Generating Community Hope in the Anthropocene: Transformational Movements for Sustainable Living

 

There is considerable scope now for local community endeavour and innovation in sustainable living. But this cannot happen unless there is transformation of the mainstream. We therefore need to examine just what will be needed to ensure that the mainstream innovates as will be required. Pensions, taxation and benefits regimes need to be made friendly to transformative social innovations. We need to look at basic wage or social income proposals and open the way for various versions of social contracts and mutual personal community and state agreements. There needs to be a fresh take on the whole idea of responsible citizenship so that everyone feels confident and supportive of cooperation and the sharing of communal betterment. We need to recalibrate our economic measures so that key elements of wellbeing (individual competence and confidence, self-esteem, personal health, supportive social relations, reliable accommodation and employment) are seen as the hallmarks of prosperity. It is possible that coming perturbations of economies and polities, plus further dislocations in international relations and the dysfunctions of globalism, will combine to galvanize the experimentation of the mainstream. In any case, we cannot sit idly by while more than a third of our electorate feels displaced and marginalized: this is not a society or a democracy, it is merely people living in tense isolation from each other. Humanity has not come all of this way to break down. The task before us is one of reconstruction.

Hope in the Anthropocene is co-sponsored by the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC.