Counsel for Getting There - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 162

countries as prosperity increased. Plants, invertebrates, amphibians, and
reptiles show increasing numbers of threatened species with increasing
prosperity. If these relationships hold, increasing numbers of species from
several taxonomic groups are likely to be threatened with extinction as coun-
tries increase in material prosperity. 9
If we choose to move toward a biologically adaptable landscape with the
right attitude, any mistakes we make may become the wisdom of the future,
because mistakes, which are simply misjudgments, stimulate the questions
we ask and attempt to answer. But we must act while the Earth still has the
strength and the resilience to survive in the face of ongoing errors, and while
there still is an ecological “margin of safety” to allow a few more mistakes from
which to learn. Remember, all we have to give the next generation is options.
An option spent foolishly for short-term economic gains at the expense of
long-term ecological sustainability is an option foreclosed forevermore.
Communities Must Actively Plan Their Own Futures
More than 3,000 years ago, sages who belong not just to India but to the
whole world gave humanity one of the earliest spiritual treasures known
to history, the Rig Veda . In it is a prayer addressed to all of us, a prayer that
is the heart and soul of a shared vision—a means whereby people can plan
their common future:
Meet together, talk together.
May your minds comprehend alike.
Common be your action and achievement,
Common be your thoughts and intentions,
Common be the wishes of your heart,
So there may be thorough union among you. 10
A vision consists of the self-determination that people ideally want to
move toward, not what they fear and want to move away from. As such,
a vision, like the social-environmental sustainability of a community, is a
perpetual work in progress. It is about doing the best we can to honorably
push the limits of human possibility, a notion that is severely tested in times
of turmoil. Pushing the limits of human possibility is a necessary condition
of social evolution, because as Albert Einstein noted, “No problem can be
solved from the same consciousness that created it.” 11
A shared vision of a sustainable future toward which a community can
build creates confidence, agreement, and energy in equal parts. At a deeper
level, it engages our imagination and helps to ferret out which questions
need to be asked, how to word them, and when to ask them.