by Edward Milford
17. February 2010 09:16
On a car journey recently, I was surprised to notice a high-visibility jacket abandoned by the side of the road. I didn’t recall seeing one lost before; however, by the end of the journey an hour or so later I had seen a couple more. I concluded it was just an example of me noticing something that had often been there but simply passed un-noticed by me. (Of course, how you lose a high-visibility jacket is a different question - clearly they are not as high visibility as all that!)
We have a monthly staff meeting at Earthscan, and our February one coincided with a visit from Eric Assadourian from WorldWatch Institute, the lead author on their ‘State of the World 2010’. As a result, we asked Eric to speak to the meeting about the book, which focuses on the cultural shifts, particularly that away from consumerism, that will be necessary to move to a sustainable, one-planet lifestyle. The inevitable question came up about how the huge commercial pressure to consume can be counteracted. While quite optimistic, Eric concluded that at least if things didn’t work out, the world would need as many seeds out there ready to flower in the inevitable post-consumer world. (This is a rather similar message to the slightly optimistic ending with which Thomas Homer-Dixon concludes ‘The Upside of Down’.)
What, I wondered, would such seeds look like? Talking with Eric again over the last couple of days, I realised I had spotted four initiatives and reports that chimed in with his message. First of all was a report in the Guardian picking up on work from the New Economics Foundation (they are also authors of our book The New Economics ) about the need for a shorter working week – they calculated 21 hours. Next was another report in the paper about a Compass group report calling for significant restrictions on advertising. Third was a report from World Wildlife Fund called 'Strategies for Change' looking at consumers and identity, and the fourth was a friend pointing me at a web site about 'tomorrow's companies' called Force for Good.
These are just a tiny slice of the many, many others out there, the ones that simply happened to come across my viewfinder – and I was not actively looking for such initiatives. I concluded that, rather like the high-visibility jackets, I may simply not have been aware of them as possible seeds before.
