A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only.
www.brucenixon.com
hypocrisy, but it's also important to explain with humility why you - like most other people - find it
hard. That takes the conversation to the more important changes we need to enable and facilitate
sustainable lifestyles in the mainstream.
We lack the infrastructure and services to make many sustainable lifestyle choices. Our towns and
cities embed the car as the most convenient mode of travel; moving to living streets, car and bicycle
clubs, better public transport and so on enables people to make a shift. Without the infrastructure
and services those choices remain very unlikely outside of the keen green demographic. So long as
this remains the case, our super-sustainable choices will be of little consequence because they won't
spread out to the majority of the population. Better to work on the underlying causes, and make
your own life easier as a result;
Upstream efficiency in the supply chain reduces the impact of your lifestyle choices. Eating less meat
and dairy is definitely necessary; but if farming, your cooking and every process in between are
made more efficient, you need to make less of a reduction through your food choices. If you want to
reduce your transport emissions to a sustainable level today you get a budget with zero flying miles,
zero foreign train holidays and a few train holidays around the UK, with the majority of commuting
by bicycle or foot. If you model resource efficiencies throughout the economy, you suddenly get to
travel quite a lot more.
The changes we need in the economy, political systems, civil society institutions, neighbourhoods and
personal values are complex and profound. Insisting that we all "walk the talk" not only backfires as a
strategy, it's also a self-deception”.
This means we have to lobby for system change if we are serious about “saving the planet” or more
accurately, saving ourselves, our children and grandchildren, the whole of humanity and all the other
creatures on the planet.
We are the most destructive creatures on the planet. Many scientists believe the rate of species loss is
greater now than at any time in history. We have already lost 30% of species and three quarters of the
genetic diversity of agricultural crops. That endangers food security. Today’s forest contains around 70% to
90% of the Earth's species. We are dependent on forests for many of our pharmaceutical remedies. Yet we
are rapidly destroying forests. We have already lost half. We do not appreciate that we are dependent on all
species for our well-being.
Homo sapiens? Do we deserve that name? In the next 30 years, half of the species on the earth could die in
one of the fastest mass extinctions in the planet's 4.5 billion years’ history. Nearly 4,700 species are now in
danger of extinction, according to David Attenborough. Dr Leakey, author of "The Sixth Extinction", believes
that 50% of the earth's species will vanish within 100 years. Such a dramatic mass extinction threatens the
complex fabric of life, including Homo sapiens. The problem is not just the loss of species. There is the loss of
the genetic diversity within species, and the loss of diversity of different types of eco-systems, which can
contribute to whole species extinction. Preserving the wider gene pool’s diversity provides the raw material
for the evolution of new species in the future. According to National Wildlife Federation’s estimates in Web
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