A century of healing

This short guest blog is from Steb Fisher, an RSA Fellow in Australia. To find out more information about RSA Australia and New Zealand’s activities, and connect with Fellows based there, head to their website.

Humanity’s last century on earth might be this one.  The current trajectory is not looking promising.  But the reasons are not climate change, pollution, pandemics, biodiversity loss, and so on . . . .

Those are of course symptoms, but the reasons are in the way we organise ourselves and our mental models for human organisation on a full planet.  Exponential growth has meant that we have rushed from a relatively empty planet to a full one in barely a century and human societies are both slow to wake up to new circumstances and then slow to change.  We are now faced with a stark choice, change very fast or face terrible consequences.  But the trajectory is not inevitable, there is a sensible way forward.  Basic science points towards a brighter future.

So the challenge is to redesign politics and economics starting with a blank sheet of paper, basing these fundamental organising mechanisms on the operating instructions for the planet, which all lie in the province of science.  Organising to be proper stewards of our ecosystems, to have zero material and energy growth, to protect biodiversity with appropriate biosecurity, and to shelter local economies with appropriate protections.  All that depends on cooperation.  That is a spiritual pursuit.

This provides a brief summary of Steb’s ‘A Century of Healing’ talk, which aired on ABC Radio National in Australia in May.