The "Take Action!" emptiness
Bank of Nature gives it meaning
Much of the frustration of the climate impasse — other than, you know, the looming, ever-present, terrifying existential threat and a bleak future for all the babies today in the maternity ward — is the growing number of people demanding that we “Take Action!” and having that demand land exactly nowhere.
The outrage, which does not show up meaningfully at the polls or in consumer buying by the way, is loud, reasonable and even informed — but is just noise, dampened by the thrum of growth and progress.
In the media, in social media, at conferences and from pulpits, in bestselling books and all the other channels not listed here, the calls for us to “Take Action!” are inescapable and rarely more precise than that. It may be a dog whistle for other activists frustrated with the climate forecast, but it has not changed the way we deplete nature's ability to keep us sustained.
Legitimate protests, some global and involving millions in marches in the world’s capitals, warn us that there is no “Planet B.” Young children stare into a camera recording a PSA, asking CEOs: “Do you even care?” “The house is on fire!” doesn’t seem to bring out even the garden hose. The IPCC’s annual gloom report from the UN, more and more dire each year, wants nation states to “Take Action!” on reducing greenhouse gas emissions — Code Red — and will again implore them to act next year, because it has no leverage to enforce “Action!” now.
Is it Code Redder next year? Code Super Red?
For 70 years, there have been science-based, socially minded, well reasoned entreaties to governments for climate action, with some movement case-by-case: The EPA in the US, for example, or our move to stall the ozone layer holes, or, as another example, the multinational policy to address acid rain. Corporate social responsibility and sustainability mean that industry is demonstrably less bad today, but still blighting the environment for shareholder gain, even those with ESG-based investments.
One, a cynic, might argue that there has been lots of "Action!' to date, so the governments and industry are giving us — and have given us historically — exactly what we demand. Another, more enraged, might argue that placation of outrage is not, in fact, addressing the source of the outrage — which, by the way, is not climate change, but the complete known and unknown inventory of societal behaviors that have resulted in the most colossal negative externality of them all. Code Redder!
Why mince words? “Take Action!” really means “End the Threat!”
And that, to heap on the frustration, is not going to happen with our collective, human priority on growth, value-creation, wealth and economy.
Humans are industrious. To be industrious, you need raw materials. Raw materials, in diminishing supplies, are under your feet so let’s get digging. Diminishing supplies mean an inflationary benefit for value. Scarcity! Let's build markets around that and gamble to earn more. To get more value, you need to be even more industrious.
This loop is not going anywhere and is certainly not threatened by either climate collapse or calls for “Action!”.
If CEOs have to set themselves up as the punching bags or as climate killers to distract from ongoing wealth creation, so be it. Jail time? It’s not a disincentive even in the unlikely event that it’s remotely, legally relevant.
“End the Threat!” is an end to toxic industry and a cost to shareholder value. More CEOs are punished, in one way or another, by “Taking Action!” that has even a whiff of concern for shareholders focussed on their net worth.
So, I propose we make "Take Action!" mean something specific.
"Take Action!" is where Bank of Nature gets its inspiration, specifically to end the threat of the climate crisis. We know that in the cold world of human industriousness, the only way to get global, at-scale "Action!" is if we make it an engine for wealth creation. Humans are industrious and we’ll point them to industry that balances both growth and the environment.
It's not that complicated, even though it doesn’t happen. The system, as a rule meant to be broken, makes you choose: wealth or climate security. Why not do both? "Making wealth through climate security" isn't radical. It's doable with the inclusion of nature as an investor as hungry for growth and solid returns as any investor.
"Take Action!" means disrupting the status quo just enough to move money into initiatives that grow the resources under our feet, so that digging them up, if necessary, is done with nature and nature’s net worth also our concern.
Join our global co-creation efforts to launch Bank of Nature, so that "Take Action" has the desired result.
"blighting the environment for shareholder gain"
What is this social construct we call the shareholder? Why is the shareholder given such prominence in our theories of the economy, and prosperity? And our politics of law, and fairness?
What is the economy? Is it industry, or a partnership? A partnership with Humans, and Nature. A Human-Nature Partnership.
How can we, as humans, collaboratively co-create and adaptively evolve a prosperous partnership with each other, and with Nature?
That seems to me a better goal for Economics to be pursuing than shareholder gain.
Prosperity is what we really want. And peace.
We are told that Growth is the pathway to prosperity.
But we can see, through climate change and other things, that Growth is not a pathway to Peace.
How can we have real prosperity, if it does not bring us peace?