Different Problems, a Common Root
We must address the root cause, and not merely the symptoms of our environmental and social ills.
Everything is interconnected. Our lives consist of a network of interwoven actors and institutions and systems in direct or indirect relationship with each other. And often times, if you look past the surface, you’ll find common root causes to seemingly different issues.
Yesterday, Grist reacted to outgoing President Obama’s final press conference, observing that he seemed to be reprioritizing his key post-Presidency issues. Grist noted that whereas Obama had previously indicated that he would make climate change a key area of his work after he leaves the Oval Office, Obama now seemed to be lumping “air pollution and climate change” in the “normal back-and-forth, and ebb and flow of policy.” He distinguished those issues from another set of more pressing issues that threaten the “normal functioning of politics” and our “core values,” such as systematic discrimination, obstacles to voting, the silencing of our free press and forced deportations.
In Obama’s apparent shift in stance, Grist laments that the outgoing President may not be as interested in reserving his legacy on climate action as earlier indications may have provided. Grist’s disappointment is understandable. Hopes were high in the environmental community that Obama would continue to build on the groundwork he has laid during his presidency to further strengthen domestic and global climate security. The echoes of my former trees-first-people-second self can certainly relate.
Yet, who can blame Obama? We have witnessed what seems to be a systematic dismantling of public trust and accelerated erosion of public institutions over the past 18 months (although arguably for longer), from mass shootings to acts of egregious policy brutality to the sustained and incomprehensible assault of minority communities, our free press and our Constitution writ large. If that does not call for a reexamination of priorities, I don’t know what would. With the fragility of our democratic foundations in clearer focus than ever before, it seems Obama feels the need to shift gears.
But does he really?
If you will set aside your personal religious beliefs for a moment, I’d like to point out the wisdom of Pope Francis, who wrote in his groundbreaking 2015 encyclical Laudato Si:
We cannot presume to heal our relationship with nature and the environment without healing all fundamental human relationships [119].
Here, Pope Francis is not necessarily arguing that people are more important than trees. He goes on to explain:
Our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than romantic individualism dressed up in ecological garb, locking us into a stifling immanence [119]….We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature [139].
Pope Francis sees a direct connection between the way we treat our environment and the way we treat our fellow human beings. He is not the only spiritual figure to draw such connections. The Dalai Lama has written:
In this century we have seen enough war, poverty, pollution, and suffering. According to Buddhist teaching, such things happen as the result of ignorance and selfish actions, because we often fail to see the essential common relation of all beings. The earth is showing us warnings and clear indications of the vast effects and negative potential of misdirected human behavior.
I’d frame it in a different way —
Many social and environmental ills are actually symptoms that share a common root problem — a political and economic system governed by rules that fail to dignify human and non-human life.
This will be a recurring theme that I will continue to explore in future posts. In an important essay, James Gustave Speth and J. Phillips Thompson III make the case for the alliance between green groups and civil rights groups by observing:
One can begin by asking: What is an environmental issue? We’d say that an environmental issue is any issue that affects environmental performance. When answered that way, environmental issues must include our failing political system and the erosion of democracy; the pervasive economic insecurity that paralyzes political action; and the materialistic, racially divisive, and completely anthropocentric values that dominate our culture.
With that understanding, it is not a bridge too far to see that environmental and social problems share the same root cause — a political economy based on extraction, exploitation, and wealth-hoarding of the powerful few. Adopting a “systems thinking” perspective, this conclusion should not be surprising — our political and economic system is a complex system consisting of varied and numerous relationships amongst citizens, families, communities, corporations, and social and government institutions, each operating under certain rules. These rules are typically established with certain goals in mind, goals that are determined sometimes democratically, sometimes not.
As a part of what Obama called the “ebb and flow of policy,” such goals sometimes get clouded over time. We lose sight of what is important, or special interests co-opt certain rules to their benefit, at the expense of other the well being of human and non-human life. Perhaps Obama has the correct intuition, but it is unclear if he, or anyone else we have entrusted in public office, is really connecting the dots and taking a systems thinking view to tackling root causes. But it is imperative that we as citizens do, otherwise we’d simply be trying to alleviate symptoms (like climate change and socio-economic inequality) and merely fiddle at the margins rather than undertake the deep transformation needed to create a sustainable society conducive for the flourishing of human and non-human life.
Our call to action now is to (1) articulate a new vision and goals of what we want our political and economic system to achieve*, (2) systematically unpack the current system and its rules and measure where they fall short, and (3) determine and undertake a course of correction, transition and change.
Please join me in this journey.
* I’d suggest the dignifying of all human and non-human life as an aspirational starting point, but I am well aware this needs to be further expounded, discussed and distilled.
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