Professor Malcolm McIntosh
Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Griffith University

Earth-centric creativity and innovation let rip . . .

By Professor Malcolm McIntosh

The tragic events in Queensland, Christchurch and in the Sendai region of Japan highlight the fact that we are living on the edge. We have reached the limits to growth and must now take a hard look at our success as a species, at our follies and at a radical new future built on new principles. We know enough about ourselves, about our social and economic systems and about the strengths of the natural world to make the transition to a sustainable enterprise economy. But, we must be bold, very bold. In both Sendai and Brisbane citizens were offered the chance to move out of Tsunami areas and flood planes but in most cases declined the offer of moving to higher ground. In the case of the Japanese nuclear reactors there has been a wealth of articles discussing the problems of reactors build on earthquake fault lines going back more than forty years. But did we learn?

The new politics confounds all previous models. It may start with the three legs of sustainable development - social, economic and environmental - and the underlying principles that support change - equity, social justice and futurity - but there are now four other forces at work.
 
First, the limits to growth hypothesis is writ large across the world as we reach peak oil, and it become more and more treacherous to find new sources; as we reach fish stock limits; as fresh water becomes a major political issues everywhere; and as climate change science clearly shows a human hand.
 
Second, the new politics is founded on conservation and is at its core interestingly conservative. We need to conserve natural resources and in many cases to rebuild them, through, for instance, replanting forests and not fishing. This confounds some development models from both the left and right. It is conservative in that it says let's re-understand how communities used to work and re-establish social cohesion as a fundamental principle, let's not let the market rip unfettered as we now know this does not work for the good of the many or the few.
 
Third, the new politics knows that the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to the 'C' generation - communicative, connected and computer literate. It's not all good, this internet world, but it is unleashing passionate forces for transparency, accountability and freedom across the world, from the Middle East to China to the USA. The problem with the release of so much aspirational energy is this energy has to be harnessed to the creation of institutions and practices that are built on integrity - that hold the powerful continuously to account. It is possible that the euphoric, ephemeral world of facebook and twitter may lead to chaos not democratic stability.