Prosperous Sustainability

Introductory Series Post #7

In earlier posts I have put forward what I think should be the vision, purpose, and Major Goal of the Climate Movement: to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances the wellbeing of everyone and everything.

So what do I mean by prosperous sustainability?

Sustainability is talked about as a “normative” concept. “Normative” is a word scientists and social scientists use, spoken dispassionately, with a sense of this being a descriptive process, as if labeling and tone somehow explains, somehow tames, somehow contains.

But, of course, normative is not really descriptive in the sense of scientists simply describing reality. Some scientists and social scientists may wish it were so, because otherwise they are on unfamiliar ground not of their own choosing where they are no longer experts. And so they label sustainability “normative” and quickly move on and change the subject.

Of course, science has an indispensable role to play in helping us understand what needs to be done, including helping to shape how we go about doing it.

But normative declares what should be done. By giving us facts and findings, science helps us understand what we need to do to achieve what we should do.

With “normative” what we’re talking about is a moral concept. “Normative” is a way to say moral without sounding moralistic, to say it with an objective-sounding label to cover over something beyond the purview of science and social science.

But let’s be honest: obscuring what it is does not help.

Discomfort is understandable. It can get rather messy. Who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong?

Well, we are. We simply make our case.

And that’s what I’m going to do, make a case for what we all should be striving to achieve; not simply describing what is, but saying what ought to be. Whenever you hear the words “should” and “ought” check your surroundings and get your bearings; you’re in the land of morality.

For the Climate Movement that’s a good place to be, because we are a moral movement! It is one of the two most important factors providing us the power to bring about change (the other being our numbers). We’re not shy about saying how things should be. That’s why we exist! Our moral passion-power make it possible for us to become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world.

Simply put: what we’re calling for is the right thing to do; our cause is just as we strive to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better, the three, desires, demands, and actions of justice.

This points out that we are not calling for any old prosperous sustainability — but a just and prosperous sustainability. I’ve already talked a bit about justice in previous posts, and much more will be said about hope and justice in its own series. For now it is good enough to simply recognize that two of our Movement Values — justice and sustainability — are related. In fact, sustainability is a form of justice. (What are our “Movement Values”? Stay tuned!)

Early on, when folks began to discuss what they termed “sustainable development,” it was mainly about “resources,” specifically natural resources. Future generations should not be denied the natural resources they need because we piggishly gobbled them up. Sustainable development was about a less-bad world where the future had as many resources as we do in the present — or, as some would argue, substitutable resources, basically undercutting the entire project. That’s because in this substitution scheme when we start to run out of something, as the ever scarcer resource disappears we find something comparable to substitute in its place.

But many of us are not satisfied with this way of looking at things. Many of us don’t want to think of the rest of nature simply as a bunch of “resources” for human beings to use up, to consume. And furthermore, the Better Future Covenant says we don’t just want a less-bad world for children and subsequent generations. We want a better, more beautiful world.

Photo Credit: Jim Ball

What we want is a relationship of balance and harmony between humanity and the rest of the natural world — that is what both are due.

Sadly, climate change, and the related massive extinction of other creatures we are bringing about, just may be the biggest examples of disharmony yet. With climate change we’ve pushed the rest of nature out of wack, and it’s pushing back. Climate change is our wake-up call.

To help us achieve such balance and harmony it will be helpful to no longer think in terms of civilization versus nature, civilization over against nature. We want to see human civilization as what it has always been — a part of nature, because we are a part of nature. (That’s why I say “the rest of” the natural world, to recognize we are a part of it.) We may be distinctive in that we have much more power over the rest of the natural world than other creatures do. It is that power that has brought us to the climate precipice over which we now stare. So now that power needs to be guided by both the relevant science and our values as we work to reset the relationships we have with the rest of the natural world — to establish justice for the rest of nature as well. (I will have a post on justice and nature in my forthcoming Hope and Justice Series.)

But why have I used the adjective “prosperous” to modify the word sustainability?

I use it to help people understand I’m not talking about an imposed scarcity, or about asceticism and the denial of what most people want, or about freezing in the dark, or about banishing fun. Quite the opposite. And I’m certainly not talking about a future that takes us back to a supposedly simpler life in some idyllic past that never existed, a future that eschews technology. As I will briefly lay out in my next post on what I am calling the Four Catalytic Sources of Transformation or the Catalytic-4, the accelerating rate of technological change or ARTC is one of these sources and a key way we are going to achieve balance and harmony!

And, most importantly, I’m not talking about imposing upon the majority of humanity something that impedes them from climbing out of poverty. Once again, we are striving for a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

We want sustainable economic progress that lifts everyone into prosperity as we simultaneously create balance and harmony with the rest of the natural world.

I’m talking about flourishing, about a future where all our basic needs are met, where we are free to be creative, free to deepen our human relationships and our relationship to the rest of the natural world because we are striving to be in harmony with it. I’m talking about having lots of fun, but fun that leads to fulfillment.

So prosperous means flourishing that leads to fun and fulfillment.

In such a world we have designed technological solutions to help provide the good life in a way where our footprint on the rest of the natural world is small enough to allow it to flourish and become all it can be. In this sense, we want the rest of the natural world to be prosperous as well.

Thus, we are striving for a better life that is not contingent upon ever-increasing consumption and depletion of “natural resources.”

Some here such talk and think we’re against “economic growth” and all the legitimate benefits it has brought. They equate unsustainable economic growth with prosperity; they see them as one and the same. This is another framework we must move beyond to a better way of understanding what helps us create the good life.

I am pairing up “prosperous” and “sustainability” to help us move beyond this false choice, this false either/or, one that denies we can be both prosperous and sustainable at the same time. Rather, instead of unsustainable economic growth we are talking about sustainable economic progress.

But more than that, we’re talking about the fruits of such progress, a progress where economics is simply a means, not an end. But progress towards what end? Towards the flourishing of ourselves and the rest of the natural world. Now that’s progress.

Prosperous means people having plenty of healthy and delicious food they enjoy, a clean and healthy environment, nice homes that are warm in the winter and cool in the summer, reliable clean energy to power our sustainable lifestyle, work that is meaningful, and time to be creative and enjoy the good things in life. Prosperous means we are all flourishing.

All of this enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. It is what we are all due, and thus what justice calls for. As such, prosperous sustainability is a form of justice.

Some will scoff and say I’m talking about pie in the sky. Well, we won’t have a chance to taste this pie if we don’t try! Such criticisms and potshots are easy. How about joining us to see just how much we can achieve together?

Moral visions are meant to have us reach for something. We may not get it all, but in the striving we create a better, more beautiful world. Our moral vision puts us on the right path, in this case one of justice and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and the rest of the natural world.

And that’s what I mean by prosperous sustainability.

Part of the good news here is that every step towards this vision gives us hope, a hope we make happen — vision-hope and action-hope working as one. Together, we will make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful as we make our future come faster.

Remember to check out the earlier posts in this Introductory Series.