Achieving a sustainable future - In Search of Sustainability - page 174

sight. As Great Transition says, policy reform has to overcome 'the resistance
of special interests, the myopia of narrow outlooks and the inertia of com-
placency'. As long as politicians are more concerned about the next election
than the next generation, necessary reforms won't happen.
Great Transition argues that market-led wealth generation and govern-
ment-led technological change need to be supplemented and guided by a
values-led move to an alternative global vision, based around such principles
as equity. We should see the economy as a means of serving our needs within
the limits of natural systems, rather than an end in itself. We need new tech-
nologies based on renewable resources, efficient use and 'industrial ecology'
- that is seeing the waste of one industrial process as the feedstock of
another. It is possible to eliminate hunger by stabilising the Earth's popula-
tion and improving distribution systems. Above all, we should aspire to
genuine globalisation, recognising that we share a common future with the
entire human family and all other species.
This vision is utopian, but that has been said of all important reform
movements. Those who opposed slavery just over two hundred years ago
were told that no economy could function without slave labour, while the
suffragettes were persecuted when they sought the vote for women a
hundred years ago. Closer to our time, 20 years ago it was still considered
utopian to dream of Berlin without the Wall, or South Africa without apart-
heid. Most social reforms we now take for granted were initially denounced
as unachievable. They happened because determined people worked for a
better world. All around the globe, people are striving to develop social and
institutional responses that will enable the transition to a sustainable future.
A naïve faith in markets will not bring it about. We have to change our
values, recognising that we share the Earth with all other species and hold it
in trust for all future generations. That is our moral duty to those future gen-
erations, our own descendants.
Acknowledgement
This chapter has been significantly improved by Patricia Kelly's helpful criti-
cism and suggestions.
References
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2002). Measuring Australia's Progress . ABS Cat. No.
1370.0. Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.