Can Women Save our Planet?

Let's make the following two hypothesis:

1) mainly men or the male human species with its major dominating and destructive forces is responsible for climate change and environmental degradation

2) only women or the female human species, holding mainly "feminine" traits and characteristics, in providing them with the necessary responsibilities, leadership roles and position, are able to save our planet

An interesting source of information in that regard is the text on Environmental Ethics (cf Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy SEP), section 3.2 on Feminism and the Environment.

Support of hypothesis 1) are related to men's or male traits and characteristics

- authoritarian nature

- domination and oppression

- dualistic and favoring inequality

- slavery

- arms race

- warfare

- application of atomic bombings and arms of mass destruction (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

- application of chemical and biological weapons

- enviornmental disasters, e.g. chemical (Bhopal), nuclear (Fukushima), oil (Deepwater Horizon)

- men's attribute of coercive power, domination of women, nature

- young men enjoying destructive and warfare video games

- young men shooting and killing (e.g. Utoeya Island, Columbine)

- white-collar criminality

- etc

With regards to hypothesis 1) we would need to differentiate with regards to culture and evolution of (violent) societies. A counterargument could be, that the traits listed above would not be attributable to the buddhist culture dominated by men.

Hypothesis 2) would need to be scientifically proven. Still we could argue, the female attributes in favor of hypothesis are for example

- sustainable

- care taking

- empathetic

- emotional intelligence

- and more

In my opinion, with regards to the differentiation between men and women, we cannot use a simplistic dualistic differentiation. In that respect I also recommend to read the SEP article on Psychoanalytic Feminism. I agree that we need to look at the psychoanalytical work and findings of both, men (e.g. Freud) and women (e.g. Simone de Beauvoir, Karen Horney).

Also men can hold feminine traits and vice versa, women can hold male traits. A question to analyze is whether in "feminine" men, once in a leader position, male traits again take over to dominate a man's female traits. We would need to characterize and define, whether feminine men exist and what there major feminine traits and characteristics are.

While it is interesting to favor and assess women leadership and responsibility with regards to climate and environmental change, two areas should be analyzed

- the consequences of women leading men in our society and businesses

- how men and their experience can be used and valued in supporting women leaders

- comparing leadership of both women with little or no male traits and feminine men

If leadership of "feminine" men can be associated to the leadership of "feminine" women, in that case hypotheses 2) could be extended to include "feminine" men. In that case we could look at the notion of "feminine leadership" rather than making a difference between the two sexes.

I think one important question is related to domination and whether women can lead without falling into male domination under different circumstances (e.g. "by nature", men's instinct, men's tendency to dominate, men's coercive and destructive forces).

Global Recession - Time for New Work

In the wake of a "new" global recession - as I stated earlier, some economist believe that we have never got out of the present recession, lasting already over a decade - economist and businesses should assess Fritjhof Bergmann's "New Work" model:

1/3 job for a living, 1/3 for family and community, 1/3 for our own life and dream project

http://newworknewculture.com/

Rather than laying of thousands of people, alternative solutions should be thought for seriously. Following the principle of enough for everybody, a fairer distribution of the resources, living life for a meaning, Bergmann's model should be applied and further assessed.

If consumer demand decreases, level of production has to follow logically.

Giving work to fewer people, making them work even harder, until they physically and psychologically break down, isn't the right answer to global recession.

It is a chance for new models and opportunities worldwide. New Work will demand that all of us adapt our standard of living, lifestyles. New Work will generate a more dynamic, interacting workforce, leaving time for family, community, new ideas and innovation towards a zero carbon society, favoring participative, integrated, local and healthy solutions. It's promising and definitely worth trying!

Climate Change and The Titanic Analogy

Climate Change and The Titanic Analogy - In my opinion this is a good analogy, comparing the current course of our civilization with regards to climate change.

Climate change is represented by the Iceberg. We have strong scientific evidence that our temperatures on our planet are increasing, and that the causes are anthropogenic and explained through the growing emission of greenhouse gases. We know that the Iceberg is there, but we can’t see it.

Titanic luxury liner, supposedly unsinkable, together with its passengers and crew represents our civilization.

Rather than bringing the passengers save to the other side of the Atlantic, the ships’ captain wanted to cross the Ocean in a new record time. Again, the analogy to our production and consumption frenzy matches well. To achieve this record the Titanic crew takes the highest risks, running the ship at maximum possible speed, opting for a route further North into risky waters with very high probability of iceberg presence.

But no passenger is informed or eventually aware of what is actually happening, of the risky endeavor they have engaged on their journey. They rely on their Titanic crew, they feel trusted and embedded in full confidence, enjoying leisure and luxury. Looking back we know that this confidence has been fatal. No one was challenging the captain, its crew and their plan of a risky route to break a new record. They where blinded by the Titanic’s mightiness, beauty and luxury on its maiden voyage. At no instant any passenger could think that human failure could cause the largest ship at that time to sink.

Some people reading these line might say, it is just destiny, many of them died in glory and with style. But when you have seen the Titanic movie, you remember the horrifying scenes and desperation of the over 1,400 people, dying and drowning in the ice-cold water. At that moment, they were all the same independent of the social status, age or gender, human beings, babies, children, teenagers, adults and elderly people.

And it is not glorious at all, to bring our entire civilization into such a dangerous and devastating situation, which can be caused be climate change.

With regards to climate change, we know that the “iceberg” is there. It is huge, it is global, it is everywhere. Similar to The Titanic, moments before hitting the iceberg, the night and the fog prevent us from seeing it. Today and in analogy to the Titanic catastrophe, we take the very highest risk and keep our Titanic full speed heading towards that iceberg, although we are all aware, that the iceberg is in front of us.

So where is the main difference in the analogy? Right, in the Titanic case, the crew saw the iceberg, when it was too late, to steer the Titanic around in time to prevent it from hitting the iceberg. And what about climate change? Although we can’t see it, we know it is there. We have scientific evidence and our latest temperature records confirm this evidence. We still have the time to turn the ship and our civilization around, to prevent the fatal collision.

We do not have much time left, so we should find and implement solutions to keep our planet from further warming. But why should we do this effort? Our journey has been so pleasant so far, with all the luxury. And the passengers in the 3^rd class did not bother us at all. Right, we are all in this, whether rich or poor, children or adults, men and women.

With regards to gender we could ask ourselves, if the Titanic captain would have been a women, would this accident never had happen? Some argue that today women leadership is needed to bring us out of the global climate crisis. One sound argument is that those industries which are most contributing to climate change, like the fossil fuel businesses, are controlled in majority by men. Even if such a hypotheses is difficult to prove today, since women at leadership position have been rare in the past, they might might hold true. And we must try every solution, especially of low entropy, since we have little resource, energy, money and time available to act. The destiny of our civilization will depend on whether we can steer the Titanic around in time that is now.

And you remember what happened to the 3^rd class passengers when the ship was filling with water and started to sink. The captain gave the order to lock all the doors. When resistance grew, people got shot by the officers. Those passengers in the 1^st class, rich and powerful, wanted to make sure to get into the rescue boats first. We know that The Titanic did not have rescue boats for the people in the 3^rd class.

Here we can enter into a discussion whether the lives of the rich and powerful must be higher valuated than the life of the 99% or the base of the pyramid. The debate could be expanded onto the intra-generational and intergenerational justice in the case of climate change, and what the responsibility of the rich nations towards the poor nations in the Southern hemisphere is.

To return to the Titanic, those in the 3^rd class had to run for their lives. This is why they succeeded, despite the initial attempt of the officers to hold them back, to break up the doors and get outside. And it was with the help of a woman (in the role of Kate Winslet), that this was possible. The movie also shows that love is one of the strongest elements, being above class discrimination and class warfare.

In the world today and in the climate change context, we are not talking about a few thousand people. Billions of people will be affected if climate change worsens. They will be forced to migrate and this situation can turn into chaos and out of control. It is in the interest of all leading and powerful people and corporations, to take climate change very seriously, to look after and implement peaceful solutions as fast as possible. It would be irresponsible and unjust, to let our planet and civilization deteriorate and abuse of coercive power and military weapons, to wipe out entire populations and large numbers of people to assure stability through repression.

The Titanic analogy to climate change is a disaster scenario which is very realistic and highly probable, if we do not change the course of our actions and businesses. It is high time to accept this reality and to accept and to be open to communication and discussions to find common solutions for all stakeholders, governments, corporate and business leaders, philanthropists, institutions such as the WEF, NGOs and all the people who hold the necessary means and skills to support and come up with possible solutions. No, it is not only about money, short-term benefit and shareholder value. The future of our civilization is at stake. We have to act fast, find and implement solutions as fast as possible to prevent climate change from further deteriorating the vital foundation of our existence.

If you are shocked and confused in reading these lines, I want to let you know, that the situation in which we are living today is not ok, it is very alarming. If I would keep silent and passively look how the situation deteriorates globally with natural disasters, famine, ethnic wars, and competition over vital resources, this would mean that I am not taking seriously my responsibilities for all the affected people and generations to come. We are all in this, we have to take it very seriously, we have to act now. Each and everyone has to get engaged in stopping further CO2 emissions and global warming, to take a role and act. Also and especially those who are well off materially, should engage and act to help the most needy and vulnerable.

Global Systems at Risk

Global systems represent a very high risk to our society. Global finance, global energy consumption, global CO2 emissions, global climate, global food, global water systems expose our planet and its living inhabitants to very high “systemic risks”.

The 2008 financial system collapse brought our economy into a recession. Some economists argue that this recession lasts over a decade, and that it might degrade into a global depression.

Climate change is the most important challenge and threat to our planet. While there is no doubt anymore that our planet is getting warmer, the global political and economical world does not come up with solutions, proceeding with “business as usual” or even worse. While international dialogue on international climate policy and measures is taking place during the climate change conferences, major CO2 emitters do not agree or engage into binding commitments to reduce and stop CO2 emissions.

This is evidence that on a systemic issue like global climate change, despite the good will and intentions of individual politicians and nations, international politics fails.

The good news is that there are alternative solutions. While in my opinion we should not only rely on the political process to come up with solutions, we have to work in small local units to come up with creative solutions. Politics can facilitate solutions, but we cannot only rely on politics to do so. Politics is an authoritarian institution focused on political power which implements regulations, norms and controls, mainly from a national and international security perspective on how society has to function and its citizens to interact. Politics and its heavy bureaucracy mainly concentrates their resources into parties politics, political processes themselves, into top down governance and policy making. In international politics, politicians depend on their national political system and on their international counterparts with hardly any possibility to come up with creative solutions. Politics role is to assure national state sovereignty inwards and outwards of its national borders.

I would also say that independently whether global systems functions or not, we have to develop decentralized solutions. If international systems collapse, we are left on our own, so it is better we are prepared, in the case it would happen, based on the precautionary principle. Resources should be decentralized and go into supporting stronger local autonomy and initiatives. It is a shift from a heavy centralized and resource consuming bureaucracies into local flexible, adaptive and integrated institutions, that help to build resilience against systemic risks such as financial crisis and climate change.

With regards to resource security, I am a strong supporter of building local sustainable solutions, e.g. through local organic farming and product consumption, radically reduce ecological footprints, to build resilience and independence from global food systems, which leave our communities worldwide and billions of people in desolation, if the system breaks down. It is also a call to centralized governments and control to reform and to move towards decentralized, flat and networked communities which can rapidly adapt in situations of global systemic failures, to secure vital resources like energy, food, water, shelter. And this is true for all nations and economies, industrialized, developing and emerging.

The same is true with regards to the national and multinational corporate world. With growing populations, climate and environmental change, increasing pollution and pressures on natural resources, MNCs need transparency, trustworthiness, governance and strategy oriented towards local and community based solutions, involving all local stakeholders, people and societies, NGOs, municipalities and operate locally in a ethical, sustainable and responsible way, driven by the main paradigms that climate is changing, resources are more and more scarce and the usage of resources, whether natural, social or economical, must have a long-term sustainability focus.

Sustainability Models

New day, same setting. Airplanes queuing for landing and take off. An infinite queue of trucks and cars slowly moving forward, releasing tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. An hour later I stand in the city, waiting at the bus station. There is all this exhaust pollution from a never ending flow of cars, which is so disgusting, but which we are obliged to breath each day as evidence of politics failing over environmental questions. Poor babies in their baby strollers, exposed to breath this heavily polluted air.

Back at work. Today, in the corporate world, shareholder value is the most prominent topic. Thousands of employees are laid off, taking in charge by the state and social security. While firms on their websites and reports show evidence of taking social and environmental responsibility seriously, the bottom line is efficiency, profit maximizing and shareholder value creation. Competition is fierce. Businesses have to be economically sound, and that is what counts, otherwise they will disappear, and the workforce and people, too.

Why can’t we transform our economy and society to become sustainable? Politics is about politics and parties competing for power, with a bottom line to securing economy and stability. Sustainability and clean technology is somewhere on the agenda, but for the sake of the economy, CO2 emissions correlates with economic growth, globally.

Corporations and other organizations function like highly efficient machines. Where they are not efficient enough, reorganization and lay-off of workforce takes place, causing more social victims. In the global economy, these highly efficient organizations are all interlinked. If your organization is not part of it, your organization will be soon gone. “Go with the flow” for survival. Humans as elements of these highly efficient and tuned machinery must never ask creative or challenging questions in a world of competitive machines. Technological innovation helps to substitute the human workforce and the machinery becoming even more efficient, producing more output with less input.

Efficiency, division of labor and specialization are among the major theoretical developments of Adam Smith. Frederick Taylor implemented these concepts adding structure, organizational hierarchy, separating the roles and functions between management and the specialized workforce, responsible for maximizing productivity.

Efficiency can be considered as the main driver for technological innovation in all sectors, leading to today’s consumer societies and society of the plenty, requiring more than one planet Earth: up to 9 planets Earth if emerging economies reach the standard of living and consumption levels of our developed western societies.

While John Maynard Keynes introduced Keynesian theory or consumption-driven economy, assuming that states supply money to secure consumption of the entire and growing produce, Hannah Arendt comes to the conclusion that today’s society cannot keep up in consuming all the products which brings us economical growth in the neoclassical sense. The result is increasing layoff of the workforce, leading to global economic and social crisis, increasing poverty and a growing gap between poor and rich.

This is one reason of a deadlock situation, where we cannot change the current course of our society anymore. Another reason might be that resources have become scarce, and large multinationals have become part of global geopolitical players, economy is turning into wars over global scarcity of resources.

This course will be difficult to be changed in the near future, since we are living the largest economic crisis since The Great Depression in the 1930ies.

Good news is that rather using arms and eventually arms of mass destruction, geopolitically and strategically important nations talk to each other to find solutions for a common economic future. Still the current global situation is unsustainable and our society is in a deadlock situation, where all needed resources are consumed and change and transformation does not happen.

“Trust” has become a mainstream fashion word. I am also confronted with the question. My answer is always the same: “can I trust you?” Basically you cannot trust anyone, unless you get a strong understanding and evidence, what the other person’s agenda, roles and values are in and for our society.

And it needs more than trust. It needs courage, integrity and transparency. It needs true grit and the courage to cultural change, even if such endeavor can turn into difficult and unpleasant experiences. Complacent attitudes of the conformists will lead us to situations where we will be left on our own, where we need to take leadership and adopt a role model with strong personal sacrifice for what we value as important for today’s and future generations and societies.

To reflect on the Schumpeterian destructive creativity: we need to go against the flow, act in a non-conformist way, challenge legacy, lead and convince our opposition and our supporters in creatively destroying neoclassic economical values, norms and standards with a completely new set of values and ways for our society, economy and environment.

In today’s economy lecture, models presented are still from the neoclassical, mono-dimensional and reductionist economic theories. We are aware that we live in a complex world, that sustainability since the 1987 Brundtland Report on Our Common Future is a vital and complex paradigm.

Still economy lectures remain the same. If we look at the MBA programs of prominent business schools, they still look the same, for decades. Corporate sustainability is considered as a marginal topic to the neoclassic economic and business administration teaching, since future leaders have to fit into the fine-tuned global machinery of organizations.

Why is this so?

If you read Thomas Princen’s book on “the Logic of Sufficiency” or Economy of Sufficiency you become aware that to understand the current global problem is to understand, how nature and their constituents, ecosystems and last but not least human beings interact and function. Human beings are described as the managers of ecosystems, their resources and services they provide. Referring to Elinor Ostrom and the Tragedy of the Commons, cost-free and uncontrolled consumption of natural resources leads to ecosystem destruction, which we perhaps deny psychologically, but which is taking place globally (rainforest deforestation, ocean overfishing, atmospheric and water pollution, urbanization etc.)

But Economy of Sufficiency is not part of economy lectures. It does not belong to the neoclassical economy, efficiency and productivity driven strategic thinking.

Yes, the risks and impacts of climate and environmental change find their way into the auditoria of managerial lectures, but as a marginal footnote topic. The examples used and presented are marginal, insignificant, because they lack economic theory based on the consideration of climate and environmental change and resource shortage.

Solutions are available. Books like the one of Thomas Princen would be a good entry to a New Economy lecture. Those professors who develop and lecture the new economic theories, must have learned what climate, environmental and ecological sciences is all about. They either do, or they fail and so do the students, who should become the leaders of our future generations.

You might find the following books helpful, still it is a small list of the literature available which I will continue to complete with new references on such topics as Economy of Sustainability, Economy of Sufficiency, Economy of Meaning, Climate Ethics and more https://sites.google.com/site/slow4earth/resources/books .

And there are solutions for the corporate world. Referring to the philosopher Frithjof Bergmann http://newworknewculture.com/ , each person’s activities could be defined by 3 tiers of meaningful time usage: 1/3 at a job to earn money and make a living, 1/3 with family, neighbors and your local community, 1/3 of the time working on one’s dream activity for a better planet Earth. A “slow” way of living, sustainable, local, organic and wholesome, a model on which the Swiss “New Start” Initiative is based upon http://neustartschweiz.ch/ .

New economic theory, changes in economy and management education is needed. There is leadership legacy. Education must change in line with the sustainability mainstream, to bring up young leaders trained in the Economy of Sustainability and Sufficiency who must take over leadership and management to lead and transform our society into a sustainable world.

What about the philosophical and moral aspect? First to start with, I recommend you to read the book of Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book on Living and Dying, which I received from my lovely daughter Hannah : http://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying.pdf

With a sound and well-balanced foundation, you are better armed to confront your daily challenges in turning our planet sustainable.

Let’s look at possible models of sustainability. Clark Wolf in his article on Intergenerational Justice identifies three possible rates of savings for our future generations: a) unsustainable rate that tends towards zero savings: “If we consistently use resources at a rate faster than they are renewed or replaced with substitutes then we make it certain that future generations will eventually be left with nothing at all”; b) positive accumulation in that they leave later generations better off than earlier ones: “If resources grow over time or if they can be replaced by better economic substitutes then it may be possible to increase the size or the value of the total resource set left for future generations; c) the only one rate of saving that is simply ‘sustainable’: “We achieve sustainability when we use resources at exactly the same rate at which we either replace them or develop economic substitutes for them”.

I would propose the following models to be implemented. The models are global in scope. The incentive is based on the principle that unsustainable resource consumption leads to complete resource depletion. For sustainability, the consumption of vital and renewable resources should reach “saturation” to allow a resource to regenerate. “Saturation” is used in opposite of “peak”. The definition of “peak” is that resource stock and supply beyond resource peak has already reached a point of no return as far as natural regeneration is concerned. The resource will not be able anymore to meet demand and deplete towards complete exhaustion.

The “saturation” concept and model is in analogy to the hydrological cycle. Making abstraction from the use and depletion of artesian water resources and water pollution, we can consider the hydrological cycle as continuous and in balance. In contrast, carbon cycle is out of balance through anthropogenic use and depletion of fossil fuel, continuously converting fossil fuel and releasing increasing amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere, where it remains stored over millennia, a trend towards a state of planet Earth at the time, when life was impossible.

The following principles are used in this analogy:

1. flow of resources is considered in analogy of the flow of water
2. in analogy to water, a closed cycle of resources is considered as the sustainability of resources, from consumption to regeneration
3. in analogy to water and water molecules, the simplification is made that vital resources naturally cycle through decomposition and end the cycle again as resources
4. a strong principle is that resources end a cycle, in turning into resource again, with its same biochemical and physical characteristics
5. to reach the level of saturation, resources and resource consumption has to be actively managed. Resource saturation cannot be achieved naturally. Main factors include population growth and its consequences (e.g. increase of urbanization, global increase in ecological footprint per capita, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission) and climate change (e.g. loss of biodiversity, drought, forest fires, sea level rise)

“Exponential pricing”

Unsustainable consumption of resources is ceased through pricing policy, as a function of the rate of consumption. Rather than a linear progression, prices should increase exponentially, the more you consume of one resource (e.g. water, fossil fuel, electricity).

Through the exponential pricing mechanism, large consumers (resource intensive value chains, industries and the investment sector) have the incentive to reduce their resource consumption significantly.

“Saturation effect”

We have little incentive in reducing the amounts of garbage produced.

This leaves us as a “throw-away” society, where we do not care about our garbage, once it has left our factories, buildings and homes, considering the environment as a free common or zero cost resource. Garbage saturation in front of one’s factory, buildings and homes would occur unless higher collection prices are covered. At the same time, littering will be highly punished, e.g. USD 1,000.

The goal is to generate responsible consumption on the principle of sufficiency. That is we consume only what is necessary for our “survival” and that we recycle widely. The underlying physical and psychological model is that each individual taking a meal, will be very hungry in the beginning, but after a good meal, being saturated. The same applies to any type of consumption.

“Flying”

The cost of flying will be exponential in function of the number of times and kilometers flown for every year. You might fly once a year. After that each additional flight becomes exponentially more expensive.

“Car driving”

In analogy to flying.

“Stopping overconsumption”

Overconsumption of resources can thus be reduced to achieve a sustainable level that is what we consume can be regenerated by nature, keeping our resources in balance.

“What we value under sustainability – our common future”

What we actually have to do economically is to determine the future value of our natural assets.

Referring to sustainability we could start to look at the human-ecological continuum, with the two extremes, a 100% anthropocentric approach on one end, and a 100% ecocentric approach on the other end, where for the latter we would leave out the human component entirely. From a (climate)ethical perspective, every person, independent from her or his economical standpoint, can decide, where she or he wants to be positioned on the continuum, e.g. 40% anthropocentric and 60% ecocentric.

Since scenario-based global temperature and climate change projections are forward-looking in time, I opt for a future values approach in valuating natural assets. The point whether to use future value or net present value depends on what we actually want to value. Let us assume intergenerational justice, i.e. our ethical standpoint is that future generations have the same right for a good life as we have today. If we want to value how well we meet the needs of future generations, taking into account CO2 emissions and climate change projections, it is in my opinion more interesting to open the debate based on the calculation of the future value of natural assets: e.g. ecosystem services obtained from reforestation, nature conservation practices, new environmental standards, measures to prevent air and water pollution, measures to support rural livelihood creation through local, integrated organic agricultural practices, to mention just a few examples.