Re: [pf]2. Binary thinking and methods of sustainability

At 04:45 12/9/2001 +1200, David Mac sent-on his June 1999 piece {at:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001III/msg01251.html } :-
>>... leaving some outside coercion, like a legal system ... as the only
way to get enough human activities changed soon enough to save the earth's
ecology.
>** Methods _are_ important as well as aims; so what methods might work?
>>

At 12:21 11/9/2001 -0500, Jill wrote {at:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001III/msg01252.html } :-
>I am eager for the particulars of how this strong democracy will take
place, ... strong democracy is advocated as the only "method" that is
flexible enough to deal with the changing reality of sustainability.
>
>                                    Jill
{And in http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001III/msg01257.html  she
comments: "I don't think it any more callous to discuss such things today
as on any day - perhaps it is even more relevant."}

· Jill has currently paused in her reading of _The Local Politics of Global
Sustainability_ (Prugh, Costanza and Daly). I haven't read it; I haven't
read any political/social-change books since I got started on David
Korten's _When Corporations Rule The World_, and expanded my "the bad guys"
list to include almost all the "top 750" corporations, as well as the US,
British and (to some extent) Japanese governments.
  That's coming to mean, what with big-box stores, and main-media and
government conformism to the "threatening economic growth is treason"
mind-set, that there's less and less available to civil society, you and
me, to have effective direction-and-control over. Depressing to me, though
I struggle on regardless.

· It may be that I should read Prugh, Costanza and Daly; it might give me
hope, get me energised. 


· However, I mainly wanted to comment on: "the changing reality of
sustainability"; I agree that what is sustainable changes with time. Years
ago I pointed out that IMO New Zealand in the early 1950s was nearly
sustainable (i.e. if the whole world was brought up and down to that level,
the world could have been kept sustainable from then on), but that in the
late 1990s the sustainable level had decreased to something like a country
Thailander's level. (Because of increased population and greater
consumerism by the rich.)

· I see us at the beginning of a several-decade transition (hopefully) to
sustainability, possibly by means of contraction and convergence. I agree
with Jill that “strong democracy is ... the only "method" that is flexible
enough to deal with the changing reality of sustainability”, but I don't
see that delightful problem, “dealing with the changing reality of
sustainability”, facing us right now.

· No, in the political arena (Jill's interest), the problem in democracies
is convincing ordinary people that there is a huge problem with the way
things are being done at present, but that also there are ways of dealing
with it, involving the-man-in-the-street as well as corporations (and
governments - they just tag along, IMO).

· In the real world, (Jill's daily life), the big question facing us all is
the preservation of as much of the geography/ecology of the world (in
linked patches, usually) as possible, together with the preservation of
ordinary mid-20th-century small-town-USA civil life, against the ravages of
the current extremely exploitative economic system. (Small is Beautiful!)
  So that when sustainability becomes a real possibility, there will be
something to build from, somewhere to start in re-colonising the wasteland
that unrestrained capitalism is causing, on the land and in people's hearts
and minds.

David.
David MacClement [davd @ ihug.co.nz] (remove spaces)
http://davd.tripod.com/GrRR-010907_titles.html#top
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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