Splitting of the socio-economic power
When a consumer goes shopping on the “biosustainable” market, he takes the socio-economic power apart. He takes it apart in the social power of income of the producer and the economic power of expense of the consumer. The producer gives shape to society. Look around you. All the forms and volumes you see are there because producers have been paid to create them. Since producers form society, their power is a social one With the economic power of expense, the consumer maintains ways of living that keep his environment sound by accounting with scientific proofs for the ecological quality of his purchases. With the combined economic powers of their expenses, consumers can safeguard the integrity of Nature. |
Ethical currents in the economy
In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, integrity is defined as: 1: firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : INCORRUPTIBILITY 2: an unimpaired condition : SOUNDNESS 3: the quality or state of being complete or undivided : COMPLETENESS Since integrity is defined not only as something, which is sound and complete but also as having sound moral principles, the integrity of anything can be kept only with integrity. With the economic power of his expense the consumer will sustain ethical currents in the entire ethical market economy, out of interests. |
The demand of consumers for products with the highest ecological value and thus with the highest efficiency in utilising resources could cause an increase in efficiency in the utilization of resources in our ways of living of one percent, rather quickly.
One percent increase in this efficiency in the lives of billions of consumers will have as a result that so much more is produced with the same input as today that there will be more than enough for everybody on this planet to live well. |
There will thus be no more poverty. People will therefore be sharing compatible levels of well being, so they will be sharing satisfaction. People who share satisfaction live in peace.
This will be true particularly when an optimum efficiency in the utilization of natural resources in mankind's ways of living has been achieved. |
As long as the macro economic practise of maintaining growth in development is pursued, billions of consumers will continue to consume more, resources will dwindle further, the ecological crises will worsen and poverty will become even more rampant. By the time arable land, clean air and pure, fresh water have become rare resources, wars will break out to defend what is left of these assets.
Of course maintaining growth in development must also end up in natural catastrophes, which we already see happening around us more and more frequently and more and more damaging: erupting volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, fires, floods and too much snow. Nature is made up of an enormous collection of dynamic processes. The equilibria of these processes have not been disturbed for hundreds of centuries. However, since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the condition in nature in which opposing forces are equal to one another has been upset tremendously. As can be expected of dynamic processes of which the internal stability has been perturbed, these processes react in a way to re-establish this balance and they will do so by eliminating the disturbing element, the human species. These are the laws of Nature. There is nothing I can do about it. So, as long as we, all more than seven billion, do not live in harmony with nature, Nature will keep on wiping us out even if it takes another Atlantis. The probability that this happens is not 0%. Politicians, law makers do not listen to scientists when dealing with the ecological- and economic crises and with poverty. On 24 June 2015, Urgenda and 900 co-claimants won the climate case and enforced a more stringent climate policy by the Dutch state. A court in the Haghe, the Netherlands decided that in 2020 the emission of CO2 has to be reduced to 25% in comparison with 1990.* * http://www.urgenda.nl/themas/klimaat-en-energie/klimaatzaak/ |
In September 2015, I explained in a letter to Mr. Rutte, who was then Prime Minister of the Netherlands, that he would be able to reach the levels set by the court, if he financially rewarded the consumer for living in harmony with Nature. I received a letter signed by him that my proposal was contrary to the programmes of his government.
I answered that he should adapt his programmes, because science is not adapted, science determines. I received a letter from the person who had already dealt with my letter to Mr. Rutte, not to bother them anymore. In November 2015 I sent a letter to a scientific council of the Dutch government with the same advice. In July 2011 I had sent a message to the Dutch government with the same proposal. In 1990, a generation ago, I reacted to a demand for advice how to defend the Netherlands against rising sea levels because of the warming of the atmosphere. My advice was to allow the consumer to deduct his green costs of living from his taxable income. This proposal was incorporated with all the advices received in a special report, "Reacties van particulieren", Advies Kustverdediging na 1990, Raad van de Waterstaat, 'sGravenhage, 2 februari 1990. Politicians do get together to discuss how the ecological problems have to be solved, such as at the climate conference in Poland in December of 2018. They declared the meeting a success because they had come up with a Rulebook. It is impossible that a group of politicians can solve planetary problems concerning Nature by agreeing to meet certain goals, like the Millennium Development Goals. They have not been met. The goals politicians set can only delay the inevitable end of a development based on consuming more. The year 2030 might not be the year it all ends, but it could very well be the year of the point of no return. |