Circular Economy
We need a new economy.
In addition to income inequality, there’s another thing which is terribly wrong about our economy: it’s addiction to growth.
By now, we’ve all heard the ecologist maxim on how “infinite growth of material production in a finite world is an utter impossibility.” We all witness the abuses and devastation that an economy geared on endless growth is producing on our natural environment. And yet our governments and media keep repeating, almost every day that passes, how their top priority is economic growth. Growth, growth, growth. Numbers are all that really matters, they say.
Since the Industrial revolution, global GDP has been growing at exponential rates. Along with it, global population and per-capita consumption have also been growing exponentially.
About 50 years ago, the unsustainability of such exponential growth patterns started to became evident to economic analysts. A 1972 UN-commissioned report to the Club of Rome titled “The Limits to Growth” stated:
“If present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.”
In other words, the myth of infinite growth was only a bubble that will burst sometime in the next decades. Given the current economic paradigm, there’s no way human civilization can avoid a violent systemic collapse in our lifetime.
But an alternative exists. The report continued:
“It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future.
The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential. If the world’s people decide to strive for this second outcome, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater their chances of success.”
50 years later, the alternative is not yet mainstream.
The UN — the closest we have to a planetary authority — has indeed adopted some eco-friendly terminology in their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda for 2030, but their plan lacks a comprehensive transitional strategy, keeps dealing with each problem as a separate issue instead of looking at the larger picture, and often ends up mistaking a mere symptom for the problem itself.
For example, most of their sustainable economy models are focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions (water vapor, CO2, methane, etc.) in order to revert their infamous warming effect on global temperatures. But even if it’s true that we must shift from an fossil fuel-powered economy to a renewables-powered economy in the shortest time possible, why focus only on the temperature change? It’s a bit like trying to cure a fever by applying an ice-pack on the forehead.
This mindset leads to agreements like that of Paris, where our dear leaders pledged to “limit the temperature increase to +1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels instead of a projected +2 °C increase above pre-industrial levels”. That doesn’t sound like a measure aiming to solve the problem, only a desperate tamper solution which can at best buy some time and delay the inevitable disaster! Such an approach is perfectly useless.
What we know since the 70’s is that all major global questions are inter-linked. In Indira Gandhi’s words:
“Pollution is not a technical problem. The fault lies not in science and technology as such but in the sense of values of the contemporary world which ignores the rights of others and is oblivious of the longer perspective. The only real alternative is a cooperative effort on the global scale to deal with to the entire spectrum of our problems, because Life is one and the World is one, and all the questions are inter-linked.
The population explosion, poverty, ignorance and disease, the pollution of our surroundings, the stockpiling of nuclear weapons and biological and chemical agents of destruction are all parts of a vicious circle. Each is important and urgent but dealing with them one by one would be wasted effort.”
For ecological problems we need a holistic approach, which means the answer doesn’t lie in battling with a symptom like temperature, but in addressing every aspect at once and getting to the root cause of the disease. After decades of irresponsible procrastination our civilization is truly on the verge of collapse and needs to be reset. We’re not going to save ourselves by focusing on half a degree more or less, but by changing the way we live: our habits, relationships, organizations, laws and ethical values.
Economy means “management of the home”. Since it’s now obvious that planet Earth is the common home of every human being and that our species is part of the larger family of life — the biosphere — our economy must evolve accordingly, and adapt to the new worldcentric paradigm that is emerging from an interplay between the fields of biology, ecology and systems science.
In the presentation of his new book ‘A Systems View of Life’, Fritjof Capra explains:
“As the twenty-first century unfolds, a new scientific conception is emerging. It is a unified view that integrates, for the first time, life’s biological, cognitive, social, and economic dimensions. At the forefront of contemporary science, the universe is no longer seen as a machine composed of elementary building blocks. We have discovered that the material world, ultimately, is a network of inseparable patterns of relationships; that the biosphere as a whole is a living, self-regulating system. […] Evolution is no longer seen as a competitive struggle for existence, but rather as a cooperative dance in which creativity and constant emergence of novelty are the driving forces. And with the new emphasis on complexity, networks, and patterns of organization, a new science of qualities is slowly emerging.”
The current neoliberal economy is still based on the outdated theories of Neo-Darwinism, which viewed life as a mere “struggle for existence” where a bunch of selfish individuals are constantly competing against each other over the scarce resources available.
According to Daniel C. Wahl, in order to move from the old to a new economy we must shift our underlying economic narrative from competitive scarcity to symbiotic cooperation:
“If we want to re-design economics based on what we know about life’s strategy to create conditions conducive to life, we need to question some basic assumptions upon which the narrative underlying our current economic systems is built. The narrative of separation has predisposed us to focus on scarcity, competition, and the short-term maximization of individual benefit as the basis on which to create an economic system. Life’s evolutionary story shows that systemic abundance can be unlocked through collaboratively structured symbiotic networks that optimize the whole system so human communities and the rest of life can thrive.”
Our goal as a movement can be summarized by this Buckminster Fuller’s quote:
“to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”
We must reinvent our economic system from scratch and create a new economy that is in service of all people and the planet. Each sector of this new economy must be integrated in a circular, regenerative framework that stabilizes the depletion of non-renewable resources by maximizing sharing and recycling while minimizing waste. The new model must incentive local bio-economies and provide a platform for global coordination and cooperation.
To start with, the WAM will provide an online forum for new economists, ecologists, systems thinkers, ethical philosophers and the like to confront their ongoing projects and learn from each other. At a second stage, we will create and distribute apps for collaborative decision-making to bring our work to the operational stage, while we organize real-person gatherings and events.
When we actually have a viable alternative model ready to use, we will move onto the testing phase, where we will test the new economy between ourselves, and then start scaling it gradually. Finally, we will start collaborating with the existing institutions to define a 21st century transitional roadmap for shifting the world economy towards the new model.
Feel free to leave any comment or question below, and join the discussion on the dedicated forum.
Also in Coop Network:
- Distributed Web — Common internet infrastructure
- Mutual Credit — Smart contracts platform
- Universal Welfare — Ethical incentives program
Other WAM! publications:
Life Tribe
A new humanity
Conscious Forum
A new consciousness
Eden Planet
A new world
