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Gus Speth ’64 writes “Essays from the Edge”


Gus Speth

Gus is publishing a new essay series “Essays from the Edge.” This web page contains all the essays published so far:

Gus is a fellow at Vermont Law School and a Distinguished Next-System Fellow at the Democracy Collaborative. A former dean of the Yale School of the Environment, he also co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, was founder and president of the World Resources Institute, and served as administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. He is the author of six books, including the award-winning The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, and Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment.

How to Lose Average Americans

by Gus Speth

July 9, 2024

I confess. One thing I do enjoy about today’s politics is Jordan Klepper’s Daily Show interviews with Trump supporters. Visiting Trump rallies, he ties them in knots of contradiction, inconsistency, and inanity. [See an example.] It can be hilarious, and I smile and shake my head. But after a good dose of this, I worry that I am being condescending. There is humor here, for sure, but also pathos. I should not be laughing, though in Klepper’s defense he tends to choose victims who are as game as he is. Still, what is happening, the reality that Klepper lampoons, is distressing and profoundly sad.

Trump has supporters of many stripes. There are the rich looking for even lower taxes, the energy barons looking for the end of “climate nonsense,” the suburbanites and country-club types who can’t imagine voting for a Democrat — the so-called traditional Republicans.

My concern here is not these predictable folks but the huge number of Americans who are drawn to Trump because they are hurting. Millions of Americans who have gravitated to Trump believe they have been screwed by the system and not helped by the Democrats, especially not by their early and fulsome embrace of globalization and easy acceptance of job loss.

In much of this, they are not wrong. Across a broad front of national life, the American economy and our politics are not delivering good results for average citizens or the poor. The documented truth is that the conditions of life and living in our country are deplorable for half our people or more, with almost all measures of public well-being behind other upper-income countries. That is one of the main things fueling the widespread political disaffection in America today. When combined with extraordinary wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority, the unsurprising result is widespread public anger and resentment.
And so we come to recent polling results. This is from a New York Times news story back in mid-May. "The findings reveal widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the country and serious doubts about Mr. Biden’s ability to deliver major improvements to American life. … Nearly 70 percent of voters say that the country’s political and economic systems need major changes — or even to be torn down entirely."

And more recently on June 15 the Washington Post opined: "Polls suggest that several of Mr. Biden’s core constituencies — young people, Black people, and Hispanics — are increasingly Trump-curious. … For the disaffected, Mr. Trump offers the promise of radical change. In the Times poll, these ‘tear-it-down’ voters — some 15 percent of registered voters — prefer Mr. Trump by 32 percentage points. For anti-system voters, what could be better than a candidate who promises to destroy that system?"

The mind reels. So many questions swirl to the forefront. 

How, in the first place, did Democrats, and progressives generally, allow the welfare of average Americans to stagnate and decline? Aren’t Democrats supposed to be looking out for the little guy? The conventional wisdom is to decry the reality that the Democrats lost close touch with working people, the non-college-educated, and those in rural areas. There is truth there, but I think it is too easy merely to say that the Democrats lost sight of these Middle Americans.

The deeper truth, I believe, is that Middle Americans and the poor have been leading hard lives for decades because of the nature of the economic and political systems in which we live and work. Those systems prioritize many things, but the wellbeing of average citizens is not one of them. The American polity and economy are thoroughly skewed in favor of production, profit, and power at the expense of people, place, and planet. Yes, the Democrats failed to deliver, but even when they had some power, they were quite constrained. The critique of our failed and failing political economy could take forever; I have written two books on the need for system change in America.  But much of it is summed up by Peter Barnes in Capitalism 3.0: “The reason capitalism distorts democracy is simple. Democracy is an open system, and economic power can easily infect it. By contrast, capitalism is a gated system; its bastions aren’t easily accessed by the masses. Capital’s primacy thus isn’t an accident…. It’s what happens when capitalism inhabits democracy.”

Here is one thing that happens when capitalism inhabits democracy. Capitalism’s growth imperative puts our politics in a straightjacket, narrowing and constricting available political choices and giving real power to those who have the finance and technology to deliver that growth.

The Democrats did have a chance for real progressive power. Way back in 2008 David Sirota wrote a prescient book, The Uprising, about the nascent populist revolt then becoming visible. “The activism and energy frothing today is disconnected and atomized,” he wrote. “The only commonality in it all is rage.” That rage, he saw, could threaten both major parties. If they played their cards right, the Democrats were the natural beneficiaries of the gathering storm, and the natural leader to make it happen was a new senator from Vermont named Sanders. That now seems like a distant pipedream. Sanders almost gained the Democratic nomination for president in 2016; that he didn’t is one of the great historical mistakes in our politics. I believe he could have beaten Trump.

Our system of political economy has greatly narrowed policy options, and Democratic leadership has not been willing to challenge the system. Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have all been establishmentarians unwilling or unable to pursue the paths opened up by Bernie, though Biden has been a definite improvement over his Democratic predecessors.  

Here are two data points that further help to explain today’s politics and the progressives’ failure to deliver for average folks. Between 1973 and 2020 the private sector unionization rate in the US declined by two-thirds, from 25 percent to 8 percent. And today US military spending is about half of discretionary federal spending. In other words, half the pie has already been eaten, and average Americans have been greatly weakened in the slicing up of what’s left.

And, of course, Trump and the Republicans have exploited the Democrats’ failure. Sad to say, there is good evidence that in today’s politics it can help to be unscrupulous and shameless. For years, what average Americans have been fed for their pain by Republicans, Fox News, and others is a diet of lies and misinformation, now to such an extent that a close cousin of brainwashing appears to have occurred. Trump and the Republicans have skillfully exploited the mother lode of latent American prejudice, fear, frustration, and racism, including blaming the immigrant for a host of real and imagined ills. To the Democrats’ credit, they have not been willing, for the most part, to stoop to the level of fabrication and demagoguery of Trump and his allies.

Who could have imagined that an uprising against established wealth and power would eventually be captured by, of all people, Republicans led by Donald Trump?

My last question, then, is what is to be done?  Millions of voters are fed up, and Trump, as the Washington Post notes, “offers the promise of radical change.”  As I said, Trump is eating progressives’ lunch. The Democrats should be reaping the political benefits of the 70 percent of voters who believe serious changes are needed in our economy and politics, but it is Trump at the table. Something must change. I think we probably all have ideas.

Here is one suggestion. I wish the Democrats and allied progressives would develop a highly visible, attractive, and bold program to offer the American people. They should unite behind, and actually fight for, a half dozen programs of real change addressed to America’s challenges: income security and social justice, climate change, democracy and civic rights, foreign policy and immigration, education and health for all, and tax and economic reform.  We need deep changes in these areas, and a political strategy for pursuing each. A powerful vision and a path to realize it are essential. Perhaps initial steps toward such an approach are still possible for 2024.

In developing such a plan, it would benefit the Democrats to look at the policy ideas that Bernie has put forward in books and platforms. And others have also put forward useful ideas.  It would help too if we could get over our “not invented here” syndrome and start looking around the world, where problems we face are often being dealt with better. If I were young again, I would consider a new policy research center — Good Governance Globally (GGG) — that would examine and call attention, in the spirit of comparative governance, to what is working well around the world. I would ask Michael Moore to be honorary chair in appreciation for his enlightening film “Where To Invade Next.”

I recognize these thoughts run counter to the idea now in vogue that issues no longer matter in politics, only identity.  To counter, I will only mention the large array of frightening policies Trump allies are offering. Check out this summary.

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Cry, the Beloved World

by Gus Speth

July 16, 2024

Here is a topic miles away from the 2024 elections, though it should not be. Its political salience is just about zero, but it concerns the future of life on Earth. I could be referring to the recent surge in spending on nuclear weapons, but the devastation I will write about is slower yet no less problematic.

If you are of a certain age, you may remember the children’s book The Wump World.  It first appeared in 1970, the year of the first Earth Day. Its message was clear. The bountiful, bucolic world of the Wumps, with its lovely bumbershoot trees and plentiful grasses for grazing, was denuded and impoverished by the Pollutians, who had colonized the Wump’s planet because they had destroyed their own. The Wumps hid underground for a long time, and eventually the Pollutians left, blasting off in search of another planet.  Slowly, the Wumps came up, looked around, and seeing the biotic impoverishment “wondered if there was anything left for them.”

Bill Peet, creator of the Wumps, leaves them with a bit of hope. Eventually, they found a small meadow of grass not scarified by the Pollutians’ ferocious, belching machines. But in the last sentence of his fable, Peet notes that “the Wump World would never be quite the same.”

Now, a half century later, we see that Peet’s message is still entirely too relevant. Major studies of Earth’s biological diversity by top scientific groups keep appearing, and despite decades of environmental action and many international agreements to protect species and ecosystems, these reports offer grim findings and forecasts.

The authoritative NatureServe group reports that species are going extinct today faster than any time in human history. The immediate causes include habitat loss and deterioration, dams and waterbody alteration, poaching, and climate change. They calculate that an alarming 34 percent of plant species and 40 percent of animal species in the United States are at risk of extinction and that 41 percent of US ecosystems are at risk of range-wide collapse.

It is not just here in the US, of course. Taking a global perspective, European scientists recently found “a widespread global erosion of species, with 48 percent undergoing declines.”  Their findings, they note, are “a further signal indicating that global biodiversity is entering a mass extinction, with ecosystem heterogeneity and functioning, biodiversity persistence, and human well-being under increasing threat.”

The Living Planet Report 2022 is a comprehensive study of trends in global biodiversity and the health of the planet. This flagship World Wildlife Fund publication reports an average decline of 69% in species populations since 1970.

Half the world’s tropical and temperate forests are gone. Half the world’s wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. Half of the large predator fish are gone as well as more than half the elephants. The list goes on.

Such tragic, tearful losses are being worsened by increasing global warming, ocean acidification, and other impacts of fossil fuel use. Climate change will speed and spread biological impoverishment while impeding the potential recovery of diminished ecosystems.

A phenomenally large and sophisticated enterprise has been working hard for many decades to save the Earth’s biological wealth, now spearheaded by impressive groups like the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy and by feisty newcomers like the Center for Biological Diversity. In this cause, awe-inspiring films, beautiful books, and profound personal reflections have reached and often moved perhaps billions of people. Yet, despite decades of warnings and these tremendous efforts, the human enterprise plows recklessly ahead, doing to Earth what the Pollutians did to the Wump’s world.

This tragedy points to two overall conclusions. One is that the human enterprise on the planet has thus far been devastating for other life forms and for their habitats. Second is the plausible prediction, if history be our guide, that this
devastation will continue for a considerable amount of time, leading to a planetary condition of widespread biotic impoverishment. I do not want to exaggerate, but I believe we are on the cusp of a ruined planet.

It is just as if species had no rights and we had no duty to honor them!  The great cultural historian Thomas Berry pointed out that humans had grasped the concept of rights — and then given them all to themselves. He saw our misguided values and flawed consciousness as the root of ecological devastation and called for a profound reorientation. 

Berry sought to bring humans and nature together in a new “communion of subjects.” “The deepest cause of the present devastation,” he wrote in The Great Work, “is found in a mode of consciousness that has established a radical discontinuity between the human and other modes of being and the bestowal of all rights on the humans. … We see ourselves as a transcendent mode of being. We don’t really belong here. But if we are here by some strange destiny then we are the source of all rights and all values. All other earthly beings are instruments to be used or resources to be exploited for human benefit.” Here is some good news: there’s now a vibrant movement working to secure the rights of nature.

I would like to flip the normal chain of being which puts humans at the top and pose a question. Can you imagine Earth without people, not today’s Earth but a pristine Earth that evolved to the present without us? If you can contemplate such a world with satisfaction and pleasure — a world with forests of majestic old-growth trees, with oceans brimming over with fish, with clear skies literally darkened by passing flocks of birds, thriving with abundant diversity of life and landscape but without people — then you not only have a keen ecological consciousness but, more to my point, you are ready for a vital assignment.

Imagine further that you live on a different planet from this pristine Earth, and now you are the captain of the spaceship Voyage of Discovery. Your home world has become depleted, polluted, and overheated, and your people, billions of them, must find a new planet. You are the leader of the expedition to find such a place.

As the Voyage of Discovery enters the Solar System, its sensors immediately home in on the pristine Earth with all its biological and material wealth — wild, whole, and beautiful. As you settle into an orbit around Earth, you and your crew begin to closely study Earth. You first become intrigued but then amazed and awe-struck by what you see, even fascinated by frogs.

You and your crew discuss how to settle Earth in a way that allows all of you to enjoy a decent standard of living while having the smallest possible impact on Earth’s environment. As the discussion warms up, a woman from the science team quiets the group with her intervention: “Whatever the odds of achieving a truly sustainable development on Earth, they are improved if the people and nations we would bring here are well-informed about science and policy choices, if they share deeply the values of social justice and environmental protection and care about the future as well as themselves, if they have a tradition of working together cooperatively to forge common goals and solve mutual problems, if they are democracies not dictatorships, and if they love peace.  Do the nations of our world meet these tests?” She lets the question hang there.

After her talk, there are some moments of reflection and discussion, but soon, at the urging of the captain, a decision is taken: leave Earth alone — save it and all its amazing beauty and diversity and let it evolve on its own uninterrupted path. There are smiles and quiet applause as Voyage of Discovery speeds away.

I want to end with some questions for us all.

We can’t fly away like the Voyage, leaving Earth to recover before we finish off the rest, so what is to be done in its stead? How can we recognize and respect the right of all of Earth’s life to flourish and accord intrinsic value to that life and life’s systems, nature for her own sake?

What are we prepared to sacrifice to save others, in this case the life that evolved here with us?  What are we prepared to do without: our aggrandizement or the wild things to whom we are close kin?

How do we try to compensate for our destruction of so much of Earth’s life? By curbing ourselves?  By deep societal change?  By bending heaven and Earth to protect what is left, before it is too late?

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From Growth Fetish to Post-Growth

by Gus Speth

July 23, 2024

My family and I spent 25 years in Washington DC. They were good years, and every morning I began with coffee and the Washington Post. The newspaper was a wonderful companion — and reliably progressive. But there is something going on there now, on the Editorial Board, that I find, well, weird.

The Post has now published several editorials that reflect antipathy towards what environmentalists and climate advocates are trying to accomplish. The most recent, and one that got me concerned again, is “Ending Growth Won’t Save the Planet.”

I have read it several times, trying to understand. The Editorial Board is eager to make the case that Growth Is Good and that America should keep striving for it. It’s amazing that the Post feels the need to defend economic growth. News Flash! The Washington Post thinks growth is in trouble! The editorial is clear: its worry is that climate concern will drive an attack on growth.

And what better whipping boy, on whose back to make their case, than the tiny “degrowth” movement? Called decroissance in France, degrowth has some thoughtful advocates in Europe. But here, its proponents are so far from political relevance that their voice cannot be heard. Still, the Post can’t resist: “’Degrowth’ — the brand name for neo-Malthusianism — ignores how ingenuity and innovation have repeatedly empowered humanity to overcome ecological constraints.” Mostly, of course, we have bulldozed ecological constraints away, but that is a story for a little later.

The editorial casts a disdainful eye on growth critics like Naomi Klein, Greta Thunberg, and even Pope Francis. It makes light of esteemed figures like Herman Daly and Paul Ehrlich. I believe this confirms that the Post’s concern is not really the miniscule degrowth movement but those who are scoring points on the prevailing pro-growth orthodoxy.

Were I prominent enough, the Post could certainly have included me on its list. That would have made me very happy. In several books and numerous articles, I have joined the critics of economic growth as it is currently defined and practiced. So, naturally, I feel called to respond now. 

Hardly anyone would favor the version of degrowth in the Post’s caricature.  I do advocate what I and many others have called a post-growth society. To me that is the view that economic growth — by which I mean GDP growth — should no longer be an important national policy objective. 

That is plain heresy, of course. Not much in our society is more faithfully followed than the gospel of economic growth. To know what growth critics are up against, consider this remarkable passage from J. R. McNeill’s environmental history of the twentieth century, Something New Under the Sun. He writes that the "growth fetish" solidified its hold on imaginations and institutions in the twentieth century: “Social, moral, and ecological ills were sustained in the interest of economic growth; indeed, adherents to the faith proposed that only more growth could resolve such ills. Economic growth became the indispensable ideology of the state nearly everywhere. ... The overarching priority of economic growth was easily the most important idea of the twentieth century."

Despite the heresy, I want to offer five reasons why I think the Post should reconsider and join us in questioning GDP growth as a national priority. Five is a lot, but the points are short — and important. 

First, our measure of growth, Gross Domestic Product, is terribly flawed and should be pushed off its exalted pedestal. GDP should stand for Grossly Distorted Picture. Never mind that GDP is simply a cumulative measure of all activity in the formal economy — good things and bad things, costs and benefits, mere market activity, money changing hands, busyness in the economy — for the bigger it gets, the greater the private profit and public revenue. Never mind also that even the creator of its formalisms, Simon Kuznets, warned in the 1930s that "Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth. … Goals for ‘more' growth should specify more growth of what and for what." 

Though it is still very much on its pedestal, GDP's continued reign must be challenged, and many economists agree. Favoring growth when that growth is measured by GDP is a tragic blunder. 

What we need is a dashboard of alternative indicators. It should include:

  1. Measures of true economic progress that correct and adjust GDP so that we can gauge sustainable economic and environmental welfare
  2. Indicators of objective social wellbeing such as the status of health, education, and economic security
  3. Indexes of environmental conditions and trends
  4. Indicators of democratic performance
  5. Measures of subjective wellbeing such as life satisfaction, happiness, and trust.

Here is good news: indicators of all these types have already been developed!

The first of the above indicators responds to society's need for a monetized measure that corrects the shortcomings of GDP. Such a measure could then be compared to uncorrected GDP on a regular, quarterly basis. The results of country studies using such a measure show changes in public welfare eventually flatlining while GDP continues to grow, not producing additional wellbeing.  

That leads to the second point: GDP growth doesn’t deliver the claimed social and economic benefits. Since 1980, real GDP in the United States has tripled, and per capita GDP has doubled. Phenomenal growth! You would think America would be a paradise. But during this period real hourly wages of US workers hardly budged, stagnating while the pay at the top skyrocketed as did a vast inequality. Simultaneously, life satisfaction flatlined, social capital eroded, families lived paycheck to paycheck, and the environment declined. Over this period, the US dropped from the No.1 country on the UN’s Human Development Index to No.21. As I describe in what follows, desperately seeking more GDP growth is unlikely to yield better results. 

My third concern is a major one: the overriding imperative to grow gives overriding power to those, mainly the corporations, that have the capital and technology to deliver that growth. And, much the same thing, the growth imperative wars against a long list of public policies that would improve national wellbeing but are said to "slow growth" and to "hurt the economy." 

Such policies include:

  • Shorter workweeks and longer vacations
  • Greater labor protections, including a living minimum wage, protection of labor's right to organize, and generous parental leaves
  • Guarantees to part-time workers
  • New incentives for a twenty-first-century corporation, one that embraces rechartering, new ownership patterns, and stakeholder primacy rather than shareholder primacy
  • Restrictions on advertising
  • Incentives for local and locally owned production and consumption
  • Strong social and environmental provisions in trade agreements
  • Rigorous environmental, health, and consumer protection
  • Greater economic equality with genuinely progressive taxation of the rich and greater income support for the poor
  • Increased spending on neglected public services
  • Powerful initiatives to sharply curb greenhouse gas emissions nationally and globally.  

Taken together, these policies would undoubtedly slow GDP growth, but quality of life would improve, and that's what matters.

Fourth, the growth imperative reinforces our dreadful consumerism. Recall that GDP is 70 percent consumer spending. American consumerism is definitely pathological but essential to keep the current system going. The New York Times ran a story a while back that summed up the matter nicely: “Why Americans Must Keep Spending — Households perceive an endless stream of needs, and besides, the economy depends on it.” 

In my book America the Possible I discuss a series of policy changes that could curb our consumerist addiction, but here I want to stress something else. Our search for meaning and belonging through having more material things deflects us from pursuing the real sources of happiness and satisfaction: close ties in families and with friends, development of skills and talents, informal education, helping others and volunteering, exposure to the natural world, sports and play, and even politics. Many people do sense that today there is a great misdirection of life’s energy and that, as Martin Seligman said, “Materialism is toxic to happiness.”

My fifth and final point, of course, is that economic activity and its growth are the principal drivers of massive, continuing environmental decline. The economy consumes natural resources (both renewable and nonrenewable resources), occupies the land, and releases pollutants. As the economy has grown, so has biological impoverishment and pollutants of great variety, including a handful of greenhouse gases. Economist Paul Ekins observed that "The sacrifice of the environment to economic growth. . . has unquestionably been a feature of economic development at least since the birth of industrialism." 

Of late, there has been serious work done to see if societies can have it both ways: can growth go up while environmental destruction goes down? This challenging possibility has been called “green growth.” That may be what the Post is advocating, but the Editorial Board seems unaware of this work. It is a fair question, and there are qualified analysts on both sides. One of the best is Canadian economist Peter Victor. I admire Victor’s books and articles and have been influenced by them. So perhaps it is predictable that I agree with him on green growth’s prospects.

Victor’s latest book is last year’s Escape from Overshoot. In analyzing the pros and cons of the green-growth proposal, Victor concludes that “the prospects for long-term green growth are discouraging and they become more so the faster the economy grows.”  Victor sees potential benefit from green-growth policies in the short term, but concludes: “More and more goods and services cannot be produced out of less and less forever. Green growth, which depends on the endless dematerialization of GDP, does not offer a plausible, even possible, long-term solution.”

Who does GDP growth benefit? A growing economy can be good for the bottom line of businesses, large and small. Government revenues go up when the economy grows: the taxman does not care if the activity is healthy or harmful. There are countries in the developing world where strong GDP growth could make a big positive difference. And we cannot forget the national security complex. For security hawks the global projection of a strong America is aided by robust GDP growth. We shouldn’t just try to wish all these complex matters away, but we can find ways to address them, including by looking around the world for ideas.

Our society tends to see growth as an unalloyed good, but an expanding body of evidence is now telling us to think again. The never-ending drive to grow the overall US economy has produced a ruthless international search for energy and other resources, brought us to the cusp of environmental ruin, led us away from badly needed policies and social growth, and rests on a manufactured consumerism that does not meet the deepest human needs. It’s time for something better. To me, that something better is post-growth, where society focuses major policy interventions on growing the activities that benefit people, place, and planet and on shrinking those things that do the opposite and, all the while, not pausing to worry about GDP.

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Next Big Steps on Climate

by Gus Speth

July 31, 2024

Despite Red Sky at Morning’s good reception in the New York Times, The Economist, and elsewhere, its warnings in 2004 that we were on the wrong track in addressing the climate threat have gone largely unheeded. Of course, I cannot say my proposals would have done the trick, but I do believe they offered alternatives that would have greatly helped, and could still. That said, it is time for a new era of solutions that can rid the world of the greenhouse-gas emissions ruining the planet.
 
A bit of background here will provide context. In 1980 I was chair of President Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality. That was the year that climate change moved from science into the public policy arena, with Carter calling it a “preeminent environmental challenge of the next decade” in an important address that year. Please note the ancient date!
 
This foresight was confirmed twelve years later when an international climate treaty was signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Over the next decade my concern grew that the international community had in fact adopted a flawed, weak approach to climate change and several other major global environmental threats like biodiversity loss. That concern was the origin of Red Sky at Morning two years later.
 
In the preface to the book, I wrote that “the current system of international efforts to help the environment simply isn’t working. The design makes sure it won’t work, and the statistics keep getting worse.”
 
The overarching conclusion of Red Sky was that “the response that the international community has mounted has been flawed: the root causes have not been addressed seriously, weak multilateral institutions have been created, consensus-based negotiating procedures have ensured mostly toothless treaties, and the economic and political context in which treaties must be prepared and implemented has been largely ignored.” It was quite an indictment.
 
A particular focus of my critique was the climate-treaty process, in which the international community had invested so much. Fast forward twenty years to today, the conference of the parties to the climate treaty (COP) has now met 28 times, the most recent annual meeting in Dubai attracting over 80,000 participants, including 2500 fossil-fuel lobbyists! Unfortunately, the size of its crowds bears no resemblance to the COPs’ actual accomplishments. The climate treaty COPs have not been a waste of time, but they have surely wasted a lot of time, decades of it.
 
At COP 21 in Paris in 2015, the treaty process gave birth to its main achievement, the Paris Accords, which Trump infamously abandoned but Biden promptly rejoined. The Accords have done some important things: setting the well-known goal of preventing warming from exceeding 2º C while trying to stay below 1.5º C, mobilizing countries to come forward with pledges for greenhouse-gas reductions, and launching programs for monitoring progress.

Last year was a moment for taking stock in the Accords and global climate action. A number of sophisticated assessments found that country pledges were woefully inadequate to meet the Accords’ goals. Worse, perhaps, as the senior UN official in charge of the treaty noted, “governments combined are taking baby steps to avert the climate crisis.” In one of the most comprehensive studies, the researchers found that “Only 1 of 42 indicators assessed — the share of electric vehicles in passenger-car sales — is on track to reach its 2030 target.” The World Resources Institute, where I was president for its first decade, had this to say: “The United Nations’ polite prose glosses over what is a truly damning report card for global climate efforts. Carbon emissions? Still climbing. Rich countries’ finance commitments? Delinquent. Adaptation support? Lagging woefully behind.”

For many reasons, the international community has failed to rise to the climate challenge. Those reasons include, especially, pushback from the powerful fossil-fuel industry. Consider that more than three decades after the famous climate treaty was signed at Rio, the world is still deeply dependent on fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas, the main villains in global warming. For both the United States and the world, our energy still comes 80 percent from fossil fuels. In 2023 both global greenhouse-gas emissions and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were the highest ever. The week of July 21, 2024 saw several of the hottest days ever recorded.
 
Societies everywhere now face increasingly dire situations. Climate change is often called an existential threat, but few appreciate how true that is. A new and frightening world is unfolding around us.

New Solutions

I suppose Red Sky could have stopped with the critique, but I felt obligated to write a second half of the book on what I thought should be done. I pointed out that there were available models of successful international regulation and issue management to draw from, and an attractive proposal for a World Environment Organization was making the rounds in world capitals. A revamping of the treaty process to make it truly regulatory and functional was only one of the “8-Fold Way” that Red Sky recommended.
 
The last of the eight initiatives I urged — “the most fundamental transition of all” — was the compelling need for a transition in values and consciousness. I quoted the remarkable Earth Charter: “Fundamental changes are needed in our values, institutions, and ways of living.” We know now from much experience that value change is something we can bring about, not something we must just await.
 
My critique still stands, I think, and there are good pointers for today in Red Sky. But we need a new era of innovative international collaboration in the fight against climate devastation. It is time to design new and implement existing solutions that can rid the world of the greenhouse-gas emissions ruining the planet.
 
Americans naturally focus on US greenhouse gas emissions, which remain huge and demand curtailment, but today almost 90 percent of global emissions come from outside the United States. This reality underscores how critical it is for the US government and our citizen groups to focus internationally.
 
Here are some ripe targets for innovative international action. During the past eight years the world's big banks have pumped more than $7 trillion into the global fossil fuel business, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank among the worst of them. It is insane for this to continue. Several states, including New York and California, are pursuing legislation to force fossil-fuel companies to pay for climate damages. Vermont now has such legislation. Everywhere, we should make the polluters pay!
 
Across the pond, Europe has adopted a new system of carbon border tariffs to protect its companies from unfair competition from imports from countries without carbon controls. That will put real pressure on the laggards. To address the financing needed in the developing world, the Bridgetown Initiative proposes a new global financial architecture to make a lot more money available and to create financial guarantors for larger private sector funding. As has happened with the treaty to protect the ozone layer, other treaties can be mobilized to help with climate. The Convention on Biological Diversity should be next.
 
The international community needs urgently to pursue new ways of tackling greenhouse gas emissions, like going after the big banks. New avenues have been proposed and more should be developed. The treaty process with its endless conferences needs to be revamped. This comprehensive effort should be a major, priority project of all those institutions and individuals now in the fight against climate change.

Some Reasons for Hope on the Homefront

After Red Sky at Morning, I wrote two other books at Yale Press, The Bridge at the Edge of the World (2008) and America the Possible (2012). They both dealt with the American scene, not the international one, and they both began by describing national challenges that have deepened and worsened in the ensuing years. I tried in both books to understand America’s mounting problems — environmental, social, and political — and to explore how they might be addressed. Most of the problems we see all around us today were clearly visible then, including of course climate change.
 
I came to a difficult conclusion in writing these two books. In America the Possible I noted that “when big problems emerge across the entire spectrum of national life, it cannot be for small reasons.” My conclusion was that the unfortunate conditions we faced then and still do — the decay in American society, politics, and environment — stem from basic flaws in our economic and political systems.
 
The priorities of our economic system, and the political system supporting it, include ramping up GDP, growing corporate profits, focusing investments on high financial returns (rather than social and environmental returns), keeping labor markets slack, promoting boundless consumerism, sustaining great bastions of corporate political and economic power, ignoring issues of income distribution, and projecting overwhelming military strength abroad. This complex is reinforced by a flawed, plutocratic democracy and by dominant cultural values that remain severely materialistic, individualistic, and anthropocentric.
 
In other words, while there are many things we should do of a reformist nature, sustained progress on America’s great challenges requires deep, transformative change. That is a very sobering thought.
 
I do join those of us who sometimes get discouraged. From such desperate moments I try to rescue the ground for hope — not hopium but plausible hope. Let me relate some of the things that now give me hope.
 
The past twenty years have seen a flourishing of creative efforts to explore futures that involve transformation in our interlinked economic and political systems — our political economy. Doubts about the current order are increasing, and calls for transformative change grow louder. I love the frequent climate protest banner: “System change, not climate change.”
 
Recognizing that such deep change will take time, efforts there have been complemented by the pursuit of near-term avenues for progress. First off, there is a rebirth of protest in America. Activism is increasing, including labor and climate activism and activism among the young, the marginalized, and the victims. Aversion to “socialist” ideas is fading, at least for young people. Economic democracy is in the air. Bernie almost won the Democratic nomination in 2016. Recent affirmations of government action, like the successful Inflation Reduction Act, challenge the hold of market fundamentalism. The conventional wisdom that markets are good and government bad may be on the way out.
 
Meanwhile, the public, the media, and progressive politicians are finally alert to the rising menace of climate change. The Biden Administration has recently issued a flurry of impressive climate regulations. Here and abroad, the growth of renewable energy is extraordinary, especially its phenomenal takeoff in China. China is building renewable energy equivalent to five nuclear power plants every week! Ongoing stalemates in Washington are countered at least partially by impressive initiatives by some states and localities. Interest in new indicators of well-being is growing, including development of alternatives to GDP as a measure of progress.
 
The threat to democracy is recognized, and the fight for a democratic future is joined. The climate challenge is underscoring the imperative of a strong, effective government of, by, and for the people. And more and more people are seeing the root of many problems in misguided dominant values. They are searching for new values and new lives to go with them. We often find our faith communities at the forefront of these efforts.
 
So, I say all is not lost. It is not over yet. I believe the positive currents driving toward meaningful change can strengthen in the future. But there is a major problem on that front. These positive currents would be greatly weakened and slowed in a second Trump presidency, much as climate and other progress was derailed in the first. Our democracy and our climate are both at stake in this election.
 
My big hope is for progressives to leave behind their issue silos, come together, and forge a mighty political force, both for immediate action and for deep, transformative change. We need a fusion of forces, a movement of movements. That would be new, and could make a world of difference.

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New Consciousness — The Brass Ring

by Gus Speth

August 13, 2024

Let’s face it, it is going to be damn hard to protect the human and natural communities we love. Big changes in public policy are needed as well as big changes in individual and social behavior, moves that are difficult and far-reaching by today’s standards. It is important to ask what might make them possible.

Strong social and political movements come to mind, but I believe the changes needed will also require the rise of what we will call a new consciousness. For some, a new consciousness can arrive as a spiritual awakening — a transformation of the human heart. For others it is a more intellectual process of learning to see the world anew. From a society-wide perspective, it involves major cultural change and a reorientation of what society values and prizes most highly.

The father of the land ethic, Aldo Leopold, came to believe “that there is a basic antagonism between the philosophy of the industrial age and the philosophy of the conservationist.” Remarkably, he wrote to a friend that he doubted anything could be done about conservation “without creating a new kind of people.”

Paul Raskin and his Global Scenario Group have developed many scenarios of world economic, social, and environmental conditions, including scenarios where there are no fundamental changes in consciousness and values. But without a change in values, all their scenarios run into big trouble. So they favor the “New Sustainability” worldview where society turns “to nonmaterial dimensions of fulfillment ... the quality of life, the quality of human solidarity, and the quality of the earth. ... Sustainability is the imperative that pushes the new agenda. Desire for a rich quality of life, strong human ties, and a resonant connection to nature is the lure that pulls it toward the future.”

My early mentor, Charles Reich, the author of The Greening of America in 1970, concluded that, “At the heart of everything is what must be called a change of consciousness. This means a new way of living — almost a new man.”

I would never say that no progress can be made until America’s dominant culture has been transformed. But I do believe that we won’t get far in addressing our major challenges unless there is a parallel, ongoing transformation in values and culture. Einstein said that today’s problems cannot be solved with today’s mind. That is a difficult conclusion but one with which we must contend.
 
So, two important questions emerge. First, what are the social values required by today’s circumstances? And second, what forces can drive cultural and consciousness change of the type and on the scale needed?

The most serious and sustained effort to date to state a compelling ethical vision for the future is the Earth Charter, which has gained wide endorsement and support around the world. The Earth Charter is an eloquent statement of the ethical principles needed to “bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.” Over 2,000 organizations representing tens of millions of people have endorsed the Earth Charter.

After a lot of reading on this subject, here are the value transformations I believe we need. We want our dominant culture to have shifted, from today to tomorrow, in the following ways:

  • Instead of viewing humanity as something apart from nature, and nature as something “other” to be dominated, we will see ourselves as part of nature, as offspring of its evolutionary process, as close kin to wild things, and as wholly dependent on its vitality and the services it provides.

  • Rather than seeing nature as humanity’s resource to exploit as it sees fit for economic and other purposes, we will see the natural world as holding intrinsic value and having rights that create for us the duty of ecological stewardship.

  • We will no longer discount the future by focusing so intently on the short term, but instead take the long view and recognize our duties to human and natural communities well into the future.

  • Instead of today’s corrosive individualism and narcissism, we will foster a powerful sense of community and social solidarity, in all venues from local to cosmopolitan (from me to we).

  • Violence will no longer be glorified either at home or abroad, nor wars easily accepted, and peace will be a priority.

  • The spreading of hate and invidious divisions will be rejected. We will move from racism, sexism, and nativism to tolerance, an embrace of cultural diversity, and protection of the rights of all.

  • Materialism, consumerism, and the primacy of ever-more possessions will give way to a culture that grants priority to family and personal relationships, learning, experiencing nature, service, spirituality, music and dance, sports, the arts, and play.

  • Rather than tolerate gross economic, social, gender, and political inequality, we will prize and demand a high measure of equality and social justice in all these spheres.

I agree, that’s a mindfull! The good news is that we don’t need to wait on these changes but can help bring them about. This jewel was from Senator Pat Moynihan: “The central conservative truth is that culture, not politics, determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
 
As Moynihan suggests, we actually know important things about how values and culture can be changed. Here is a partial inventory to consider.
 
One sure path to cultural change is, unfortunately, the cataclysmic event — the crisis — that profoundly challenges prevailing values and delegitimizes the status quo. The Great Depression is the classic example. I think we can be confident that we haven’t seen the end of major crises that will shake things up.
 
Milton Friedman was an accomplished economist and a fierce advocate. I did not often agree with his positions on policy, but he was right to point to the way crises can bring ideas to the fore: “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change,” he wrote. “When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
 
I think ongoing climate change is a crisis of sufficient potential to be transformative. The reality of global warming and climate change is already hard upon us, and it will worsen. My guess is that the world will soon be consumed with the consequences of climate calamity. The climate crisis is the strongest possible argument for transformation of today’s dominant social values.
 
A thorough look at this issue is Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down. Homer-Dixon believes that foreshocks and breakdowns can lead to positive change if the ground is prepared. “We need to prepare to turn breakdown to our advantage when it happens — because it will,” he says. Breakdowns, of course, do not necessarily lead to positive outcomes; authoritarian outcomes are also possibilities. Turning a breakdown to advantage will require being crisis-ready.
 
Two other key factors in cultural change are leadership and social narrative. Harvard’s Howard Gardner has written, “Whether they are heads of a nation or senior officials of the United Nations, leaders ... have enormous potential to change minds ... and in the process they can change the course of history.
 
“I have suggested one way [for leaders] to capture the attention of a disparate population: by creating a compelling story, embodying that story in one’s own life, and presenting the story in many different formats so that it can eventually topple the counter-stories in one’s culture. … The story must be simple, easy to identify with, emotionally resonant, and evocative of positive experiences.”

Bill Moyers, a powerful force for good in our country, wrote that “America needs a different story. … The leaders and thinkers and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people.”

Others, like the cultural historian Thomas Berry, have written about the need for a new story. The Rev. Jim Antal, author of Climate Church, Climate World, is one who recognizes that need. “It’s the very structures of the world that need to be challenged if we are to live into a new story.”

There is some evidence that Americans are ready for another story. Large numbers of Americans express disenchantment with today’s lifestyles and offer support for values similar to those discussed here. But these values are held along with other strongly felt and often conflicting values, and we are all pinned down by old habits, fears, insecurities, social pressures, and in other ways. A new story that helps people find their way out of this confusion and dissonance could help lead to real change. I was once part of an organization with the fetching name Center for a New American Dream.

Another source of value change is social movements. Social movements are all about consciousness-raising. In my lifetime, I have seen hard-fought change in civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and other gender, race and ethnic issues including Black Lives Matter. Two of my heroes here are the Rev. William Barber on social justice and Bill McKibben on climate.

Another way forward to a new consciousness lies in the world’s religions. Mary Evelyn Tucker, an authority on world religions, has noted that “no other group of institutions can wield the particular moral authority of the religions.” Faith communities played key roles in ending slavery, in the civil rights and voting rights movements, and in overcoming apartheid in South Africa. Led by the remarkable Pope Francis, they are now turning special attention to issues of social justice, peace, and climate.
 
An awakening to new values and new consciousness can also derive from the arts, literature, philosophy, and science. Consider, for example, the long tradition of “reverence for life” stretching back to Emperor Ashoka more than 2,200 years ago and forward to Albert Schweitzer, Aldo Leopold, Thomas Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Oren Lyons, and many others. Consider as well the wisdom traditions of Native Americans and other indigenous peoples.
 
In 1977, the elders of the Iroquois Confederacy issued a remarkable statement, Basic Call to Consciousness: Address to the Western World: “the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy has existed on this land since the beginning of human memory. ... Our essential message to the world is a basic call to consciousness. The destruction of the Native cultures and people is the same process which has destroyed and is destroying life on this planet. The technologies and social systems which have destroyed the animal and plant life are also destroying the Native people. ... It is the people of the West, ultimately, who are the most oppressed and exploited. They are burdened by the weight of centuries of racism, sexism, and ignorance which has rendered their people insensitive to the true nature of their lives. ... The people who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow concept of human liberation, and begin to see liberation as something which needs to be extended to the whole of the Natural World.”
 
Another major and hopeful path is seeding the landscape with innovative, instructive models. A remarkable but under-appreciated thing going on in the United States today is the proliferation of innovative models of community action and business enterprise, many promoted by groups like the Solidarity Economy, the New Economy Network, and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
 
Local currencies, co-ops of several types, community wellbeing indicators, slow money, community supported agriculture, downshifting and living simply, community wealth-building, community-owned power and solar-net metering, and on and on — these are bringing a positive future into the present in very concrete ways. These actual models will grow in importance as communities search for answers on how the future should look, and they can change minds. Seeing is believing.

Finally, there is the great importance of sustained efforts at education. Here one should include education in the largest sense as embracing not only formal education but also day-to-day and experiential education. It includes education we get from personally experiencing nature in all its richness and diversity. My Yale colleague Steve Kellert stressed that such exposure to the natural world, especially for children, is important to wellbeing and human development.

Education in this broad sense also includes social marketing. Social marketing has had notable successes in moving people away from bad behaviors such as smoking and drunk driving, and its approaches could be applied to larger themes as well.

These are all things within the power of citizens to make happen! The psychologist Tim Kasser has provided good advice about two factors that can improve receptivity to messages conveying new values. One is to turn down the incessant triggering of our materialistic impulses, e.g. escape from advertising! And the other is to improve people’s sense of economic security, personal safety, and social connectedness, good advice for many ailments.

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New System Possibility

by Gus Speth

August 20, 2024

Good reason to despair, yet grief was purged
by tracing how creation reigned supreme.
The pupa cracked, the butterfly emerged:
America, still emerging from its dream.     Clive James

My previous essays have tried to describe some of the major challenges our country faces. We have, as Clive James notes, “good reason to despair.” But we know that is not an option.
 
Instead, many of us think the situation we face calls for transformative change. By that we mean major change in our existing political and economic systems. The goal is to imagine and then seek a new system of political economy that ensures the priority of people, place, and planet and leads to flourishing human and natural communities.
 
But how would this new system look and work? Often there is a lack of clarity about the actual shape of a transformed society. There’s comfort in staying with a generous dose of generality, and I, on occasion, have stayed there. But the first step is surely to have a good sense of the directions to pursue. So in this essay I will describe rather concretely what I mean by transformative change to a new system of political economy.
 
Different folks have different ideas about what transformative change would look like. There is transformation lite and transformation deep. At the lite end of the spectrum are welcomed changes that look a lot like traditional reforms but can contain the seeds of fundamental shifts. The ideas I will present here tend towards the deep-change end of the spectrum. They are not as radical as some, but a portion of readers may think, indeed, he has gone off the deep end.
 
As I present this new system, I keep in mind this bit of wisdom from author Richard Flanagan: “What we cannot dream we can never do.” We do need dreams! But we have more than dreams now. We know a great deal about how to promote the changes I will describe. Pioneering initiatives are being pursued here and abroad. Moreover, there are mounting pressures moving us in these directions, including climate change.

Transitions

I believe system change in America can best be approached through a series of interacting, mutually reinforcing transitions. Such transformations — some aborning, some farther off, and all difficult but none impossible — would alter the current system’s key motivational structures. Note that they are transitions: progress can be made over time, and there are partway houses.

  • The growth transition
    • GDP — think “grossly distorted picture” — is recognized as a poor guide, ignored in favor of measuring progress toward democratically determined priorities and social and environmental wellbeing.

  • The corporate transition
    • Profit becomes a relatively minor motivation for businesses. Producing social and environmental wellbeing comes first. Economic democracy is everywhere and takes many forms: worker ownership, co-ops, community and public ownership, credit unions, public-private and for-profit / not-for-profit hybrids. For big corporations, stakeholder boards are mandated as are high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.

  • The market transition
    • As a governing force in economic life, the market is now powerfully complemented by cooperation and by planning. Tight market regulation keeps prices honest and wages fair.

  • Transition in investment and finance
    • Investment for high financial returns is largely replaced by investment for high social and environmental returns. Public and community banking predominates over private. Main Street tops Wall Street.

  • The social transition
    • Powerful social justice measures — tax fairness, a job guarantee, fully adequate minimum wage and unemployment compensation, strong unions, equal pay for equal work, good child care and paid leave, paid opportunities in social and environmental services — ensure fundamental fairness and genuine equal opportunity, defeating both economic deprivation and gross inequality.

  • The lifestyle and culture transition
    • Vain attempts to satisfy non-material needs with material possessions give way to new lifestyles based on the recognition that other people are our main source of happiness. Nature is seen not as ours to exploit but as a communion of subjects in which we are integral. (For a full description of the all-important transition in cultural values, see my Essay from the Edge “New Consciousness — The Brass Ring.”)

  • The communities transition
    • Runaway enterprise and throwaway communities are replaced by vital communities that prize human solidarity, local control, and rootedness. Joy in diversity supplants racial and religious discrimination and intolerance.

  • The democracy transition
    • Creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy are rolled back as political reforms bring true popular sovereignty and empowerment of marginalized groups — actual government of, by, and for the people. Governing is focused where it is most effective — local, state, national, or international — with decision-making on issues guided to the most decentralized level feasible.

These transitions provide the truest escape from the currently failing system and the foundation for an attractive next system. (Note that transitions about international and defense affairs, though omitted here, must be added.)

American Dreamscape

Here is a dreamscape of an America made possible by these transitions. Down these paths, we can envision interesting aspects of life in this new setting.
 
For starters, much of economic and social life is rooted in our communities and surrounding regions. Production of food and much more is local and regional. Enterprises are mostly locally owned and committed to the long-term wellbeing of employees (their neighbors) and the viability of their communities (their towns).
 
Worker and community ownership are prominent, often taking the form of co-ops and credit unions. Community wealth-building, where communities have ownership and control of their assets, is commonplace. Cooperation moderates competition, and companies stress wellbeing and not profit. Indeed, the profit motive has faded into the background.
 
Production systems are designed to mimic biological ones, with waste streams eliminated or becoming a useful input elsewhere. The provision of services replaces the purchase of many goods, and sharing, collaborative consumption, and community ownership are commonplace. Few people own things they can borrow or rent. Products are more durable and are easy to repair, with components that can be reused or recycled.
 
Growth in GDP is not seen as a priority, and GDP is viewed as a misleading measure of wellbeing and progress. Instead, new indicators of national and community wellbeing — including measures of social and natural capital — are closely watched.
 
Socially, formal work hours have been cut back and paid leaves added, freeing up time for family, friends, hobbies, continuing education, skills development, caregiving, volunteering, sports, outdoor recreation, and participating in the arts. Life is less frenetic. Mindfulness and living simply carry the day.
 
Because large inequalities are at the root of so many social and environmental problems, measures have been implemented to ensure much greater equality not only of opportunity but also of outcomes. Because life is simpler and less grasping and there is less advertising and people are not so status-conscious, a fairer sharing of economic resources is possible.
 
The overlapping webs of encounter and participation that were once hallmarks of America, a nation of joiners, have been rebuilt. Trust in each other is high. Community bonds are strong; civic associations and community service groups plentiful; support for teachers and caregivers high. Personal security, tolerance of difference, and empathy predominate.
 
Special attention is given to children and young people. Their education and receipt of loving care, shelter, good nutrition and health care, and an environment free of pollutants and violence are the measures of how well society is doing.
 
Consumerism is supplanted by the search for abundance in things that truly bring happiness and joy — family, friends, the natural world, meaningful work. Communities enjoy a strong rebirth of needed skills and trades, crafts, and self-provisioning. Conspicuous consumption is considered vulgar and has been replaced by new investment in natural amenities, education, and community wealth.
 
Voting rights everywhere are secure, and almost everyone votes, but voting is considered only part of popular democracy. Local governance stresses participatory, direct, and deliberative democracy. At the national level, a host of pro-democracy reforms are in place. Citizens are seized with the responsibility to manage and extend the commons — the valuable assets that belong to everyone — through community land trusts, public spaces, and more.
 
Despite the many ways life will be more local, and in defiance of the resulting temptation to parochialism, Americans feel a sense of citizenship at larger levels of social and political organization, including at the global level where there is a new sense of global citizenship and a strong global citizens movement.
 
There is a palpable sense that all economic and social activity is nested in the natural world and dependent on it. Zero discharge of pollutants, toxics, and greenhouse gases is the norm. Renewable energy is used everywhere, with maximum efficiency. Green chemistry has replaced the use of toxic solvents and hazardous substances. Organic farming has eliminated pesticide and herbicide use. Biophilic design has brought nature into our buildings and communities.
 
Businesses are forced to pay for their “external” environmental damages, like climate-change impacts, as some economists have long preached. Schools stress environmental education and pursue “no child left inside” programs. Ecosystem restoration, especially repairing the damages caused by climate change, is a main focus of community action. Major efforts are made to return carbon to soils and forests.
 
As humorist Dave Barry often exclaimed, “I’m not making this up!” Around our country there is actual evidence of all these things, some in place and some still only as proposals for new policies. They do not predominate, not yet the norm, but they are there. They provide guideposts showing the way. And there is a world out there of non-profit groups and coalitions working for these changes and ready to help. The path, a poet said, is made by walking.

Coda: The Complication

I so wish I could end here with this delightfully positive story. But it would not be honest to fail to mention the great complication looming over this entire essay. There is a problem in the path of any positive future — the climate problem. Possibilities like the ones just sketched could be severely limited by the slow pace of climate action here and abroad. The reality of global warming and climate change is already hard upon us, and it will worsen. My guess is that the world will soon be consumed with the consequences of climate change. How America and the world address the climate issue will be a powerful determinant of what future is possible.
 
To that end, we must proceed with urgency to do what is so clearly needed: a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in all the major countries. But along with emissions reduction and adaptation to climate impacts, we must also pursue the system changes needed to correct the fundamental flaws that have delivered the climate crisis to our doorstep.

We should not see climate as a separate problem. The climate crisis is the world’s political economies at work. The oncoming climate calamity is the strongest argument for transformation of America’s political economy. Elsewhere, I have argued that the system changes advocated in this essay — the transitions — are what we need to cope with climate change over time. My hope is that the US and other countries will see the wisdom of fusing measures for transformative change with measures to address climate threats. The two should go forward hand in hand.

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I Hate Advertising

by Gus Speth

August 27, 2024

After six completed essays, I want to report on three essay efforts that I started but, for various reasons, decided not to pursue to completion. I want to share these stories with you because I believe they each contain valuable nuggets.

Advertising

The first one is about advertising. Here is how the essay began:
 
I hate advertising, and this is my diatribe on the subject.
 
It is not just that advertising interferes with my TV viewing and other pleasures. If it were only that, I would be in a quandary since the ads sponsor many of the shows and games I watch. No, I hate it because of the deep damage it does to American society and its people. Advertising is one of the world’s most pernicious businesses.
 
In protest, I fast forward through ads whenever possible and mute others. And I have installed ad blockers. But that is like holding a little umbrella in one of today’s climate-fueled rain rivers.
 
Here is the good news: there are answers short of returning to the caves.
 
I thought I was off to a nice start. I had addressed advertising in my books, and I knew a few things, like that advertising to children was once tightly restricted in the United States. Then, in 1983 at the urging of the Reagan Administration the FCC deregulated it, and within a year the ten top toys all had ties to TV programs. By 2011 marketing to children had swelled to a $17 billion a year juggernaut. Children and adolescents now view 40,000 ads per year on TV alone. My plan was to develop the idea that advertising has been both key to our runaway consumerism and a huge barrier to needed transformations in our social values.
 
But I needed updating, so I started doing a little research — and my confidence fell apart. A decade or so ago, digital advertising in the US was a small part of the advertising industry. Now, it’s the mainstay, consuming almost 80 percent of rapidly swelling advertising expenditures, with mobile devices taking a major and growing share of that. Meanwhile, there are strange things going on. Tens of billions are being spent on influencer marketing, of all things. What’s driving this is not hard to figure. Screen time for US adults and teenagers is 6 to 8 hours a day. Digital platforms carrying ads typically get paid by how many clicks the ads get, so the platforms provide content that keeps eyes on the screen, no matter how socially destructive. Algorithms!
 
I realized that ancient I, who spends zero time on social media and almost none on a phone of any sort, had no insight into this new world or what to do about it. What good would it do to write about highway billboards or other traditional ads? I also discovered that the First Amendment is now being used in new ways to protect “commercial speech” from regulation, adding a whole new and complexifying area for this old law professor.
 
So, as much as I would dearly love to see advertising dramatically curtailed and reshaped by regulations, especially ads aimed at children and the vulnerable, I knew I was not the right person nor an essay the right format. As an alternative, do watch or rewatch the gripping, compelling Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, available on the official Netflix site.

Climate

Another essay effort began with the thought that, despite the media attention the climate issue is finally getting, most of today’s climate news and discussion is focused on the immediate effects of climate change and neglects the horrendous downstream consequences.
 
I hope it is clear why I would want to present such distressing information. Understanding the full dimensions of the climate threat can drive home the need to head off the worst. That much we can still do. It can spur crisis readiness for what is unavoidably coming and, importantly, encourage people to ask what's wrong with a society and a world that has brought the climate tragedy to our doorsteps.
 
Here is what I had prepared:
 
A new and frightening world is unfolding around us. It is difficult to face, but please do. The scenarios I describe here are likely, some inevitable and some more speculative than others. The question for us now is whether societies will act with swift determination to minimize their prevalence and severity.
 
Already underway, the first-order effects of climate change are droughts, extreme heat, wildfires, severe storms, floods, unwelcome new weather patterns, melting of glaciers and landed ice, sea-level rise, and more.
 
You know this world. It's the world we see emerging today.
 
These effects will lead in turn to second-order consequences, what economists call knock-on effects. Entirely predictable are widespread biological losses and ecosystem degradation, the spread of diseases into new areas, water and food shortages, persistent crop failures and famines, large-scale economic disruptions, uninhabitable zones along coasts and elsewhere, scorched cities, and major loss of human life.
 
Simultaneously with these changes, we will likely see still more consequences such as climate refugees and mass migrations, resource and other disputes within and between countries, and costly efforts at adaptation, much of it futile, as well as risky geo-engineering.
 
These impacts will greatly stress governments around the world. They will struggle to cope. We could see police forces and militaries called upon for social stability and invoked as solutions. There are already a number of countries tallied as “failed or failing states,” and climate change will drive these numbers up. At the international level, the multiple inadequacies of global governance, never strong except in economic spheres, will be magnified by the international tensions and domestic preoccupations caused by climate change.
 
Equally telling will be the psychological burdens. The loss of homes, communities, and livelihoods; the many “excess deaths;” the destruction of much-loved natural and cultural resources including species, forests, and coastlines; the pall of grief, dread, and powerlessness — these will weigh heavily, especially on the young.
 
There's more, possibly worse, for example the tendency of frightened, overwhelmed people to reach for authoritarian, strong-man solutions, but I’ve said enough.
 
Why did I move on from this essay? I first paused because the draft was too bleak, standing alone. As someone once said, things are much too bad for pessimism. An essay with this disturbing material would have to offer ways forward to contain the scope of climate disaster. And just then an invitation arrived from Yale University Press to reflect on my 2004 book, Red Sky at Morning, and that effort evolved into the vehicle to say better what I wanted to say about the climate situation. See the resulting Essay from the Edge “Next Big Steps on Climate.” The above material didn’t make it into that essay, but it is important, so I present it here.
 
See this web page for a current assessment of the climate situation and what must be done from top experts, Bob Watson and colleagues. From the UN on through to the local level, I don’t think we are prepared for the climate impacts and calamitous changes that are coming, and there seems to be no concerted effort to get prepared at any level.

Federalism

A third essay I began and then halted was to focus on the possibility of shifting more of our progressive efforts away from the stalemate in Washington DC and towards other levels of government. Here is a draft I started toward that end:

The United States is faced with the unsettling combination of unprecedented challenges requiring strong, effective governance and a politics so broken that Washington rising to multiple challenges seems remote.
 
An apt metaphor for America’s national politics is trench warfare. Both Democrats and Republicans are dug in, with hardened, almost unmovable attitudes and positions. Red and Blue forces face each other in stark opposition and mutual rejection. Massive efforts are expended for small gains that can be rolled back when power shifts.
 
This situation raises an important question: Is it time for progressives to adopt another, perhaps primary approach that involves shifting out of Washington? This alternative strategy might do the following:

  1. Identify what is most needed from Washington and devise and pursue strategies to secure these outcomes and prevent negative ones
  2. Concentrate far more progressive energies on other levels of governance — international, state, regional, and local
  3. Seek a new level of non-governmental governance, for example involving civil society and enlightened elements of the private sector.

The core idea is to locate public policy at the most effective level of governance, depending on the issue. The old saying that the nation-state is too small for the big things and too big for the small things doesn’t quite get it right, but you get the idea.
 
Already, many encouraging initiatives are underway across the country at the local and state levels. We recall the go-it-alone initiatives in California and elsewhere in response to the Trump administration. And perhaps there are things to be learned from other federal countries, like Canada.
 
Should efforts be pursued to bring together a new strategy for progressives of many stripes to get behind? Might progressives see enough positive in decentralization and a New Federalism to support such an approach? Might decentralization mean abandoning large numbers of people to reactionary state governments or diminishing our centuries long struggle for a more perfect union? There is sadness in seeing the national experiment come to the distressing situation in which we now find ourselves. Still, might it be that thinking, planning, and acting in a new way is now the best path for making real progress?
 
I halted on this one for two related reasons you may have guessed. First, I decided that a full essay would make more sense if — damn the thought — Trump were unfortunately to win the presidential election this year. That said to me: shelve the idea for now. And second, I am totally excited and energized by the Harris-Walz ticket, and I want to join with others now in focusing on building a new and positive era in our national politics! Still, it’s worth keeping this range of issues in mind as we proceed. For the period ahead, we will need vital governance at all levels, from local to global.

Signing off for a while. Thank you for reading. I have enjoyed preparing these essays, and I hope you found them helpful.
 
It’s time now to go get out the vote. There are several great programs for writing postcards. Third Act has one. It is estimated that there are about 13 million environmentally inclined Americans who don’t vote regularly in federal elections. Check out the Environmental Voter Project for how you can help on that.

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The Silver Linings Playbook — Climate Edition

by Gus Speth

September 17, 2024

To my knowledge, I have never been accused of erring on the optimistic side of the climate issue, and too often I have been right. Still, I have thought a lot about how to make some lemonade out of this bitter lemon. To pursue silver linings is not to minimize the climate catastrophe now hard upon us. It is only to try to make the best of a bad situation.
 
Here are six silver linings — areas to which we can put our energies. We need to frame a positive politics for the climate issue, and these silver linings can help.
 
First, the most widely appreciated of these silver linings are the many ancillary benefits from the ongoing shift to widespread renewable energy, benefits beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide and methane. The climate requirement will get us out of fossil fuels more quickly and thoroughly than the many longstanding fossil fuel problems ever could.
 
The benefits will be enormous. The Lancet recently stressed that air and other pollution from fossil fuels contribute to huge health impacts, including asthma and other respiratory diseases, heart disease, cancers, poor birth outcomes, cognitive effects, and premature deaths — these fossil-fuel deaths now estimated to be about 350,000 a year in the US. Beyond health benefits, retiring fossil fuels would bring dramatic reductions in surface mining, oil and other spills, pipelines, fracking, and more.
 
Similarly, while climate change promises to be devastating for the Earth’s biota, it is also possible that the imperative of keeping greenhouse gases in the world’s soils and forests will drive major new efforts to conserve natural habitats and healthy agricultural lands. We need to keep the world as green as possible. Climate change’s destruction of much biological diversity is now inevitable. Countervailing conservation is something we have to make happen.
 
Second, the climate disaster could draw communities together, much as natural disasters are documented as doing today. People will be required to fend more for themselves, and they could discover that in so doing they will succeed more often if they cooperate, if they support each other, if they accept and get beyond social and political divisions. The stronger the community bonds, the more intense the interactions across sectors and differences, the higher the spirit, the better off they will be as much of the world seems to be falling apart.
 
There is much good that can come from community revitalization. Local, state, and regional governance could grow stronger, and their successes in response to the unprecedented climate challenge can carry over into other areas of public concern. Also, community climate efforts will be paired with individual efforts of homeowners to go solar and adopt climate-friendly lifestyles, and in the process that will activate a larger constituency for other needed changes. Here’s another pattern: the fights to “own your own electrical utility” are not new, but the climate challenge is giving them new momentum.
 
Implicit in these changes at the community level are corresponding changes in individual values. Crises, in this case the climate crisis, can compel a rethinking of what we value most highly and who we are and want to become. The results of this value change can be helpful across a broad front.
 
Third, the technologies driven to commercial scale by the imperative of addressing climate change will have other major benefits beyond climate. One can think of all the uses to which new battery technology can be put. And more: improvements in air conditioning and cooling technologies, electricity grid performance, energy efficient construction, biophilic design, green cities, and much more can better our lives as well as reduce climate threats.
 
Fourth, after decades of denigrating government and worshiping the market, the climate issue is leading to an appreciation of the need for effective, capable, and engaged government and, what’s more, government that is truly democratic — of, by, and for the actual people. The creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy that got us into this mess is not going to get us out of it, at least not until the economic elite are through making money out of both causing the problem and providing their profitable answers. Reagan said “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” But of course, he had it backwards. With good government, we can solve a lot of America’s many problems.
 
Fifth, the climate crisis is driving a lot of people to distraction, but it is also driving a lot of people to progressive activism. This growth is happening especially among the young and the old (everyone else is working too hard) and, to be sure, the victims, the moms, and the preachers. Here, we recall the leadership Bill McKibben is giving us, including most recently with Third Act for us elderly folks and before that with 350.org, and the powerful mobilization of young people by the Sunrise Movement and others. With climate threats helping to mobilize citizens, we can work to build a powerful progressive coalition addressing a large agenda of national needs.
 
Sixth, and importantly, societies here and abroad will eventually be forced to face the reality that the climate crisis is the result of the failure of economic and political systems. The climate demonstration banner says it all: “System Change Not Climate Change!” An economy so hell-bent on profit and growth that it is destroying the planet’s habitability. A politics so captured by economic interests that it can barely stir itself to save the planet. Consumers so enthralled by the diversions and infatuations of modern life that they hardly care what is going on around them. That has been the pattern for a half century. But here is the good news: it is beginning to change, and to deal successfully with the climate threat it will have to change dramatically. The oncoming climate calamity is the most powerful argument for transformation of America’s political economy, and with that system change would come benefits for a wide range of today’s challenges.
 
Here is another way of looking at the need for deep change. Adaptation to climate realities will receive huge attention in the future. If tactical adaptation is the practical preparation for climate change’s impacts, then what I would call “systemic adaptation” is the design and adoption of the societal changes needed to correct the fundamental systemic flaws that have brought the climate crisis to our doorstep. Systemic adaptation looks beyond tactical measures like preparing for floods and extreme heat, and it asks what type of societies will fare best for people and the planet in the future. See YaleEnvironment360.
 
All of this raises an interesting question: what about international action? Might the climate crisis establish new paths for international cooperation and inclusion that might carry over more widely? We must hope that it will.
 
The silver linings of the climate storm clouds will not simply materialize down here on land. They must be first appreciated and then pursued as part of the climate struggle. This is a playbook after all. There is much to be done if we want to seize the opportunities just reviewed. Here are a few of the things we need to do, together.
 
We will need to avoid the pitfalls that are all around us in this area. Communities could disintegrate rather than cohere. New technologies, like those for geoengineering, could produce disasters. Climate change could further authoritarian tendencies as societies grasp for security and embrace fake solutions. Elites can be counted on to try to save themselves. Climate change could get too severe for adaptation, even systemic adaptation, to succeed and for the silver linings to be realized.
 
Paul Raskin and his colleagues at the Tellus Institute have described positive scenarios, but they have also developed a "Fortress World" scenario — a place of gated communities, armed private security and even armies, safe and unsafe zones, all for the privileged elites. As government responses to climate stresses are puny and fail, some expensive private sector solutions are available to the rich while most people are shut out. There are not many silver linings in Fortress World.
 
Beyond avoiding pitfalls, we need to join in supporting the efforts, locally and nationally, to cut by 50 percent US greenhouse gas emissions and to protect 30 percent of America’s land, both by 2030 — two ambitious goals already set by the Biden Administration. That means quickly putting a stiff fee on carbon and other greenhouse-gas emissions and halting new fossil-fuel investments and leases.
 
We need to prepare our communities for the full destructive possibilities of climate change while working to bridge social and political divides, build local resilience, and strengthen governmental capacities.
 
We are in an era of rapid technological change, some of it good and some not so. We need to support an effort to revitalize “technology assessment and choice,” an area where the federal government was once strong. We even had an independent Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, which was eliminated allegedly for budgetary reasons. Speaking of budgets, the crazy, broken federal budgeting process needs to be revamped so that careful attention can be given to building government capabilities and carrying out sustained, long-term programs.
 
Environmental and climate advocates need to join with the advocates promoting pro-democracy reforms, including campaign finance reform and public financing of elections. Pro-democracy reform is an environmental issue just as surely as putting a price on carbon or acting to save species. More broadly, advocacy groups need to come out of their issue-specific silos and join together to build a powerful new movement of movements. See the discussion here.

Regarding system change, the first steps toward a new system of political economy that gives priority to people, place, and planet occur at the personal level with the rise of a new consciousness. For some, a new consciousness can arrive as a spiritual awakening — a transformation of the human heart. For others it is a more intellectual process of learning to see the world anew. From a society-wide perspective, it involves major cultural change and a reorientation of what society values and prizes most highly.

If properly guided, nothing can drive this transformation in cultural values quite like the unfolding climate disaster. It can and will shatter settled assumptions and habitual thinking and prompt a search for the societal flaws that have brought the climate crisis to our doorstep. From this base of people alerted to the need for deep change in our economic and political systems, a movement for transformational change can be built.

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