Climate Change

Subtitled ‘the path to a sustainable future’ and following on from John’s earlier books Elegant Simplicity and Time is Running Out, this book suggests that the climate crisis could form the basis of the transition to a localised and morally revitalised future championed by Helena Norberg Hodge and others (www.localfutures.org). Egocentric and extractive capitalism is unsustainable and relies on extrinsic motivations at a time when we need to develop intrinsic values relating to meaning and purpose - which will also help address the crisis in mental health. John rightly identifies decadence and decay as important factors, powerfully quoting Thomas Merton in this respect (p. 25). He also makes the important point that sustainable energy in itself uses rare minerals and metals, especially for batteries.

This leads him to argue that growing demand for energy cannot be satisfied by replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources, and that we must reduce our consumption accordingly. He says this in the context of carbon emissions and global warming, though the localised model he advocates is it itself an example of a regenerative approach with broader systemic effects on food and energy. He also excoriates the parasitic financial system that now constitutes 40% of the American economy, calling it ‘a closed-circuit mechanism for the creation of financial instruments of speculation.’ Naturally, we need new indicators of well-being such as the Happy Planet Index. John is also inspired by the Gandhian swadeshi, Japanese wabi-sabi and the Pun Pun Centre for Self-Reliance in Thailand as examples of modest and genuinely sustainable lifestyles where farming is a way of life rather than big business driven by scale, technology and the kind of top-down planetary management advocated by the World Economic Forum.