Economic development, the climate wall and the human factor. Part 3: the living world
“Go take your lessons from nature, for that is where our future lies”
- Leonardo da Vinci
The current globalised capitalist model is leading us into a dead end in environmental (E), social (S) and governance (G) terms. It is this firm belief that we elaborated on in the first two parts of this letter. Simply relying on different governments to work together to change this dynamic is not realistic. The task is too daunting, as it requires not only resistance to lobbying but also consensus among many states with conflicting interests. Such an approach would also entail calling into question the habits of everyone who accepts the model as it currently stands, since it provides them with a level of comfort that exempts them from challenging their own opinions. On the other hand, simply hoping that technology will come to our aid allows us to remain in the comfortable mindset of “let’s not change anything, they’ll figure something out”. This is a tempting yet dangerous gamble because it results in us sidelining our freedom while we wait for the miracle of technology to come and save us. We concluded our previous letter by saying that the only possible way of steering our economic system towards a more sustainable model was to adopt an approach that entails moving beyond the division of knowledge, rethinking our relationship with the living world and putting the human factor back at the centre of the economic equation. The effort involved is considerable but necessary, because making only slight changes to our economic system will not be enough to avoid the dead end our current model is leading us into. To clarify, when we refer to adopting a more sustainable model, we are talking seriously about preventing the collapse of our civilisation, as we are at a pivotal moment in human history. The economic model presented to us as the only path to prosperity and happiness is failing us to such an extent that it is threatening the survival of humankind.