Winners Take Everything

 I really should read some definitive works on what we know about the "Bread and Circuses" period of the Roman Empire. According to Wikipedia, 

"It is attributed to Juvenal (Satires, Satire X), a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century AD, and is used commonly in cultural, particularly political, contexts. In a political context, the phrase means to generate public approval, not by excellence in public service or public policy, but by diversion, distraction, or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace,^[1] by offering a palliative: for example food (bread) or entertainment (circuses). Juvenal originally used it to decry the "selfishness" of common people and their neglect of wider concerns.^[2][3][4] The phrase implies a population's erosion or ignorance of civic duty as a priority.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses"  

On fall Saturdays and Sundays in contemporary America, the major circus is American football - either or both NCAA games or NFL ones. But change the calendar a bit and it could be baseball, basketball, or ice hockey. Team sports are particularly the biggest attention grabbers. And yes, I understand the desire to distract ourselves from the mundane or spiritless elements of contemporary lives by being spectators of team sports. As a youth I was hooked on following team sports and playing a few in my neighborhood and schools. Even today at 75 I've been playing competitive softball. So I'm not against team sports as a fun and potentially positive force on us as individuals.

But there are some larger issues of growing concern that are rarely discussed or considered. This is the focus of this brief post. 25 years ago, since I felt there were legitimate concerns that were not being considered or discussed, I wrote in a professional library journal about "Beneath the Surface: The Unintended Consequences of Information Technology". In that context my concerns were with the following:

• Speed
• Info glut
• Cultural amplification
• Alienation and demise of community
• Status
  

With our mesmerization with team sports my concerns are: 

• Increasing commercialization of sports
• Demonization of opponents
• Sole focus on winning
• Solidification of competition as the dominant human driver
• Incredible sums given to some individuals
  
• How all of these are in conflict with the our role as a species in the community of life
  

I happened on a college football game yesterday and saw the violence inflicted on the human body and of course a recent death of a college football player from the affects of a game. There is a celebration of war in the air, where vanquishing the enemy at any cost is an elixir inhaled by players and fans alike. We line up and call our fellow competitors, foes. The frenzy of the mostly white fans, especially the young males, is palpable. Since the cost of tickets is ridiculously high, only middle and upper classes can afford to attend. The enormous sums now going to certain individual athletes, not to mention team owners, is absurd and a driving factor for the increase in ticket prices. Just tune into any of the professional leagues on broadcast tv and note the absence of people of color in the stands as opposed to the participants in the game.

The bleeding of this ethos, that winning is everything, has seeped into the politics of our time. The new administration coming to Washington in a matter of weeks is loaded with the economic winners worth more than $340 BILLION. That's not million, it's BILLIONS or 340,000 millions. The wealth of billionaires already a staggering amount a decade ago has more than doubled since then. This is the outcome you get when you follow the mantra that winning is everything. 

Of course the other side of the coin are the losers. All the rest of us are losers, especially the young and yet to be born who will have to cope with a wounded planet no longer the relatively stable one for human life it has been since we became an upright species.  Given that the rich are responsible for burning grossly more fossil fuels, that destabilizes the climate and ecology that provides us life support, it just adds more proof to the failures of winning is everything.

Now that the winners have purchased control of government here and are preparing to lock-in that control while increasing their personal winnings, the road back to sanity that nurtures and  supports an ethos of cooperation, compassion, and conservation must be our response. Let me leave just one example of what committed cooperative efforts can inspire. 

 Ridwell is a waste reduction business now operating in seven major metropolitan areas - Seattle, Portland, Denver, Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Bay area,and Minneapolis-St. Paul. It is now a certified B Corporation but it started out as a neighborhood effort in Seattle

 

"It all started with a son, a dad, and a bag of batteries…

Ryan knew that batteries had chemicals in them so began researching where in Seattle to dispose of them. This was not an easy task. Locations start and stop accepting batteries and it wasn’t until Ryan’s third call that he found a safe destination.

Thinking that neighbors might also have dead batteries, Ryan decided to see if he could take others along the way: a recycling carpool.

Owen was thrilled. He and Ryan started scrounging around their house for other things they could recycle: light bulbs, electronics, clothes hangers, Styrofoam, plastic bags, clothing, and even Halloween candy!

Each time, Ryan and Owen would tell their neighbors so they could also save their stuff from landfills. Pickups got bigger and bigger and eventually word spread beyond Ryan and Owen’s neighborhood.

Soon, the demand was too high to be handled by just a dad and his six year old. Aliya, Justin, and David jumped in to help with pickups, donations, and spreading the word around town.

Still, demand continued to grow and we decided that there just might be enough people who shared our vision of the future. And so we founded Ridwell, a solution you can always count on to get rid of things the right way."

This is the type of win-win-we-all-win approach that is needed.

 

You can read more about this and other efforts in the Pultizer Prize winning author Edward Hume's new book, Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World.

Just in the past 24 hours I've learned about  two distinctive approaches to building a sustainable future that seem worth delving into. In both tone and depth they appear to be particularly useful for our time. The invoke the spirit of cooperation. Maybe one or both of them will fuel something useful to you.

Rock Creek Institute https://rockcreekinstitute.org/

Berggreun Institute  https://berggruen.org/

 

 

Living With Boundaries

 I attempted to give a public talk last week which was intended to find some coherence with many of the issues and forces cascading through our present world. I was completely pleased with my delivery, but the elements I wanted to touch on are there for anyone interested.

 

It was perhaps with some irony that at roughly the same day I was sharing my thoughts, Dr. Johan Rockstrom, the leader of the emerging "Planetary Boundaries" science was giving a terrific and essential talk (only 20 minutes) to a huge gathering of young people somewhere in Europe. 

Perhaps, the rapidity of reports will be the new norm as we take a look at these new graphs compiled by The Guardian and published just this week. 

There is plenty of evidence that climate and other planetary boundaries should be our primary concern as these reports make clear. But as I have argued in the past regarding the broader concerns of the 17 Global Sustainable Development Goals, my talk tried to not only link them (no pun intended), but to offer an attitude and approach to meet that significant challenge.

Now, with an incoming administration that has either absolutely no understanding of planetary boundaries, or just doesn't care, we are marching directly towards the abyss. Fortunately, there are many millions who do understand the polycrisis we face. How to resist the worst actions that will emanate from this autocratic and oligarchical gang is still unclear to me. But we must.

Could Sanity Prevail?

 

I heard a report on NPR the other day where former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy offered that, in our culture, you don’t get people to change behavior by asking them to sacrifice but rather by convincing them that the change is good for them. I guess on the face of it that sounds practical. But there is a throbbing force within me that challenges that notion.

It would seem to me that by employing that strategy one reinforces the self-centeredness that is, at its base, the scourge of our time.

This “me” focus is accentuated in the gross growth of income by celebrities and others. The highlight recently was Elon Musk’s annual salary of $46 BILLION. But we can also look to Taylor Swift’s almost $2 BILLION for 2023, or the 5-year contract for $275 MILLION recently signed by football star Trevor Lawrence. See more in a recent NYT piece on sports salaries following the Caitlyn Clark signing. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5491137/2024/05/16/caitlin-clark-wnba-salary-comparison/

How much is enough, with 8 billion people living on a single planet under stress, largely because of the appetites for more? August 1 this year is expected to designate Overshoot Day. Earth Overshoot Day is computed by dividing the planet’s biocapacity (the amount of ecological resources Earth is able to generate that year) by humanity’s Ecological Footprint (humanity’s demand for that year) and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year.

What does it tell us about ourselves that our culture keeps urging us to consume more, to get the newest, fastest, biggest thing; that constant advertising entices us to be unsatisfied with what we have and that to be truly fulfilled we need more, bigger, better?

The median household income for Michigan in 2023 was $64,488. That’s for a family of four. The super rich, such as those mentioned above, make a lot more money than their annual salaries, as they have investment income that is taxed at much lower rates than median workers’ income. This is a driver of national debt, because it shrinks government revenue while benefiting the already wealthy. It’s also why we can’t seem to afford to pay teachers more, provide health care for all, or seriously invest in addressing climate destabilization.

In 2002, Robley George wrote a little reviewed or read book, Socio-Economic Democracy: An Advanced Socioeconomic System.

 

 

  While the title may seem a little heavy, its message was really straightforward: Why don’t we have a system that democratically determines what a minimum livable income should be as well as a maximum allowable wealth? He elaborates on these issues over some 200 pages with uncanny insights. The kicker is how to balance these extremes democratically, which he does nicely. It would be fascinating to have local communities vote their preferences and see where they set those limits!! I suspect you would see a significantly reduced gulf between the top and bottom, perhaps akin to studies that show people’s perception of wealth gaps and the reality. Check this out! 

Serendipity intervenes. Just noticed after I drafted this that a new book has come out by economist Peter Victor, Escape from Overshoot: Economics for a Planet in Peril. 

 

 

I got my fingers on a copy and read the forward, prologue, intro and first chapter this morning. You can read the prologue and first chapter here. It is an incredibly lucid text with tons of graphics to help make the points. The prepub accolades are numerous and impressive-

Uses sound economics to map a path out of overshoot. Highly recommended.
―Herman Daly

An excellent primer on key insights and questions in ecological economics from a celebrated pioneer of the field.
―Jason Hickel, author, Less is More

Peter Victor provides a state-of-the-art overview of the drawings for the economic rocket humanity needs for a safe landing on Spaceship Earth. In our turbulent times, with multiple planetary boundaries breached and tipping points approaching fast, Escape from Overshoot provides the perfect launch pad for new economic thinking that reconnects the world with planet Earth.
―Johan Rockström, Professor, Earth System Science; Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; and co-author, Earth for All

The title of Peter Victor's important book says it all: the planet is in peril and a major factor is a global economy too big for nature to flourish. Human beings are animals and thus, like all other species, constrained by nature and nature's laws. An economy unfettered by the needs and limits of nature and propelled by a fool's goal of endless growth has created the twin ecological crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. All who care about the kind of world we are leaving to our grandchildren and what we can do to bring the economy into harmony with nature must read this vital book.
―David Suzuki, emeritus professor and grandfather

No one pulls it all together as well as Peter Victor. His Escape from Overshoot covers climate and other key issues with a compelling clarity. I highly recommend this book.
―James Gustave Speth, former Dean, Yale School of the Environment, and author, America the Possible

Victor draws a plausible pathway that nicely intertwines with a growing body of evidence and proposals for new economic models from across the globe. This book is timely and gives cause for hope!
―Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president, the Club of Rome, and co-author, Earth for All

Erudite and lavishly illustrated, Peter Victor's Escape from Overshoot is a sweeping analysis of the flawed economic mindset that has pushed us to the brink and an inspired prescription for the new economics needed to help pull us back.
―William Rees, professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), and co-author, Our Ecological Footprint

I own hundreds of books, all carefully curated. But I reserve one short shelf for books that I think everybody needs to read right away in order to grasp the human condition and what needs to be done. Peter Victor's Escape from Overshoot is now at the front of that shelf. It is clearly and entertainingly written and elicits an aha! on every page. Escape from Overshoot would be a great book on those merits alone, even if it weren't the key to our collective fate.
―Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute, and author, Power

An absolute must read― I could not put it down and read it in one sitting. Peter Victor masterfully ties the threads of economic thought together to demonstrate why― and how― we can collectively do our best to avoid climate and ecological breakdown.
―David Miller, managing director, C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy

Escape from Overshoot is a tour de force of the latest research in ecological economics from one of the top researchers in the field. In a highly accessible style, with a helpful figure or illustration on almost every page, Peter Victor explains how the current economic system works, how it has pushed us to the precipice of environmental collapse, and how a post-growth economy could pull us back from the edge.
―Dan O'Neill, Associate Professor in Ecological Economics, University of Leeds, and president, European Society for Ecological Economics

If you want to enable the next generation to build a successful future, ditch the textbooks from the past and get this one instead.
―Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D., founder and president, Global Footprint Network, and author, Ecological Footprint

I urge you to read it and think about how to live the rest of our remaining lives….