What would you wish for?
6th January, 2011 by Claire Wyatt | Add a comment
If you had one wish that would make your organisation more sustainable in 2011, what would it be? It’s a tough question, but that’s exactly what we asked Forum for the Future staff, partners and friends at our end of year party in December. The party was a celebration of all the great things we’ve achieved together in 2010. We recorded their wishes and have put them together for you to enjoy and be inspired by.
Listen!
Forum's Christmas Wishes (mp3)
What would you wish for? Why don’t you leave a comment and tell us - Who knows, it may come true!
Comments
What would I wish? For a society that isn't so dominated, and styled around monetary profit. Get rid of money and start building a better world through true cooperation and understanding, instead of considering how much profit might be gained from an industry regardless of environmental or social impact.
Money is a tool of human creation and entirely dependent upon the permission of our shared imagination in order to function. It is also an enormously powerful motivating tool. Profit is a function of arithmetic but the way we currently do the sums is all wrong (at least if we want to ensure continuation of the species)!
Economics is supposed to answer the question of how best humans can maximise scarce resource but the way we account for our economic activity makes the ludicrous assumption that the planet’s resources and services are not only unlimited but that there is no cost attached to their use.
Business has long been use to the idea that it is necessary to have a depreciation charge to put aside cash so that when a capital item needs replacing there is money to do it. It is time that business was also made to pay for the depreciation of natural capital. If they were obliged to spend that charge on restoration projects of their choice (e.g. restocking oceans, protecting biodiversity, taking carbon out of the atmosphere) it would by-pass government administration (but not verification) and so couldn’t be accused of being a tax. It would also put us onto a rapid course of making thing better and stimulate the needed creativity that has, so far, ensured our species has thrived.
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