I’ve been thinking about Claire Short reproaching you, during her resignation speech, for being concerned about your place in history, and am writing to tell you that I was pleased to hear it. It makes me think that you will do your best to make the right decisions for the good of our country and the world at large.

Saddam Hussein, I have heard, was also concerned about his place in history, but apart from being a brute, he was also a very stupid man with an appalling warped view of reality. He thought he could impose his vain view of his place in history on the Iraqi people by force, because he had the power to do so. But the moment his power was gone, so was his vision of history. What a pathetic figure he looks now. One could almost feel sorry for him, if it were not for all the suffering he caused.

In contrast, you know, I am sure, that your place in history will be judged more-or-less objectively by scholarly historians, whereby your success will depend to a large extent on your (and your advisors’) view of reality.

My view of reality tells me that we are on course for disaster, because our economy (including many of the values, attitudes and aspirations on which it is based), is non-sustainable. It depends on perpetual growth, which on a planet with limited resources, a finite carrying capacity and 7 – 9 billion human inhabitants (most of whom, once they can afford it, will want their own car (more than one if they have the money) and to fly in an aeroplane whenever they wish), is simply not possible. Already Earth is groaning under the strain that the demands of just a billion or so affluent people are placing on it.

But instead of facing up to the limitations of living on a finite and vulnerable planet, we are ignoring them and attempting to achieve the impossible, which in this case is not a bold thing to do, but foolhardy and irresponsible in the extreme, since it can only lead to climatic, ecological, economic and social disruption of catastrophic proportions in the decades ahead.

I know how difficult it will be for you to take me (my view of reality) seriously when probably all your advisors will assure you that I’m crazy. Perhaps I am – but that is what most people thought of Aristarchus and Copernicus when they suggested that Earth was a wandering star (planet) which spun on its axis while orbiting the Sun, instead of being stationary at the centre of the universe, which was an obvious and unquestionable fact to almost everyone else.

It is always easy with hindsight to distinguished the crackpots from the geniuses (in 20 years time most people will realise that my view of the world is not that of a crackpot), but in the meantime it is very difficult.

It took me many years to appreciate just how revolutionary the “Copernican Revolution” actually was, because for generations it has been taught and taken for granted; so much so that we find it almost impossible to image how anyone could have believed anything else. The idea of Earth being stationary at the centre of the universe now seems absurdly naïve to us, but only because we are the heirs of centuries of accumulated scientific knowledge which is instilled into us from birth. If we hadn’t been taught it, we would assume the obvious, as most people did up until and well into the 17^th Century, which is that we are at the centre of the universe, around which everything else revolves.

You cannot really teach appreciation; it has to be cultivated. But, unfortunately, very little time or effort is given to cultivating an appreciation of the knowledge we have. Perhaps this is because there is so much of it we don't know where to start, but I think also it is because we are so busy increasing, teaching, learning, testing and applying - to great effect, both positive and negative - what we know. In a sense, partly because of our growth-dependent economy, we are addicted to it, a bit like someone who eats compulsively (as I know from experience). We have to eat, of course, we depend on it, but like any compulsion, it is not healthy for us and can cause considerable physical, mental and emotional suffering.

Cultivating an appreciation of what we eat (know) can help us overcome our compulsive behaviour. Learning to appreciate the Copernican Revolution is particularly important, not just academically, but because of the light it throws into the darkness we are in at the moment, not in respect to the physical sciences, where now there is so much light it is difficult not to be dazzled, but in respect to the “social sciences”, particularly economics, and where these intersect with the earth and life sciences.

Most people, of course, do not realise that in some important respects we are living in a dark age, any more than those who believed in the Earth-centred Ptolemaic system did; and most economists will defend the authority of what they teach just as doggedly as 17th Century Catholic theologians defended their teaching against the Copernicans. 

There are just a few of us, who you might call the Copernicans of 21^st Century economics, who realise just how seriously flawed our present economic system is, because of its inherent inability to facilitate the creation of sustainable conditions on board our very large, but nevertheless finite and vulnerable planet, Spaceship Earth.  In 400 years time my draft model of a sustainable socio-economic system will probably seem as imperfect as Copernicus's heliocentric system does to us now. Nevertheless their central truths remain: In the case of Copernicus, that it is the Earth that moves, spinning on its axis and orbiting the Sun rather than remaining stationary at the centre of the universe, and in my case, that man must create the framework for an economy and lifestyles which are subordinated to the demands of sustainability and justice on our finite planet, rather than allowing an economy based more on man's animal than human nature to drive us along an unsustainable path to disaster.

Whether someone believed in the Copernican system or the Ptolemaic system in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries was fairly academic (provided they didn’t shoot their mouths off about it in the wrong company, as Bruno and Galileo did) and had no consequences for normal everyday life. In fact, it was only of any real interest to philosophers, astronomers and those who simply wanted to know the truth (or defend their own monopoly of the truth from it, as many clerics and theologians did). The present situation in respect to economics is very different. It does not concern lofty philosophical thoughts about cosmology, the physical nature of the universe and our place in it, but the mundane survival and well-being of our species. Far from being academic, it is a matter of life and death, if not for ourselves, certainly for today’s children and coming generations.

It is frustrating for me knowing just how difficult (perhaps impossible) it is for you and others to understand what I’m saying. Unlike the Copernicans in the latter half of the 16^th Century, I don’t have all the time in the world to convince you of the correctness of my view. We are racing towards catastrophe and everyone around me seems to be deaf, unable to hear my warnings.

TO BE CONTINUED