Ways Forward from this Polycrisis: David Suzuki/Ian Hanington

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Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr Connected crises contain opportunities  for a better world The climate crisis is not simply an isolated technological challenge. It’s part  of a much larger “polycrisis.” After all, everything is interconnected. The magnitude of this “system disequilibrium,” as Canadian author, social  scientist and Cascade Institute executive director Thomas Homer-Dixon  calls it, can cause a sense of hopelessness, but it is resolvable —  with major changes in the ways we conduct ourselves on this small planet. That’s the message of a comprehensive new study. The World  Inequality Lab’s “Global Justice Report: A Plan for Equality &  Prosperity Within Planetary Boundaries” — by 45 authors using  databases compiled by more than 200 researchers from around  the world — states that “it is possible to reconcile planetary  habitability and high well-being for all, but only if the transformation  rests on three pillars simultaneously.” This will require significantly altering the power structures  that now govern our world and that are driving us toward calamity. The pillars are rapid decarbonization of energy systems, a shift from  overconsumption toward “sufficiency” (including reduced labour hours  and raw materials use and large changes in food habits, land use and  forest cover) and a “drastic reduction in inequality of income, wealth  and power” between and within countries. This will require significantly altering the power structures that now govern  our world and that are driving us toward calamity. It would include “hefty  wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change  in diets and a shift of investment from materially intense sectors, such  as industry and mining, to education and health,” the Guardian reports. The majority of humans would benefit, as it would double the incomes  of 89 per cent of the world’s population by 2100 and keep global heating  below 2 C above the preindustrial average. It would also reduce the  average workweek to about 2.5 days, increasing leisure time. Wealth inequality would be sharply reduced, with the poorest half of  humanity increasing its portion from two to 30 per cent, while the  billionaire class would see its share fall from six to 0.05 per cent. “Close to 90% of the world’s population would double their income  between 2026 and 2100, and once leisure and a habitable planet  are counted, more than 99% come out ahead,” WIL co-director and  Paris School of Economics professor Thomas Piketty and others wrote in a Guardian article. As people feel less economically secure, they support authoritarian leaders, but that then leads to a backlash against green policies, undermining efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption. Piketty says the ideology of people currently in power or rising in the  United States and many other countries can’t deliver what most of humanity needs. “At the end of the day we’ll have to come to this kind of cooperative  redistribution of resources and power because the alternative will  simply lead to disastrous outcomes both on the environment, on the  climate, but also on social grounds,” he told the Guardian. Homer-Dixon argues that, although the interrelated crises may  seem dire, they also present opportunities. That requires  understanding how they connect, and how feedback loops  exacerbate the problems. For example, fossil fuel consumption  leads to climate change, which produces economic costs. “As  people feel less economically secure, they support authoritarian  leaders, but that then leads to a backlash against green  policies, undermining efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption.” The opportunity, he says, is that this “delegitimizes the existing way  of doing stuff, the existing vested-interest stakeholders who are hunkered  down and don’t want anything to change.” What stands in the way is not technical impossibility but political choice and the hard but crucial work of building a coalition behind it. The Cascade Institute and the WIL report attempt to understand the holistic  nature of the polycrisis to find solutions. Given that one underlying cause  is wealth hoarding and inequality, the backlash from the ultra-wealthy and  their political backers will likely heat up. The “Global Justice Report” notes  that average per capita gross national income worldwide would increase  for almost everyone but, “The exception would be the mega-rich, who  would be highly taxed because they are most responsible for the climate crisis.” As well as taxing the overly affluent, the report recommends measures such  as “a global justice fund to finance the energy transition and oversee an  increase in education and healthcare spending” and “a world sovereign  fund, which would rebalance global holdings of public and private wealth closer  to proportions last seen in 1970.” It concludes that a better, more equal world is materially possible. “What stands  in the way is not technical impossibility but political choice and the hard but  crucial work of building a coalition behind it.” It’s a coalition we should all get behind. By David Suzuki, with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor and Writer Ian Hanington Read Online Share this story! 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