Human Sustainability

It should be obvious to all of us that natural resources such as fisheries and fresh water are unsustainable when insufficiently managed. Other resources, such as fossil fuels, lithium or uranium, are finite and will inevitably be depleted. With regard to human resources, the current state of global economies, where grievous imbalances between wealth and poverty exist, could also be attributed to mismanagement, negligence or just plain old human nature manifested as greed.

For disadvantaged people who are unable to maintain a stable source of income at a high enough level throughout their lives, and consequently cannot afford basic necessities such as housing or groceries to feed themselves or their families (as experienced during the recent ‘cost of living’ crises in many countries), life itself soon becomes unsustainable.

The urgent need to transition away from unsustainable policies such as economic growth, and the subsequent population growth required to fuel it, should be further motivated by the increasing rate of economic instability, the frequency of boom and bust cycles of the sharemarket, the illogical persistence with expanding fossil fuel exploitation, and other forms of economic extremism.

The impending rise in inhospitable conditions for life on this planet, both for humans and for nature, would most likely be addressed at a planetary level.

Of course, we have seen how inept and dysfunctional our United Nations have become, with permanent members of the Security Council returning to imperialistic behaviour and invading other countries, and of the painstaking paralysis of climate change mitigation.

Even the most ardent supporters of “business as usual” could not fail to see that if the world were being run as a business, then the current executives should be sacked, and a new management structure put in place to avoid a sudden and drastic fall in the market value of Earth. A new five or ten-year strategic plan created which addresses these life-and-death but patently simple problems, and provides a clear, rational way forward to remedy the dysfunctional status quo.

In my alternative history series, “The Free World War”, the old order is replaced by a Union of Nations. Its charter removed the major obstacles to rational and ethical change, and hence universal prosperity and social justice, by delaying membership to totalitarian states, and those under the influence of the ultra-wealthy, aristocracies, hereditary monarchies and plutocracies. States that placed themselves above the people, where conditions prevailed so that those responsible were difficult to remove from office.

 Full membership of the Union of Nations could only be assured for countries who adhered to the principals of democratic freedom, and where fundamental human rights were enshrined in a constitution and protected by the rule of law,

Then, the efficiencies, productivity and synergies characteristic of a successful business could see its human resources receive their just rewards.