To:    Comment at the Guardian
Re:    Stepping outside the box to take a look at the "Sustainability Problem"
Date: Monday 6 November 06

In response to the Guardian article, "It's hard to explain; Tom; why we did so little to stop global warming" by Madeleine Bunting and one of the comments attached to it

Link to article and thread at The Guardian.
 

1st Post

 
"It was a classic illustration of how denial works. The only way to maintain sanity when living in the shadow of this dam was to ignore it. That just about sums us up in 2006, Tom - the scale of what lay ahead was simply too vast" - and terrifying! Thus the very strong inclination for us to keep our heads buried in the sand.
 
It is not easy stepping right outside the box - of a world we are totally immersed in, familiar with and dependent upon - but when you do - even if it's just for a moment, as I have managed to do, before being sucked back in again - many things become a lot clearer. Allow me to offer an anthropological perspective and explanation of our seemingly hopeless situation.
 
We are "prime apes" (if you will excuse the pun), in fact, Earth's "Greatest Ape", whose behaviour evolved over millions of years to serve its survival, "in family groups", in the natural environment. It has had no time, however, to adapt to the much larger social units of civilisation, so it is no wonder - although narrow self-interest prevents our leaders from seeing or admitting it - that we have got ourselves into such a terrible mess. Just take an honest look at the state we are in, at the history that got us here, and where we are heading!
 
The other thing you can recognise from outside the box is that the natural environment (which included other, rival, groups of humans) has effectively been replaced by an artificial "socio-economic environment", which - naturally enough, in view of our origins - is deeply rooted in our animal nature, which free-market capitalism has developed and been honed to take full (and thus such effective) advantage of.
 
It is in this artificial "socio-economic environment" that we now struggle for survival and advantage, which explains why we persist in giving priority to economics (the household of man in the socio-economic environment) instead of to ecology (the household of the planet in the natural environment), when it is obvious (were we not blinded by familiarity and dependency) that medium and long-term human survival demands the opposite.
 
The question is, are we JUST animals? In which case our situation is hopeless.  Or is there more to us? Is there a, perhaps "divinely inspired", part of us, that can recognise and get us out of this situation, by creating an alternative socio-economic order (environment), rooted, not in our animal nature, but in our more "enlightened", human nature?
 
 
2nd Post
 
bellairs1, the point you make about the need to curtail (I'd say, ban) the advertising that is driving our unsustainable (and, except for our growth-dependent economy, totally unnecessary) consumption is a central one, and adds weight to my argument (above) about our economy being "inherently" unsustainable.

That is easily said, I know, when besides our total immersion in and dependency on it, the sheer magnitude of the Problem makes it extremely difficult (for most people, impossible), too terrifying, to face up to.

The default response is to keep one's head in the sand - which is what our politicians have led us in doing for the past 30 odd years. Only now, the brewing storm is beginning to shake our windows and rattle our doors, so that even with our heads still in the sand we cannot help realizing that something not good is going on out there.

Either we can wait until the approaching Hurricane (and accompanying tsunami) hit and sweep us (or our children) away, or we can lift our heads out of the sand and take stock of the ACTUAL situation. There may still be time for us to save ourselves - and, even more importantly, surely, to save our children and grandchildren.

More in the same vein at http://www.spaceship-earth.org