The living earth ethical principles.

• Author: Assadourian, Erik
• Position: Essay

Every day there is more news about floods, fires, hurricanes, acidifying oceans, bleaching coral reefs, drowning polar bears. Scientists and journalists increasingly point to climate change as the root cause. But what's at the root of climate change?

In a word: consumerism. This dominant socioeconomic and cultural system encourages us to define our success, our very happiness, through how much we consume, how much we travel, how rich our diet, how big our house, how fancy our car, and on and on. On a finite planet (particularly with a population of 6.7 billion humans), this system is an impossibility, though one that is hard to resist. Yet deep down, many now grasp that the consumer system is fatally flawed, making people fat and sick, shortening lives, increasing stress and social isolation, and wreaking havoc on the global and local environments.

What we need is a new socioeconomic/cultural system, namely an ecological-ethical-social-entrepreneurial system, where people work decent hours, for decent pay, in jobs that are designed to do good, not exploit people or the planet (like most jobs do today). I described what this system could look like in the last issue. But how do we get there? To start with, we will need an ethical code that can mobilize people to work toward this cultural reboot.

At the heart of this ethical code will be a new understanding of our relationship with the Earth. Right now, most of us treat the Earth like a reservoir of resources, there for us to tap in building our homes...