Choosing sustainable growth opportunities | more

We have to be realistic. Building an ecological future is certainly a socially determined choice. This is also a necessity. But this is only one choice among three likely paths:

1. A green path to economic growth leading to ecological improvement;
2. Business as usual and emerging mitigation and geoengineering efforts;
3. Taking a path of no growth and economic contraction as the only viable tactic for survival on an ecologically impacted planet.

In this article we will consider path number one, the ecological development strategy, and its dynamics, strengths and challenges. The pursuit of a green future can be summarized as follows:

• Making the price system send clear signals regarding sustainable development, thus becoming a guide for entrepreneurs when making investment and production decisions, and a guide for consumers when making purchases. What is sustainable will be cheaper, gain market share and be more profitable.
• Replacing all income taxes with green consumption taxes, such as a green value added tax or a system based on assessments of green sources, sinks and environmental impacts, to send clear signals to production and consumption.
• Building efficient continental-scale renewable energy networks based on local renewables and the essential high-voltage direct current (HVDC) networks that can replace all the fossil fuels and nuclear energy that will power our factories, heat and cool our homes, and power our vehicles . -Implementation of a global production system with zero waste and pollution, managed by industrial ecology, in which all products of one process become raw materials for others. Transforming agriculture towards sustainable practices replacing conventional, high-energy, toxic chemicals and soil-damaging agents.
• Making forestry a sustainable domain for habitat protection and restoration and long-term economic productivity.
• Develop a coherent global framework to equitably transfer assets and information from rich to poor to help finance and strengthen the global ecological transition through a system of small scale assessments for sustainable energy production, agriculture and forestry. -The use of sustainable resources can be approached in a similar way to the Norwegian Petroleum Fund, which should be reinvested for further sustainable development, as well as the ESA “Ecological Quality Assessment: A Framework for Reporting Ecosystem Quality and Their Dynamics Based on Reference Conditions”.

The profound nature of sustainability

If the pursuit of sustainability is a guide for fundamentally transformative action to build a green future, we need to consider issues such as the profound nature of sustainability in the ecosphere and its importance for transformative change. Sustainability is more than just a trendy business. Sustainability in the ecosphere acting as a fundamental co-evolutionary force. Sustainability is the process in which life responds to all influences in ways that shape the ecosphere to maximize the prospects for life, and in which life evolves in response to these changes in a continuous process of co-evolution, cybernetic feedback networks of signals and responses. Sustainability is the force that has enabled life to survive periodic mass extinctions and then flourish. This is the force through which human consciousness and the movement for a green future are now becoming part of a rebalancing and healing response to the consequences of human-induced mega-pollution on planetary and geological scales. Will the evolution of the Anthropocene lead to an ecological future or will it follow a path of self-destruction? An ecological growth system in response to existing mega-pollution conditions. It is a manifestation in the 21st century of billions of years of sustainable development and co-evolution of the ecosphere and life. Sudden and non-linear change resulting from ever-increasing pollution, leading to negative, dire ecological consequences, may alternatively be a path to sudden and dramatic healing social and political change. Healing ecological social change can and, I believe, will happen very quickly and suddenly. Both of these efforts are intended to help guide the coming environmental reform.

Historical context

Historically, there is good reason for optimism, as the ecological turn represents a healing response to industrial excess. The ecological future reflects an imperative that is consistent both with the need to refrain from self-destruction before it is too late and with historical processes of excess leading to healing change. This dynamic of healing response to excess often requires increasing scale and complexity to solve existing, unsolvable problems. The global ecological growth system will follow this path both as a healing response to mega-industrial pollution and as a great global expansion of complex networks of ecological market actors expanding trade, relationships, economic activity, self-management and customized production. Looking back, we see a European world ruled by absolutism, aristocracy, and the Church at breakneck speed gave rise to the Enlightenment, the industrial and political revolution, democracy, chattel slavery for industrial input, mechanization, high technology, mega-pollution, imperialism, globalization, world war, global corporation and global finance, new wave of democratization and global cyberspace. Looking to the future, an ecological system of global growth is a logical step towards recovery: it means a future that is not smaller, but bigger, different and better. Its aspirations include ending global poverty and replacing the global war system with a peaceful one.