The Carbon Fixation: How Philanthropy and Aid Miss the Real Crisis, Culture Hack Labs (CHL) identified some problematic characteristics of climate philanthropy and climate finance, most notably that they may in fact contribute to the very problem they seek to solve. The following sets out some ideas for alternative directions which together could comprise a new paradigm of how to address the climate crisis. These proposals align with CHL’s research findings, which identified key causal pathways for systems change. These pathways emerged from deep analyses of the crisis, highlighting interconnected actions required to address its systemic roots and foster meaningful transformation.  

Summary:  ‘A Total Concept’

This note proposes an inter-linked set of ideas, ‘a total concept’:

• A system-wide approach, intervening in and thus changing the overall system that has created and continues to perpetuate the climate crisis;
• A post-growth paradigm: decentering growth, instead promoting other forms of human wellbeing and flourishing: a necessary step to reduce emissions and meet climate targets;
• Such a shift requires new forms of ‘bottom-up’ participatory democracy to facilitate and endorse these changes, and elevate different human priorities beyond material consumption;
• All stakeholders should own common assets on the principle of ‘usufruct’ (temporary ownership on the basis of usage), including land, in order enable shared governance that will preserve the ‘commons’: land, water, atmosphere and Earth systems
• New ontologies of what matters to human beings (including immeasurable factors), including incorporation of Indigenous philosophies and non-material indices of human progress.

These changes need to happen as a whole.  Individual elements may be pursued on their own, but systems change will only be achieved if all elements are implemented

These changes need to happen as a whole.  Individual elements may be pursued on their own, but systems change will only be achieved if all elements are implemented (positive feedback loops between these factors will also accelerate the overall shift).

These are guidelines for a systemic approach to the climate crisis. The paper will also address how to implement such an approach with suggestions on methods, such as the need to acknowledge and address complexity: current systems models assume ‘Newtonian’ linear cause-effect change when in fact the system is complex, where change is non-linear and comprehensive ‘phase’ change to the whole system a possibility.  This characteristic of the system requires different approaches.

Systems change – an objective much cited in climate philanthropy – requires the abandonment of the current piecemeal, element-by-element approach and embracing of an holistic approach such as that recommended here.  It is the current economic, political and social (and intellectual) system that has produced and perpetuated the climate crisis.  It is this system that must be changed.

Systems change – an objective much cited in climate philanthropy – requires the abandonment of the current piecemeal, element-by-element approach and embracing of an holistic approach such as that recommended here.

Systems not Fragments

If the ecological crisis is to be addressed, the whole system that produces green house gas (GHG) emissions and the destruction of nature must be re-engineered. However, so far, the approach has tended to be partial – electric vehicles, heat pumps, or energy systems – pieces of the system that produce the undesirable outputs, an output-focused strategy.  These policies are important but do not address the whole system.

The system as a whole can be seen as:

At present, climate finance and philanthropy tend to address only the innermost circle – the machinery, whether energy systems or vehicles, that produces carbon, with a focus on technological approaches, such as conversion to renewables.

Under this approach, the world is dramatically off-track to meet net zero by 2050; some research suggests it may take as long as 220 years to meet the target.  At present, carbon emissions continue to increase.

A systemic approach offers more potential: addressing the outer circles, an ‘outside-in’ approach i.e. the whole ecosystem in which carbon emissions are the product.  Such an approach does not exclude the partial approaches, but proposes a more holistic understanding of the system and thus policy to change it.

A systems approach requires:

1. Consideration of the whole not only its parts i.e. not only the whole economy, but the drivers and deeper forces that shape the economy, including politics and social, even emotional or psychic factors.  What are the intellectual frameworks, the systems of knowledge, and belief systems that have created the system that produces GHGs?
2. The system is complex – it has billions of moving parts in constant interaction.  It is impossible to know the complete and detailed composition of the system at any fixed point in time.  It is also impossible to know the full consequences of any single intervention.  Change is not linear but fundamentally unpredictable.
3. This picture of complexity suggests that multiple interventions may be necessary to achieve change.  We do not know which will work.  We may need to launch a thousand ships for a few to get across.
4. Interventions should concentrate on systemic factors i.e. the deeper underlying forces and assumptions that have created and continue to shape and perpetuate the system.  

What is the system that produces excessive GHGs?

1. An economy that relies on fossil fuels, producing ever more GHGs when production increases (despite the relative decoupling of carbon emissions from production – see below for further discussion of this crucial point);
2. A politico-economic system composed of two main elements: an acquisitive, consumption-based economic system that requires constant material growth and resource exploitation; combined with top-down government that, to a significant extent, has been ‘captured’ by those actors who benefit from the existing economic system, but who do not represent the total aggregated desires of all humanity.  So-called citizens’ assemblies composed of a representative sample of the population (selected by sortition)  – including at the global level – have consistently reached more ambitious and progressive conclusions on climate policy than governments, demonstrating that governments are not accurately reflecting the wishes of their populations but instead must therefore be reflecting other interests;
3. In turn, this system is a function of a broader ecology of ideas and philosophies of how societies, economies, and human beings operate.  By far the dominant belief system worldwide is neo-liberalism or capitalism, in short, the belief that the operations of the free market will maximise growth and thus human wellbeing.  Those operations may produce negative outcomes, such as monopoly, inequality, or environmental damage, but these can be adequately managed by government interventions such as rules, levies, etc…This model is notable for what it leaves out.  Most infamously, the model fails to account for negative ‘externalities’ such as environmental damage and social fracturing; it centers human wellbeing (measured only through empirically available indices) rather than planetary wellbeing; it is questionable that human wellbeing is maximised through economic growth, not least because the benefits of that growth flow largely to a small minority.  And, in terms of ecological damage and inequality, the evidence is emphatically clear that governments have not adequately managed let alone remedied these ‘market failures’.
4. Finally, these ideologies themselves exist within a framework of a particular ontology – how we think and apply terms to existence: that only what can be measured or described with terms matters.

Evidently, in terms of meeting the climate challenge, the system is not working.  Emissions continue to rise.  Climate heating is conservatively estimated to reach 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, a level that will cause catastrophic outcomes for humanity and the planet’s ecosystems that sustain all life.  Climate heating is already contributing to disasters and extensive death across the planet: unprecedented fires and flooding, crop failures, extinctions, etc…

Alternative system elements

An alternative system needs to replace the obsolete and dangerous.  Each element of the system causing the climate crisis must be addressed.

The elements of a new system interlock and reinforce one another.  For any one element to work, the others must be implemented in parallel e.g. a shift to decenter growth can only happen through the introduction of more participatory and inclusive ‘bottom-up’ democracy (a crucial relationship discussed under ‘Method’, below).

1. Fossil fuel dependency: so far climate philanthropy and climate finance have tended to concentrate on this area, supporting transitions to renewable energy, electrification, and, for instance, electric vehicles and ‘sustainable’ aviation and shipping.  This output-based approach is not wrong but is demonstrably insufficient in the absence of action to address the other elements of the system;
2. Decenter growth: studies suggest that the growth-based economic system will not reach net zero for decades if not centuries. However, governments and climate philanthropy continue to adhere to the belief in ‘green growth’ i.e. that economies can (and indeed must) continue to grow while emissions are reduced.  This widely-believed and -promoted myth is wrong:  As long as emissions are not absolutely decoupled from production, any additional production (i.e. growth) will increase GHGs.  The evidence clearly demonstrates that, despite occasional short periods of absolute decoupling, economies are achieving not absolute but only relative decoupling (emissions per unit of production decline). This evidence suggests that growth must be deprioritised as a political and economic goal. Growth reductions should be prioritised particularly in the more advanced economies where living standards have already reached ‘sufficiency’ and where absolute and per capita emissions are by far the highest.  Research has shown it is possible to sustain high levels of welfare with significantly lower emissions and indeed the reduction of emissions produces co-benefits that outweigh the costs of decarbonisation.  Meanwhile, less developed economies will continue to pursue growth in order to improve material living standards.  Notably, and with little public attention, the IPCC’s 2023 synthesis report refers to the need for demand strategies (i.e. measures to limit consumption) to control emissions, a tacit acknowledgement of the dangers of continued growth.  This reference also helpfully brings attention to demand as well as supply factors in the economy.

3. In parallel to the decentering of growth particularly in the richest countries and wealthiest sectors of the population, other measures of human well-being should be promoted, such as meaning, community, love, etc. which are arguably the true priorities of humans in comparison to consumption.  However, ontologically speaking, these goals are immeasurable and are thus ignored in dominant theories of economics and politics.  See below for further discussion of these ontological issues.

4. ‘Neo-classical’ economics has been reduced, in the popular discourse, to simplistic platitudes of how growth benefits everyone (when the large majority of benefits flow to a very few); that competition best promotes human well-being and that humans are naturally competitive.  ‘Social Darwinism’ of this kind – a distortion of what Darwin actually said – was introduced into the public discourse, not uncoincidentally, at the time of the Industrial Revolution when the interests of a few wealthy industrialists began to dominate the public square (through ownership of newspapers for example).  But it is these platitudes that help sustain the ideology that underpins the contemporary western model of capitalism.  More sophisticated and better-evidenced theories of human need, desire, and motivation must be promoted in place of the reductive and inaccurate ‘social Darwinist’ narrative.

Elements of a new ideology and ontology

This shift will be facilitated by the development and propagation of new paradigms of economics and politics, and new ontologies to replace the contemporary dominant ontology of rationalism and ‘scientism’ – the propagation of quasi-scientific evidence to enforce a political ideology that has led to enormous inequality and planetary destruction.  Elements include: 

1. Promoting wealth equality: Piketty’s law demonstrates that without significant remedial government intervention (or, as he observed, global crises such as war), inequality will only continue to rise.  Moral beliefs that value public service over self-interest, community over privilege, and society over individualism, must be promoted.  Evidence clearly demonstrates that societies with greater economic equality tend to be happier, more cohesive, and have higher levels of collective welfare. It has been proved and needs comprehensively to be understood, that above certain levels, inequality does not benefit all, quite the contrary.  Since government, in the supposedly ‘representative’ system we experience today, has been captured by the wealthy and corporate interests (the most egregious example is, of course, political donations), such redistributive taxation is unlikely.  Instead, common ownership, such as that offered by cooperatives, offers a more plausible course to greater equality.

2. Ending domination of nature: Part of the process to decenter growth is to change humankind’s relationship with ‘nature’ – the Earth’s ecosystem upon which all life depends.  That relationship must change from one of domination and exploitation to one of mutuality and co-existence.  The mindset of exploitation dates back to colonial beliefs of domination over other cultures and racial superiority.  The abandonment of those beliefs – for instance, structural racism – will in turn aid the renegotiation of the relationship with nature.  In other words, as the philosopher Murray Bookchin believed, until humans end their domination of each other, human domination of nature will persist.  It is the idea of domination and exploitation, which is also intrinsic to capitalism, that must end.  There are contemporary examples of a more mutual relationship to nature, such as the ‘social ecology’ approach being implemented in an area of North East Syria known as Rojava.  Other areas implementing this philosophy include the Zapatista community, Comunalidad, and Buen Vivir, as well as smaller-scale projects across the world.  Agricultural policy obviously has a huge role to play in facilitating this transformation, encouraging rewilding for instance as well as the reduction in the use of toxic chemicals.  

3. New notions of ownership and governance.  Ownership is critical.  Ownership co-exists alongside notions of exploitation, that land is predominantly a ‘resource’ to be profited from, a factor of production, rather than as the source of multiple positive and shared benefits, from the environmental to the psychological.  The commercialisation of agriculture in England and Scotland and with it the over-exploitation and impoverishment of land followed from the ‘enclosures’ in England (which took place over many centuries) and the ‘Highland Clearances’ in Scotland (18th and 19th centuries) when land held in common and used for shared benefit was seized and ‘enclosed’ by a small and wealthy minority: in reality, forced eviction and theft, legalised by the state after the event.  This turn in land ownership has never been reversed – today, in England, 1% of the population owns about half the land while corporations and government own much of the rest – and is a recurring pattern across the world.  Today, such appropriation is often performed by multinational corporations in cahoots with corrupt political elites, sometimes in the name of the ‘green transition’ where land has been seized allegedly for solar farms or other ‘environmental’ uses.  

The work of the Nobel prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom has shown, through meta-analysis of hundreds of studies, that collective management by all stakeholders of a shared resource, such as a lake or forest, is the most effective way both to enjoy the benefits of that asset and preserve it, contradicting the common presumption of ‘the tragedy of the commons’ and undermining the binary choice of private or public ownership, instead replacing it with a third possibility. The commons as a category must be supported, starting by propagating an understanding of what the commons are in terms of the natural world – in global terms: the land, water (freshwater and oceans), atmosphere, and chemical and biological cycles that sustain them.  But also smaller-scale commons such as fisheries, areas of land or bodies of water.  Overall, the concept of ‘stewardship’ of a shared and mutually beneficial resource should replace that of ownership and exploitation.  Shared management of common resources by stakeholders is one practical way to operationalize these ideas. ‘Usufruct’ is a helpful concept here, that of temporary ownership – or rather stewardship – on the basis of use.

4. Bioregions and new notions of states/borders: such an approach to the commons also implies a more fluid understanding of borders, boundaries, and governance structures.  A river basin or tropical forest will cross many national borders but requires holistic management that can address all the factors contributing to the health of that discrete area.  This is the concept of ‘bioregions’.  A bioregion is a geographical area defined by natural ecological and environmental characteristics rather than political or administrative boundaries. Key aspects of bioregions include: they are defined by natural boundaries like watersheds, mountain ranges, and ecosystems; they are characterised by distinct plant and animal communities, climate, soils, and landforms.  Logically, the preservation and sustainable management of such bioregions must involve fully democratic governance procedures including all stakeholders, including of course any indigenous inhabitants of the territory, which unavoidably must transcend existing political boundaries.  Again, we witness the interlocking necessities of commons management, inclusive democracy, and the reconceptualization of natural ‘resources’. 

5. Future Generations: The recent UN ‘Summit of the Future’ agreed on a ‘Declaration on Future Generations’.  This indicated – though in somewhat ambiguous language – the obligation of current decision-makers to consider the needs of future generations.  However the declaration, hedged with conditions and restrictions, does not go far enough.  One problematic aspect of such consideration is the notion of discount rates, whereby future needs are discounted according to a set multiple.  There is no clear moral basis for such discounting: the needs of future generations should have equal weight to those of current generations.  One necessary conceptual shift would be that, as a matter of course, the needs of future generations are evaluated and factored into policy decisions.  This requirement is already expressed in some indigenous cultures, such as Native American but needs to be added to the otherwise reductive calculations of cost and benefit (not least because of their intrinsically materialist nature).
6. New approaches to empiricism, perhaps anti-empiricism.  In the current neoclassical economic orthodoxy, there is a ‘tyranny of the measurable’: the only data that matter are measurable.  In fact, there is strong evidence that humans care most about immeasurable and ineffable factors – the quality of relationships, love, community, and meaning.  As Wittgenstein claimed, it is impossible to put terms to such things by their very nature, and we should not try. But this does not mean they do not matter, quite the contrary.  Wittgenstein believed that these consisted of the most important things.  This assertion is confirmed by the most unarguable of empirical statements – the words of the dying, which refer to the importance of human relationships and love as more important than material goods or measurable wealth. These ineffable things are the realm of religion, literature, and art.  Some might call it spirituality.  Space must therefore be found for these factors.  How is open to debate, but the start must be acknowledgement of their importance.  An economic system that centred the ineffable, as humans seem to desire, would of course look very different from today’s exclusively materialist dispensation.  The flourishing and reinforcement of human relationships would sit at the centre.  How these are best promoted is of course for any individual to determine, suggesting that a political system that allows for all voices to be heard on an equal footing would be most appropriate.  Moreover, love prospers most in conditions of equality (with the exception perhaps of the family unit) pointing to an economics and politics that fostered these qualities.

Ultimately, the goal should be a different system, incorporating the above elements.  In simplified terms:

Method: how to achieve these shifts

How to change the system?  What are the elements of the necessary and comprehensive strategy, addressing all parts of the transition to a new system?

Participatory Democracy

It is of course an enormous challenge to effect such a shift in economic and social priorities, in the face of deeply entrenched interests whether profit-seeking companies or the governments that have been captured by them.  In the current political system, such a shift is implausible.  It is my contention that such a shift can only be achieved by a transition to a more ‘bottom-up’ system of democracy.  Top-down government, where the tiny few take decisions for the many, is inherently corruptible as access to and influence over decision-makers is inevitably restricted. This creates a competition for access/influence which invariably will be won by those with the greatest resources: money buys power.  Thus outcomes from such systems will be skewed towards the interests of those who can purchase influence i.e. the wealthy and corporate interests.  One clear piece of evidence for this corruption is that in many countries, including the US, the returns on capital are taxed at a lower rate than income i.e. capital owners have been favoured over labour.  

Decisions made in mass participatory democracy are by contrast incorruptible.  They therefore do not reflect minority interests but those of the whole.  The practice of such participatory democracy, for instance in Porto Alegre in Brazil, but also clear evidence from social science, demonstrates that decisions arising from such systems favour public goods, social equality, and more immaterial goals such as community well-being and cohesion.  Indeed, the practice itself contributes to these other benefits: such forms of democracy will improve social cohesion, and people’s sense of agency over their own lives, rendering other priorities, such as material consumption, lower on the list.

The inclusion of all stakeholders required for effective commons management obviously requires an inclusive form of decision-making, such as models of participatory democracy of ‘citizens’ assemblies’ or ‘people’s assemblies.’  In Rojava, the pursuit of an ecological society is coupled with bottom-up communal democracy which is also spearheaded by women, where women are automatically appointed to leadership positions, thus ending other forms of domination including patriarchy (demonstrating Bookchin’s point that ending domination in all forms is necessary for a mutualist relationship with the natural world).  Such inclusive democracy is the necessary component of shared management of common assets such as land or water.

Changing Beliefs

The underlying ideologies that sustain the system need to be changed by interventions to alter beliefs, such as:

• Presentation of evidence of the failure of the current dominant model, alongside appreciation that the orthodox solutions of government intervention are insufficient
• Elevation of alternative models, such as those suggested, that better account for all the factors that require attention: material human welfare (i.e. healthcare, housing, sanitation), planetary health, psychological well-being, the needs of future generations.
• Elevation of the evidence that such a holistic approach, such as Buen Vivir, is successful in attending to the requirements above with a much smaller resource and GHG footprint.  In Costa Rica, indices of well-being equal or exceed those of western ‘developed’ economies with much lower GDP and thus carbon emissions.

Mimetic change

Any attempt to change beliefs is difficult. The dominant model is assumed not only within the mainstream intellectual and media discourse but also suffuses culture and everyday behaviours (what Mark Fisher called ‘Capitalist Realism.’)  This set of beliefs presents itself as ‘natural’ i.e. reflecting the ‘reality’ of human nature and is therefore enduring and immutable, unchangeable except at the margins.  Moreover, the ‘proof’ of this assumption is claimed in the observable behaviors of individuals (e.g. to maximise consumption, compete, etc), when those behaviors are instead a function of the system itself, thus setting up a self-reinforcing and self-justifying cycle.

Evidence from social science shows that people are more influenced by the example of others than by argument or persuasion. In other words, change happens through imitation: mimetic change.  This observation suggests in turn a series of techniques to initiate such mimetic change.

A number of techniques might trigger mimetic change:

• Prefiguration: the demonstration by doing of alternative ways of being
• Language: the use of different terms e.g., the invention of new terms to express an alternative reality: relanguaging
• Ontology: the propagation of alternative understandings of what constitutes reality itself e.g. that immaterial benefits (e.g. meaning, purpose, love, community) are as if not more important that material and thus measurable benefits (e.g. growth, production, consumption etc.)
• Arts have a crucial role in imagining and presenting potential maps of a better future.

We can also begin to see the need to find new terminologies, such as ‘bioregion’, to describe these new ontologies and concepts.  ‘Resource’ for instance is a problematic term (used here for familiarity) in that by its very content it implies exploitation.  New words need to be found and propagated that better express the relationship of mutual dependence, stewardship, and husbandry required between humans and the Earth’s systems.  

The sum of these changes means a shift from the current highly technocratic and output-oriented approach to the climate crisis to a more holistic and systemic approach.  This is a paradigm shift.  The old paradigm has been found wanting, a new paradigm needs to be introduced then refined and tested.

Indigeneity

Principles of shared ownership and symbiosis between humans and nature have long been central to certain indigenous belief systems, of the inextricable unity and mutual dependence of humankind and the natural world, as well as the obligation to future generations.  This indigenous knowledge already exists and does not need to be re-invented.  Partnership with Indigenous peoples is often given a nod in climate philanthropy or finance, but it needs to be more centered with genuine agency for the Indigenous peoples over the land over which they exercise stewardship (reinforcing the argument for genuinely inclusive shared management, per Ostrom).  Concepts of state control or private ownership continue, in binary form, to dominate the discourse of what to do about common natural assets such as forests or rivers.  Respecting the existing practices of stewardship of indigenous peoples does not fit into this reductive binary, but must instead shape policy towards the commons.

Feedback loops

One advantage of pursuing all these strategies is that each may create positive feedback loops for other elements. For instance, respect for indigenous rights and agency over land will in itself imply a bioregional approach to land management.  Converting private ownership to shared ownership on the basis of ‘usufruct’ will itself facilitate better management of the commons. The development and implementation of participatory ‘communalist’ democracy will promote a different version of human aspirations and purpose and, through its actions, a more cohesive community where genuine human needs and environmental concerns are more centred.

Experimentation

Experimentation and testing are vital components of a shift to a new paradigm of the economy and politics. New words, ontologies, and cultural behaviours will have to be learned.  There will be mistakes. The role of philanthropy in particular should be to take risks and explore this new territory. In complex systems, there is no way of knowing which approaches may work, and which may indeed trigger ‘phase shifts’ in the whole system.  This reality implies that many attempts will have to be made to ensure success.

Conclusion

Given the evident failure of the current, growth-based, top-down government economic and political model, and the present reality of the climate emergency, there is no choice but to pursue systemic changes – a paradigm shift – in the manner identified. Granted, this is a leap but a leap where the recommended approaches are well-evidenced and theoretically sound.  A leap in the dark it is not.

Postscript: a personal note

This ‘total concept’ or Gesamtkonzept as it is called in my book, ‘Gentle Anarchy: from the heart of government to a republic of love’’ (Perspectiva, forthcoming 2025), is the product of many years of research, doubt and questioning.  

The journey to this conclusion is described in the book.  In short, it began when I resigned from the British diplomatic service over the Iraq War.  The profound disillusionment with my government triggered a deeper reflection on the nature of the current ‘order’ (or is it disorder?), both economic, political, and indeed social.  Inequality, ever-increasing carbon in the atmosphere, endless war: what was wrong with the existing system that it gave rise to these outputs? 

For many years, I struggled with the answer. I wanted a philosophy that put people, and their real needs, at its centre.  I realised that the neo-classical economics I had studied at school and university assumed those needs and they were material: ever more consumption.  I realised that, despite its claims, so-called ‘representative’ democracy, where the few take decisions for the many, did not foster an ideal freedom – indeed it left most feeling powerless over the things that matter to them.  And the side effects of neoliberalism, in terms of social fracturing and planetary destruction, were disastrous.  The numbers of the concentration of carbon molecules in the atmosphere were unarguable; the sense of frustration, ennui and submerged violence less obvious but in fact more palpable.

Slowly, over time, I realised that the best way to cure the ills of our current system of democracy was more democracy – mass, direct democracy where the many take decisions for themselves.  Where people debate and arbitrate the things that matter most to them, methods that would have to be learned, but methods that by their very action would help reweave our tattered social bonds.  This is ‘bottom-up’ democracy rather than the top-down variety we are familiar with.

Meanwhile, shared ownership was the best way to bring justice into an economy that rewarded the capital owners rather than those who performed the labour.  Genuinely redistributive taxation was never going to happen in a political system where the wealthy and the corporate had captured government through political donation and other more insidious means.  Shared ownership – cooperatives – offered greater economic justice intrinsically, but also the agency so lacking in the current workplace and economy.

But where did the climate crisis fit into this?  For a long time, I bought into the ‘green growth’ myth, that of technocratic change to deliver us from the terrors of ever-rising temperatures.   I believed that transitioning our energy and transport systems from fossil fuels would be enough.  I believed that targets, rules, and regulations were the correct method to pursue this change.  

I first started working on climate in the British foreign office at the time of the 1992 Rio ‘Earth’ conference, the first international meeting to recognise the dangers of climate change.  But by the early 21st century, as my explorations of alternative systems began, it was already clear that the technocratic ‘green growth’ approach was not working, as it has failed to do to this day.  I saw this but I couldn’t figure out the answer.  

It was Rojava, in North East Syria, that helped me – and the evidence of social science.  When people gather together to decide their affairs, consumption and ever more material growth are not their primary concern.  Instead, it is social well-being, the needs of the poorest, public goods (utilities, water, sanitation, education) that predominate.  Everyone’s needs are attended to because everyone is included in the decision-making.  One man who had participated in the project of mass participatory democracy in Porto Alegre, Brazil, described the experience to me as ‘beautiful’, not a term anyone would apply to contemporary ‘representative’ politics in the US, Germany, or the UK.  Partisan divisions evaporated, corruption was eradicated as transparency reigned.  By its very operation, this direct democracy was remedying our social and political ills.  There is an alternative.

What do people really want?  I turned to the irrefutable evidence of the words of the dying.  They did not say that they wished they had had larger cars or more exotic holidays.  They say that they wished they’d spent more time with their children, their families: it was their relationships that mattered most.  Love.  And what would be a politics where relationships – our very humanity – are fostered?  One where we deal with each other on equal terms, ideally face-to-face, where we see each other as truly human.  Not only would we at last enjoy a system – indeed a culture – that allowed these true needs to be met but only then can we begin to turn the supertanker away from its course of ever more consumption – and destruction – and into a different world where our true needs and humanity are at the centre.

Thus, things began to come together.  A system that works better for the planet is also one that promotes our most cardinal needs as human beings – things that are not always measurable like community, meaning, and love.  The dominance of the measurable, the empirical, must end and with it must flourish a richer understanding of what is important – a new ontology.  Domination over other humans must end for this culture to prosper, and thus domination over the natural world must end too, to be replaced by a more cooperative and mutual relationship.  Western culture has forgotten these things (did it ever know them?).  Other cultures have not and we must turn to them to relearn the essential.

Other elements fell into place.  The seminal work of Elinor Ostrom taught me that only through shared management by stakeholders can the ‘commons’ be successfully preserved when neither the state nor the private sector have succeeded in this challenge.  This too is another lesson that indigenous cultures could have told us if we were only to listen.  This insight too buttresses the ‘Gesamtkonzept’.  It is through sharing and participation in decision-making that we protect our world.  The idea of shared decision-making by those who use or benefit from the land or water (or air, indeed) – ‘usufruct’ – that offers the best chance to save the commons that sustain us all.

It is tempting to see the ‘Gesamtkonzept’ as a neat and catch-all solution with an explanation for every phenomenon.  In a complex world, nothing can be.  Other ways of understanding explain our fragile and contested state too, perhaps better.  Other cultures will see things differently.  Other tools may work.  The only way forward however is to acknowledge, at last, that the current system is not working, and to advance, step by step, testing the path, examining the evidence, exploiting the best of human (and natural) ingenuity and heritage: hypothesize, experiment, consult, adapt.  Surely the need has never been greater.