 As
promised last week, this post draws together many of the ideas I've
written about in these pages over the past year into a single 'roadmap'
action plan for transforming the world from one of imminent ecological
disaster, massive cruelty, violence, suffering, rampant disease,
poverty, misery, overpopulation, inequity, excess, ruinous growth,
tyranny and waste, to one of balance, peace, harmony, stability,
diversity, happiness, equality and well-being. Today's post simply
presents the roadmap. The arguments for each of these actions being
essential to our world's and our species' survival can be found in the
posts in my environmental philosophy and politics & economics tables of contents. The journey that has changed me from a depressed victim of a society gone mad to a do-or-die activist was described in my How to Save the World signature essay. This post updates the prescription in that essay.
Tomorrow I will present
my first personal scorecard, a 'progress' report showing how I have
begun changing my life, living smarter without sacrifice, to become
part of the solution instead of part of the problem. For the rest of my
life (I'm 52 now) this roadmap will be my personal agenda, my
obsession. For better or worse, for me there is no turning back now.
In the prescription in my earlier essay, I presented a 'systems
thinking' chart to show how the actions in this roadmap contribute to
the objectives of creating a better world. The chart was visually
interesting, and its logic has not changed, but the chart format made
it a bit cryptic and unwieldy. So this roadmap uses a more prosaic
table format, where there's room for proper description of each action.
Where one action aids achievement of another action ('reinforcing
actions') I've noted this parenthetically below. All actions contribute
directly and are, I believe, necessary to the achievement of the
objectives in green below, the Future State we must create. My
novel-in-progress is set in that Future State, and hopefully will show
compellingly just how much better, how almost unimaginably wonderful,
our world could be if enough of us work successfully on the 27 actions
in this roadmap. The actions are grouped by 'actor' -- who needs to do
them -- but are in no particular order.
| Where We Need to Get to: The Future State: |
The Human Sphere:
Physically & emotionally healthy people, healthy
communities, global peace, security, economic & political
stability, and an end to suffering & waste
|
The Natural Sphere:
Stability & diversity of all life on Earth, with reduced human impact, and natural habitats & rights for non-humans |
Getting There: The Role of Technologists & Innovators :
|
T1 / Technologies & Innovations that Advance Self-Sufficiency :
Renewable energy, advances that allow all communities to be energy
self-sufficient; other innovations that allow each community to supply
and provide as many of its basic needs as possible (food, clothing,
building materials, energy, transport & communication), so that
few goods need to be imported or exported outside the community |
T2 / Technologies & Innovations that Advance Resource
Conservation :
Invent new materials and portable, configurable,
multi-function products that allow more functionality to be provided
with less weight, size, pollution and resource consumption |
T3 / Technologies & Innovations that Reduce Suffering :
Within
ethical limits (i.e. without exploiting any animal species for the
benefit of another), develop foods, pharmaceuticals & materials
that reduce human and animal suffering and the need to consume animals
for food |
T4 / Technology-Driven Collaborative Problem-Solving :
Use of
computer power, networks and collaboration to develop new ideas and
technologies that help achieve the Future State |
T5 / Technologies & Innovations that Facilitate Activism :
Lists
and tools that allow citizens to identify, boycott and prosecute
polluters and other socially irresponsible people and organizations |
T6 / Technologies & Innovations that Reduce Fertility:
RU486 and
other innovative technologies that reduce human fertility painlessly,
equitably and voluntarily |
T7 / Technologies & Innovations that Advance Inter-Species
Communication :
Linguistic and other technologies that aid in
deciphering other animals' languages and allow us to communicate with
and understand them (reinforces actions T3, S1, S3, S4)
|
| Getting There: The Role of Citizens, Leaders & Teachers: |
S1 / Re-learn How and Why Communities Work :
Develop & teach the
logic and efficiency of community-based businesses, governments,
schools, regulations, economic systems, and other small,
decentralized, self-managed institutions |
S2 / Teach Critical Thinking :
Revamp education to make critical
thinking the #1 core skill; Publish & organize to foster
dissenting ideas and dissatisfaction with the existing political,
economic, social and religious dogma (reinforces action P2)
|
S3 / Promote Vegetarianism :
Teach the benefits and social responsibility of a vegetarian diet, and vegetarian cuisine |
S4 / Reduce Human Fertility :
Support 'Maybe One' initiatives to get humans to reduce our population voluntarily |
S5 / Exemplify & Teach Radical Simplicity :
Teach people how to
reduce wasteful consumption, be less materialistic, economically budget
their time & money, and live as comfortably and more freely while
consuming less, and living smarter, simpler and more efficiently |
S6 / Teach Conflict Resolution :
Teach people the superiority of
consensus-building and compromise, to resolve conflicts and
differences, instead of aggression, confrontation and litigation |
S7 / Use Consumer Power :
Boycott socially and environmentally
irresponsible businesses and products, and pledge to buy local whenever
possible and affordable. |
S8 / Promote Feminism :
Encourage greater roles for women and
greater attention to feminine solutions to problems, which tend to be
more balanced, more peaceful, more responsible, more collaborative, and
more economical |
S9 / Smash Despair, Cynicism & Complacency :
We must believe the creation of a vastly better
world is possible. That means heeding the words of relentless optimists
like Margaret Mead and relentless change architects like Bucky Fuller.
We can't give up hope, and we can't give up trying.
|
Getting There: The Role of Activists, Economists, Lawyers & Politicians
|
P1 / Tax & Regulate Pollution & Waste :
Eliminate subsidies,
revamp regulations and tax laws to reduce waste, resource use and
pollution, and encourage clean, employment-producing, local,
responsible businesses |
P2 / Decentralize Power & Shift it from Corporations to People :
Ban all corporate involvement in the political process and scrap
corporate ‘rights’; Restore governments' authority to set high
social & environmental standards, reward self-sufficiency and
protect viable local business from unfair foreign competition (taken
away by ‘free’ trade laws); Devolve authority over land & resource
use, industry, energy, health, education etc. to local community level,
and allow citizens a say in how government spending is allocated; Scrap
redistricting and other abuses of power that make government less
representative or responsible; Change corporate charters to mandate
social, environmental responsibility to employees and communities, prohibit
sweatshop environments and reduce the rights of passive shareholders;
Strengthen anti-combines law, especially for media industries |
P3 / Tax & Regulate Inefficient Human Food Production :
Eliminate
subsidies and enact laws and tax penalties to shift agricultural
production from animals for slaughter to more environmentally sound
organic vegetarian products |
P4 / Ban Ecologically Damaging Technologies :
Examples: nuclear
plants, dams, animal testing procedures, most agricultural genetic
engineering |
P5 / Enact Stringent Conservation Laws :
Prohibit taking more out of
the land than is put back; Remediate much of Earth to a 'natural' state
free from significant human occupation or interference |
P6 / Enact Animal Rights Laws :
Guarantee right to life, freedom from
suffering, and an end to treatment as human 'property', for all Earth
animals |
| P7 / Eliminate Oppressive Third World Debt |
| P8 / Make Quality Universal Health Care and Education a Right |
P9 / Shift Government Policy and Investment from Defense &
Incarceration to Humanitarian Aid & Other Preventative
Methods :
Acknowledge that the only answer to war, crime, violence and
aggression is to alleviate the symptoms that give rise to it, and treat
it early
|
| Getting There: The Role of Businesspeople |
B1 / Establish New Collaborative Enterprises to Create a New
Economy :
These new enterprises will supplant the old economy by being
more innovative, more economical, more responsive to customer needs,
and more adaptive to changing public attitudes and laws (P1 to P6
above), rendering the old economy obsolete |
B2 / Push Business to Take an Active Role in Education :
Encourage New
Collaborate Enterprises (B1 above) to invite students regularly into
the workplace so each can learn enormously from the other
|
 Can
we achieve the Future State, or something tolerably close to it, by
pursuing and achieving only some of these 27 actions? Perhaps. But I
don't think we can count on it. As you'll see in my report card
tomorrow, I am now getting personally involved in actions T1, T2, S3,
S4, S5, S7, P1 and B1. I'll continue to blog about the others, of
course, and hope that others can bring them to fruition.
Despite being a year in the making, this roadmap is still a work in
process. I welcome comments, additions and refinements. But as I said
in my post last week, I no longer have time to debate the worthiness or
achievability of these actions. This is a roadmap for doing something. Time to shift from whether & why to how.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
