Mastodawn

Wolfgang Lucht Aug 30, 2024

On Monday, I'll be participating in the annual Sustainability Forum in the Chancellory in Berlin. We were offered to submit a 1-sentence, 250-character statement. This is what I submitted: "The guiding vision of a life in dignity for all, within planetary boundaries, requires not just efficiency and a circular economy, but also contributions from sufficiency to achieve the necessary limitations of material flows that are harmful to ecology or health."

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teledyn 𓂀 Aug 30, 2024

@W_Lucht

Looks good, but may I ask, what are "contributions of sufficiency"? Could that be a spontaneous consumer self-restraint in realizing we've had too much for too long?

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Wolfgang Lucht Aug 30, 2024

@teledyn
It's deliberate governance of society's social metabolism (i.e. of the material exchange flows required with the environment to maintain their functions) - all the planetary boundaries are linked to these flows. And within these boundaries, injustices in use are an issue. "Sustainable development" promises solutions through "green growth". But that hits hard limitations. Sufficiency as a "Strategy of the Enough" addresses more fundamentally the challenge of "Ecological Civilization".

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teledyn 𓂀 Aug 30, 2024

@W_Lucht

Strategy of the Enough is what I'd hoped you would say 😊

And yes, metabolism. Not just of one member of one species, it means an interdependent ecosystem of give and take, such that, when Centralization/Amalgamation descended to "streamline costs" it was identical to amputating limbs to save on food: local, regional, neighbourhood metabolisms ground to a halt, and died.

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Wolfgang Lucht

@teledyn
Exactly! The report we sent to the German government in March (that I thought would be ignored and attacked but is meeting with surprising levels of interest) is entitled "Sufficiency as a 'Strategy of the Enough': An Invitation to a Much-Needed Discussion". It's in German ... but we're currently working on an English-language article summarising some of it. We wrote it to reinforce the analysis of sufficiency advocates and their work. It's project "Making Democracy Ecological".