Sustainability

- a choice to consider

• Home
• Our Purpose
• About Us
• Articles
• Add Your Voice
• Contact Us
• Donate
• Links

The whole story:

Life, Money
and Illusion

Three Steps Toward Sustainability

Steps in Transition

The shift in priorities that our civilization needs to undergo to accomplish long-term well-being will not take place in a single bound. Grasping the nature of a sustainable economic order will come in stages. Industries adopting the Natural Step, Extended Producer Responsibility or other programs, as described in Chapter 12, can move us toward sustainability by reducing fossil-fuel use and the waste they produce, while at the same time conforming to the principles of the economic expansion model. Renewable energy provides a further bridge. With its foundation in the material production of equipment, its positive effects can be multiplied by the application of intent through conservation. Health care and education are of unquestionable importance. They will have a presence in any social structure, and they provide an exemplary way to move the focus of society away from the limited realm of material processing and toward the unlimited realm of life-based potentials.

By stepping away from accumulation and consumption as the purpose of life, security would become the product of working respectfullywith natural cycles. By extending respect to other people, adversarial competitiveness would give way to caring cooperation, and the possibility would expand for creating a truly elegant culture through co-intelligence and participatory democracy.

Renewable Energy

Renewable energy provides a toehold for the new legitimacy. Unlike petroleum, where long ago the energy was captured and rendered almost ready for use, renewable energy and storage systems require sophisticated manufactured equipment, making them expensive. A cost-benefit analysis would show that more comfort and service can be derived from investing in conservation measures than in building additional equipment. Understanding that conservation can accommodate human need better than expanding production is crucial.

Energy conservation combines elements from both paradigms. From one perspective, it is a full participant in the “investment- production-compete-for-market-share” world of the growth economy. Energy-efficient light bulbs, motors, appliances and vehicles are all products of profit-motivated businesses. From the other perspective, conservation involves recognizing limits and taking steps to live within them. While this impulse can still lead to product purchases, it gives legitimacy to considering one’s lifestyle and choosing less-consumptive activities. Through this window, the focus shifts toward the sustainability perspective.

The conventional wisdom around energy supply has oscillated notably since the early 1970s. Up until then, energy was strictly a growth industry. Following the 1973 oil crisis, concern for energy conservation reached a high point. Programs were instituted to encourage the insulation of homes and businesses, speed limits were reduced to boost fuel efficiency, and subsidy programs were initiated to advance the development of wind, solar and small-scale hydro-electric generation. Pioneering low-consumption lifestyles was not part of the official response to the energy crunch, but it was a natural inclination for conscientious people. The vision has been growing ever since.

Between the high price of fossil energy and encouragement to conserve, consumption levels did drop, and the energy producers were not pleased. Among the first things that Ronald Reagan did after his election in 1980 was to cancel the funding for alternative energy programs, slowing progress in those fields to a crawl. Speed limits were increased, and a blind eye was turned to the promotion of sport utility vehicles and 4X4 trucks for personal transportation. Exempt from the fuel-efficiency requirements of personal transport, yet sold by the millions, these heavyweight vehicles ended energy conservation in transportation. Claims of increased safety have since unraveled, leaving the public with inefficient transport and increased danger of pollution, fuel depletion and large volumes of steel traveling at high speeds. A review of the Ford Motor Company’s 2003 vehicle lineup showed that only one of those models gets better mileage than the 35 miles per gallon with which their 1912 Model T cruised the highways.

Such was the first oscillation of legitimacy between producing energy to maximize monetary returns and extending the utility of a resource through conservation and the development of alternative energy sources: one was driven by monetary growth, and the other carried within it the seeds of the “life perspective.”

As anxiety mounts again over petroleum reserves, another oscillation is presently taking place. With well over 500 billion barrels of oil consumed since 1973, most oil fields outside the Middle East are past their peak of production and in decline. Those who still believe in perpetual expansion continue to muster vast military forces to secure remaining supplies so that they can continue with business as usual. Those who view the world from the sustainability perspective are moving slowly forward, developing energy-efficient and renewable- energy-producing equipment. These new businesses fit inconspicuously into the old legitimacy as ambitious growth industries preparing to fill a growing need. At the same time, they are important components of a sustainable economy and are increasing the legitimacy of their complement — conservation.

Health Care and Education

The scope for shifting paradigms expands further in the fields of education and health care. Critical to any society, the way these sectors are developed changes significantly depending on which values a society holds. Despite the seemingly self-evident truth that a population is far more productive when it is healthy and well-educated, the money paradigm considers health care and education expendable when accounts get tight: the returns are less concrete and often longer-term than suits conventional monetary expedience. Loan payments are due monthly, economic performance is measured quarterly, and governments are reviewed on their performance every four years or so. A basic education, on the other hand, can take a decade or more, and like health care, is most effective as a life-long process. Unfortunately, from a monetary perspective, which legitimizes only profit, the gains from industry and speculation are more tangible than the returns from good health and education.

Unlike material production where technical innovation can increase the amount of work each person can do, the work of teachers, doctors and nurses requires dealing one-on-one with students and patients. Efforts to increase “productivity” end up lowering the quality of the service. When the measure of all things is money, working directly with people suffers. Technological innovations in manufacturing and some services enable higher pay through increased productivity per person, without disrupting the customary balances between wages, profit and prices. For the wages of teachers and healthcare personnel to keep up with that of their peers in manufacturing, however, additional revenue must be found or other services cut. The money paradigm says the additional costs should be carried by those receiving the services. Such policy in health care and education, however, creates serious divisions. In health care, it divides those who would receive treatment for their illness from those who might die for lack of care. In education, those who must study long years to take on challenging jobs are divided from those who must live by menial labor. Such harsh divides frequently lead to deep resentment between classes and to social instability.

Education in the money paradigm aims to train people for jobs. Raising the price of education limits the number of people who might seek jobs in professional fields, virtually assuring that only the children of those already well off will fill those jobs. Education for life aims instead to produce emotionally stable, confident citizens, with a variety of knowledge. While skills by which individuals can contribute to mutual provision are important, so too are history, philosophy and the arts. These subjects help people understand the world, make informed choices about democratic options and increase the quality of human experience. The sciences are learned, not simply to expand production, but to assure that such production can co-exist harmlessly within the social and natural environments. Furthermore, education is a bountiful component of the life paradigm. By pursuing education for the wonder of knowledge itself, satisfaction can be gained for entire lifetimes with almost no additional material throughput.

Except for the cost of living for the teachers, from the sustainability perspective, education costs almost nothing to deliver compared to a transportation system or consumer products. Once developed, knowledge is free. A teacher can explain a topic to many people. While all will know more than they did before, the teacher loses nothing for passing the knowledge along. It is possible for poor countries to have a very well-educated population. Once basic support for those who enjoy learning is provided, they will be able to absorb and share the bounty of information that humankind has produced. Unfortunately in the Money End Game, developing countries are told to reduce investments in education when lending agencies pressure them to gather money for interest payments.

In the realm of health care, the economic growth model finds opportunity in sickness. Diabetes was mentioned earlier, and drug prices are another infamous example. The extension of patent protection for drugs was a concrete action to accommodate economic growth. Patented drugs are often sold for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of times as much as it costs to produce them. This makes drug companies among the most profitable investments around and assures that their sales will continue to inflate the GDP for years to come. While the resulting increases in GDP, with minimal increase in material throughput, is promoted as a win-win solution for growth and sustainability, the moral repercussions of charging inflated prices for badly needed medication are compromising.

Cancer is a growth industry. Tens of billions of dollars are spent annually treating the poor souls whom it afflicts, and many millions more are spent studying the disease and looking for a cure. In all the research, however, the obvious connections between increasing concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals in the environment and the increasing incidence of cancer are largely ignored. Making money doing practically anything is so revered that it is considered almost anti-social to try to solve the problem at the prevention level. It does not bode well for preventative solutions as long as we are entrenched in the value structure of growth everlasting.

Nevertheless, the new paradigm is making appearances here and there. The successful legal suit against the tobacco industry mentioned in connection with full-cost accounting is a landmark example. The legitimacy gained for prevention in that one case will make it easier for future cases where money-making activities threaten well-being.

The expensive equipment and complex procedures that drive medical costs up are the tools necessary for curing illness after it has taken hold. Maintaining good health is not an expensive undertaking when it is approached from the angle of prevention. Mostly what good health requires is knowledge about the factors that contribute to individual well-being and the will to encourage each other to lead healthy lives, rather than promoting the consumption of products and lifestyles that undermine our health. Knowledge, as discussed above, is the product of attention, thought, communication and goodwill. Research to determine the causes of problems can be expensive, but once it has been conducted, the understanding can be reproduced indefinitely at little or no additional cost. Nourishing food, exercise, a community of friends and the opportunity to participate in mutual provision and the decisions that affect one’s life will keep most people in good health.

Cuba provides an excellent example here. The island has been under an economic blockade since 1962. Without the benefits of unrestricted trade and finance, the most abundant resource available has been the life-based capabilities of the people. Even so, in 1988, Cuba was awarded the Health for All medal by the World Health Organization (WHO). The medal recognized it as the only developing country to attain the health goals that the WHO hoped all developing countries would achieve by 2000. Cuba received the medal again ten years later for having more doctors serving in other countries than the WHO itself, and for having lowered its infant mortality rate from 60 per 1,000 births in 1959 to 6.5 presently. By comparison, the US has an infant mortality rate of 6.9 per 1,000 births.

A recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine said of the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana: “[It is] sponsored by the Cuban government and dedicated to training doctors to treat the poor of the Western hemisphere and Africa. Twenty-seven countries and 60 ethnic groups are represented among [the school’s] eight thousand students.” Of these, 88 are from disadvantaged parts of the US. In exchange for free education, students are required to commit to practicing medicine back in the poor communities from which they came.

Another example is China’s “barefoot doctors.” A Canadian, Dr. Norman Bethune, started China’s present medical system during their revolution in 1935. Bethune had already achieved notoriety for a variety of things. These included the procedure, which he first performed on himself, for curing tuberculosis by collapsing a lung, and the creation of the first mobile medical unit upon which Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH) are now modeled. Before going to China, Bethune had been a professor at McGill University in Montreal. To this day, in his honour, each year two professors are chosen from the McGill Faculty of Medicine to tour China and lecture at medical schools there.

My father, Dr. Mark Nickerson, was head of the Department of Pharmacology at McGill when he was chosen in 1975 to be one of the Bethune Professors. One of my dad’s specialties was post-traumatic shock, the sort of complication that sets in after a severe injury, such as a very bad burn. In China, he was expecting to deliver a talk on the methods he had been developing, but before the lecture, he was given a tour through a large hospital. To his surprise, the post-traumatic-shock complications he was accustomed to dealing with here in Canada were almost nonexistent there. In North America, 20 percent of serious burn victims might develop such complications. In China, the figure was around one-half of one percent. The “barefoot doctors” were responsible for the difference.

Because the new order arising in 1935 had almost no medical services available, Bethune trained people to train others in medical procedures. A kind of voluntary pyramid scheme of medical information sharing developed. By the time of my father’s visit, if someone in China didn’t have a job, he or she received first aid training. If there was still no work, they received more sophisticated training. Over time, a great many Chinese have been trained in all manner of medical procedures. One in every 80 people there is a healthcare provider. What this means to accident victims is that sophisticated first aid is available anywhere in the country soon after an accident. The shock complications don’t develop because of the speed with which accident victims are treated. My father’s specialty was irrelevant, and it was necessary for him to quickly come up with another topic for his lecture.

Even today, China is not yet rich by Western standards, but 30 years ago it was far less so. The difference in this healthcare system, at that time at least, was that medical procedures did not have to respond to the structural scarcity of a debt-based money system. Human ingenuity could be directed toward other ends.

We have some of the advantages of the life-based approach with Canada’s medicare system. Although it is heavily influenced by a profit-seeking drug-manufacturing industry, and tight restrictions on who can provide medical care, the services are primarily in the interest of a healthy population. Even as powerful lobbies campaign to allow for-profit medical facilities, there is a trend to shift medicare’s focus from treating illness to promoting wellness. While we aren’t training welfare recipients to give their neighbors first aid yet, there is a growing effort to keep people out of the “medical treatment market.”

Many communities in Ontario are fortunate to have community health centers. The doctors on staff are paid a salary rather than per visit and, as a result, have nothing to gain from people getting, or staying, sick. The primary focus of these centers is to encourage healthy living. By helping people to understand how health is affected by stress, pollution, quality of employment, income distribution, exercise, nutrition, participation in decision-making and the like, communities are prompted to work toward improving the quality of life for everyone.

Health care straddles the line between the material focus, which can be lucratively harnessed for monetary expansion, and the life focus, which can provide significant increases in well-being with almost no material requirements beyond the sustenance of those providing the services. The economic growth approach might be seen, from the life-based perspective, as taking undue advantage of people’s weaknesses, while the life-based approach would be considered worthless, distracting or counter- productive where monetary expansion is the measure of success.

Life-based Activity