Sustainability in a growth-obsessed society: reshaping our ideas of happiness

 by Lucia Scodanibbio

"Our culture does not nourish that which is best or noblest in the human spirit. It does not cultivate vision, imagination, or aesthetic or spiritual sensitivity. It does not encourage gentleness, generosity, caring, or compassion. Increasingly in the late 20th Century, the economic-technocratic-statist worldview has become a monstrous destroyer of what is loving and life-affirming in the human soul" – Ron Miller[1]

An obsession with unfettered economic growth is one of the main drivers behind today’s ecological crisis and a changing climate.

As exemplified by the ecological footprint concept, we are currently using more resources (associated with water and land ecosystems) than the earth has the capacity to replenish and are producing more waste than can be assimilated by the natural systems. This is made possible by consuming resources that have been produced over the course of millennia and using trade, which allows more ecologically-degraded, high-consuming countries to import natural capital under the form of goods subsidised by poorer, more biodiverse countries – as well as the global commons.

That this growth-directed pathway is unsustainable is made clear by the latest ecological footprint statistics, which show that since the 1970s we are using more resources than those the earth can generate in any given one-year period, and thus, by the month of August – and each year slightly earlier – are already borrowing from the future. South Africa itself requires the equivalent of 2.2 earths in order to maintain its consumption patterns[2]. Worldwide, evidence in the form of degraded and polluted ecosystems, as well as a changing climate, testifies to humanity’s greed and addiction to consumption.

While the world’s top scientists warn us “that global civilisation is on a collision course with biophysical reality … [and] warn that staying on our growth-based path to global development virtually guarantees eventual catastrophe for billions of people and threatens the possibility of maintaining a complex global civilization[3]”, we see little evidence from either our top decision-makers, or the average citizen, to shift direction.

With people in the developed world measuring their self-worth based on the size of their car or the model of their cellular phone, and people in the developing world aspiring to this capitalist model of accumulation of possessions, it seems we are far from where we need to be. With governments spending more on weaponry than citizens’ health, and competing to water down global commitments aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions or biodiversity conservation targets, many of us feel we really are driving at full speed towards catastrophe.

It is in this context that emergent glimpses of hope and inspiration feel even more precious and admirable. One such illustration is provided by Jose Mujica, Uruguay’s current president. Not only does he lead by example, donating 90% of his salary to charities, living in his modest farmhouse rather than the presidential palace and picking up hitchhikers in his rusty 1970s VW Beetle. Furthermore, he has exhorted world leaders to question the way we judge “development” at numerous global meetings – from Rio+20 to the 68th session of the UN General Assembly. Drawing attention to the fact that a model based on consumption and competition is inherently unsustainable with current population levels, he furthermore underlines that this very model is undermining the foundations for a better quality of life: “Today, man does not govern the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man. And life. For we do not come into this planet simply to develop, just like that. We come to the planet to be happy. ... Development cannot be at the expense of happiness. It has to work in favour of human happiness, of love on Earth, human relationships, caring for children, having friends, having our basic needs covered. Precisely because this is the most precious treasure we have: happiness. When we fight for the environment we have to remember that the starting point for the environment is human happiness[4]”.

Although Mujica stands as a lonesome example as far as world rulers go, his call for different, more humane values begins to be, to a certain extent, reflected in academic, scientific circles too, where the recognition that the scale of today’s environmental and social problems calls for paradigmatic shifts that go far beyond scientific fixes and technological solutions. William Rees himself, co-founder of the ecological footprint concept, calls for changes in beliefs, values and assumptions in order for “growth to give way to the ‘steadystate’; competition to yield to cooperation; selfishness to bow to generosity in sharing limited resource on this single Earth”. He goes on to say: “the value emphasis would shift from quantity of possessions to quality of life. People will come to judge their self-worth and social status less in terms of things accumulated (manufactured capital) and more in terms of relationships enjoyed (social capital)”[5].

This shift in thinking and in the language itself that scientists are using has been the centrepiece of Mike Hulme’s latest piece in which he claims that attempting to address climate change pleas for the resurrection of a number of virtues that have been lost to greed and power in modern society. Calling for wisdom, humility, faith, integrity, hope and love, he asks for people to rise to the challenges we face, by thinking less of “the world we want” and more about “the people we should be”[6]. While he argues that the focus of climate change discussions on “emissions”, “thresholds”, “low carbon economies” or “intended nationally determined contributions” has led us far from resolving the problem, Hulme  states that “a flowering of human goodness” is now required, with global warming acting as “a catalyst for a redesign of Man”.

With the wisdom to balance competing interests and strategies across temporal, geographical and human scales; humility in recognising the limits of scientific knowledge and in designing policies aimed at tackling climate change problems; integrity and honesty in the way we live our lives according to our deepest values; and love in the form of compassion, friendship, justice and self-sacrifice, Hulme provides pointers for how to exercise virtue in our lives. Should we manage to “make the ways we think and act, correspond to our deepest values or moral commitments” we will be rewarded with “eudaimonia: a state of blessedness, happiness, well-being”[7].

As environmental educator David Orr has put it: “The plain fact is that the planet does not need more "successful" people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it”[8].