Our capacities for dealing with large problems of our own making seem to be diminishing

Not only is climate change moving faster than global efforts to stop it, but our capacities for dealing with such large problems of our own making seem to be diminishing. With economic inequality, job insecurity, and stagnating living standards creating a widespread sense of alienation and disempowerment, societies are fragmenting, and political polarization is deepening.

The problem is not that humans are predominantly ignorant or evil. Most people abhor social discord, abject poverty, and environmental destruction. But they find themselves trapped in systems that induce them to behave in destructive ways. For example, our socioeconomic system focuses primarily on individual economic success (narrowly defined), and rests on the assumption that what is good for the economy is good for society and the environment.

But this assumption is false. While businesses are expected – in fact, required – to focus on financial performance, politicians are supposed to act in the national interest, and consumers naturally seek to satisfy their wants at minimum cost. The system allows for these goals to be pursued as a matter of principle, with measures to protect people and nature coming only as an afterthought.

As a result, aggregate economic prosperity has become increasingly decoupled from social and environmental prosperity. Unless there is a recoupling, we will destroy the basis of our livelihoods. Our current predicament thus requires an entirely new worldview – a different way of understanding how our world works and our role in it.

The last time a radically new worldview emerged was during the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which elevated the values of individual autonomy, humanism, reason, and the social contract.

The democracies that emerged during this era were meant to serve the goals of autonomous citizens, while capitalist economies catered to the preferences of autonomous consumers. Nature increasingly came to be viewed as a resource to be exploited to satisfy human needs and wants. The Enlightenment worldview set the stage for the past 225 years of unprecedented economic growth, rising living standards and life expectancy, and the spread of the rule of law.

But while Enlightenment values remain vital for protecting human well-being, we must recognize that they also have contributed to the brokenness of our current world. Too much emphasis on individual autonomy blinds us to the broader societal forces that are driving political fragmentation and social distrust. Viewing the world only with dispassionate objectivity impoverishes our capacity for solidarity and a sense of belonging. The obsession with mastering the natural world blinds us to the need to proceed humbly and responsibly in ecosystems that we do not fully understand.

A new worldview would stress the fact that our very existence as autonomous individuals depends on a much larger, immensely complex human order – one that spans our physical neighborhoods, our web of social connections, our place in the landscape of power relations, our network of economic relations, and the natural world. To live in harmony with this broader order is to promote sustainability and to find meaning not in the exclusive pursuit of our own happiness, but by aligning our individual purposes with our collective goals.

We flourish when we live in solidarity with our families, friends, and communities; when we exercise agency by shaping our surroundings and innovating; when we enjoy sufficient economic gain to satisfy our basic material needs; and when we live sustainably in our environment. These are four fundamental drivers of flourishing: solidarity, agency, gain, and environmental sustainability, summarized by the acronym SAGE.

These drivers are all measurable annually. Katharina Lima de Miranda and I have done so for nearly 150 countries over the past decade and a half. Low solidarity and agency are associated with the wave of populist discontent that led to the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s election in the United States. “Take back control” (the Brexit slogan) is about a lack of agency, while “build the wall” is about a lack of solidarity. Countries with high solidarity and agency were better able to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

Though markets can promote economic efficiency under the right conditions, there is no “invisible hand” that can deliver solidarity, agency, material gain for all, and environmental sustainability. While the traditional political debates between right- and left-wing parties have been about the size of GDP growth versus its distribution, the SAGE framework reminds us that people do not live by bread alone. Politicians ignore solidarity and agency at their own peril.

While Enlightenment thinking has focused on individual autonomy and mastery of nature, the SAGE worldview recognizes that satisfaction of the human needs for solidarity, agency, gain, and environmental sustainability must be kept in balance. Solidarity without agency is tyranny; agency without solidarity is chaos. To address our proliferating global challenges – climate change, biodiversity loss, financial instabilities, cyber threats, and more – we first need to recognize the scale of our collective challenges, and then exercise agency to promote solidarity at that scale. Such solidarity is essential for collective action.

While the Enlightenment worldview led to unprecedented economic growth and appreciation of individual liberties, the SAGE worldview focuses on how to align our individual goals with our collective goals. It seeks to promote harmonious orders of interdependence for people and the planet. It implies four principles of collective action, which can be applied to global problems such as climate change.

The first principle is shared purpose. For example, as climate change is a global problem, it must be addressed through solidarity at a global level, enabling countries to have shared climate goals.

The second principle is agency-based governance. Applied to climate policies, this involves international agreements committing governments to binding decarbonization pathways, and giving those countries the means to hit their targets and a voice in global negotiations.

The third principle concerns the redirection of material gain. Business incentives and operating conditions will need to be reformed to ensure that profit cannot be earned at the expense of environmental sustainability or social cohesion. This can be done with taxes on polluting; socially harmful activities; subsidies for clean, socially beneficial pursuits; and regulations setting collective bounds on economic activities. Moreover, consumer incentives can be redirected along similar lines.

The fourth principle is about pervasive environmental responsibility. All our economic activities must become environmentally sustainable. Those who contribute to the Earth’s bounty should be rewarded, and those who plunder it should be penalized.

These SAGE principles can ensure that everyone’s basic material and social needs are met within a thriving natural world.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024. www.project-syndicate.org

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