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Cleaner Fairer Larger Better - Essays Overview: Cleaner, Fairer, Larger, Better We live in a world that thinks of reform in incremental terms. A little less pollution. A little less poverty. A little more economic growth. A little less terrorism. A little more racial equality. And so on. And - in some areas - progress does get made. A little bit here, a little bit there. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide levels mount. Global warming risks grow more severe. Energy and mineral mining operations, and carbon-fired energy generation, spit tons of poisons into the air every day. One billion of the world's six billion people are prosperous, the other five billion are poor, and, given current growth rates, the next quarter century will see the ranks of the world's poor grow by almost two billion more. Much needs to be changed. Yet making change is difficult, because change today generally requires institutional reinvention, and reinvention is a hard, multi-stakeholder process. It takes bipartisan sponsorship, rational dialogue, a thoughtful spirit. And a strong motivating vision. Without the vision, where's the energy? Without the energy, where's the change? It is the lack of energy which tips us off to the lack of the larger vision. A larger vision with real dignity. If we as a people don't have a better vision of where we want to go, it will be difficult indeed to muster the energy for change. That's the bad news. The good news is that the potential for a larger vision is just below the surface, camouflaged by all the "noise" of modern society, but not at all beyond the reach of our imagination. Here's my take on it: CLEANER: Secure environmental sustainability and lasting prosperity by replacing dirty technology with clean technology. FAIRER: Promote social peace by developing fair, inclusively middle class societies throughout the world. LARGER: Expand the global economy by a factor of four or five with a tenaciously inclusive global growth strategy. BETTER: Make the world safe for honest citizenship, both through a politics of integrity, and through interfaith affirmation of the oneness of the human family. What Won't Work We can't build a prosperous world for everyone on a technology platform that pollutes the environment. We can't build a peaceful world for everyone when half the world's population makes less than $2 a day. We can't build an inclusively middle class global economy in a world that's torn by social injustice. We can't bring people together to reinvent corporations, to reinvent government agencies, to reinvent civic sector nonprofits, in a world where priests and rabbis and clerics and ministers fail to affirm the duty to love ALL our brothers and sisters. To quote Robin Williams from Aladdin, "It's not a pretty picture." And it's an upside down picture as well. Let's place it on its feet. What Can Work Couldn't a rigorous fifty year program to change out all the global economy's "dirty technologies," to invent and implement "clean technology" alternatives, put us where we need to be? Of course. With the right incentives, with the right regulations, humanity could get rid of almost all its "dirty technology" inheritance within the next fifty years, and deal with the remainder over the following fifty. Couldn't an aggressive global program to bring medical care and sanitation and renewable energy and schooling to the world's poorest villages and urban slums bring the miracles of health and literacy to all the world's children within the space of only two or three decades? Or less? Couldn't a program that brings health care to those who most need it turn around the dread epidemics of tuberculosis? Malaria? AIDS? And create a public health climate in which the danger of killer global epidemics is largely quelled? Couldn't an ethos of inclusive middle class prosperity shape the way we grow our cities, both here in the United States, and throughout the world? Instead of jamming all the urban poor into ghettoes where inter-generational failure is inevitable, couldn't an ethos of inclusive middle class prosperity reverse the downward spiral of urban poverty? We will rise together by learning to live together as neighbors. With a global commitment to clean technology, with a global commitment to inclusive prosperity, the world's potential for vigorous economic growth points sharply upward. A global economy that moves forward along a Cleaner Fairer Larger Better path will end up being three, four, five times larger and wealthier than a global economy fettered by dirty technologies, social injustice, and tribal hatreds masquerading as religion. Three times larger. Five times larger. Today's global economy is worth roughly thirty-five trillion a year, if I'm not mistaken. If middle class living standards were within reach of all the world's people, the global economy would be worth a hundred trillion a year, a hundred fifty trillion a year. A century from now - how big will the world's economy be? Don't know, but I do know this. If all the world chooses Cleaner Fairer Larger Better as its path, the end result will be three to five times bigger. Can't be done from a dirty technology base. Can't be done by religious leaders who haven't the integrity to preach a message of love. Can't be done by a world that's indifferent to gaping divisions between the rich and the poor. Stick with dirty technology, stick with social injustice, and the world falls achingly, painfully short of its potential. But it can be done if we see the vision, if we grasp the vision, if we use the vision to guide our politics, our economics, our cultural standards, and our religious practices. Win - Win - Win In other words, it is in the self-interest of global capital to bet on clean technology. It is in the self-interest of global capital to bet on social justice. Turn the world's technologies into clean technologies, turn the world's poor into prosperous middle class consumers, and we turn the global economy into a much vaster, cleaner, fairer, and wealthier playground. Imagine the alliance. Global capital bets on clean technology and social justice. Environmentalists bet on clean global capitalism, bet on social justice that leads to fast, clean technology growth. Advocates for the world's poor bet on clean technology, on socially inclusive capitalism. It's a win-win-win strategy. Cleaner world economy. Fairer world economy. Larger world economy. Recall the point I made at the outset? That the world lacks a larger, unifying vision? Turn the question around. Is there anything unreasonable about the vision I've just painted? Yes, we lack a unifying vision. But, yes, a unifying vision does exist, only inches below the surface of our consciousness, well within the reach of our imaginations. All we have to do is grab it. And make it ours. More to Come I have long owed an update to those who have appreciated the resources this website offers. This Overview gives just a bit of that update, and I will be adding more in the days and weeks to come. There is much to be said on the subject of reinvention. Much to be said about the role of rigorous model-building as a tool that supports reinvention. Much to be said about the complexities of Cleaner, Fairer, Larger, Better. Stay tuned. If you like, drop me a line. I can be reached at sjohnson@simcivic.org. Steven H. Johnson, President, Simcivic.org |