Uncomfortable living in a material world
Sydney morning Herald January 12 2006
Optimism about quality of life has slumped among Australians, writes Richard Eckersley.
MAKING the cover of Time or Newsweek has long been a milestone in public recognition. In one cover story, "The ravaged environment", Newsweek warned of the threat to humanity posed by the destruction of the natural environment.
The magazine quoted the head of General Motors as committing the company to eliminating cars as a source of pollution. The president of the US declares this must be the decade "when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its water and our living environment". It sounds encouraging - except for the date on the cover: January 26, 1970.
In the decades since, we've made gains environmentally, but the task has continued to grow. Newsweek makes passing mention of global warming - or the greenhouse effect - describing it as a "fanciful notion" of global disaster that scientists played with in "their more apocalyptic moments".
Well, "fanciful notion" has become alarming fact. As Dean Collins, of the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre, said after the bureau's announcement that 2005 was Australia's hottest year on record: "Climate change is here, and it's real."
Governments - notably those of Australia and the US - have been slow to accept this reality because they fear tackling global warming will jeopardise economic growth, and growth, they believe, is the foundation of progress. The primacy of growth is at the heart of the concept of material progress, since it creates the wealth necessary to increase personal freedoms and opportunities, and to meet community needs and national goals.
However, material progress is a dysfunctional idea, based on an outdated industrial metaphor of progress as a pipeline: pump more wealth in one end and more welfare flows out the other. It is facing a growing challenge from a competing notion, sustainable development, which does not accord economic growth overriding priority. Instead, it seeks a better balance and integration of social, environmental and economic goals and objectives to produce an equitable and enduring quality of life. Rather than casting the core question in terms of being pro-growth or anti-growth, we need to see that growth is not the main game.
Governments are lagging behind scientific evidence and public opinion on this. The 2005 Ipsos Mackay Report on the mind and mood of Australians says we feel we "seem to be lurching from one difficulty to another with the prospect of a serious crisis emerging". The blame is repeatedly directed at political leaders, who are accused of "short-term thinking" and neglecting to invest in the country's future.
An Ipsos Mackay survey last November, which included questions asked in 1988 and 1995 studies that I was associated with, provides evidence of the extent to which economic performance and people's perceptions and preferences are diverging. Despite a long economic boom with strong economic growth, declining unemployment, low interest rates and rising incomes, those saying the quality of life in about 15 years would be better fell from 30 per cent in 1988 to 23 per cent last year; the proportion that said it would worsen rose from 40 to 46 per cent.
Offered two positive scenarios of Australia's future - one focused on individual wealth, economic growth and efficiency and enjoying "the good life", the other on community, family, equality and environmental sustainability - 73 per cent expected the former, but 93 per cent preferred the latter. This gap between expectations and preferences has widened markedly since 1995. Optimism about the future of the world has slumped. Asked about the world in the 21st century, only 23 per cent thought it was likely to be "a new age of peace and prosperity"; 66 per cent opted for "a bad time of crisis and trouble".
In other words, we are seeing a profound loss of faith in a future constructed around notions of material progress, economic growth and scientific and technological fixes to the challenges we face.
We no longer believe in the "official story" of the future on which our governments base their policies. Environmentalists and scientists have won the minds of the public. Now they need to win our hearts, to give us the courage to act on our convictions.
Richard Eckersley is at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the ANU, and is the author of Well & Good: Morality, Meaning and Happiness (Text, 2005).