vanish, and all our possessions be left behind tomorrow, what would archaeologists of the future find?

An entire layer of large sections of the Earth’s crust would be paved with concrete and tarmac or other impermeable materials. Plastics, an artificial material, would be intermingled in every area of the land, not only at a macroscopic level but invading life at the microscopic level. There would be radioactive nuclear waste, some of which would still be highly hazardous, tucked more or less ingeniously around the crust. Materials of all types would be bonded tightly together such that the action of microbes or bacteria could no longer separate out the biological from the inert. A great variety of

5 unnatural chemicals would be found among the Earth, seeping through the water supply and poisoning animals and plant life alike.

Huge alterations to the Earth’s geology would be observed; with excavation, deposition and transportation happening on a massive scale.

While this legacy is impressive, it is also highly concerning and demonstrates that, in the Anthropocene where humans are in a position of vast and ever-increasing control over the biosphere, geology and atmosphere of the Earth, for the first time we need to choose to restrict or change how we use our power as a species. To do this, we need to understand and reinvent our relationship with the environment.

the environmental crisis In 1988 a climatologist called James Hansen stood up in US congress and presented the report his team of NASA scientists had written. It concluded that the greenhouse effect, where certain ‘greenhouse’ gases absorb and re-emit the sun’s radiation, was sensitive enough to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations that human activity could result in ‘dramatic’ changes to the climate. It also found that the impacts on people and biosphere through increased recurrence of extreme weather and changed precipitation patterns resulting from this would be ‘major’3. Hansen’s report informed the world’s most powerful nation’s politicians that immediate and significant action was required to prevent global warming.

Thirty years later, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) observed 1.0C of average global warming resulting from human activity. Whilst scientists have continually updated their predictions, measured global variations, attributed an increase in extreme weather to climate change, broadened their understanding of the myriad

6 impacts we might expect and noted the increasing decline of species, the world has continued to warm. While we are faced with this ever more complete image of the seriousness of the climate and ecological crises and the immediacy of remedial action required, the problems continue to multiply.

The reasons for our ‘collective’ failure to prevent global warming are many and of significant importance to understand. Without confronting all of them, even the most inconvenient, there is no reason to expect that time will solve our problems. Solving climate change and associated crises is not, actually, about changing the climate. It’s about changing our society and systems.

I’m going to discuss the barriers to the sort of significant change we need and explore the type of thinking and mindset that we should adopt. This will not be a detailed analysis of the science of climate change or the impacts it will make to humankind or the wider biosphere, because these findings have been rigorously documented by scientists across the world, and any interested reader can fill in the blanks in their education on these topics without searching far. I don’t want to spend time discussing these topics because I, and many others, are sufficiently convinced that the likely impacts are severe enough, and that the scientists have been doing a thorough enough job of documenting, understanding and predicting them for decades to conclude that we can collectively spend less time discussing the issues and more time discussing how to solve them.

It’s relatively easy to observe societal problems, but it takes courage and creativity to imagine alternate realities. I absolutely refute the idea that our economy or society are in any way perfect, or that any one future is inevitable. Obvious though it may seem to write, radically different and better futures both exist and can be realised. It is our collective opportunity to conceive of them, identify the barriers to them

7 and take action to break down those barriers. We have everything to lose, and everything to gain.

the way we used to think about nature Human position within the world has always been a topic of interest among philosophy, religion, literature and art.

A good way to summarise our intent, desire and position in the world, for example with respect to the environment, is in the form of a narrative4. Thinking about the narratives of individuals, groups or entire societies is useful because it addresses their most pressing beliefs and desires.

I do not wish to ignore, suppress or discredit any cultural views, however for the sake of brevity I will continue with a broad generalisation of Western philosophy to observe its history. For many thousand years, classical western philosophy, which was and is tightly related to Christian teaching, held the view that the human race is part of nature and though distinguished above other animals and plants (either by divine selection or exceptional intelligence) should treat all nature with reverence and respect; in other words, stewardship.

In the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon wrote New Science. Rejecting the views of Aristotle and others that humanity was part of an interconnected web of nature, Bacon viewed humanity as superior to all nature and believed we should conquer the environment through science and industry.

This view was massively influential and lead to a concerted effort to study, learn and exploit nature. I don’t believe it’s necessary to discuss how thoroughly this ideology manifests itself in much of contemporary Western industry, if not all society. I’m reminded of a mural featuring a young person at the top of a mountain looking out across the landscape. There is a pattern of cogs spreading out from them,

8 symbolising the entrepreneur’s opportunity, creativity and desire. You may interpret this either as a desire to solve the world’s problems or to become powerful; either way, our culture prides itself on lofty ambitions - most of which extend the Anthropocene.

which problem, which solution?

When I talk about environmental issues with friends, relatives or colleagues I’m reminded of two things: we all have different knowledge, and we all react differently to it.

We all have different understandings of the same topics because we gain knowledge sporadically and from different sources, rarely carefully researching a topic to reach original sources of information and draw our own conclusions; nor is this normally possible.

While it seems pointlessly obvious to say that next, even with the same information we all respond differently, I think the implication should be explored to its limit. Many within the environmental movement have gained more knowledge about environmental issues than the general public feel extremely emotive and strongly that something should be done, and that everyone should be as concerned as they are.

Clearly, the first step is to raise the awareness of as many people as possible.

Thereafter, there is a tendency for the environmental movement to expect others to agree with us on appropriate reactions to these issues. This however is often not the case, as it is forgetting the backgrounds, cultures, belief systems and ways of processing the world that are unique to each of us. I believe it is extremely useful to briefly consider this in greater depth.

The Cultural Theory model summarises political worldviews into regions based on the solidarity among members and the level of hierarchy existing in society5. The theory creates

9 four regions of societal worldview which have significant bearing on how people perceive and respond to risks, such as those posed by the climate crisis. Three of these worldviews are particularly relevant.

The ‘individualist’ favours little regulation and individual or entrepreneurial action. They are likely to perceive the environment, or more broadly the current situation, as being stable and resilient, or expect that change will likely result in an acceptable situation.

The ‘egalitarian’ views the environment as fragile and is cautious that significant changes could result in negative effects. They have a high degree of empathy for others and favour collective action to solve problems.

The ‘hierarchist’ is concerned about the consequences of significant changes but views the situation as more stable than the egalitarian does and will favour a collective action that respects societal hierarchies.

While resisting the potential to over generalise and ignore the great richness of each citizen’s character, it is clear that each of these personas will perceive environmental issues differently and will favour very different actions. The individualist, unless perceiving an immediate and personal threat, is unlikely to feel strongly enough to take significant action. A reaction consistent with the worldview of an individualist might be buying certified sustainable produce or moving to a less polluted area, but not to pay a carbon tax or take public transport. The individualist does not perceive risk to others that strongly, nor do they wish to have their choices constrained.

The egalitarian is highly motivated by issues which impact others and favours working together for a solution. 1 million set to become homeless as Bangladesh set to lose 200km2 in 100 years would likely create a very strong reaction for an egalitarian, who will tend to err on a preventative approach

10 and might support solutions such as a ban or tax on harmful products.

Another personality trait which has been long used by marketing teams is the technology adoption ‘s-curve’, from which we will extract two extreme examples. The ‘early adopter’ is generally excited about new technology and will rush to try out new things. They view technology as a means to solve problems and believe problems which have not yet been solved require new technologies.

The opposite personality is the ‘laggard’ who is sceptical of new technology and either perfectly satisfied with their existing habits or even frustrated by the insurgence of new technology. To them, technology is often the cause of problems rather than the solution.

Ester Boserup was the ultimate early adopter and optimist who theorised that each time the population’s needs (for example energy or food), were nearing the extent of their supply, Earth’s carrying capacity would be extended by the emergence of a new technology or efficiency gain provoked by the approaching hardship. It is not difficult to find examples in human history of how ingenuity has enabled our continued growth, through the introduction of agriculture to the horsedrawn-plough to the steam engine and modern farming equipment.

In the future, increased automation, advanced sciences, machine learning and the internet of things are technologies which those of Boserup’s persuasion will assert to be only the latest in technological advances which extend our ability to meet our population’s ever-increasing needs.

Thomas Malthus was of an entirely different view. He spoke of positive or negative checks to growth which would periodically reduce demand rather than increasing supply. The growing population would either be reduced by positive checks such as war, famine or other catastrophe; or by negative or preventative checks such as the reduction in birth rate or

11 restriction of demand. Again, I would assert that there exist many examples of Malthusian Crises in human history, such as China’s one-child policy, post-WW2 rationing or resourcebased conflict.

In less extreme and more modern examples, each of us display more or less of Boserup and Malthus’s viewpoints.

Some of us will enthuse the possibilities of a new fabric manufacturing technology while others of us will repair their clothes. Some of us will talk about how lab meat and new forms of hydroponics will enable sustainable food supplies, while others will advocate eating consciously. Some will rush to buy electric vehicles, while others will cycle more or use public transport.

We can therefore conclude that the ‘austerity versus technology’ debate and the analysis of the interrelation of personality and environmentalism are both extremely poignant. The practical conclusion however is that in order to catalyse the entire population and unify our responses into impactful solutions we must take account of a great diversity of worldview. There is one thing that nearly everyone can agree on already however: we need to be more sustainable.

what exactly is sustainability?

In 1987 Gro Harlem Brundtland, leading the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), published a UN report that produced the modern definition of sustainable development: Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs6 This definition should be in our minds every time we discuss sustainability, to ensure the word doesn’t lose its

12 power. The report also introduced the idea of the triple bottom line, the three p’s of “people, profit, planet” or “social, economic and environmental” factors being balanced in all sustainable activities. The idea is simply that unless all three requirements are met an activity is detrimental to society; if you make money and improve people’s lives, but damage the environment; or if you preserve the environment but don’t treat people well, obviously an action is unsustainable. The Brundtland definition of sustainability is intuitive and widely accepted – for myself it seems to be as close to a fundamental societal principle as we could get. Yet certainly our society is not organised around the principle of treating people and the planet with equal regard as we give the economy.

In fact, though the principle of sustainability is simple the disparity to our present society is unfortunately huge.

Focussing temporarily on environmental issues alone, sustainability is not about energy efficiency improvements, saving water or using energy saving lightbulbs. Sustainability is about having no net impact on the planet. It’s not about being less bad, it’s about living in a way that’s not bad for the environment at all. Our current society is living so far from this aim that it’s difficult to fully imagine what it could look like, and reactionist thinking often positions environmental needs in opposition to current quality of life.

Unfortunately, we have at present a sort of grotesque Midas touch, where every action seems to result in some sort of environmental cost, and quite often the most effective environmental strategy is saying “no”. Naturally, “no” is often not more fun and those in the environmental movement face an uphill struggle living in a society built on non-environmental principles.

To achieve sustainability as the Brundtland commission envisaged it we therefore need to stop associating environmentalism with saying “no” and start building the principle of sustainability into our society. The reason it’s so

13 critical we do is that every year in our society of landfill, pollution, extraction, deforestation and extinction steals time from future generations and irreparably damages the planet.

It’s difficult to empathise with future generations in the same way that we value our own current lives; perhaps because many of us haven’t yet experienced proper environmental hardship enough to really, deeply understand (logically and emotionally) the potential realities our inaction is ushering in. Many of us in the last generation that can prevent irreversible climate change therefore need to practice intergenerational empathy to remind ourselves what’s at stake.

Let’s imagine ourselves born in a highly conceivable future where we don’t have access to unpolluted drinking water, where we have to wear a breathing mask to go outside, where birds no longer sing and biodiversity is experienced through description and imagination. A future in which our society struggles to feed itself because unpredictable and severe rainfall combines with soil degradation to reduce crop yields. A future where the commonest of materials, once plentiful, are now rationed after being combined, used and incinerated or landfilled. Where our grandparents speak with regret and sadness of a time when they could count the many sounds of the woodland, watch birds at the feeder, spend all day outdoors without fear of air pollution, eat fresh fish at the seaside, pick wild berries from the hedgerows and watch bees in the flowers. Of a time before constant international climate migration. When water supplies weren’t guarded by the military. When a varied, natural diet wasn’t the preserve of the rich. When virtual reality wasn’t the only way to see a coral reef. When there was still hope that climate and ecological crises would be stopped in time.

This is what’s at stake and why we must rebuild society with values that reflect the power we hold as a species and with sustainability at its core. Just as our generation has a right to a clean, stable and biodiverse planet, so future generations

14 have a right to inherit it from us. There is however another essential facet to our movement: environmental justice.

environmental justice Environmental justice is essential for radically reducing our burden on the environment, but also for addressing the stark inequality in our society. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines: Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, [colour], national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.7 The definition gives us something to aim for in the same way as the Brundtland definition of sustainability gives us the strength to aim for meaningful environmental targets. And just as sustainability encompasses fully the social element, so environmental justice is fundamentally about equality.

Unfortunately, our present situation is very far from equitable in economic or environmental terms and there are some very deep-seated and uncomfortable national and global truths which need to be addressed to make true progress towards environmental justice.

The heritage on which the developed nations’ economic supremacy is built on seems distant to many but not to all. While today’s oligarchy emerged as the victors, it was achieved on the backs of others who have not forgotten and often still live with the intergenerational impacts of past exploitation. While sustainability deals with future generations,

15 environmental justice deals with past generations as well; the reason being that so long as societal standing is determined by inherited land, wealth and political power, historical oppression does not reside in the past but causes inequality today.

Indeed, the most vulnerable and least wealthy are subjected to the largest exposure and live with the greatest environmental risks. Privileges lacking by these people include not having access to clean drinking water, non-toxic air, nutritious food or sanitation and this prevents them from reaching their potential. With globalisation we are all connected to this injustice; every garment we wear may have been produced by farmers working in unsafe conditions, spraying pesticide on a field of cotton without adequate protection; the phone in our pockets may contain metals mined by young people, exposed to toxic by-products and unsafe practice.

Yet environmental injustice need not be seen as a faraway thing, as those without the privilege of a car in our nation are the ones who breathe the toxic fumes of the exhaust pipe. Similarly, the cheapest foods are often the least healthy and produced with the least regard – the privileged know this and naturally prefer fresh cooked, healthy foods; yet the time and space to prepare food and the economic security to reliably stock a kitchen are not accessible to the majority.

Living in an area with clean air and water, safety and quiet and healthy food are not the norm but the global exception.

Environmental behaviour is often seen as a lifestyle choice, but in the face of these truths it becomes clear that it is instead a privilege. Those with limited space, time and money will naturally focus on meeting their basic needs and don’t necessarily have the luxury of making environmental considerations such as sorting the recycling, buying organic food, buying products which will last, travelling to a zero-waste food store, cultivating a vegetable patch, carrying a reusable

16 coffee cup or buying an efficient car. It’s frankly insulting and potentially classist to expect everyone to make environmentally minded changes to their lifestyle regardless of their economic situation.

We must, therefore, strive to replace the easiest, quickest and cheapest lifestyle options with ones that close the gaps in environmental justice. Non-packaged vegetables should be the cheapest option. Healthy, fresh cooked food should replace the cheapest fast food. Communal kitchens and loosepackaged dry foods provide access to the ingredients for a cooked meal without requiring the upfront cash to buy utensils or full portions. Community sharing schemes or ‘product libraries’ can give everyone access to good quality, durable clothes and items; again without requiring a full purchase to be made and therefore making them accessible to all.

An increasingly debated topic is universal basic income, which proponents suggest could alleviate some of the economic pressure of individuals or families and allow them to invest in themselves. This could easily offer environmental benefits if invested in things like loft insulation, cooking utensils, good quality long lasting items, efficient heating and lighting; all of which require capital expenditure but offer long term benefits. Already we can see that building our narrative around environmental justice has significant political and economic implications.

Another reason that it’s essential to take account of the variable situations we find ourselves in is to encourage diverse political engagement. As one of the fundamental aims of environmental justice, everyone should have an equal voice in determining the decisions which shape their access to a clean environment. Yet those overburdened in their daily life, facing systemic discrimination or without the means to educate themselves on political issues are understandably less likely to be politically engaged or mobilised with the issues that matter.

17 The poor cotton farmer imagined earlier, paid unfairly for their work, does not therefore just have their health taken away but also their capacity for political involvement.

Right-wing detractors of the extinction rebellion protests have called them privileged and middle class, and while this may be due to the reasons discussed, there are other causes too. Historical distrust of the police by migrants or people of colour who fear repression, brutality or incarceration continues to be relevant and while the movement appears to be aware of this fact, it’s essential to remain conscious that not everyone feels safe in a protest, and that everyone does not experience politics equally.

Voter and community engagement are behaviours passed through generations and are therefore susceptible to historical oppression. In an extreme example, the legacy of black lynching in the United States, which was explicitly designed to suppress black voices and prevent their attaining political power, continues to correlate with voting patterns. In another way, immigrants or those without strong roots to a community are less likely to be drawn into national or local politics, and it’s our collective responsibility to nurture a welcoming political environment which encourages everyone to participate. This could take the form of publishing information in different languages, using inclusive wording and imagery, and by encouraging a more diverse spread of politicians.

The participation of everyone in politics, activism and community activities is not just required for environmental justice but is also beneficial for all. While (as we’ve explored) a great many western values do not centre on respect for the environment, other cultures have radically different narratives and relationships with the environment and we would do well to listen and learn, without becoming guilty of cultural appropriation. We are collectively losing a great wealth of

18 possibility by our assumption that traditional western values are superior.

Furthermore, the behaviour pattern of western (white male) supremacy that led to colonisation and the abhorrent slave trade is still alive in a new incarnation which dictates that resources such as land, water and air should belong to whoever can buy them and that the unfortunate global poor should be the ones to suffer environmentally in order to ‘progress’ global society. The legacy of colonisation is achingly clear in tragedies such as the mass exploitation of Brazilian forestry for international export, or in the global trend of overturning subsistence farming in favour of cash crops. A strong case study is Puerto Rico, where the majority of food and energy is imported despite plentiful sun and wind for renewable generation and arable land for agriculture - which is used to produce cash crops for export8.

To address only briefly the essential topic of feminism as it becomes relevant to the present topic; whether by decades of socialisation to act as carers or otherwise, it has been reported that women generally show greater environmental awareness than men. The conclusion follows that a huge improvement to our culture could be realised if women were meaningfully emancipated to equal economic and social status as men (which should be an urgent societal goal anyway).

On the other hand, it’s been reported that toxic masculinity, the cultural norm that asserts male aggressive dominance, is not only affecting both men and women negatively in emotional terms, but also results in the painfully pathetic conclusion that caring about the environment is “girly”. The extreme end of this behaviour trait sees men driving pickup trucks and generally consuming with deliberate lack of environmental consideration, presumably to demonstrate superiority. Clearly, social behavioural changes in society could lead to vastly happier and more sustainable

19 futures; and these can only be achieved by confronting discrimination in all its forms.

We have seen briefly how the poor and marginalised suffer the worst environmental conditions, both nationally and internationally, but looking into the uncertain future there is a more worrying conclusion. We know that climate change and ecological damage will destabilise rainfall, upset crop yields and cause a greater incidence of extreme weather events such as flooding, fires and hurricanes. The first and worst effects of this will be felt by the global poor and marginalised who will not have the resources, support system or privilege of living in a safe location to insulate themselves from harm.

This is already true: the people living on floodplains in Bangladesh know it, the indigenous people losing their home in Brazil know it, those starving from drought and war in South Sudan and Yemen know it. In the interest of preventing further mass humanitarian crises, migration on a huge scale and war over resource scarcity, environmental justice must be at the root of our movement.

There is another moral impetus for environmental justice on an intergenerational scale. It’s an uncomfortable truth that the currently developed countries are responsible for vastly more cumulative emissions than the currently developing countries9,10. The massively significant result is that currently developed countries need to redouble their efforts to achieve sustainability, and that they owe a debt of assistance to the countries suffering environmental consequences they did not cause.

While a great deal of environmental thinking is fortunately intersectional and radical, a similarly large portion of western environmental policy betrays strong remnants of white supremacist thinking. Environmental policy that, for example, works towards the goal of the erosion of foreign sovereignty or the creation of export markets should be

20 strongly opposed. Unfair environmental targets lacking a strong underpinning in environmental justice and remembering historical emissions are often seen as political tools to control developing countries.

An example of this is the way Asian, particularly Chinese, economic development is seen not only as a huge concern to the environment (which it is) but as a justification for western complacency. The hypocrisy of this stance becomes evident with self-reflection on the west's historical pollution, consumption-based lifestyles and national emissions reduction targets which seem centred around offshoring energy-intensive manufacturing to less developed countries.

Just like the working class suffered most from the austerity era of the 2010s after an economic crisis they did not create, so policies built on this fallacious argument would punish the less developed countries who did less to cause this crisis unfairly. There’s a phrase that the “polluter pays” and we mustn’t for a minute let it slip our minds in local, national and especially global politics.

A western perspective that genuinely supported the clean development of the Asian and African countries would not seek to market technological fixes but to share without contract the technology and means to enable a sustainable growth pattern. While the currently developed countries went through horrendously polluting industrial revolutions, we must make sure these countries have the support they need to develop directly into a sustainable model.

a new narrative develops We’ve now traced briefly the environmental crisis from the industrial revolution, powered by Francis Bacon’s outdated views of the environment, to James Hansen’s testimony of global warming. We’ve noted that people see both problems and solutions very differently and concluded

21 that the environmental movement must be diverse and accepting of a great many worldviews. We then examined the concept of sustainability and found it crucially asks us not only to leave no impact on the environment, but to treat people properly as well. Investigating the social aspect further through the lens of environmental justice, we found that a plethora of social inequalities stem from our exploitation of the environment and that neither issue can be solved without unpicking the other.

We can see deep roots of an alternative narrative to the status-quo, one which respects nature as an equal and similarly oppresses no human, which aims to protect the balance of ecology while healing intergeneration inequality.

This narrative has been growing in the mainstream and is in part traceable to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring11. Carson, an ecologist who studied the impacts of pesticides on the environment condemned our ‘shot-gun approach to nature’ and wrote passionately about the importance of ecology: Life is a miracle beyond our comprehension, and we should reverence it even where we have to struggle against it…. The resort to weapons such as insecticides to control it is a proof of insufficient knowledge and of an incapacity so to guide the processes of nature that brute force becomes unnecessary. Humbleness is in order.

Silent spring provoked a resurgence in the desire to reconnect with nature on a more equal, sustainable level; to observe, protect and appreciate rather than collect, forget and destroy. People across the globe are increasingly trying to lessen their personal load on the environment and are asking their corporations and politicians to do the same; this in turn is setting off a chain reaction of societal shifts. Yet it is also recognised by many mainstream commentators that taking individual action to lessen our environmental impacts is not enough. Reflecting the unsharpened but nevertheless potent

22 frustration of the global youth movement, these commentators, such as Naomi Klein and George Monbiot, believe that to reconcile our society with the values of sustainability and environmental justice we need to do far more than make skin-deep changes. Their work challenges some of society’s deepest-set values: Do we need to consume more? Is economic growth positive? Is it fair that some people have so much power? But most of all, they assert that we need to confront neoliberalism.

the problem with neoliberalism I believe there is a massive disconnect between the values we commonly agree on, and with the reality which results from our political and economic system. Capitalism replaced the feudal and later slave-based economic models and while much of the world now lives in very comfortable conditions, the uncomfortable truth is that poverty is not ‘history’ and unjust, unrequired, unsafe or degrading labour is the reality for far too many people. Neoliberalism is the prevailing economic wisdom of our times: When we make reference to 'neoliberalism', we are generally referring to the new political, economic and social arrangements within society that emphasize market relations, re-tasking the role of the state, and individual responsibility…neoliberalism is broadly defined as the extension of competitive markets into all areas of life, including the economy, politics and society.12 Let’s explore our moral values in contrast with those of neoliberal capitalism. It seems obviously unfair, for example, to require someone to do work of a nature, duration or in a condition we would not personally undertake. Likewise, it would be unfair to pay a woman or non-white less, for an equivalent job, than we would a white or male. It would be

23 cruel and manipulative to pay less for work carried out by people we knew to be facing hardship. Similarly, it would be unjust to pay less for work done in developing countries, where we know many people to be suffering. Further, it would be a clear insult to do so, without even apology, when the aforementioned roots of poverty were sown by our ancestors.

Clearly, we would not seek to undertake business which we knew to cause environmental problems.

Yet the established wisdom of business in the age of neoliberalism, or free-market capitalism, is that provided cutting costs is legal then it is not only acceptable but the swiftest route to profitability and success. While every CEO, business owner or decision maker who engages in such practices must know that the source of their actions is the cause of pollution, environmental degradation and social injustice, in a viciously competitive market having morals don’t pay. We all know that the dirtiest, lowest paid and most dangerous jobs go wherever the employee or environment protection legislation is the weakest – the exploitation of the world’s poorest and least powerful people and places is therefore not only the exception but the norm. Unfortunately, while we may disagree with each injustice, we are complicit in the system that encourages them.

Poverty can be, in many places, traced along the lines of political stability (civil or colonial), geographic conditions or fossil fuel reserves. Whether originally forced into submission by colonial powers or struggling to thrive in the face of challenging geographic conditions, what sort of manipulative system would consciously aim to pay the people of struggling lands less for their work? What sort of society, understanding that those oppressed by unfair wage labour will struggle to gain equal opportunity to wealth, would persist with this model, or even entrench it over time?

Our economic system does this. Not only do we seek to buy labour from the lowest bidder (who, naturally, is also

24 the most desperate – whether due to racial discrimination, sexism, historical colonial transgressions, environmental hardship or otherwise), we understand that doing so will be the origin of our wealth and will lead to the perpetuation of inequality.

News of suffering, inequality, unfairness and environmental damage fills me with emotions ranging between sadness, sorrow, deflation and anger. I know that these emotions are shared by many people, those who haven’t submitted a position of mere acceptance of social and environmental injustice. More encouragingly, I believe the contemporary explosion of direct activism and protest across a wide variety of issues demonstrates voracious discontent with the present organisation of society. As Mark Fisher asks: “what if you held a protest and everyone came?”13.

Many people see inherently negative traits in humanity.

They see greed, selfishness, lack of empathy. For these people, our economic system and societal structure appropriately reflects human nature. But the traits emanating from our emerging environmental narrative of sustainability and environmental justice include instead empathy, community and altruism. The cynical behaviours of over-competition, individualism, selfishness and hierarchy promoted by neoliberalism are in direct opposition to the direction we’re heading.

To a varying extent everyone is aware of these transgressions of our society, yet we participate with a sort of indifference or resignation to the reality we find ourselves in.

Ways of dealing with this contradiction abound: acceptances such as “that’s just the way it is”; nihilistic dismissal such as “what’s it worth anyway”; dodging responsibility with “what can you do?”; reminiscence such as “back in the good old days”; poverty-porn like “probably made by some poor Chinese kid in a sweat-shop, ha-ha” or even ironic detachment like “money doesn’t buy happiness”. These mechanisms all allow us to cope

25 with living, working and by extension perpetuating a global societal structure with which we disagree.

The fact that we all witness daily so many societal problems and yet there exists no mainstream political alternative; that alternatives to neoliberalism or even capitalism remain on the political fringe (or in some countries, are completely non-existent) indicates the fog of no opportunity that has descended on mainstream politics.

To progress towards a radically better future built around our narrative of sustainability and environmental justice it seems clear then that we must look also for post-capitalist solutions. The economy, while intangible, is all-too entangled with business and thus the daily fabric of our lives to be ignored from environmental concern. Therefore, while our response to environmental issues must be immediate and urgent, it must not be apolitical but instead engage deeply and constructively with the establishment to foster significant positive change.

what about the wealthy?

While we’ve seen the deep unpleasantness and cynical values that sit at the blackened heart of neoliberalism, we also observed that there isn’t much mainstream political discussion of the sort of ambitious, systemic changes that might fix things.

To simplify the situation significantly, the Oligarchy, or the global wealthy and powerful are the ones that really hold the keys to changing the system. Global inequality is a problem for the majority who are denied opportunity and live with the consequences of neoliberalism, but it is fantastically providing for the top few percent who gain supranormal wealth through their societal standing.

To briefly illustrate the significance of wealth inequality in the UK, some readers may be familiar with the Pareto principle which claims that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. The rule was named after the 19th century

26 economist Vilfredo Pareto who observed that 80% of the land in Italy was held by 20% of landowners. A quick look at ONS statistics14 (which, I wish to remind the sceptical conservative individual I had the pleasure of meeting, is factual data) shows that the Pareto rule estimates wealth distribution in the UK today – the poorest 73% of the population have the same combined income as the richest 27%. In fact, the richest 10% have the same wealth as the poorest 47%. Global wealth inequality is unfortunately far worse15.

Wealth inequality is, fundamentally, not a problem.

While we’ve seen that neoliberalism plainly isn’t working for the majority, and the wealthy don’t seem particularly engaged with developing alternative economic models, salary is after-all how we reward people for their service to society, their talent and their hard work. We know poverty to be both endemic and problematic – but is supranormal wealth also problematic?

When a citizen receives a wage for their work, they are apt to feel they have earned it. As with all things, in capitalism labour is purchased for wages at the market value; that is, the balance between its supply and demand. As such, ability, qualifications and personal qualities all increase a person’s potential to earn. However it is clear that the market does not, among its many failures, fairly trade labour. There are many jobs which all would agree to be extremely arduous and unattractive at the salary they accrue; factory work, labouring and cleaning, to give some examples. Workers in these jobs have little chance of progression, are not well paid, experience occupational hazards and are looked down upon by society. I will allow this to support the conclusion that a great many jobs are unfairly and systematically underpaid.

I hope the reader anticipates that I will make an analogy to the related undeserving of the overpaid. In most examples I can see, persons with supranormal wealth are positioned at points of accumulation enabled by the preceding innovations, infrastructures and needs of the general

27 population. Nobody is therefore fully responsible for creating their own wealth.

The wage entitlement situation also means that people are tolerated taking actions deleterious to the public interest, provided they have the money. Overconsumption and abnormal levels of decadence are waste, but these lifestyles are attainable only by the wealthy. Those who spend money on things they don’t particularly need, believing it to be their right, are actively creating inequality by taking control of and wasting prosperity on their private possessions.

It is also easy to observe that people live within their means, but also in proportion with their means. Therefore, each person earning differently will almost certainly spend in proportion to their earnings. Those earning in the region of a ‘living’ wage will spend their money on little more than subsistence; food, rent, travel and various essentials. While they do not, as previously discussed, have the luxury of planning or prioritising the environment, they will spend far less money on ‘luxuries’.

Those earning greater than a living wage might enjoy better food. A better car. A larger house, more frequent holidays, a bigger TV, the latest smartphone, or any other manner of life improvements. What is important and what is unnecessary is a highly personal decision, but it’s obvious that, at a basic level, those earning more who do not save their additional earnings, also spend more.

Those who have lots of money to spend create markets for high-tech luxuries, which employs talented workers who could otherwise be working for the general benefit. Technology does trickle down, but wealth does not fully; if wealth trickled down like a liquid, as implied by the analogy, the water level would equalise. In our society those with money have a better quality of life, more power and more opportunity to extend both of those things and are therefore always two steps ahead.

28 On the other hand, those with less money are playing a perpetual catch up through a vicious cycle of disadvantage, leading to unfair wage labour, leading to further disadvantage.

Class inequality is passed on in many ways, but whenever one person sells the product of another’s labour at a higher price there is little scope for ‘trickledown’. It is the level of equality in society which determines the general wellbeing of the population, since the cost of living is increased by the wealthy.

There is also a well understood breakdown of the linearity of increased quality of life and wealth. This means that to continue increasing their satisfaction or pleasure, the wealthy must go to ever-increasing lengths to get extra pleasure.

We’ve therefore seen that while some individual wealthy philanthropists may be trying with great conviction to use their societal standing and power to genuinely improve society, there is a suspicious lack of discussion of the political system that permits such distorted wealth accumulation. It was also identified that not only is extreme wealth rarely, if ever, genuinely deserved, but that on a sliding scale, above average wealth brings with it environmental issues.

While the oligarchy does not seem to be actively considering alternatives to neoliberalism, surely the collective movement of the great majority, the relentless activism of the entire environmental movement for the past three decades has been enough to move society towards the sustainable and environmentally just alternative we are thinking of? In fact, why has there been little real progression towards this radically better alternative world?

not everyone wants change Having discussed the inherent fission between wealth and environmental sustainability, the reader might be interested to wonder why our economic system, which faithfully reproduces

29 such stunning levels of economic inequality – which is surely not satisfactory to the majority – is allowed to continue.

This is because the basic structure of capitalism is that wealth can be leveraged to create more wealth through investment, but also because wealth has become nearly entirely indistinguishable from political power. It is obvious to say that the richest people in society have the greatest ability to shape society but when the implications of this are considered that the richest in society, who wish to remain rich, are able to shape society to that goal, the illusion of democracy is shattered.

In the UK, a moderately democratic country, the general public are asked to shape society once every five years by voting (although, it should be noted, the present conditions of two successive unelected conservative leaders and a nearly suspended parliament erodes the sense of democracy further).

The oligarchy, on the other hand, do not wait to be asked to shape society; they do it constantly.

The principle mechanism for this is lobbying. Lobbying is the process of influencing political decision-making by methods other than by voting. It is not problematic at a fundamental level; this text is itself a form of lobbying. Lobbying is however a massive concern for democracy because it’s very effective and to do it well is very expensive. Put in pragmatic terms, the chance this text has of effecting meaningful change is strongly related to the amount of money I spend printing copies, aside from how well written it is. Were my pockets deeper, I might even pay a graphic design agency to give it a professional look, or buy adverts in strategic places. Deeper still and perhaps I could afford to post a copy through every letterbox in the country. At this stage I would have quite effectively demonstrated how simply influence can be bought.

As can be inferred through the business-led destruction of the environment and continuing social inequality, the primary objective of the majority of capitalist companies is to make a profit; perhaps even as much profit as

30 possible. Please indulge me to also conclude that since it is mainstream knowledge that there are dire human and environmental consequences resulting from GHG emissions, each company producing significant GHG emissions from their core business model is complicit in said consequences.

Therefore, polluting companies are knowingly contributing to the problem and have a moral imperative to immediately address the nature of their business.

Yet do any of my readers genuinely believe that moral imperative (the knowledge that ‘what we are doing is contributing to an environmental catastrophe’) is enough to create the shift in business thinking that is actually required? It seems unimaginable, for example, for shell, (who found it necessary to note that ‘we respect human rights’ in their 2018 sustainability report) to determine that their core products, fossil fuels, are so detrimental to human and environmental health as to be unworthy of the economic gain, and to abandon their proved oil and gas reserves (as of 31st December 2018) of 11.5 billion barrels oil equivalent.

Likewise, could it be imagined that a car company would acknowledge the impacts of street-level air pollution and global-level climate change and implore its customers to cycle or use public transport? Or for an airline to suggest its customers consider a domestic holiday. For a fast-fashion company to reject sweatshops, low-quality garments, enforced constant style turnover and sell durable, timeless clothing made responsibly and sold at a higher price.

Instead, it seems that while the profit incentive exists, capitalist companies will always neglect the social and environmental consequences of their business to the utmost legal extent. Improvements in social and environmental aspects within business is only driven by law, and when transgressions become a threat to profit. This is a dire, inhuman situation.

Proceeding now with the conclusion that some, not all, companies will always expand to the most profitable and

31 harmful modes of creating profit, and that the only things that stop them from ever more harmful activities are the purchasing decisions of citizens and the law; we shall return to the topic of lobbying.

Let’s picture ourselves in a board meeting of directors at a multinational corporation with a fundamental business model which exploits people and the planet. Perhaps, we have unfortunately found ourselves buying land from marginalised people around the world, digging holes and extracting oil and gas, and selling it on to be burnt in a variety of ways. Our chief financial officer gives their presentation that stakeholders expect a 4% dividend per quarter and that the company needs to raise additional revenue to pay interest fees on debt from the previous quarter.

Next, the market analyst presents their findings that a new wave of public environmental awareness could lead to a decreased interest in our product as the public realise that burning fossil fuels is rapidly propelling the planet towards irreversible climate crises.

The market analyst also comments that there is an alarming increase of opinion among politicians that our product should be subject to increased taxes and alternatives found for many of our most profitable markets. Our profits could potentially fall and our assets (including oil tankers and drill rigs) could become stranded.

In other words, we might lose a lot of money. The head of public relations clears their throat and all heads at the table turn to listen as they start to explain the actions our company needs to take to maintain our profitability in this challenging market environment.

We are being threatened by two things; public opinion turning against our product, and the risk of punitive legislation against our business model. Our objective: reverse or delay both trends. Firstly, we need to address the root cause of concern against our operation, which is the scientific fact that humans burning fossil fuels is the main cause of global warming. We need to fund scientific institutions which are investigating different theories to provide a ‘balanced’ scientific opinion. We need to fund media outlets and

32 organisations which communicate the science to the public, and make sure that they believe there is still ‘significant doubt’ among scientists as to the cause of global warming. We also need to ensure the public forgets the oil spills and the impending planetary doom our product contributes generously to, and give them something different to associate it with. As such, we should sponsor glamorous racing events and focus on what our product can offer: independence and power.

There is also the growing problem that concerned citizens are organising into NGOs with the political power to openly challenge our business. Using sponsored media again, we will paint the most extreme groups as radicals, anarchists and extremists (think extinction rebellion and greenpeace) to make sure nobody important takes them seriously. In America, using the c-word (communism) occasionally will be highly effective at putting down those who advocate, for example, public rather than private transport.

Next, we will partner with the more moderate groups (think Nature Conservancy, who actually set up drilling in their own reserves) to ensure we have a shared vision – of growth with environmental considerations. If we install a few of our people as executives and ensure we are significant funders of these groups, we can make sure they aren’t too harmful to our business as usual and perhaps steer them towards something safe like conservation.

By giving them the illusion of influence, perhaps we can make some skin-deep changes that will appease them enough to prevent more radical opposition of our business. Finally, the groups who won’t take our donations and who are mainstream enough to grant them broad public and political influence. The most dangerous of all, we should discreetly keep a very close interest in their activities, with a whistleblower ensuring we are always a step ahead of them; ready to mitigate political fallout, prepared to dampen their protests and never caught unbalanced.

Next, the potentially greater risk of hostile political action needs to be fended off. Fortunately, our experienced head of PR has

33 plenty of practice in heading off such business risks. In fact, we need only to decide which of many options to choose. We listen as they explain the fact that politicians and the public alike are best convinced by an argument when it comes from a large grassroots campaign. The fact that there exists no grassroots campaign for the continued extraction of fossil fuels need not be a barrier, as we can easily set up an astroturf campaign with some smart web design and celebrity endorsements. Perhaps it’ll even turn into a legitimate group. Naturally we already have a team polishing our Wikipedia page to make sure it doesn’t sound too negative.

The other type of group that is particularly effective at influencing politicians are think tanks. Journalists often reference or are at least influenced by the reports published by think tanks. Our organisation is a long-time funder of multiple conservative thinktanks with good relations to journalists, and their findings will likely support our interests, perhaps by concluding that taxation on fossil fuels would damage the economy.

To hide the blatant profiteering and self-interested motives behind our lobbying, we could discuss the matter with other similarly motivated companies and set up a lobbying group that essentially advocates policies in our interest, but without it coming from our mouths. Organisation for the Promotion of Appropriate Action on Fuels is a good (fictional) example.

Finally, the chief executive thanks each member for their contribution and asks the head of PR to proceed immediately with their plan, with an astonishing budget. The one caution is to be sure that as little as possible funding be traced back to ourselves. People might rush to the wrong conclusions. And therefore, the meeting is dismissed.

Lobbying has kept the environmental movement on the back foot for the past three or more decades as Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell document in their excellent book A Quiet Word16.

Both James Hansen and Rachel Carson were targeted by

34 vicious campaigns after speaking out so strongly at the establishment, but these are far from isolated examples.

It’s therefore essential that the environmental movement saves no patience for those businesses lobbying undemocratically in the name of hidden, entrenched economic interests. Instead, we must strive to exercise our right to democratically and honestly spread accurate and unbiased information and propose courses of action. It should be common practice for anyone with an influence in the movement (or co-opting our language in corporate marketing) to fully disclose their interests in the interest of transparency.

We’ve therefore explored how the narrative of our environmental movement; with sustainability and environmental justice at its core, deeply challenges neoliberalism and takes issue with wealth inequality. This led to uncovering some of the lobbying techniques which threaten democracy and perpetuate outdated practices and inhibit our ability to unlock the door to an ecologically rebalanced and socially just world.

Now that we’ve begun to piece together the nature of the solution we need, let’s take a long hard look at the solution neoliberalism has given us to see if it’s at all effective: conscious consumption.

the era of conscious consumption The environmental movement appears to be at its strongest ever in many European countries, with mainstream collective demonstrations and protests becoming a new norm.

New desires and outlooks on the world are being captured into everyday conversation and change is certainly happening, but it isn’t largely confronting neoliberalism. We’ve definitely got the attention of the world - but what direction are we changing in?

35 The deforestation crisis in the Amazon under the leadership of the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro has provoked a massive, worldwide, mainstream outcry by the public. People are frightened by the damage to the Amazon, representing 20% of the Earth’s oxygen production, remorseful at the loss of habitat and biodiversity, and angry that Brazilian politicians have allowed this to happen.

But how did it happen? It’s been widely reported that rising global demand for meat has provided too strong a financial incentive for poor Brazilian farmers to ignore; setting deliberate fires to quickly clear large areas of land allows them to transform the once unique and richly diverse landscape into a monoculture in which to raise cattle for slaughter. The crisis has caused a peak of increasingly strong warnings of the impact that animal agriculture is having on the environment, with many significant global organisations recommending that the global North should transition to a plant-based diet to lessen our impact on the planet.

The Amazonian crisis has given those of this persuasion the starkest demonstration of the link between meat consumption and environmental damage yet. It allows commentators to draw a relatively straightforward link between the cause: demand for meat; and effect: the deforestation of the Amazon for cattle land. Many concerned and empathetic global consumers will have been deeply affected by this and I expect it will accelerate the shift to vegetarianism and veganism.

As a vegetarian myself, I am sympathetic to the view and agree that the benefit to environment is clear enough to be worth the relatively easy dietary change. Naturally the issue of Amazonian deforestation is significantly more nuanced than we have explored here, but I want only to talk about the overall trend: ‘conscious consumption’, the brainchild of neoliberalism.

36 Conscious consumption will be familiar to consumers in the UK. Messages such as ‘don’t litter’, ‘please recycle’ or ‘enjoy responsibly’ are omnipresent on product packaging. I believe it has now become a symbol of responsibility and sophistication to separate your recycling well, buy less plastic packaging, buy from the greengrocers even, avoid products with palm oil in (don’t you know it kills orang-utans?).

In the modern era of globalised market capitalism, to be a good citizen you shouldn’t buy strawberries from hothouses, should avoid apples from New Zealand and shouldn’t even look at non-fairtrade coffee. While I believe that a great deal of this earnest worry and careful decision making arises from concerned consumers themselves and need not necessarily be seen as part of a greater ‘plot’, the upcoming era of conscious consumption is both extremely hypocritical and very convenient for those companies which are causing the greatest issues. This moment in time is unique in that public consciousness around environmental issues is increasingly broad; those environmental issues are by most accounts too glaring to reasonably overlook; and ideas can be spread rapidly via social media.

It is often said that the best way to create change in a market economy is to vote with your pocket. What you buy gets made, what you don’t doesn’t. En-mass the public can boycott negative companies and create the change they want to see. There are in fact numerous social-media accounts providing concerned citizens with bitesize pixels of advice about what they should and shouldn’t buy, conjuring continually renewed appal at the fresh lifestyle choices that each person hasn’t yet made. Cotton shopping bags? Wooden toothbrushes? Metal straws? Is this, on a wider scale, an intervention – the distribution of consumption recommendations to consumers – that could fix the issues arising from our consumption?

37 Creating an age of conscious consumption, in which the future of the planet is genuinely defended by the decisions of consumers has a number of barriers. The first challenge is to make sure that everyone (or at least a significant majority) is sufficiently motivated to partake, especially when the alternative is likely to be cheaper or potentially more convenient. Take the example of buying vegetables in the supermarket; it’s far easier (and often, strangely, cheaper) to buy the plastic wrapped bags – although they result in more single-use plastic waste and might be in too-big a portion and therefore result in food waste. To create meaningful change, the citizens in our society of conscious consumption must be very motivated to take the environmentally better option.

The second barrier is the need for clear, unbiased, comparable data on each product and the issues they cause.

Moving on from trivial decisions such as plastic packed food, which customer knows the difference in carbon footprint between cow and soy milk? Between cheese and chickpea?

Between cardboard and tetra-pak? And what if we add in the nuance of the many competing environmental issues which are likely to be traded between – waste and energy, pollution and chemicals, air miles and deforestation.

Now expect the motivated consumer to decide between synthetic fleece and the organic cotton shirt; the local beer or the imported wine; the bread machine or the local bakery; the book or the e-reader. We therefore have to imagine the consumer being so conscious, educated and presumably time-rich as to not only understand the many conflicting environmental (and social) issues relating to each purchase-decision, but to ascribe weightings between them and make a best compromise decision. The consumer, who presumably also understands global consumption trends so as to prevent creating overdemand for ‘sustainable’ options, cannot clearly do this at present; at least not to anywhere near enough success to affect the scale of change we require.

38 Expecting the consumer to understand the consequences of their consumption is difficult. For the age of conscious consumption to work, consumers will need an empathy for all ends of each (geographically and volumetrically) huge supply chain, accounting for all of its twists and turns, complexities which I assert many, if not most, brands do not understand in their entirety for their own products17. And if they did, what sort of skeletons would be found in the closet?

Brands coming forward with transparent information regarding their supply chain put themselves at risk when this is not yet mainstream. We have begun to explore the challenges of lifecycle analysis (LCA) which scientists use to estimate the environmental impacts of a product or decision. It seems then that all products will need to include unbiased, clear, comparable and comprehensive information summarising the environmental and social aspects of their consumption. A sort of “smoking kills” for every product in the free market.

If this doesn’t sound very neoliberal and feels a bit like controlling the market, we are approaching the hypocrisy of the situation. The age of conscious consumption deflects attention and responsibility onto the individual consumer rather than the systemic causes or corporations perpetuating the issues. In other words, it prevents mainstream anger at or organised action against companies and the resulting introduction of legislation, which prevents the market from transgressing into environmentally deleterious behaviour.

The age of conscious consumption and greenwashing will arrive as one and the same. If the survival of the planet depends on the correct purchasing decisions of people like us (you don’t buy Brazilian beef, do you?) the moral imperative to purchase products in-line with our environmental and social values is extremely strong. And yet in a situation where the aforementioned clear, unbiased, comparable and comprehensive summary of product-impact is nothing but a

39 dream in a self-published book, the conscious consumer is left to speculation and extrapolation.

Successfully inferring the holistic environmental and social impacts of a product based on the colour, layout and font packaging, as well as a few carefully selected words is plainly impossible. If a sales team can evoke a vaguely “green” feeling from the consumer by, for example, using the word “farmer”, making a logo with a smiling animal, mentioning some trees being planted or prefixing the product name with “eco” then we are all likely to be further baffled.

Modern marketing and sales techniques are extremely sophisticated, and greenwashing is only the latest trick; a stunning example being the promotion of Heathrow Airport to “Sustainable Business of the Year 2019”. Not all brands pursue such blatantly untruthful marketing campaigns, but until a company is witnessed recommending customers to their closest competitor, I will conclude that a competing, decentralised market will viciously oppose the sort of meaningful environmental labelling scheme we need to make the era of conscious consumption work.

In summary, companies perpetuating a “conscious consumption” approach to solving environmental issues in the absence of meaningful introspective improvement programmes are knowingly pursuing a hypocritical strategy. Those companies which make small-scale improvements to their product and gleefully advertise them to consumers are guilty of greenwashing. Those companies who individually or as part of industry groups lobby against environmental or social legislations are directly opposed to the progress of our movement.

40

what would an environmental economic system look like?

The neoliberal experiment has seen all areas of society ascribed monetary values and be traded on the free market.

While this author doesn’t pretend to agree with neoliberalism, proponents of this model extoll the efficiency, competition and freedom of the market. They claim that free market mechanism will, by a process of much competition, (the “invisible hand” Adam Smith wrote of) meet all of society’s needs in the most efficient manner by rewarding the company that solves each need with the largest share of the market.

The view that human and environmental needs could and should also be met in this way is highly contemporary.

Though the environment is ascribed monetary value only in very arbitrary ways as it offers economic value to us; for example, there exists a market value of a tree or a fish for its sale value – but this value is comprised of nothing else. While a great deal of environmental legislation has worked by imposing taxes on resources such as fuels, in part to discourage their consumption, one piece of governance in particular aims to do away with bureaucracy and government intervention and extend the neoliberal experiment to the environment in a much larger way. If the one thing that makes every company listen is money, and the company that solves the biggest problem gets the most money, why not leverage the profit motive to solve the most pressing problem: how to reduce carbon emissions?

The European Trading Scheme was begun in 2005 and aims to progressively reduce EU carbon dioxide emissions in the most efficient or least disturbing manner; given the many thousands of companies in the EU, this is done by market forces. At the start of the scheme, a carbon budget is set and tokens for carbon emissions are distributed to industries and companies. Year by year, as the number of tokens reduces,

41 companies must either reduce their emissions or purchase tokens from other companies which are ahead of the curve.

The transformation from neoliberalism to a society in which we embed the values of sustainability and environmental justice will require far-reaching changes. Some are clear and comparatively easy: we need metrics and methods of analysing ‘success’, rather than GDP (which just adds up all the money that is traded in a year), which re-centre on more meaningful descriptors of development.

But some of the economic shifts we need to pursue our narrative are huge. There’s another massive paradigm shift preparing to make systemic changes in the name of the environment: the circular economy.

The circular economy has been formally adopted by China and the EU as the future market trading model. It builds on pre-existing areas of environmental thinking such as industrial ecology, industrial symbiosis, environmental and ecological economics, the performance economy, biomimicry, cradle to cradle and spaceship earth. The ultimate goal is to decouple human activity from environmental damage, so we are free to live, work and consume without harming the planet.

The concept behind the circular economy is that, rather than taking materials from the earth, making products with them and then landfilling them, we should reuse the products and their materials forever to prevent resource depletion and ecological damage. Fortunately for memorability all the strategies for doing this begin with ‘r’ and in decreasing order of preferability we should reduce, reuse, repair, remanufacture and recycle our products.

But the circular economy, connecting to the seminal book cradle to cradle’s visions18, goes further and separates materials into two different cycles: the biological and technical cycles. Items we use for long period of time and which require sophisticated design and function, such as appliances and

42 gadgets should be produced entirely from durable “technical” materials such as metals and plastics. At the end of the product’s life, each component or material should be separable to make sure nothing is wasted – going back along the 5 r’s.

On the other hand, a great many products naturally have short lifespans and these, such as packaging, should be produced from biodegradable materials and, as in natural cycles, should offer no toxicity to the planet when returned to it.

We are increasingly familiar with the last strategy in the circular economy, recycling. For decades big business has seen the weakest presence of recycling as justification to make no significant changes to its operation and on the surface it’s started to look as if it could solve our problems. But simmering just beyond the public’s eye recycling was not only failing us but also preventing the sort of developments we desperately need.

The first issue with recycling is actually doing it: provisions are variable across the UK and even more so across the world, and for single use items like a coke can there’s rarely a recycling bin nearby. The next barrier is the widespread confusion over which materials are and aren’t recyclable in each area. More seriously because so many companies just haven’t bothered to design their products to be recycled, a great many items are unrecyclable by the bonding or even mixing of materials or being impossible to disassemble.

In terms of the actual efficacy of the recycling process, all items are finally centrally sorted in part automatic-part manual process, then cleaned and only then does the recycling process really begin. It’s time, transport, energy and water intensive and downgrades plastics and papers. Then came the revelation that the UK barely recycles any of its domestic materials, instead shipping them to less developed countries where corruption makes it doubtful that most will actually be recycled.

43 Recycling is an essential part of living sustainably and can be realised in a far, far better way than it is now. But it shouldn’t be our central strategy, and nor does the circular economy (formally) intend it to be. The uncomfortable truth is that recycling has become the go-to strategy for environmental mitigation not because it’s the most effective strategy, but because it challenges big business to change the least, because it offers new markets to profit in, because it supports the public in adopting the era of conscious consumption. If recycling doesn’t feel like the environmental weapon we need, you’d be right.

The next strategy is remanufacturing. Whether it’s just escaped the minds of innovators or if economics have dictated that it’s cheaper to make products from virgin materials every time, remanufacturing has been more or less dormant in modern industry. The idea is to take back a used product such as a phone and repair, clean, refurbish and preserve every functioning component, replacing only those that are beyond repair (which should then be recycled).

Once the product is restored to new condition it can be sold again; if done correctly (which obviously needs to start at the design stage) a company might save considerably on their costs if the remanufacturing process can be achieved economically. This is the strategy that I believe is set to rework the face of product design and consumption of technology, because there’s a clear business case to supplement the environmental benefits. The producer can reduce their direct costs by relying less on virgin materials and increase their net worth by counting returned products as valuable assets.

In the circular economy a user might trade-in their used items, or might lease them from the start, from the producer. The producer is therefore also responsible for the remanufacture or recycling of their products and is hence incentivised to ensure they are designed in a way which allows this. While we buy a newer version, someone else might be

44 buying our old item with a fresh coat of paint, some new electronics and a polished screen.

Remanufacturing and recycling carried out by the producer changes the design motivations at the most fundamental level. Yes, the product will still need to be attractive to a consumer and it must still be functional. But it will now also need to be designed to be disassembled, to be fixed, to be upgraded. The profit motive shapes the things we buy and the innovations we create by dictating the focus for technology development in design and engineering. Perhaps in this way, we can use the profit motive to radically reduce waste and use far fewer virgin materials.

There’s a great hope for the positive power of this strategy, but we need to ensure this change stays consistent with our environmental justice values. There are very real economic concerns about the sort of business models this paradigm shift could create. Referred to as the “performance economy”, modes of consumption based on paying for services not products are one of the concluding models of the circular economy and renders each individual without true ownership of any products.

The benefits are that an individual with a small income could afford to meet all their needs as easily as anyone else; not needing to purchase costly products. Everyone would be free to use a different service rather than being stuck with a product which, once bought, transpires to be a bad choice. On the other hand, finance models and the mere thought of a laundrette are close enough parallels to raise concern in many people’s minds. These are valid worries and it’s our responsibility to make sure the circular economy isn’t coopted to become a new avenue to exploit consumers.

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big problems, collective solutions It’s looking increasingly like the nature of the solutions we need are as big as the problems we’re experiencing: we’ve seen how outdated values have held back our transition to a clean and just society for all, with the isolating and cynical neoliberal experiment letting deeply entrenched interests get their way at the cost of the suffering of people and planet.

Though it’s uncomfortable to sit in such ‘radical’ political territory, we’ve planted the seeds of a new narrative filled with empathy, opportunity, love for people and the planet and peered through the keyhole at a world where everyone’s needs will be met; everyone will have access to good education and job opportunities; they will have equal opportunity and live a fulfilling life in harmony and meaningful connection with the environment.

By building sustainability and environmental justice into our narrative we’ve seen just how entangled social and environmental issues are, and have come to understand that the thought processes that caused the climate crisis are the ones that prevent real action against inequality and poverty.

We’ve seen that these thought patterns: unbalanced trading, reducing everything to monetary value and ‘me-before-you’ mentalities (among others) are not just permitted but are at the centre of neoliberalism. Is it any wonder we have a crisis?

While we’ve had to dive deep into the problems with our society and barriers to our progression, we’ve also learned a lot about the nature of the solutions we need. The most important finding is that, in stark comparison to neoliberalism’s preference, we’re going to need to work together on a massive scale, motivated not by profit but our vision of a better future.

This is because: •

Environmental issues occur on a variety of scales and while they can be local they can also be global. Environmental

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•

•

issues therefore transcend the individual and effect everyone The cause and effect in ‘trans-local’ environmental issues are often experienced by different people, potentially very far apart Many of the environmental issues we are experiencing are very complex and addressing them is extremely difficult and often unprecedented

Working together isn’t the only change we need though: right at the start we saw how the crisis has been brewing for decades, centuries even; periods of time that we struggle to focus on. Indeed, politics and much of business is rooted in short-term thinking, with a five-year-plan being on the ambitious side. While we must act immediately, the essential values of sustainability and environmental justice require us to learn an empathy for past and future; a long-term vision that western society does not currently have. The reasons for this are: •

•

•

•

The time delay between environmental cause and effect is sometimes very large (on human scales) and thus we require an empathy for people and place in the future Future generations have an equal right to a stable environment, and we should take our responsibility to maintain the environment very seriously, not only for our sake but for theirs.

The climate itself responds to changes slowly, and therefore all actions need to be made and defended of a long period of time In the Anthropocene, humankind will probably (unless through unmitigated Malthusian crisis) always continue to possess the power to destroy the planet. Our societies will

47

•

have to ensure this doesn’t happen for as long as we continue to exist The significance of our challenges requires investment in solutions that will be so large as to take a long time and much resilience to bring to fruition

So, added to the values in our green narrative, a patient and collective society looks best prepared to deal with the climate crisis we are faced with. Indeed, Naomi Klein documents thoroughly how collective societies deal far better in times of extreme stress by working together19. To some people this will sound worryingly like a call for ‘command and control’, communism and state bureaucracy, but if one theme has run through this discussion it’s that democracy, representation and fresh thinking must be key to our political system. Much as nature regenerates itself each autumn, yet grows stronger each spring, our politics must be constantly renewed – but why should this renewal be combative, oppositional and destructive as with the politics of parliament?

Can we not move to a mature, constructive and honest framework; one which better represents the diversity of beliefs and backgrounds of our country and which relegates populism and the far-right to the past.

There’s another practical reason the environmental movement should care deeply about proportional representation and creating a politics of empathy and understanding. The increasingly imminent future will feature more and more resource scarcity and unpredictable weather.

Perhaps the most worrying by-product of these huge shifts is that increased migration and hardship will lead to conflict.

Resources will need to be defended (or acquired) and people will flee from difficult conditions: whether these frightening results of the environmental crisis can be pre-empted or dealt with well rests largely on the sort of politics we create. Will we work hard to prevent environmental crises? Will we be

48 there to help countries struggling with environmental hardship?

While in times of significant crisis conservative politics often takes hold and closes the borders or mobilises the army, in a hugely uncertain future in which environmental tumult and human struggle may be a new norm, without working together to solve the root causes of the problem we could (globally) be launched into catastrophic conflict. And, plainly, global cooperation cannot be achieved when each country is more interested in game theory and their own interests than genuinely working together to solve problems. Globalisation has let us interact with the world through communications and trade. It’s time to create a model of globalisation that doesn’t just want to exploit cheap labour (and export emissions), but actually wants to move forwards.

While looking at economics we found glimpses of opportunity for the environmental movement: the circular economy has gained traction in the last few years and its five strategies: reduce, reuse, repair, remanufacture and recycle our products give us a helpful hierarchy of ‘consumption’. Yet we saw how capitalist thinking has most readily accepted recycling: perhaps because it is consistent with the individualistic era of conscious consumption that neoliberalism is so keen to promote. We saw how the ‘every little helps’ view of global problem solving has deflected attention away from systemic flaws and slowed the introduction of radically more impactful solutions.

If we forced business and economics to reconnect with the circular economy as originally conceived: a strategy for reducing material and energy consumption, we would start to see massive improvements: no more sub-optimal solutions designed to profit, no more products designed to become obsolete, no more technology that dies far-too-soon and can’t be fixed, upgraded or even disassembled. No more preying on

49 consumers’ insecurities to promote fast-fashion or all-manner or unnecessary items. It’s obvious that we need less of the things that don’t make our lives better, and that there’s a lot of that ‘stuff’. As Greta Thunberg says, we need to ‘hit the brakes’ and ‘pull the emergency lever’20.

In fact, the changes we need to see to realise the best the circular economy can offer us are entirely consistent with our narrative so far. Many academics, myself included, have written papers acknowledging that the circular economy requires much greater levels of cooperation. Furthermore, we must move from reductive definitions of economic or business success like GDP and profit or loss in the absence of human and environmental factors. What would an economy that aimed not to increase profit but instead happiness, equality or sustainability (New Zealand, for example, has recently adopted a metric based on ‘happiness and wellbeing’) be able to achieve?

By moving the goalposts in this way we have the opportunity to make our economic system work in the general interest, rather than purely for shareholders and the wealthy.

We could shift away from the hollow aspiration to wealth and excess, dreaming instead of community, diversity and a reconnection with ecology.

But most significantly we need robust and ambitious legislation to promote the best strategies in the circular economy and prevent environmental damage – Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market has been far too invisible on environmental issues for the past three decades and it’s time to see what the hand of the people can do. This has to be structured not to penalise the poor, but instead to ensure that the cheapest, best option is also the sustainable one.

Another big economic trend is ethical investment, spearheaded by the divest/invest movement. As investors, community organisations and pension holders around the world wake up to the realisation that their savings are supporting things incompatible with their personal values,

50 there is a great shift away from the neoliberal market’s vision of trade. This considered withdrawal of support for individual companies is, I believe, demonstrative of the desire for an economic system that doesn’t reduce the world to stocks and shares.

It’s worth mentioning that while we need radical and swift economic changes, there are local economies wholly dependent on environmentally deleterious practices. One lesson learnt from contemporary events in the USA is that people want and need work first and foremost - to prevent unemployment in such areas there should be strategic investment in alternative enterprise. Similarly, countries dependent on tax revenue from fossil fuels and extraction need to restructure tax carefully to prevent a renewable-induced reduction in public earning and spending.

After discussing such significant developments of our economic and political systems, what direction does work itself need to go if we continue to be guided by our narrative of sustainability and environmental justice?

Work is essential, not only because it provides people with an income with which to meet their needs, but for development and fulfilment. I believe however that the principles of marketisation and complete division of labour are not consistent with the values of our green narrative. We saw already how those in unpleasant or exhausting jobs are not fairly compensated for their contribution to society – instead they are paid the least and looked down upon. They also have no chance to develop their skills and thereby ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’.

In line with the value of equal opportunity and respect for all, wage labour must therefore be somehow ‘demarketized’ – that is, not be determined by supply and demand and thus no longer seeking to match the worst job to the most desperate person. Instead, in a world in which we aim to have

51 no desperate people at all, the ‘chores’ of society would clearly have to be far more shared21. But going further, moving away from the complete division of labour, where so many people work in extremely narrow roles, would also follow from our narrative. By encouraging broader participation, greater mandatory training, empathy for the work of others and the rejection of class snobbery and prejudice, so much progress towards the essential values we have discussed could be made.

Far from being an idealistic suggestion, in connection with our desire to strongly promote those strategies of the circular economy which oppose waste and excess, I believe that a highly effective strategy for doing so is to involve more of the population in work relating to production and the environment. Because who would consume excessively, promote fossil fuels, produce waste or ignore the myriad causes of environmental damage if they were involved in the production of products, aware of the problems and engaged in the environment?

Relating specifically to technology and science, the progression of multidisciplinary and collaborative work is perhaps even more sensible than in other professions. Such sharing of ideas is often the starting point for great innovations and it seems entirely possible that, while at present each individual sees only the field into which they have been trained, by breaking down barriers between disciplines the loss in specialism could be more than compensated for through greater insight and inspiration. Similarly, though we need global experts in challenging scientific avenues, we need to encourage a more participatory model of public outreach such that widespread scepticism of climate change cannot persist.

Is it daunting to uncover the need for such radical changes to society? Does the population have the desire for such big change? I believe that the environmental movement is at a departure point: no longer marginalised, no longer quiet.

52 We are intergenerational, everywhere and inspired. We are being honest about the problems and ambitious with the solutions. No more do we accept being asked to sit and wait for a sustainable society: we are active and engaged in moulding the future we want for the benefit of all.

Thank you for reading this booklet! Please share your views, comments and suggestions for future publications with @thinkslowactfast (Instagram) or thinkslowactfast@mail.com.

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