Counsel for Getting There - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 155

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Counsel for GettingThere
The previous chapter sought to create a vision. Yet even if the vision is incom-
plete (as are all visions), it nonetheless spills over into recommended actions,
which is the purpose of this concluding chapter. One more time: Everything
is connected to everything else. And from our viewpoint, that certainly includes
the various parts of this topic and topic.
If, for instance, the vision is for a small-scale, locally owned business, the
implied action is clear: Go start one. If the vision is for local finance, the action
is also clear: Close your account at Chase bank and open one at your local com-
munity bank or the antiglobalization credit union. We are unsure, however, how
much of our experience and counsel goes without saying and how much will
need to be overtly stated.
If a vision melds into counsel, the leakage goes both ways: Counsel must
be allowed to further refine the vision, just as vision oozes into counsel for
action. We have done our best to focus this topic on individuals and their
internal worldview rather than on institutions or public policy, because
people must change before institutions or policy will. As such, the most
important action we can recommend is for you to continue expanding your
knowledge and vision based on that knowledge. Our belief in the best of human
nature leads us to conclude that if intelligent, other-centered (as opposed
to self-centered) people begin to think systemically , they will make the
kinds of decisions and initiate the kinds of actions that will lead toward
social-environmental sustainability for all generations. We can only hope.
Resource Overexploitation
A major theme of this topic has been that, as a culture and even as a species,
we have overreached, or overexploited. Any final counsel we have to offer for
personal action must rest squarely on that premise. In our drive to maximize
the harvest of nature's bounty, we—especially in the United States—strive
for an ever-increasing yield of products, and thus intensively alter more and
more acres worldwide to that end. The Growth Ethic appears to demand this.
The need, however, is a sustainable yield that cannot exist without first hav-
ing a sustainable ecosystem, such as a forest or an ocean, to produce that
yield.
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