Sustainability

With us reaching record high temperatures this week, it is impossible to not think about how our actions are impacting the earth’s climate. We all agree that climate change is real but we tend to argue over what is causing it. What is not deniable is that our actions, as a society, are not helping the situation.

Our economic models are based upon infinite growth. Stock prices of companies are based upon market growth, not sustainability. Investment is made on the assumption of growth, not just profitability. This brings us to a system where CEOs are rewarded for increasing the dividends of shareholders, not for strengthening the company they lead and thus. Constant and infinite expansion of the economy is impossible on a planet with finite resources yet our economic model is based upon that exact impossibility.

Doughnut Economics - a viable strategy that acknowledges the unsustainable nature and inevitably catastrophic outcome of our current economic model. Judging by how a large portion of us put the economy over the lives of our most vulnerable citizens during the pandemic, we have a long way to go before a model like this has a chance of catching on.

“Here’s the conundrum: No country has ever ended human deprivation without a growing economy. And no country has ever ended ecological degradation with one.” ― Kate Raworth (b. 1970)