YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD
When we take stock of current conditions we see that transformation is essential, and it is imminent. The degeneration of the local and global environment, the inequity of the globalised economic and social system, and the stress, misery, and resentment, which now exist among billions of people, has created an untenable situation. The September 11 terrorist attack on New York and Washington is not the cause of crisis in the world: it is one of its dramatic symptoms. The crisis we experience is the consequence of the way the world’s economic and social system is structured and the way in which it operates.
The economic and social system of the world has brought unparalleled wealth to a few, and marginalisation and
misery to many. It has concentrated production, trade, finance and communication, and has created national and
regional unemployment, widening income gaps, and mounting environmental degradation. The benefits of
economic growth, for long the main indicator of progress, have become every more concentrated. While
the richest 20% of the world population become richer still, the poorest 20% are pressed into abject poverty,
barely surviving in shantytowns and urban ghettos.
These conditions are socially and politically explosive. They fuel resentment and revolt and provoke massive
migration from the countryside to the cities, and from the poorer to the richer regions. Fanatics wage holy wars and
resort to terrorism, and organised crime engages in information fraud, corruption, and traffic in women and children
as well as drugs, organs and weapons. As long as people harbour hate and the desire for revenge, they cannot
co-exist peacefully and co-operatively. Whether the cause is the wounded ego of a person or the wounded
self-respect of a people; whether it is the wish to personal revenge or a holy war in defence of a faith, the potential
for violence remains. Attaining peace in people’s hearts is a precondition of attaining peace in the world.
And inner peace depends very much on creating more equitable conditions in the global village into which we
have precipitated ourselves…
Investment flows mostly between rich countries, where it has the best chances of generating high and quick returns.
Although some $19 trillion is invested in the world’s stock markets, only 1% of direct foreign investment
reaches the poorest 20% of the world’s population.
The world’s economy is not only inequitable: because of the workings of the international monetary system it is inherently unsustainable. Most of the money in the world is supplied as loans by the banking system and has to be repaid with interest. Servicing the ever-increasing debt requires continual growth in the economy, and on our finite planet endless quantitative growth encounters natural limits. Moreover, the present system encourages financial speculation on a colossal scale with over $1 trillion moving around the globe every day in search of short-term again. This money is not financing trade or
production; it is merely gambling on market dynamics and currency fluctuation – hence the term the global casino.
Reforming the way the world’s economy is financed is urgent and necessary. It calls for a new sense of responsibility,
for behaviour suited to life in a tightly interdependent global village, where the actions of each affect
the destiny of all. Economic and financial competition needs to be tempered with greater co-operation and fairness,
and production as well as consumption must become more attuned to social and ecological considerations. This would enhance the sustainability of the contemporary world by creating more economic justice and reducing the level of conflict. Unsustainability in our global village also has ecological roots. In the past, a functional equilibrium could be maintained between human settlements and the biosphere. The human exploitation of the environment was more modest. With primitive technologies and small populations the supply of natural resources seemed endless, and environmental damage insignificant. When improved technologies depleted or destroyed a local environment, there were other environments to conquer and exploit…
The ‘ecological footprint’ (the area of land required to support a settlement) gives a quantitative estimate of the
human overload of nature. It defines the share of the planet’s biological productivity used by an individual, a
city, a nation, or all of humanity. If the footprint of a settlement is larger than its area, that settlement is not independently
sustainable. A city is intrinsically unsustainable because very few of the natural resources used by its
inhabitants come from within its boundaries. Most of them, such as food, water, and waste disposal, rely on
hinterlands and catchments. But entire regions and countries could well be sustainable: their ecological footprint
need not extend beyond their territories. This, however, is not the case. In a survey commissioned by the Earth
Council of Costa Rica, the ecological footprints of 52 countries, the home of 80% of the world’s peoples, were
examined. Forty-two of these countries had footprints that exceeded their territory.
We can see the roots of the problem when we compare the footprint of individuals with the biological productivity
of the planet. In 1996, the Earth’s biosphere has 12.6 billion hectares of biologically productive space, making
up about one quarter of the planetary surface. It com prised 9.4 billion hectares of land and 3.2 billion hectares
of fishing ground. Equitably shared, in a population of 5.7 billion this yielded an earth-share of 2.18 hectares per
person. Now that there are 6.3 billion, the biosphere’s biological productivity remains at best constant. Thus
today’s earth-share is just 2.1 hectares for each man, woman and child on the planet. But in the 52 countries
examined, the average footprint came to 2.8 hectares.
The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2000 measured the footprints of 151 nations. The study included
the largest, most highly populated countries, and gave a fair measure of the world situation. It appears that today
humanity exceeds its Earth-share by nearly a third: 30.7%. The 75 countries that consume above their Earthshare
make up 21% of humanity. Among them the United Arab Republic, Singapore, and the United States exceed
their share nearly twelve times (in the U.S. the average footprint is 12.5 hectares, which is 31 acres). Even if the
per capita footprint in the poorest countries, such a Bangladesh, is only 0.5 hectares, our species still lives beyond its means: it exceeds the capacity of the planet to produce food, water and wood, absorb pollution, and provide
habitable space for all people…
We are approaching the outer edge of the Earth’s capacity to sustain human life. The 2002 Living Planet report
warned that humankind is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life. More than a
third of the natural resources of the world has been destroyed by human activity over the past three decades,
and if these trends continue, by the year 2050, to support the human population, we will need two other planets the
size of Earth. The unsustainability of the world is aggravated by the fact that ecosystems do not collapse piecemeal.
We have been operating on the assumption that in nature cause and effect is proportional, so that an additional
ounce of pollution produces an additional ounce of damage. This, however, is not so. Ecosystems may be
polluted for many years without any change at all, then flip into an entirely different condition. Gradual changes
create cumulative vulnerability, until a single shock to the system, such as a flood or a drought, knocks the system
into a different state, less adapted to sustaining human life and economic activity.
A leap into a catastrophic new state can also occur in the global climate. According to a recent report by the US
National Academy of Sciences, abrupt changes can come about when the climate system is forced to cross some
threshold. The global warming trend projected over the course of the next 100 years (a rise in temperatures somewhere
between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees centigrade) could actually occur in the next few years. The new climate would undermine human settlements and ecologies throughout the world. Forests would be consumed by fires, grasslands would dry out and turn into dust bowls, wildlife would disappear and diseases, such a cholera, malaria and yellow fever, would decimate human populations.
Our global village is inequitable, and it is neither economically nor ecologically sustainable. This situation cannot be prolonged indefinitely. We either achieve a higher level of sustainability, or risk major havoc.
Half a century ago Albert Einstein noted that we cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that gave rise to it. Today’s Nobel scientists agree. A Declaration signed by one hundred Laureates at the conclusion of the Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium in December of 2001 noted, “The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world’s dispossessed.” They ended the Declaration saying, “To survive in the world we have transformed, we must learn to think in a new way”.
New thinking, and the economic, social and ecological behaviour that follows it, are soft factors in the life of society, but when it comes to deciding our future they have more weight than hard factors such as money and power. Not heavy-handed intervention from the top down, but timely change percolating from the grass roots up can set the world on the road to peace and sustainability.
The bottom line is that the urgently required worldwide transformation calls for positive changes in the way you and others around you live and think. As Mikhail Gorbachev has made clear, when all is said and done, the future is in your hands. With new thinking and sustainable living, you can change the world.
A Choice of Futures
There is not just one possible future before us, but many. In the final count we face a negative future of total breakdown,
as well as a positive future of stupendous breakthrough. The initial conditions are the same for all scenarios.
• Increasing population pressure: 77 million humans added to the world population every year, 97% of them in the poor countries
• spreading poverty: nearly two billion living on less than two dollars a day, more than one billion at the lower limits of physical subsistence
• widening gap between rich and poor people as well as rich and poor economies: 80% of the human population is responsible for 14% of global consumption, while the richest 20% accounts for 86%
• growing threat of social breakdown and rise of mindless violence in countries rich and poor
• intolerance and fundamentalism: for example, in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kashmir, Turkey and th Middle East, and worldwide through networks like Al Qaida
• food and water shortages, e.g. in sub-Saharan Africa, China, Southern Asia, Meso-America
• accelerating climate change: extremes of cold and heat, violent storms, changed rainfall patterns
• worsening industrial, urban, and agricultural pollution: changed chemical composition of the atmosphere, desalination and impoverishment of agricultural lands, lowering and poisoning of water tables
• accelerating deforestation and reduction of biodiversity: disappearance of tropical rainforests, loss of an untold number of species, monocultures on cultivated lands
• rising sea levels: loss of low-lying plains and river valleys in Southern Asia, flooding of island countries in the Pacific, threat to coastal cities throughout the world.
THE BREAKDOWN SCENARIO
The First Signs
• growing incidence of harvest failure due to changing weather patterns
• starvation and unsanitary conditions accelerating the spread of HIV/AIDS and other epidemics
• wars over access to fresh water and staple food supply in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
• millions of climate refugees from flooded coastal cities and low-lying areas
• massive waves of destitute migrants moving toward North America and Europe
Subsequent Events
• breakdown of the world financial system reflected in the cancellation of global trade agreements and disruption of trade flows
• deepening insecurity and violence from maverick and organised terrorism
• international and intercultural conflict resulting in local and regional wars
• rise of strong-arm regimes in many parts of the world, especially in the hardest-hit regions of the South
The Outcome
• worldwide spread of terrorism, corruption, anarchy, and organised crime
• collapse of the North Atlantic alliance linking Europe and North America
• breakdown of relations between the US and Russia
• regional wars in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America
• inclusion of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in regional wars
• global escalation of armed conflict.
THE BREAKTHROUGH SCENARIO
The First Signs
• Population pressures, poverty, fanaticism, and a variety of environmental threats and disasters trigger positive changes in the way people think. The idea that another world is possible captures the imagination of more and more people. As in England and Russia during World War II, and in America in the aftermath of September 11, people in different
societies and different walks of life pull together to confront the threat they face in common
• Non-governmental organisations link up through the Internet and develop shared strategies to restore local economies and local environments and promote socially and ecologically responsible policies in local and national government and business. A nongovernmental World Futures Council is established at the same time as an electronic E-Parliament comes
online to link parliamentarians worldwide and provide a forum for debates on the best ways to serve the common interest
• Governments and corporations begin to respond to calls for greater social and ecological responsibility from growing movements of civil society.
The Next Developments
• Money is increasingly re-assigned from military and defence budgets to fund practical attempts at conflict resolution together with a worldwide programme to restore the Earth as the concept of an ecological economy is becoming widely accepted
• A movement to promote ‘localisation’ is gaining in strength, balancing the one-sided forms of globalisation through the efficient use of the human, natural and financial resources of local environments
• Reforms are undertaken in the world’s monetary system. A world currency is put into circulation by the reformed World Bank Group on the basis of population size rather than financial power, creating a more equitable flow of money among the world’s disparate economies; at the same time local currencies continue to grow and develop. The Outcome
• A worldwide renewable energy programme is created, paving the way toward a new industrial revolution making use of solar and other renewable energy sources to transform the global economy and lift marginalised populations out of the vicious cycles of poverty
• Agriculture is restored to a place of primary importance in the economy, not only for the production of staple foods, but for growing energy crops and raw materials for diverse branches of manufacturing
• Governance structures are reformed so as to move toward a participatory Earth Democracy, releasing a surge of creative energy among people whose voice can now be heard
• As a result of such developments international and intercultural mistrust, ethnic conflict, racial oppression, economic injustice, and gender inequality give way to a more peaceful and sustainable world, based on a higher level of trust and co- operation among the world’s peoples, cultures, and economies.
This article was extracted by permission from the first two chapters of You Can Change the World by Ervin Laszlo (2002), pub. by Positive News Publishing Ltd, 5 Bicton Enterprise Centre, Clun, Shropshire SY7 8NF, UK; E:
office@positivenews.org.uk; W: www.positivenews.org.uk. Available from Green Books Ltd., Foxhole, Dartington, Devon, TQ9 6EB. E: sales@greenbooks.co.uk; W: www.greenbooks.co.uk
Professor Ervin Laszlo is one of the world’s foremost experts on systems theory and general evolution theory, and
Founder and President of The Club of Budapest. He is the author of thirty-four books and Editor of World Futures.
The economic and social system of the world has brought unparalleled wealth to a few, and marginalisation and
misery to many. It has concentrated production, trade, finance and communication, and has created national and
regional unemployment, widening income gaps, and mounting environmental degradation. The benefits of
economic growth, for long the main indicator of progress, have become every more concentrated. While
the richest 20% of the world population become richer still, the poorest 20% are pressed into abject poverty,
barely surviving in shantytowns and urban ghettos.
These conditions are socially and politically explosive. They fuel resentment and revolt and provoke massive
migration from the countryside to the cities, and from the poorer to the richer regions. Fanatics wage holy wars and
resort to terrorism, and organised crime engages in information fraud, corruption, and traffic in women and children
as well as drugs, organs and weapons. As long as people harbour hate and the desire for revenge, they cannot
co-exist peacefully and co-operatively. Whether the cause is the wounded ego of a person or the wounded
self-respect of a people; whether it is the wish to personal revenge or a holy war in defence of a faith, the potential
for violence remains. Attaining peace in people’s hearts is a precondition of attaining peace in the world.
And inner peace depends very much on creating more equitable conditions in the global village into which we
have precipitated ourselves…
Investment flows mostly between rich countries, where it has the best chances of generating high and quick returns.
Although some $19 trillion is invested in the world’s stock markets, only 1% of direct foreign investment
reaches the poorest 20% of the world’s population.
The world’s economy is not only inequitable: because of the workings of the international monetary system it is inherently unsustainable. Most of the money in the world is supplied as loans by the banking system and has to be repaid with interest. Servicing the ever-increasing debt requires continual growth in the economy, and on our finite planet endless quantitative growth encounters natural limits. Moreover, the present system encourages financial speculation on a colossal scale with over $1 trillion moving around the globe every day in search of short-term again. This money is not financing trade or
production; it is merely gambling on market dynamics and currency fluctuation – hence the term the global casino.
Reforming the way the world’s economy is financed is urgent and necessary. It calls for a new sense of responsibility,
for behaviour suited to life in a tightly interdependent global village, where the actions of each affect
the destiny of all. Economic and financial competition needs to be tempered with greater co-operation and fairness,
and production as well as consumption must become more attuned to social and ecological considerations. This would enhance the sustainability of the contemporary world by creating more economic justice and reducing the level of conflict. Unsustainability in our global village also has ecological roots. In the past, a functional equilibrium could be maintained between human settlements and the biosphere. The human exploitation of the environment was more modest. With primitive technologies and small populations the supply of natural resources seemed endless, and environmental damage insignificant. When improved technologies depleted or destroyed a local environment, there were other environments to conquer and exploit…
The ‘ecological footprint’ (the area of land required to support a settlement) gives a quantitative estimate of the
human overload of nature. It defines the share of the planet’s biological productivity used by an individual, a
city, a nation, or all of humanity. If the footprint of a settlement is larger than its area, that settlement is not independently
sustainable. A city is intrinsically unsustainable because very few of the natural resources used by its
inhabitants come from within its boundaries. Most of them, such as food, water, and waste disposal, rely on
hinterlands and catchments. But entire regions and countries could well be sustainable: their ecological footprint
need not extend beyond their territories. This, however, is not the case. In a survey commissioned by the Earth
Council of Costa Rica, the ecological footprints of 52 countries, the home of 80% of the world’s peoples, were
examined. Forty-two of these countries had footprints that exceeded their territory.
We can see the roots of the problem when we compare the footprint of individuals with the biological productivity
of the planet. In 1996, the Earth’s biosphere has 12.6 billion hectares of biologically productive space, making
up about one quarter of the planetary surface. It com prised 9.4 billion hectares of land and 3.2 billion hectares
of fishing ground. Equitably shared, in a population of 5.7 billion this yielded an earth-share of 2.18 hectares per
person. Now that there are 6.3 billion, the biosphere’s biological productivity remains at best constant. Thus
today’s earth-share is just 2.1 hectares for each man, woman and child on the planet. But in the 52 countries
examined, the average footprint came to 2.8 hectares.
The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2000 measured the footprints of 151 nations. The study included
the largest, most highly populated countries, and gave a fair measure of the world situation. It appears that today
humanity exceeds its Earth-share by nearly a third: 30.7%. The 75 countries that consume above their Earthshare
make up 21% of humanity. Among them the United Arab Republic, Singapore, and the United States exceed
their share nearly twelve times (in the U.S. the average footprint is 12.5 hectares, which is 31 acres). Even if the
per capita footprint in the poorest countries, such a Bangladesh, is only 0.5 hectares, our species still lives beyond its means: it exceeds the capacity of the planet to produce food, water and wood, absorb pollution, and provide
habitable space for all people…
We are approaching the outer edge of the Earth’s capacity to sustain human life. The 2002 Living Planet report
warned that humankind is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life. More than a
third of the natural resources of the world has been destroyed by human activity over the past three decades,
and if these trends continue, by the year 2050, to support the human population, we will need two other planets the
size of Earth. The unsustainability of the world is aggravated by the fact that ecosystems do not collapse piecemeal.
We have been operating on the assumption that in nature cause and effect is proportional, so that an additional
ounce of pollution produces an additional ounce of damage. This, however, is not so. Ecosystems may be
polluted for many years without any change at all, then flip into an entirely different condition. Gradual changes
create cumulative vulnerability, until a single shock to the system, such as a flood or a drought, knocks the system
into a different state, less adapted to sustaining human life and economic activity.
A leap into a catastrophic new state can also occur in the global climate. According to a recent report by the US
National Academy of Sciences, abrupt changes can come about when the climate system is forced to cross some
threshold. The global warming trend projected over the course of the next 100 years (a rise in temperatures somewhere
between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees centigrade) could actually occur in the next few years. The new climate would undermine human settlements and ecologies throughout the world. Forests would be consumed by fires, grasslands would dry out and turn into dust bowls, wildlife would disappear and diseases, such a cholera, malaria and yellow fever, would decimate human populations.
Our global village is inequitable, and it is neither economically nor ecologically sustainable. This situation cannot be prolonged indefinitely. We either achieve a higher level of sustainability, or risk major havoc.
Half a century ago Albert Einstein noted that we cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that gave rise to it. Today’s Nobel scientists agree. A Declaration signed by one hundred Laureates at the conclusion of the Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium in December of 2001 noted, “The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world’s dispossessed.” They ended the Declaration saying, “To survive in the world we have transformed, we must learn to think in a new way”.
New thinking, and the economic, social and ecological behaviour that follows it, are soft factors in the life of society, but when it comes to deciding our future they have more weight than hard factors such as money and power. Not heavy-handed intervention from the top down, but timely change percolating from the grass roots up can set the world on the road to peace and sustainability.
The bottom line is that the urgently required worldwide transformation calls for positive changes in the way you and others around you live and think. As Mikhail Gorbachev has made clear, when all is said and done, the future is in your hands. With new thinking and sustainable living, you can change the world.
A Choice of Futures
There is not just one possible future before us, but many. In the final count we face a negative future of total breakdown,
as well as a positive future of stupendous breakthrough. The initial conditions are the same for all scenarios.
• Increasing population pressure: 77 million humans added to the world population every year, 97% of them in the poor countries
• spreading poverty: nearly two billion living on less than two dollars a day, more than one billion at the lower limits of physical subsistence
• widening gap between rich and poor people as well as rich and poor economies: 80% of the human population is responsible for 14% of global consumption, while the richest 20% accounts for 86%
• growing threat of social breakdown and rise of mindless violence in countries rich and poor
• intolerance and fundamentalism: for example, in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kashmir, Turkey and th Middle East, and worldwide through networks like Al Qaida
• food and water shortages, e.g. in sub-Saharan Africa, China, Southern Asia, Meso-America
• accelerating climate change: extremes of cold and heat, violent storms, changed rainfall patterns
• worsening industrial, urban, and agricultural pollution: changed chemical composition of the atmosphere, desalination and impoverishment of agricultural lands, lowering and poisoning of water tables
• accelerating deforestation and reduction of biodiversity: disappearance of tropical rainforests, loss of an untold number of species, monocultures on cultivated lands
• rising sea levels: loss of low-lying plains and river valleys in Southern Asia, flooding of island countries in the Pacific, threat to coastal cities throughout the world.
THE BREAKDOWN SCENARIO
The First Signs
• growing incidence of harvest failure due to changing weather patterns
• starvation and unsanitary conditions accelerating the spread of HIV/AIDS and other epidemics
• wars over access to fresh water and staple food supply in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
• millions of climate refugees from flooded coastal cities and low-lying areas
• massive waves of destitute migrants moving toward North America and Europe
Subsequent Events
• breakdown of the world financial system reflected in the cancellation of global trade agreements and disruption of trade flows
• deepening insecurity and violence from maverick and organised terrorism
• international and intercultural conflict resulting in local and regional wars
• rise of strong-arm regimes in many parts of the world, especially in the hardest-hit regions of the South
The Outcome
• worldwide spread of terrorism, corruption, anarchy, and organised crime
• collapse of the North Atlantic alliance linking Europe and North America
• breakdown of relations between the US and Russia
• regional wars in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America
• inclusion of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in regional wars
• global escalation of armed conflict.
THE BREAKTHROUGH SCENARIO
The First Signs
• Population pressures, poverty, fanaticism, and a variety of environmental threats and disasters trigger positive changes in the way people think. The idea that another world is possible captures the imagination of more and more people. As in England and Russia during World War II, and in America in the aftermath of September 11, people in different
societies and different walks of life pull together to confront the threat they face in common
• Non-governmental organisations link up through the Internet and develop shared strategies to restore local economies and local environments and promote socially and ecologically responsible policies in local and national government and business. A nongovernmental World Futures Council is established at the same time as an electronic E-Parliament comes
online to link parliamentarians worldwide and provide a forum for debates on the best ways to serve the common interest
• Governments and corporations begin to respond to calls for greater social and ecological responsibility from growing movements of civil society.
The Next Developments
• Money is increasingly re-assigned from military and defence budgets to fund practical attempts at conflict resolution together with a worldwide programme to restore the Earth as the concept of an ecological economy is becoming widely accepted
• A movement to promote ‘localisation’ is gaining in strength, balancing the one-sided forms of globalisation through the efficient use of the human, natural and financial resources of local environments
• Reforms are undertaken in the world’s monetary system. A world currency is put into circulation by the reformed World Bank Group on the basis of population size rather than financial power, creating a more equitable flow of money among the world’s disparate economies; at the same time local currencies continue to grow and develop. The Outcome
• A worldwide renewable energy programme is created, paving the way toward a new industrial revolution making use of solar and other renewable energy sources to transform the global economy and lift marginalised populations out of the vicious cycles of poverty
• Agriculture is restored to a place of primary importance in the economy, not only for the production of staple foods, but for growing energy crops and raw materials for diverse branches of manufacturing
• Governance structures are reformed so as to move toward a participatory Earth Democracy, releasing a surge of creative energy among people whose voice can now be heard
• As a result of such developments international and intercultural mistrust, ethnic conflict, racial oppression, economic injustice, and gender inequality give way to a more peaceful and sustainable world, based on a higher level of trust and co- operation among the world’s peoples, cultures, and economies.
This article was extracted by permission from the first two chapters of You Can Change the World by Ervin Laszlo (2002), pub. by Positive News Publishing Ltd, 5 Bicton Enterprise Centre, Clun, Shropshire SY7 8NF, UK; E:
office@positivenews.org.uk; W: www.positivenews.org.uk. Available from Green Books Ltd., Foxhole, Dartington, Devon, TQ9 6EB. E: sales@greenbooks.co.uk; W: www.greenbooks.co.uk
Professor Ervin Laszlo is one of the world’s foremost experts on systems theory and general evolution theory, and
Founder and President of The Club of Budapest. He is the author of thirty-four books and Editor of World Futures.