My New Moleskine

It is the 27th of January, and I have some reason to celebrate. Today marks the first day in my brand new Moleskine calendar, and I can start using it. I have been waiting for a month, at least. If I took my financial situation seriously, things like these would probably be exactly what I should spend less money on. On the other hand 15 EUR can seem cheap for something that is used 365 days in a year. But there are bigger problems than my private budget. Vanity like this is choking the earth to death.

By Zedlik (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

More people live more comfortable than ever, which is a good thing, and we can thank capitalism and consumerism for that. Our civlisation is heavily dependent on an ever increasing group of consumers, and that is why it makes consumers out of substistence farmers with an amazing speed. Few people miss the toil of their parents. This is a great world. But can not claim that we save it for our children.

The climate is changing, making it harder to survive. Especially for those mentioned above, who just have put poverty behind. To future generations we hand over a more densly populated world with less natural resources, less arable land, less water, less biodiversity. Technology will maybe help them survive another year, but if the long time trend is not reversed, there is simply no future for humanity. Which will probably be great for the few species that will remain on earth after we have gone.

This time of year the newpapers are filled with analyzes of 2010 and forecasts for 2011. If you look at economical history, anyone will tell yo that the supply of natural resources is pivotal for human economy. Yet almost no economical forecast, positive or negative, take the diminshing supply of natural resources into account when they predict the future. Economists seem to presume that the earth will look thes same in 2011 as it did in 2010, when the only thing we know is that it will not. Which is why they are always wrong.

Our outtake of natural resources is megalomaniacal - in a time when close to everyone speaks about the environment, and green entrepeneurs spawn as mushrooms from the ground. The problem with these entrepeneurs is not what they do, but what they do not do. As long as green consumerism doesn't make us consume less, it achieves nothing. It is our endless hunger for stuff and services that keeps chinese coal heated factories running and fossil fuel trucks rolling on our highways. For those of you who haven't seen it , I warmly recommend Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff, for a witty explanation of how our consumption impoversihes the earth.

The problem is that consumerism does not only impoverish the earth, it also enrichen us in terms of money and wealth. With our current economical thinking that wealth is the quantitative sigen of wellbeing we are forced to choose between the generation currently living in wealth, and the unborn millions. And it would be deeply unmoral to pritoritize the welfare of a human being that doesn't exist, over one that exists here and now.

Maybe this is why it is so hard to break with consumerism, even though we all know that it is the root of all our problems? Or maybe it is because consumerism speaks to our human weaknesses rather than our morals. I could well have made my own calendar out of recycled paper, but it was unrestricted vanity that made me buy a Moleskine calendar instead. That was my contribution to a shopping spree that is bound to end in chaos.

What we need is a way of understanding economics that can differentiate between wealth and wellbeing. With a such understanding falling profits, or falling GDP wouldn't be a problem at in it self, since that could just as well indicate that we manage to live well with less money, as economic problems. But to get there, we must get over our vanity.

The Polluter pays?

After the COP15 was judged a failure by the European left, right and green movement alike, one culd easily fall into despair over the possibilities to reach international policy agreements. The Copenhagen accord failed to reach an agreement on anything more substantional than a vague promise to lower co2 emissions. Especially bitter was the question about who is responsible for the current high co2 levels. Is it the rich countries, who built their wealth on fossile fuels, without knowing, or is it the developing countries who argue for their right to grow richer, while knowingthat co2 levels must down.

It could be surprising, then , that the support for the principle "The polluter pays", which clearly defines a culprit, is almost unanimous. The left loves it, because it promises to tax multinationals. The right revers it, because it is ideologically pure liberalism - if a market system is supposed to work, big companies can not be allowed to pollute, and destroy the resources of smaller, equally important entrepeneurs. Those greens who avoid leaning left or right believe in it because a system that it targets the morally bad companies, rather than private entrepeneurship as such, is both more moral, an likely a more efficient way to achieve political change.

It is a pity that it doesn't work. Or at least has worked very poorly, so far. The Guardian earlier this week published findings from a study written by Trucost for the UN, due to be published in the summer. The study that the world's top firms cause staggering $2.2tn of environmental damage. "The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies' combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others."

According to the Guardian, the report is likely to end up in proposals to end state subsidies to industries like agriculture, energy and transport. Personally, I think the consensus about "the Polluter pays" will end the minute specific companies are targeted with claims.

There are lot of reasons to be pessimistic about the possibility to ask companies for this kind of responsibility. The political world, especially the part of it dealing with social- and environmental issues, is not void of beautiful words, or good ideas. But when it comes down to action, changing the world is a hard thing to do. These $2.2tn of environmental damage that noone takes repsonsibility is an ample illustration of this fact.

Picture from the wikipedia commons

One could also get pessimistic by the fact, that taking one-third of profits from some of the worlds biggest companies would be harmful, to say the least for the word economy. As if it was not already in havoc. Just imagine the headlines in FT and the Economist, and the political response from the targeted companies.

But one could also see a hope in these numbers. Their merit is not that they work as legal claims, but that they can help educating society about the gravity of the matter. Something must change. Rather sooner than later.

I think we need a kind of truth commission, assesing how businesses have used and misused our common environment, so that we can find better ways to feed, transport and amuse ourselves. The better ways to grow food and transport people already exists, but how can we make "ecological" the only legal alternative? This must be an open and throughout discussion. But there should not be any reason to hide information about how business have been actually been done - therefore the guilt question must not be central. Criminal behavior can be forgiven, but not forgotten. What is really important is not what has been done up to now, but with what mindset the kids who are now in school will go into business fifteen years from now.

But forgivance comes with a demand - that the foul behavior is not repeated. No one should be allowed to destroy what belongs to everyone - therefore the principle about "The Polluter pays" has to be enacted with legal force in the very near future. Companies, states or individuals should face justice for environmental crimes. Some rules are simply more important than others. Environmental protection is one of those you just can not bend.

The sun keeps shining

Everything is not corruption and cold houses in Bulgaria. As alwyas the coin has more than one side, and there are good news for those that look for them.

Today I was very glad seeing that Bulgarias first solar electric plant opened officialy. It will produce 1250 mgwh per year, which makes it not only Bulgaria's l but eastern Europe's largets in its kind. An enviromently and recession-proof investment.
Is there anything similar in Sweden?