A new social contract for climate change.
By Pieter Verasdonck
Introduction
Industry is preparing to meet 2050 goals, reducing methane, CO2, and fossil fuels like petrol and coal. It makes progress slowly, involves major changes, but also surely as voters demand parties adjust to storms of information the planet is heading for ‘overshoot’: more bushfires, floods, coastal havoc, and unprecedented species extinctions.
Human activity needs better managing. For example, land clearing from logging and farming reduces forests and CO2 reabsorption.
But how to do that? Research, issuing alarms, Governments funding fine projects?
It is urgent, and it is not just rightsizing production. We must speak the language of consumers better, add impacts on Earth limited resources to product price, comprehensively fund eco-friendly jobs to restore and improve environmental productivity and health.
Right now, consumers still can get a price advantage ignoring community goals.
No wonder environments are still regressing.
Yes, it may seem to hurt many, because the new measures can raise the cost of living: top of the current list of voter gripes. But inaction shifts environmental mismanagement to generations to come. Short term pain maybe, but long-term gain becomes certain.
It also shows that there are deep problems with the democratic model: representatives are selected and fed by doing the bidding of constituents.
Sure, there are much greater problems with autocracy and kleptocracy promoting untruths and/or playing one group off against another.
While all sectors can be criticised for going too slow, preserving jobs and revenue at awesome ecological cost, one sector, agriculture, is posing the greatest problems. Snail paced improvements, as it is driven by the way voters choose to eat.
Animal agriculture is the fiercest of bogymen. It is where staunch self-reliance, freedom and ingrained habits meet planetary boundaries.
Our economies have been driven by using the fruits of Earth for millennia. It has huge momentum and is very hard to change.
To deviate from the trodden path the community needs not only political leadership to drag us into the 21st century, but a renewal of the social contract that underlies society.
Required is a temporary coalition between employers, workers, environmentalists and farmers, to chart a way to a sustainable future: all reaping the benefits of good living, in booming cities, regional towns, rural areas and wilderness reserves.
A course correction is possible when government and people realise Earth resources aren’t endless: new generations can be handed a viable world instead of a poisoned chalice.
Humanity wants to recognise better nutrition and a user pay pricing structure that includes environmental care based on ecological footprints of products.
The clock is ticking on forging a better social contract.
The Co-dependent Multicultural Meritocracy Rises
Eco-friendly life is increasingly a public good for biosphere, nature lovers and forward thinkers. Politicians and leaders especially be warned: A new survey shows public pressure for serious consequences to any person who abuses planetary limitations – including decisions by law makers, companies, producers and consumers.*1)
Individual freedom of choice, value judgements and skills specialisation are keys in living, and remain so, but life has to be viable for all. People ought not undermine the social fabric or environmental limits: profiting from destructive behaviour has gone way too far.
Many people feel that climate change science is inexact, or possibly a hoax, but hopefully everybody grasps there are too many people who get their wants from limited environments. Humanity consumes itself out of house and home.
The population explosion is teaching new values: ‘others’ includes every living being in the tree of life. Earth is dangerously overstressed by the tide of consumer wants.
Biology shows that humans are a part of ‘the tree of life’ and co-dependent on viable flora and fauna. *2) Rampaging human exceptionalism, shaping history, is now deadly.
By wrecking environments, clear-felling forests and eating animals, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Humanity is running out of land, water, air, wilderness.
Supported by the momentum of history and vested interests, it is totally unnecessary. Grossly wasteful. Enough food to feed people well and comfortably can be grown around three times as efficient, without upsetting uninhabited environments, rewilding huge areas.
Tasmania, with 574,000 people, is near the same size as Ireland, but at present still ten times less populated. Low population, natural resources and political economy make it ideal for a new Australian social contract. Three million may live in the state a lifetime from now.
In history hunting and animal farming was rarely considered harmful. It proved skills. In recent past hunting ‘game’ was a valued sport and animals a regular food source for many. People often thought of themselves as omnivores, using available animals and plants.
But there are so many people now that Earth is running low. Scarcities ensue. Extinctions, poisonous air, lack of water, wildlife and trees, flora and fauna in decline.
A proposed solution when capacity is exceeded: extend the laws on non-violence. *3)
Enact rules that regulate human co-dependence on healthy nature, separate wild from controlled environments, enable more GM tissue, mushrooms or ocean produce like seaweed.
Instead of using Earth as endless waste dump and provider, we certainly can create more nourishment with less ecological footprint.
At the moment society still mirrors the social and economic structure of predators, care little for living things, hook innocent consumers like fish. Deceive, greenwash, cheat.
This is changing rapidly: a recent report shows over 40% of consumers is on a diet that avoids or lowers animal consumption and mistreatment. *4)
It also means some 50% does not know or care: a quickly diminishing part of the market, a fading majority from an exploitative economy exhausting nature’s gifts, some hiding behind make-believe masks, sly false fronts.
Humans evolved over millions of years with three layers of brains, centres of reflexes, ideas and behaviour taught by jungle law: family the pinnacle of truthfulness and care.
Thankfully society slowly becomes an integrating herbivore multicultural meritocracy in a global village. Australian data show: a fair dinkum ethos, net zero restructuring, aiming for clean air, self-reliance, living forests and economic self-interest are driving us there. *5)
There are things you, the reader, can do: spread information on wholesome change, build towards a new economy, help businesses to cater to rapidly growing sustainable trends, share joys of the great outdoors, support a plant-based treaty *6), see ecocide as a crime.*7)
Ecocide is compliance to abuse and destruction of natural environments.
The population explosion exposes limbs of misunderstanding that now push against each other: a display of wasteful planetary calisthenics. It can make some stronger, but at expense of the whole, undermining community, ecology, social and economic society.
Working together and aspiring to become the best can be much more lucrative than only competing with others. Humans did not only evolve cultivating individual excellence, but also sharing specialties, teamwork, symbiosis. It makes enterprise, flower and bee, work.
Competition and cooperation both.
Towards an Eco-Friendly Social Contract
A social contract describes the relationship between individuals and community or state. A person may pay taxes, and trade in a few liberties, but gains benefits, services, infrastructure and securities.
E.g., the seatbelt. Much maligned at the time, it is now norm and saves many lives.
The concept of a social contract entails the many rules that glue, structure and manage society: the legitimacy of ‘being ruled over’. It also implies any state should not use its huge resources to squash, lie, befuddle, overreach, be cruel, or employ undue or unfair processes.
Administer collective interests, but give citizens fair breathing space.
The notion was explored some 2500 years ago by Greek deep thinkers, Protagoras, Epicures and Socrates, and further refined by English and French philosophers, Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke.
It is not only theoretical, but practical, and affects society deeply. E.g., Capitalists may conflict with Socialists about how much incentive and care ideal states should have.
Like many democratic countries, in Australia conflicts of interest between groups are negotiated and judged by popular votes. E.g., business (Liberal), employees (Labour), environment (Greens) and farming (Nationals).
Other interest groups can be elected, be heard and have input.
These days a new lesson: society and individual depend on healthy environments, as population and wants exceed planetary boundaries. The old social contract, formed through several painful revolutions, has to be updated: include our co-dependency on viable nature.
People too are mutually dependent. Without rules of behaviour anarchy comes, jungle law of ‘might is right’ apply. In Hobbes words, ‘existence would nasty, brutal, and short’
Over a hundred years ago a book did suggest might is right should rule the individual, feeling that obedience is for wimps.
Natural selection shows in cage fights, films like Superman, warfare and at times in profit seeking, but the UN’s 200+ nations can’t unify the global village to halt ecology woes unless, in addition to competing, planetary issues are also seen as a common challenge.
Cultural change, fine-tuning the social contract, is ongoing. E.g., the existing social rules have been criticised by feminists about the historically assumed ‘superiority’ of men.
But a major revision is due. Smith, Marx and Darwin, pillars on which we build much of contemporary assumptions, lived a few hundred years ago, in times that tribes and nations sometimes battled each other to define who was superior or which race and class got the material benefits and obligations of ruling.
Old hat in these multicultural global village days? Yes, the established social contract has led us astray, and needs to be revised. It spells out our rights and obligations, but turns out to be severely lacking in viable eco-friendliness.
To put it simply, it is all about us, and does not look at the rest: other living things.
It does not mean we can’t swat a fly, or avoid a bull-ants nest, but that science knows humans are a part of evolution and depend on the totality being in some sort of harmony.
An additional regulation is wanted and should be perfected. The population exploded and threatens to spoil environments for future generations by stimulating consumption with not enough attention to the implications. *8) (Tasmanian Times 30/9/2024).
The Cow in the Room
There are fine attempts to guide jurisdictions to plant-based economies: there are huge wastes in animal farming *9) Many institutions, including doctors, ring alarm bells.*10)
It seems counter-intuitive, but Governments may not listen as their masters are… the unaware consumer/voter and businesses funding jobs, projects and short-term interests.
Vested interests may counter with doubts, alternate facts, fake science… The very idea of planetary boundaries existing may be laughed at. We live in an era of ‘fake news’. Assertions of truth are too often countered by the polar opposite. Science for sale?
It is a problem well described in ‘we have to talk about the cow in the room’ *11)
A wordplay on not seeing ‘the elephant in the room’. The obvious. It is opposed as people earn their living in old ways, and believe that sticking to your opinion may forge realities.
There are people who suspect all of this is hogwash. Science manipulated for commercial ends, fake news to keep citizens on their toes, headlines to sell more papers or raise the price of something. In life we to take things with a grain of salt.
But even the sceptical know population has grown: there were barely 2 billion after WWII, there are over 8 billion now *12). It grew from millions in biblical times to billions.
Earth is overgrazed. If you can afford a car, you know it is getting harder to park.
Measuring Ecological Footprints
An updated social contract measures individual, product and collective ecological footprints, sets limits, and so guide towards sustainable economies and environments.
Freedoms are further defined.
Shielded by society, people generally frown on stealing and harming one another. Some get away with pretending, hiding or sneak attacks, but eventually punishment awaits.
At present we compartmentalise our ethics. Different rules for family, clan, tribe, foreigners, unknowns. One rule for biting insects, others for butterflies, pets and friends.
Whatever they will be, the integrated fine-tuned rules reflect a new social contract.
Deceptive behaviour happens in nature too, and it is a phase many people go through, feeling like an outsider, pouncing on an advantage or only giving lip service to one’s creed.
The change upon us is simple, yet profound: we have to ask not only ‘what is good for me’, but also ‘what is good for all’. E.g., a bad wheat farmer erodes soils by deep ploughing, creates conditions for dust storms, yet may push out responsible farmers.
The grain produced, and thus the bread made, can be cheaper. This farmer may be a terrible land manager, yet currently may become a financially successful one.
The customer king often can or does not factor in sound environmental behaviour. They behave price aware, but often are not aware of environmental due diligence.
Rules of production should be better regulated. Consumer behaviour needs guidance.
Current outcomes can be horrendous. E.g., market forces replaced family farms with chicken warehouses, where sick fowl may live debeaked on anti-biotics for up to twelve months before they are dispatched.
Supermarket shelves for caged eggs and frozen chicken still thrive.
What is Good for the Goose, is Good Enough for the Gander
No one of sound mind would sit long in a running fossil fuel car in a closed garage and live to tell the tale, but in Earth’s thin air envelope, extra CO2 supposedly is recycled by trees, soils, oceans, is natural, no problem as we cannot see it or is only a minute part of air.
Yet science warns us rapidly rising CO2 levels may help drive global warming.
Conspiracy theorists consider this fake news: Earth’s poles melt every year, volcanos can release more CO2 than 30 years of fossil fuel cars, or hidden elites like scaring people.
What is true? Believes are personal, we enjoy freedom of choice, but buying habits, consumer choices, can be measured by ecological footprint *12).
Computers can measure consumption: the trail of environmental impacts.
Knowing the use of Earth precious resources brings certainty. The costs of restoring ecology should be included in product pricing, so it is paid by those who cause it.
E.g., profit from trees earn Government and business income, creates vital jobs.
Use of nature’s regeneration lowers taxes, creates local and public service enterprise, but also causes homeless wildlife, logging old growth forests and extra loads on roads and bridges.
The timber industry enjoys regrowth benefits, and so may the taxpayer, worker, voter, politician, wood producer, buyer and shop. What about wildlife?
Why protesters? The free market is supposed to be a wonderful thing, but it may be a pyramid scheme to use environments.
The cost of environmental abuse is estimated at US $ 3,5 trillion p.a. by global agency McKinsey *13), or an average of 7% of household expenses. This can eventually fund 395 million jobs across the world (about 4000 in Tasmania, or 130 per LGA). Paid back through maintaining or improving local productivity, and thus the State remaining viable. *14)
It is an attractive strategy to provide employment opportunities for those who, over time, will be phased out in automation: an environmental and economic win-win.
We should not only rewild, better regulate activities and repair biodiversity, but allow for a scientifically determined amount of intact wilderness.
Instead of cost shifting to next generations, products and services should pay extra for exclusive land, water and air use, etc.
An average extra of 7% of household expenses, but it may range from 0% for eco-friendly choices to over 28% or more for corrosive ones. Smart choices can save you money!
The extra amounts should be determined by governments, and if no global amounts are calculated depend on population, wilderness reserves and income levels per jurisdiction.
It also shows we are already paying much of this amount in taxes, such as health budgets. These are now paid by general taxpayers, but it can and should shift to the buyer.
It does not imply a person has to become a full vegetarian, simply REDUCING meat will do. It is called flexitarian. Most people around the world ate like that through the ages.
It should be also recognised that the notion that all humans are apex predators or omnivores is well disproven by many thriving herbivore human cultures over ages.
As it is, modest omnivore habits are a far majority, yet research shows that 12% of people in USA consume 50% of beef. * 16) Livestock numbers are also exploding*17)
While likely saving on age pensions, the habit of animal eating is unhealthy, shortens lifespans, cost in healthcare, fuels toxic behaviour, and drags the rest of humanity to doom.
Still, if change is a problem, nobody stops you. It is a free country. You can still have a chicken run in your back yard, and gobble up your favourite food from shops at fair prices.
These figures are rough global estimates and should be recalculated by environmental economists. Neither do they flag draconian measures by authorities, telling people what to eat. They just boost awareness that the environmental larder is running on empty.
Instead of forcing people what to consume, there can be categories of humans: up to three billion people could live sustainably from natural generation, but not eight billion.
Environmentally Sustainable Economics
Charging extra for things is never popular, but can be effective. Consumer behaviour is affected by cost, not so much by information, although the latter is clearly very important.
Think of phasing out tobacco dependence – not outlawing it, but by regulating price increases, adding consumer behaviour and average eventual hospital costs to product price.
Gradual change by sections of the population from animal to more plant proteins is enough to fund Earth’s rehabilitation, and secure intergenerational economic security.
Environments now are too often managed for short-term profit instead of long-term wellbeing. Conventional economics fails to account for the full value of natural resources.
Everybody has received subsidised prices to cater to the customer king, the voter.
One answer lies in helping people to reduce mammal consumption, an unnecessary, destructive, unethical, expensive habit that harms good government and adds to health costs.
There are jobs/incomes dependent on old habits. They may need assistance.
The Regenerative Limits of Nature
Environmental problems show a serious mistake is in ‘the Wealth of Nations’ by Adam Smith in believing that regulation of human-interest hinders the economy. He understandably assumed that there were no limits on planetary resources. But there are!
He was a pious man and automatically assumed the Christian principles of his time. Long after his death his ‘Laissez Faire’ principles had to be regulated to stop cheats.
Now, further adjustments need to be made, accepting that Earth is no longer limitless.
All states have to do to eventually ensure a liveable environment and fair economy, is start measuring the impact of ecological and social footprints in products and consumers.
Eating mammals is now believed by many to be healthy and strengthening. It is a cultural assumption that for a long time was reenforced. But there are chinks in this version of reality: often gladiators became herbivores to gain strength, historic figures promoted it.
Some of the strongest animals alive, like elephants and rhino, are… herbivores.
What we were depended on conditions in past, while guidance should be tuned to conditions in future. Without laws that regulate sources of food, free choice should decide what one has for nourishment.
Wealth, merit and ethics between people can vastly differ, but should there be guardrails on a person’s ecological footprint. The qualified answer is yes. It depends after all on a limited environment on which everyone’s and all living beings depend.
The natural environment is collapsing. The ‘customer king’ notion needs improving. It now drives the lowest common denominator: cheap prices, environmental disasters, and at times workers’ exploitation and low quality. It retards economies dangerously.
In Plato’s Republic, the state is not managed by customer kings, acting without full knowledge, but by informed thinkers.
A fundamental misconception in some economics is that humans are omnivores. Some are, some are not.
It was ‘The Wealth of Nations’ understandable, but most significant error. In history people had to survive harsher conditions. Now we are so populated it wrecks natural habitat.
Let no self-respecting economist, psychologist or social scientist separate what is consumed from how one thinks. ‘You are what you eat’: society becomes what it consumes.
Just like one cannot divorce observer from observed in quantum physics, the new economy must help keep environments sustainable.
The only universal language consumers respond to is price. User pays.
A sustainable Economy needs footprint laws, calculating a charge to use nature responsibly, eventually banning harming all mammals.
Vested interests may challenge, but lead people to a dead end.
Population growth is modifying the lone wolf fantasy: nature is no longer a free gift but a cradle to be cared for. Humans are no predators by nature… but by nurture.
References
1. https://studyfinds.org/damage-climate-face-jail-time/
2. https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/speciesism-racism-imperils-humanity-and-planet
3. https://sustainablelifestylehub.org/2024/08/04/why-ahimsa-non-violence-laws/
5. https://www.bze.org.au/research/report/land-use
6. https://plantbasedtreaty.org
7. https://www.stopecocide.earth/about
8. https://tasmaniantimes.com/2024/09/back-to-a-rising-apple-isle-future/#google_vignette
9. https://tiltcollective.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Transforming-the-global-food-system_190924.pdf
10. https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/the-planetary-health-diet-and-you/
11. https://sagemagazine.org/the-cow-in-the-room/
12. https://ourworldindata.org/global-population-pyramid
13. https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
15. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/net-zero-cost-3-5-trillion-a-year/
17. https://studyfinds.org/12-percent-half-nations-beef/
18. https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/consumption/foods-and-beverages/world-consumption-of-meat
About the Author
Pieter Verasdonck is a retired planner, degreed in business and philosophy, who helped build resilience, forward planning capacity and income generation in organisations, villages, cities, regions, states and industries working with communities, large and small enterprises, including a decade with NSW Government as Community Economic Development Manager.