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Needed: The Solutions Generation
The Arab Spring and now the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are indications of growing unhappiness with the state of the world, especially among the younger generation. As Paul Krugman has pointed out,1 Americans are finally getting angry at the right people—the financial and corporate elites who currently govern the United States and have caused the ongoing crisis. Anger and protests can be effective at bringing the current system into question. But they do little, by themselves, to lead the way to a better future. For that we need a compelling shared vision and a focus on solutions.
In 1776, a group of rebels had such a vision: a government of, by, and for the people. Notwithstanding their rather narrow definition of “the people,” this shared vision had profound implications and helped solve some fundamental problems of human well-being—by spreading participation in governance to the population and rewarding intelligence, hard work, and innovation.
A protestor with Occupy Wall Street in New York City in September 2011. (photo: Francisco Daum)
In 1945, the fundamental problems concerned rebuilding the nations devastated by the Great Depression and World War II. The vision that emerged from the baby boom generation involved a focus on built capital, economic production and consumption, full employment, and an expanded middle class. The “great acceleration” that began at that time, largely driven by the consumption of oil and other fossil fuels, had profound implications and helped solve some of the significant challenges of the time. But single-minded pursuit of this vision also created a new set of problems.
In 2011, our fundamental problems include the vast gap in incomes within and between nations, the ecological limits we are exceeding or approaching (climate change, biodiversity loss, etc.), the peaking of global oil production, the deterioration of natural and social capital, and the consequent threats to human well-being and sustainability that all of these imply. What we need now is a new vision and a generational commitment to finding real solutions. The “Solutions Generation” needs to think outside the box to create a vision of a better, more sustainable world for themselves and their children. They will have to design new technologies, new institutions, and new societal norms in order to get there,2 including new political and economic systems that can create shared prosperity without increasing demands on a finite environment.
This cannot be a top-down corporate or government vision. It must be built and it must be shared. If anything, it will be “bottom-down” decision making—an approach that reflects the needs of the vast majority of the people, not just the economic elites.
Probably the most important element of this new vision will be a refocus on the goal of sustainable human well-being instead of maximizing conventional economic production and consumption (GDP). In 1945, GDP was the limiting factor to improving well-being. Now we know that continued global growth in production and consumption in the developed countries is not sustainable. It is also not desirable in that it provides only marginal improvements to societal well-being in the rich countries. As many have noted, including Tim Jackson3 and the Sarkozy Commission headed by Joseph Stiglitz,4 GDP is fatally flawed as a measure of progress, and we desperately need new measures of well-being. We know from both the latest psychological research and from ancient wisdom that well-being and happiness depend on the appropriate balance of assets and opportunities. These include those supplied by marketed goods and services but also those supplied by social and natural capital. It is clear, for example, from the work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett,5 that countries with big income gaps have higher rates of a range of social problems, from crime to imprisonment to shorter lifespans. The existence of greater income gaps makes building social capital harder, and that ultimately leads to lower societal well-being. Likewise, it is clear that natural capital provides a range of ecosystem services that are hugely important but largely unrecognized contributors to sustainable human well-being.6,7 These services include everything from maintaining a stable climate to producing soil and water to providing spectacular and inspiring views.
We will have to create a new vision of societal goals and the technical and institutional solutions necessary to achieve them. This vision will involve a better understanding of what actually contributes to human well-being and sustainability. It is a huge challenge that will require a generation to accomplish—the Solutions Generation.
Many groups and communities around the world are already involved in building this vision and developing real solutions. There are far too many to list, but here are a few:
- Transition town movement, www.transitionnetwork.org
- Great Transition Initiative, www.gtinitiative.org
- Solutions journal, www.thesolutionsjournal.org, and our sponsors and partners, www.thesolutionsjournal.com/SponsorsPartners
- Wiser Earth, www.wiserearth.org
- Center for a New American Dream, www.newdream.org
- Portland, Oregon, Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, www.portlandonline.com/bps/index.cfm
- Sustainable Cities International, sustainablecities.net
It might be worth pointing out, in closing, that nature operates with a subtle dynamic between competition and cooperation. In “empty world” times of resource abundance, competition is favored. The great acceleration powered by abundant fossil fuels favored individualism, competition, and greed-based capitalism. The coming “full world” will favor cooperation and networking. We can now, as a global society, communicate, network, and cooperate as never before in the history of the planet. It will be the great work of the Solutions Generation—Gen S—to use this new capacity to envision and build a better, more sustainable, just, and prosperous society within the planetary boundaries of earth.
References
- Krugman, P. Confronting the malefactors. The New York Times (October 6, 2011).
- Beddoe, R et al. Overcoming systemic roadblocks to sustainability: the evolutionary redesign of worldviews, institutions and technologies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, 2483-2489 (2009).
- Jackson, T. Prosperity without Growth (Routledge, New York, 2011).
- Stiglitz, JE, Sen, A & Fitoussi, J-P. Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up (New Press, New York, 2010).
- Wilkinson, R & Pickett, K. The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2009).
- Costanza, R et al. The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 387, 253–260 (1997).
- Ecosystem services come of age. Special issue. Solutions 2(6) (November-December 2011). www.thesolutionsjournal.org.
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23 Comments so far
Show AllThe name 'Transition' implies whatever is being fostered is only temporary. I joined a Transition group in our town. Then I set about researching just exactly where the idea came from.
I found it odd that 1000's of towns worldwide attempting to come up with solutions to modern excess were arriving at the EXACT SAME SOLUTIONS...complete with manuals and mandates.
From what I understand, Transition Towns are not spontaneous, grassroots and original as it might appear. Transitions Towns are a part of a United Nations program called Agenda 21. This is the same United Nations that supports genocidal wars instigated by NATO and refuses to recognize the state of Palestine, etc,.
Agenda 21 has many goals, such as drastic reduction of world population by any means, reduction of mobility for the common person, centralization of power, and the loss of local and national self-governance to European technocrats, all in the name of sustainability.
Group Think at it's worst. To be a Tranny you need to wholehearted believe, the end of the world is near, oil is running out, the globe is warming and the only way to stop it is to give up your freedom and pay taxes to European technocrats.
:P
Hmmm. You're not the same person who, when running for governor of the state of Colorado last year, criticized Denver's highly popular and successful bike-share program ("B-Cycle") as being a "United Nations plot to take away our freedoms"?
If so, I've got a boxful of tin foil hats to sell you. Just have your people call my people.
I went through the Agenda 21 document and found nothing like that (although the bureaucrat speak makes it quite unreadable and annoying). Could you give me a few examples? Maybe start with the population control stuff because that's what I'm most interested in.
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_05.shtml
some woman,
Please investigate your claims more carefully; nearly every statement you make is not only completely wrong it is demonstrably so, and very easily, at that. The Transition Town Movement started in 2004(?) in Totnes, England and Kinsale, Ireland. It has spread through grassroots organizing, has nothing whatever to do with the UN and is sustained by all, but inspired by Rob Hopkins, the writer of the Transition Handbook (new edition out this week!). It is about communities becoming more resilient, locally interdependent, functional and prosperous. Oh woe is us! What dastardly, devious goals!
Anyone who thinks a global takeover plot could start with making every town and city more independent of government, corporations, large food, power, and other systems is not....um, fully conscious...shall we say?
You have apparently been lied to about giving freedom away etc. The only threats to freedom are the ongoing intensifying right wing security states and what happens if lack of preparation for peak oil and climate catastrophe cause people to be willing to trade what little freedom they have left for a little more illusory security (which actually turns out to be giving up security too, as we already are doing without Habeas corpus and the right not to be kidnapped, tortured and killed by the US government.) You're on the wrong side, sumwoman.
To find a solution, first, recognize that the current form of money, Legal Tender, is severely flawed,
http://theformofmoney-mammon.blogspot.com/2011/10/form-of-money-treatise.html
and then consider alternate forms of money.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/6/21/3015861.html
Sumwoman writes... "To be a Tranny you need to wholehearted believe, the end of the world is near, oil is running out, the globe is warming and the only way to stop it is to give up your freedom and pay taxes to European technocrats."
The end of the world is near if we don't end up changing course lickity split. Oil is definitely running out and just as importantly the globe is warming up at an unprecedented rate. These are givens. Giving up your "freedoms" is a vague and misleading term. Which freedoms are we talking about? The freedom to buy an SUV and burn infinite amounts of fossil fuels without a care in the world? The freedom to let my neighbor starve while I wallow in abundance and preach to the have-nots about my inherent rights to do as I please? Or how about he freedom to speak my mind even it includes demanding that my listeners shut up or suffer the consequences? A more accurate account of Agenda 21 would be the surrenedering of a few rights for the collective good. A concept known as 'shared sacrifice in the cause of the greater good'... something vary alien to the American political landscape, does not necessarily equate with the trampling of our basic rights and freedoms. As for "paying taxes to European technocrats", should we be paying taxes to American billionaires instead (as we're currently doing!) or perhaps shelling out our taxes to export them to corrupt governments of the third world? When examining exactly where tax revenues come from and where they end up is quite telling in the grand scheme of things. In the U.S. the majority of taxes are generated from property taxes (which are paid and distributed at the local level), income tax (which is paid to the Federal government and sometimes the State government) which comes overwhelmingly from the working and middle class and is redistributed to the welthy via generous contracts to a handful of corporations and by sales transaction taxes that are also collected by Federal and State governments and redistributed to the same elities. The UN gets paid a pittance from the U.S. (the only developed country that is continuously in arrears in their UN contributions) for their operating budget which would explain its reluctance to let the US lead the charge in solving the world's economic and environmental challenges.
Currently I would argue that the US is but a shell of democracy with some superficial lip service paid to our Blue Rights (The right to assemble, right to free speech, etc.) and a non-representative government that demonizes Red Rights (the right to food, shelter and healthcare). At least in Europe there are pockets of society in which egalitarian principles have been effectively implemented at all three levels of government resulting in a far more equitable and happier existence of its inhabitants.
A transition to a better society will require universal cooperation meaning shared sacrifice as well as shared benefit. While the UN is not perfect, the US is at least partly responsible for the UN's lack of resolve. America's persistent attempts to undermine the UN's legitimate goals by withholding funds, vetting popular UN resolutions (i.e Palestine, landline reform, nuclear disarmament) appointing corporate friendly psychopaths to high level UN posts (i.e. Bolton), demonizing the International Court and manipulating the UN council to its own narrow purposes, it is no wonder that literally anyone can find criticisms of our only world governing body. But without a legitimate world governing body, no practical solution to our current crisis of human survival can be achieved.
Costanza gets a lot of things right. There's nothing wrong with analyzing the details of his article for consistency and accuracy. He is speaking the language of change and seems to better understand the nature of 21st Century change that most other writers. Personally I would like to hear more from him.
Costanza got almost nothing right. He glossed over the contributions of the 1776 generation. The contributions of Jefferson, Madison and Adams cannot be dismissed in favor of more "hope & change". One might start with a careful reading of the Bill of Rights. Any worldwide socio-economic movement will inevitably require totalitarian control, which will erase those enumerated rights.
The term "of the people, by the people" was not found in the writings of the brilliant men who established this Republic. Individual liberty is core to the beliefs of our founders. Costanza attempts to spin history and minimize the loss of liberty which is necessary to the fullfillment of his brave new world. His solutions are those of a simple minded government aparatchik. His solutions are patentedly tried and discredited.
IMO, The OWS doesn't have enough pragmatic planners/organizers to survive in the US. Cold weather and snow will shut them down faster then the oakland PD. Maybe I'm wrong, but judging by the direction of online discussion (focusing on politics and injustice) rather then logistics, I believe this to be the case.....
Wow. We're not asking much of the young folks, are we? The Wall Street occupation suggests they may be up for the task.
Thanks for this Robert. Transforming the United States into a Threefold Republic is a Solution will call for the devotion of a generation: https://picasaweb.google.com/TraverseTravis/ThreefoldAmerica?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCJnVgYbWs7TzaQ&feat=directlink
All that piece needs is an appropriate song to go along with it, 'The Old Guard' by Anti-Flag. The sentiment is the same and is on point: the sooner the Boomers fade from the scene, the better.
After reading this article and the comments I am even more concerned about future generations. Put a"name; to something, "blame" someone for it, "produce" data to backup the idea and SHAZAM we have ANOTHER crisis!!
Do we as humans actually think we have that much impact on the planet? Perhaps locally , yes. But come on, how long do we have records for temparture? Compare that to the time the earth has been here and it doesn't mean a thing, amounts to a fraction of a percent snapshot.
Stay out of my wallet, I earned what I have, that is the it is supposed to be. nobodty owes you anything except and even shot, NOT an even outcome.
Semper FI
"GDP is fatally flawed as a measure of progress, and we desperately need new measures of well-being."
The most relevant message to convey at this point is not that the GDP is fatally flawed, given that most people have little training to recognize a better alternative.
The most relevant message is that people have far greater capacity to know than conventional wisdom pretends. We need to focus on this message because if we don't, then the "new" measures the author conveys will be same as the "old" measures, eternally flawed, invented by the elites as yet another mode of oppression, the new boss, same as the old boss.
So instead of "new" measures of wellbeing, we need specifically measures that serve the people's better interests, UNIVERSAL EQUITY/JUSTICE. So a different word, like "populist" measures. It may be difficult to swallow, but I suggest we learn how. And we know we can, because we have shoved aside those other messages to get to the most relevant message of all: The people have far greater capacity than the thug elites will allow. USE THAT CAPACITY.
We, all of us, can dance around what's wrong, what needs to be changed and how bad things are but limiting ourselves to venting is only going to drive us crazy. We need, we have to have, a third party. The two parties we have are bought and paid for. We know it and they know we know it, yet nothing changes. Check out the Senate vote on closing oil companies tax loopholes.All of this anger, angst, rage,etc.in the name of the 99% will be for naught if we can't accomplish real change, not just swapping parties, but real change. There could not be a better time than now. Starting a third party is not an easy task, the incumbents have seen to that, but it is at least as easy as amending the Constitution and perhaps easier. Don't just occupy, get petitions signed. The movement can focus on an issue all can agree on. We fight about a platform later. Now, just get petitions signed. Respectfully, I would like to nominate Eliot Spitzer(D), and Shelia Bair(R) for the top spots either way. I would further suggest a name for the party, The 99%'ers.
I'm curious about the nice sounding words in this article. "Solutions" for one. It seems to me what is being discussed is actually subsidizing problems, not actually solving them. If you need to keep paying to solve a problem, it's not solved.
Second the nice sounding idea of 'cooperation'. Has very nice connotations. But again, I know 'cooperation' as meant here is not actual cooperation. In actual cooperation, if someone isn't interested in your offer, plan, or idea, they just say no thank you. That's the end of it. No legal sanctions, no need to move to escape same. I don't think what is desired here is actually cooperation. I'm betting it's more like coercion *called* cooperation. The test is....does this 'cooperation' require enforcement by the State? If it does, it's not cooperation and it shouldn't be called cooperation.
The small number of comments and the sometimes terrible low quality of the comments confirm my impression, that any here publicized piece, which even remotely expresses the necessity to change our personal lifestyle will be ignored, ridiculed, or scorned.
It is of course far easier to join an open air party than to work diligently by 1. learning new skills (studying engineering, mathematics, biology for instance), 2. by organizing local networks, 3. by setting up small workshops to produce for the local economy, 4. by changing to gardening and farming.
Just to name a few of the myriad of possibilities for creative ("out of the box") thinkers.
An economic system is basically a network between the participating individuals and the system will only change or be replaced if a significant number of the participants change.
Utter bullshit. These are absolutely not "out of the box" and "creative" possibilities, these are in fact the standard, cliched quasi-liberal "individualistic" non-solutions to societal problems.
As for your constant fucked up allusion to "open air parties", don't be such a patronising asshole, especially seeing how you aren't exactly too knowledgeable even about the basics. Quite a few nice things you take for granted are thanks to "open air parties" like that - because there are loads and loads of large issues that simply can not be solved incrementally (as incremental solutions always need to be compatible with the current overlying economic system), only by larger scale social change.
"An economic system is basically a network between the participating individuals and the system will only change or be replaced if a significant number of the participants change."
Ugh. Jesus Christ. This is a half-truth that ignores the single most important issue: you know, the material "tools of production". Have you ever heard about that? No idea if your ignorance is intentional or not, but you certainly should read up on this stuff before spouting crap. Start with the Capital maybe.
Thank you, Robert Costanza. For years I have been frustrated by the touting of the GDP as a barometer for national health. Your article is helping me articulate why. The last paragraph, about nature, competition and cooperation, is something that everyone should agree on. I appreciate your insights.
I highly recommend to all "The Fourth Turning" by Neil Strauss and Steven Howe. They trace Anglo-American history back to the 15th century, and see it as being comprised of 80-90 year cycles in which four generational archetypes emerge to deal with the circumstances of each of the four "turnings". The "solution generation" Constanza refers to is their anticipated "hero" archetype, the last being the GI or "greatest" generation of the 30's and 40's. According to the authors (and keep in mind they wrote this back in 1995 with eery accuracy as to what we are now witnessing), we are entering a fourth turning, or "crisis"(winter) stage that comprises the last years of our current "Saecumlum", the approx. 80 year cycle. Go back 80-90 years you find the Great Depression and WWII; 80 years before that, the Civil War; 80 years before that, the American Revolution; 80 years before that . . . on it goes. What's happening now is a bit late according to their time-line, but nonetheless on schedule -- delays often mean increased trauma of transition, like an overdue baby or earthquake. Anyway, go to the website, it's fascinating.
The solution is a change of mind-set and our non-sustainable life-styles in the West, which are now imitated by China, India and everybody in the world, while dissing US for it ;-)! The Wall street abuses are a result of people letting politicians into position of power, without fulfilling even minimal civil duty of voting! People have a government that they deserve and in US the Voltaire statement that "democracy is counting of noses" may have played a major part in failure of the economic system where greed and growth are considered a good thing.
Since Earth is limited economic growth, as measured by classical economics is a false indicator of well being of ANY nation and should be completely abandoned by the "deciders". The best solution IMHO is to live off the grid and derive all the energy and water one needs for survival from the energy (solar and wind) and water that falls freely from the skies. I have been doing for the last 2 years and enjoy better health than ever before and have no utility bills. When we abandoned large grids of electricity and water works, we will regain power both energy and political: Thus diffusion of power collection is a pre-requisite of sustainability.
The next step is to replace all internal combustion engines with electric motors powered by batteries that are rechargeable from the roofs of the vehicles and roofs and back yards of our homes where we collect photovoltaic and wind energy. When we wean yourself off the grids of energy and water, the large corporations will become irrelevant their their obscenely compensated CEOs will have have to find some useful thing to do since there will be no need for their services. All other suggestions are useless as we had witnessed in the last 19 years since publication of Agenda 21. Israel is on the way of becoming the first country with ZERO CO2 emissions. India, with all its sun energy and wind and water from Himalayas could be second. Both of those countries are democracies, unlike some others that have oil and are keeping the world hostage to their ideology of hate ;-)!