Imagine the following: the scientists of an entire nation come to consensus on the roots of our environmental problems and the most critical avenues for action. The nation's head of state then gives his endorsement to their consensus report. An educational packet based on that report is prepared and sent to every household and school, so that citizens and students can learn the basics of sustainability. Then a roster of famous artists and celebrities goes on television to promote and celebrate the birth of this remarkable national project - a project that, in the long run, promises to completely reorganize the nation's way of life to bring it into alignment with the laws of nature.
p to now, much of the debate over the environment has
had the character of monkey chatter amongst the withering leaves of a dying
tree - the leaves representing specific, isolated problems. We are confronted
with a series of seemingly unrelated questions: Is the greenhouse effect
really a threat, or will it actually prevent another ice age? Do catalytic
converters on cars filter out toxic emissions, or do they cause even more
damage to the ozone layer than Freon? Are forests dying from pollution,
or from natural phenomena? Is economic growth harmful, or does it provide
resources for healing the environment? Will the costs of phasing out non-renewable
energy sources outweigh the benefits? Should we clean up our own backyards,
or concentrate our efforts on countries that are even more polluted? Can
isolated countries accomplish anything useful on their own, or must they
wait for international agreements?In the midst of all this chatter about the leaves, very
few of us have been paying attention to the environment's trunk and branches.
They are deteriorating as a result of processes about which there is little
or no controversy; and the thousands of individual problems that are the
subject of so much debate are, in fact, manifestations of systemic errors
that are undermining the foundations of human society. There has been a
basic scientific agreement about the causes of that deterioration for nearly
half a century, and it should be possible to anchor key decisions affecting
society in that scientific consensus. We must learn to deal with environmental
problems at the systemic level; if we heal the trunk and the branches, the
benefits for the leaves will follow naturally.
Let us begin by focusing on the cell. We cannot discuss
politics or ideologies without it: The cell is only concerned with the conditions
necessary for sustaining and propagating life. It also reminds us that we
are inescapably a part of nature: there is much less difference between
the cell of a human and that of a plant than is commonly understood. And
if we compare our cells with those of other animals, we must go to the molecular
level in order to perceive the differences that do exist. The basic structures
and functions of our bodies are nearly identical to those of eagles and
seals, all the way down to the molecular level. It is very clear that, from
a biological standpoint, we are not the masters of nature, nor even its
caretakers. We are part of nature.It also happens that nearly all of our natural resources have been created by cells. Over billions of years, a toxic stew of inorganic compounds has been transformed by cells into mineral deposits, forests, fish, soil, breathable air and water – the very foundation of our economy and of our healthy existence. With sunlight as the sole energy supply, those natural resources have been created in growing, self-sustaining cycles - the "waste" from one species providing nutrition for another. The only processes that we can rely on indefinitely are cyclical; all linear processes must eventually come to an end.
For roughly the past hundred years, humans have been
disrupting the cyclical processes of nature at an accelerating pace. All
human societies are, in varying degrees, now processing natural resources
in a linear direction. Our resources are being rapidly transformed into
useless garbage, some of which is obvious to the naked eye, but most of
which escapes awareness. The smaller portion can be seen in garbage dumps
and other visible waste. By far the larger portion can be thought of as
"molecular garbage" - consisting of the vast quantities of tiny
particles that are daily spewed out into the earth's air, water and soil.With few exceptions, none of this garbage finds its
way back into the cycles of society or nature; it is not taken up for repeated
use by industry, nor is it put back into the soil. As a result of poor or
non-existent planning, the volume of garbage is too large for nature to
reassimilate, and some of it - toxic metals and stable unnatural compounds
- cannot be processed by the cells at all.The ultimate consequences of all this are impossible
to foretell. The complexity of ecosystems is so great that we do not know
the tolerance levels for any of the thousands of kinds of molecular garbage;
it is even more difficult to anticipate how they will interact with each
other. In addition, it often takes a long time for the consequences to appear:
the effects of today's pollution will not become evident until tomorrow.
It is from that perspective we must respond to questions like, "Is
the greenhouse effect really a threat, or will it actually prevent another
ice age?"
We have lost control, and are moving backwards in evolution. The extinction of species, deforestation, the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and all the other assaults on nature are but different aspects of the same mistake – increased reliance on linear processes. As we busy ourselves with tearing down more than we rebuild, we are racing toward world-wide poverty in a monstrous, poisonous garbage dump. No temporary trade balances, illusory bank accounts, or pseudo-scientific disputes can save us from the consequences. The only thing that can is the restoration of cyclical processes.To argue about the cost of that restoration borders
on the absurd. The question is not how much it will cost, but rather how
much it will cost to hide in ignorance and wait for the problem to become
even bigger. It may have been possible to postpone payment for a few decades,
but now the bills are starting to pile up: it is already more expensive
to harvest declining fish stocks over wider and wider areas; it is already
more expensive to make water fit to drink; and we haven't even started to
pay for the cleanup of toxic metals, radioactive and otherwise, that we
are constantly injecting into our world.
The Natural Step is a network of experts from various
fields who are attempting to find out how much can be accomplished by using
scientific consensus as the basis for decision-making in human society.
The network includes scientists, economists, teachers, environmental activists,
politicians, business leaders, artists, and others who are all contributing
to a mutual effort for a future based on respect for natural laws.Central to that effort are consensus reports of The
Natural Step on the current condition of the environment's "trunk and
branches," and on the strategies needed to reverse their deterioration.
The reports are distributed through a variety of media: illustrated booklets
and audio cassettes to all of Sweden's schools and households; seminars
for members of Parliament; study circles; television programs; establishment
of an "Environmental Youth Parliament"; a journal targeted at
readers in the business world, etc.The ultimate purpose is to find the common ground where
all sorts of people - right- and left-wingers, employers and employees,
atheists and believers, etc. - can meet. When they can all agree on a set
of scientific facts, and on the logical implications of those facts, the
way is cleared for concrete action.
If a politician were to ask a random selection of scientists
whether or not the reproductive organs of seals are destroyed by the chemical
PCB, it is very unlikely that he would get the kinds of answers that would
be helpful in arriving at a decision. He might hear, for instance: "That
has not been definitively established yet." "Yes, that has now
been clearly established." "Our laboratory has identified a toxin
that plays a far more destructive role," and so on.That's the sort of thing that happens with questions
about the leaves of the environmental tree. But, if one begins with the
trunk or branches, the answers become clearer and more consistent. For example:Does it accumulate in organisms? Yes, it does.Is it possible to predict the tolerance limits of such
a stable, unnatural substance? No, since the complexity of ecosystems is
essentially limitless. Nevertheless, it is known that all such substances
have limits, often very low, which cannot be exceeded.Can we continue to introduce such substances into the
ecosystem? Not if we want to survive.The final answer is what the politician actually wanted
to know from the beginning, since he is probably not particularly interested
in the reproductive organs of seals. Yet, most public environmental debate
is preoccupied with such relatively minor details. This happens whenever
we fail to proceed from a basic frame of reference, or overview, which makes
it possible to focus on the fundamental issues without getting lost in a
confusion of isolated details.
To greater or lesser degrees, all countries have introduced
the same kinds of systemic errors into their societies, and population growth
means that more and more people are expanding on the same mistakes. Natural
resources are wasted in linear processes, and molecular garbage is exported
across international boundaries. However, there is not much point in waiting
for international agreements to restore cyclical processes. The first steps
must be taken by dedicated individuals, businesses, and governments who
are ready and willing to take the initiative.What the earth needs most is a variety of useful models
- model homes, buildings, companies, communities, and countries, all demonstrating
how to make the transition from linear to cyclical processes. Positive examples
are an extremely powerful force for change, and it takes only a small proportion
of a population - perhaps as little as 15 percent - to stimulate dramatic
improvements With the right leadership, Berlin Walls can fall, and bleached
paper products can be replaced by less harmful alternatives.Fortunately, it appears that there is now a growing
core of thoughtful decision-makers who understand that the time to act is
now. Whether we want to help others or ourselves, to conduct our affairs
ethically or compete in tomorrow's markets, the possibility of success rides
on the shoulders of well-informed business and political leaders who are
supported in their efforts to base the foundations of society on natural
laws. A strategy for achieving that goal can be derived from a multi-disciplinary
scientific consensus. Above all, it is necessary to cure our addiction to
the false, short-sighted economies of linear processes, and to restore the
health of nature and society by investing every available resource in cyclical
processes.Despite all the quibbling over peripheral issues, there
is already enough of a scientific consensus to get on with the necessary
work. In most cases, it is simply not true that "more research is needed":
in order to predict that you will die if you jump off the top of the Eiffel
Tower, it is not necessary to calculate that it is 345.23 meters high at
20 degrees centigrade. Since environmentally-sound technology is already
available, the pace of transition to cyclical processes is limited only
by our spirit of sacrifice and our will to act. The longer we delay, the
more painful the sacrifices we will have to make.Since few countries have the capacity to provide positive
examples, the responsibility of those who do is particularly great. It is
also in their long-term self interest to conserve natural resources, reduce
pollution control costs, and develop the technology that the entire world
will demand, sooner or later. Of course, some technologies and industries
lend themselves to the necessary transformation better than others; we can
begin with them, and let the others benefit from their example.Among nations, which will take the leading role - Sweden? The Netherlands? The Natural Step has now been taken in both countries, and we in Sweden are even so fortunate as to have received the King's blessing and support. I wish The Natural Step of The Netherlands all the best for the future, and I hope that they – as well as others – will be even more successful than we have been. In that competition, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
am a scientist, and I'm also an active physician and the head of a cancer unit. When you treat patients with cancer using modern methods, it means that during your career – even if you are reasonably young, as I am at 43 years of age – you have experienced how a lot of patients who can be cured now would have been dead within months at the time when I started my career! It's a tremendous change, generally implemented by very hard work in big teams.But at the same time, pollution is increasing outside
the wards of the hospital at a rate which is incredible. Most scientific
groups who have analyzed these problems agree that we have one or two decades
[to turn things around]. But we are arguing over the details. We are running
around looking for knowledge, but we are drowning in information. This is
the problem.
To me it's just obvious that there must be some truth
about our environmental problems that is true for everyone, whether they're
left- or right-wingers. There must be some truth that we could define together
based on knowledge, and I wanted to know where this knowledge was. How much
could we agree upon from the facts?But all I saw was this arguing going on – it was like watching a house burn down while the fire brigade was arguing about how the fire brigade should be organized. I felt, "God! Couldn't we agree upon something, and see how much we could start doing on that basis?"That was when I became a slave to what became The Natural Step. I started to write the consensus report – which was only a consensus in my own brain, but I tried to foresee the problems that people had when they wanted to reach consensus. For example, if I wanted to get rid of nuclear power, I tried to understand how intelligent people who want nuclear power would argue. I did my best, then I sent this report to the best scientists in Sweden - communists as well as conservatives. I asked them, "Could you please find the errors in this for me?"If there is anything that unites professors, it's that
they can't help finding errors in what others have done, so they helped
me very well. I got the document back, solved the problems they had pointed
out to me, and sent out a second version. I did this 21 times.The final report is the 22nd version of the first consensus
report. This was very challenging to industry and to a lot of organizations,
because at last somebody had gathered a consensus about what we should do.
I managed to raise money to distribute this report to every Swedish household
and every school - 4.3 million copies. The package comes with an endorsement
from the King, and it employs a very simple pedagogical method: an audio
cassette talks along with the pictures and explains what is wrong - the
systemic errors that make up the trunk and the branches of the pollution
tree - and finishes by explaining what we must do if we want both to survive
and to keep our wealth, which really amounts to the same thing.Wealth is based on structure, and we are tearing down
structure. I explain this in a way that makes it very easy to understand,
and I explain the tests that have been done. And now, together with the
Green movement and the adult education network, we have started study circles
all over Sweden with this report as a basis.
When I travel to Hungary, Poland and Switzerland, I
tell them the same thing: you must identify the slave who doesn't want to
have power in any respect except to be the glue between powerful and intelligent
people. If you can identify him and make him work, there is tremendous power
in this idea, because almost everyone who can think would like consensus
to appear when it's about survival and natural resources.This is not a new organization. This is a network of
people. We have a lot of good people involved from Greenpeace, the Swedish
Federation for the Preservation of Nature, the World Wildlife Fund, and
so forth, but we are not getting any money from membership as those organizations
do. Just the opposite - we are begging for money from industry, and finding
other sources, and our message is, "Please join Greenpeace or the World
Wildlife Fund." And that has had a very big effect on their membership.So I built networks wherever I went. I phoned one of
our best-loved artists, Lillian Fosch, and said that I and all these scientists
were going to educate the whole country, would she please help us celebrate
it on TV if we succeeded? And she said "Of course! And who else would
you like?" So she helped build the network too.I phoned other people up and said that I and Lillian
Fosch would like them to take part, and they said "Certainly, if you
have already succeeded at doing all that, I will take part!" Then I
went to the department that governs national education issues and said that
I and all these artists and scientists from the Swedish universities would
like to put on this educational campaign, and would they like to have it
distributed free to the schools and take part when it hit the whole nation?
And they said, "Well, that's very exciting! Certainly we would like
to take part in it."So then I went to Swedish TV and said that I and all
those artists and scientists and this big governmental office wanted to
educate the whole Swedish people, and we would like to have a party on TV
celebrating it. And they said, "Certainly. How could we refuse if you
succeed with all these other things? What would be the best date?"
The schools wanted the campaign in March, and I said the last day of April
[1989] would be nice.But while it may not be what he wants, this is what you feel. In the beginning you feel, "This damn idiot. I'm going to punch his teeth in!" But by asking him for advice instead, you learn that he was not a threat at all! And by following his advice, two things happen: first, he has part of the responsibility for it now, because it's his advice you are following; and secondly, the project generally improves – because most people have rather good ideas!
So industries must move from defending themselves to
being heroes, ahead of everyone else, fighting for tomorrow's market and
tomorrow's technology. In ten years the market will be about nothing else
but sustainability. Whether you are a commercialist or a Florence Nightingale,
the answer is the same: close the cycles, and you will be the winner tomorrow.This is what we are teaching industry, and they buy it. We give them a crystal ball by talking about thermodynamics, the building up of structure, how the structure is the basis for economy, and how the tearing down of structure is deteriorating the economy. We also tell them in practical terms how the costs appear, and they agree – they have seen all those costs already.Since this is non-negotiable, there are only two alternatives:
either we choose to close the material cycles in society with high heads
and in pride, or we do it crawling on our knees later on. But we will still
have to do it. My life will be worth something if I can speed the process
up a little, so that we can do more of it standing up than crawling. If
I can speed the process up a few minutes, that's all that is necessary for
me.
This [networking] will probably be the future solution
of how to work. It will probably develop into something much better than
we have been able to do, because we have all this experience now, and somebody
will improve on it.Democracy is the best political form we have because
it hinders idiots from coming up [and taking over]. We need it to protect
ourselves. We don't have anything better. But there are serious limitations
in the traditional democracy, so people with skills and knowledge must join
and help democracy. If they don't - if they ask the decision-makers to do
the job for them - it will die.We have serious problems - AIDS, criminality, drugs
- and people will realize sooner or later that democracy can't solve these
problems if we don't support democracy. So I think network structures will
be like flowers on the field very soon.
I don't believe that the solutions in society will come
from the left or the right or the north or the south. They will come from
islands within those organizations, islands of people with integrity who
want to do something. They will expand and they will become more and more
powerful. It's like the Trojan Horse - in a big oil company, for example,
I know that there are people with integrity who think about the future,
who want to protect kids, who would like to do something. We can use their
skills to do something within the company. We educate them, when we find
them.This is what a network should do - identify the people
who would like to do something good. And they are everywhere. This is how
the change will appear - you won't notice the difference. It won't be anyone
winning over anyone. It will just spread. One day you don't need any more
signs saying "Don't spit on the floor," or "Don't put substances
in the lake which can't be processed." It will be so natural. It will
be something that the intelligent people do, and nobody will say that it
was due to The Natural Step or your magazine. It will just appear.
