2011.....a new year of old goals...

So it's 2011...a fresh new year of opportunities await each of us. Several billion humans scurry about over a planet that has not or will not get any larger, or more capable of supporting any more life. All of us wish to improve our lot and rise ever higher each day...but we need to be mindful of our impact in aggregate. And that's the crux of the idea of worldeternal as a concept....as a movement...and hopefully one day as an organisation (a pipe dream perhaps, but only time will tell).

Worldeternal is about understanding that this is where we live, and (NASA aside) where we are likely to live for a long time yet. It is about treating Earth like our own backyard instead of a musty hotel room. Acknowledging that we are here to stay and living within the limits. All this is old fashioned ecology, the grating birth of a discipline that drives so many of us to advocate for the protection of nature, the sustainable use of resources, and accountability for those that don't play the game.

Worldeternal is about the recognition that we are not passing through, and our decisions should be based on an assumption that we need this planet, we need functioning ecosystems, we need the full suite of biodiversity...that these things are not 'nice-to-haves', but the fundamental building blocks of our persistence as a species, and the persistence of all others.

So what does this mean? Well many things...but for starters....

It means that neoliberal economics must confront it's fallacies and undeclared assumptions that drive so much of the world's worst environmental damage. It means that the continued expansion of agriculture, rampant urbanisation, and the population growth rate must slow and cease and (in most cases) retreat. It means that precious parts of the globe must be protected, put away and not decimated where there is a buck to be made. It means that species protection must be an ethical venture, not a cost-based triage decision.

It means the responsibility to curtail our needs and wants (and accurately demarcate these) becomes the responsibility of each individual, community and country and it must be given urgent attention. The science says stop, society says slow, and economics tells us to ramble on, business as usual. I suggest we somehow meld the first two and put the latter one to bed....