State of the World 2004: Rethinking the Good Life

Worldwatch Live Online Discussion

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Director of Research(GG) and Research Associate(LM)

September 24, 2004 - 2:00pm EDT

The world is richer than ever before, but are we happier? Research suggests that increases in material wealth do not necessarily correlate with rising levels of personal happiness. In a world on the fast track to self-inflicted ill health and planet-wide damage, we may need to rethink what constitutes "the good life".

Discuss how nurturing relationships, facilitating healthy choices, learning to live in harmony with nature, and tending to the basic needs of all can help societies shift from an emphasis on consumption to an emphasis on the good life.

Bhubaneswar, Orissa.: In a world where 24000 people die everyday due to hunger and malnutrition, and 75% of them being children below 5 years, how can we think of a good life without hurrying to see that every child born is well provided for? Isn't it something fundamental? Can we call our age a civilized one ?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : As you note, for much of the world's poor, 'the good life' is still only a distant dream. In much of the world, what is needed is in fact increases in consumption in order to enable people to meet basic needs for food, shelter, and good health. One of the reasons Worldwatch has focused so much attention on the higher consumption levels of wealthier populations is out of a recognition that if the inequitable and rampant consumption of global resources continues, this will ultimately make it even harder for the world's poor to meet their basic needs. Put differently, if such inequities persist, we may never have the opportunity to create a world where every child born is well provided for.

PAKISTAN: It gives us a feeling that Worldwatch organization is not watching the environmantal affairs in our part of world?!

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : As noted in other responses, Worldwatch is very aware of issues of global inequity and poverty, and this has been a leading impetus for our efforts to address global consumption, particularly among the world's wealthy. However, it is important to note that consumption is no longer simply a North-South issue, but rather an issue of wealthier populations versus poorer populations. If you look at the global consumer class, the developing world is now home to half the world's consumers. China has roughly the same number of consumers as the United States, and India has roughly the same number as Japan. (Of course, the average Chinese or Indian consumes far less than the average American.) And the potential for growth is enormous. This suggests that concerns about consumption and inequity today--in both the North and the South--are increasingly relevant if we are to work towards a more sustainable and socially just world..

Palmerston North - New-Zealand: If we manage to make people use only green energies, don't you think we would go towards even more energy consumption? It would be the same pattern as with Diet Coke for instance: people don't feel guilty so they keep consuming, maybe more and more.

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : In theory, because green energy technolgies are cleaner and draw from renewable sources, then the ultimate impact on the environment and society would be lesser, alleviating some of the challenges associated with increased energy consumption. However, as we note in State of the World 2004, cleaner technologies alone are not enough--they would need to come hand-in-hand with increases in energy efficiency, in everything from appliances to automobiles, as well as with greater consumer awareness about the wider implications of the use of energy and other resources.

Palmerston North - New-Zealand: The ultimate goal of our modern societies is based on maximizing the economic growth. This is now stupid in a system in which consumption already exceeds what the Earth can provide. Lavoisier used to say "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed". Money comes from the transformation of resources. Do you believe in our society change towards sustainability without a radical shift of our economic paradigm?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : As noted in other responses, a sustainable economy would by necessity look very different from the economy of today, where wealth is based largely on the transformation and ownership of resources.

Kibondo - Tanzania: To which extent a personal perception contributes to the actual definition of better life?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Measures of well being are either objective, using some measure such as caloric intake, or subjective--asking people how they would describe their level of happiness. Each method has its place. Subjective measures of wellbeing have particular power because people themselves, not a researcher, deternine whether they are happy. There is particular power in pointing out that, by peopleís own admission, income and happiness do not correlate well after a modest level of prosperity is reached.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: When is a woman in a developed society truly happy and content? I ask this question as I hear of more and more women in Asia and presumably in the West too, talking of how they worked to reach the top position in a corporate organisation, was the first woman judge, or how she built a million dollar business etc; essentially of how women can be equal to men in the world of achievement and business. I am concerned with this trend. I am an Asian woman specifically a Malaysian Indian woman who is an Environmentalist and Sustainability Specialist.

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Itís interesting to consider gender differences in happiness, but I am not familiar with research on this topic. In many ways, of course, happiness for women is not likely to be much different than happiness for men: basic needs, strong relationships, good health, and freedom are likely to figure prominently. But it would be interesting to learn if women value these factors differently from men, or if they pursue them differently.

Women out there, what do you think?

Brussels, Belgium: This is hardly a new subject. It has been written about and discussed since long before the 1992 Earth Summit. What makes you think anyone will take more notice now than they have during the past 25 years?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : We're talking about a major cultural shift that is clearly neither quick nor easy. But we are seeing signs of progress on two levels. First, in terms of changing the way we consume. There is growing interest in redesigning economies so that the consumer has choices that allow him or her to get the service or pleasure that is desired at a greatly reduced environmental impact. You have more experience with this in Europe than most regions do. Car-sharing, for example, is a popular alternative to car ownership that emerged in the 1990s that leads to declines in fuel and materials consumption--yet people still get what they are looking for (transportation). Or consider Germany's packaging "take back" law of 1992. The law said that companies were responsible for the packaging they create, and that they had to "take it back" after it was tossed out. This had two immediate effects: companies reduced the amount of packaging used (we donít really need the box that the toothpaste tube comes in, do we?) and the packaging that remained was made recyclable. Same level of service to the consumer, much lower enviro impact.

The second level of change is voluntary reductions in consumption, a much greater challenge. Even here, though, there is an encouraging countertrend. In Europe, the number of people who are voluntarily reducing working hours has grown by about five percent per year over the last five years. In the mid 1990s, the number of Americans who would opt for more time off from work was greater, for the first time I believe, than those who would prefer a pay raise. And the number of people who are reducing meat consumption is on the rise as well. So there are some positive trends.

Poughkeepsie, New York: If the economy continues to grow at the rate it is at today, how long can we expect the environment to sustain such growth? For that matter due to the large ammount of damage already done, how long can we expect to sustain our way of life even if changes are made?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Current economic practices are already widely documented to have dampened some kinds of growth. Air pollution, for example, has been shown to decrease agricultural output. Logging in Haiti, as we are seeing tragically today, has led to flooding and economic losses that would likely not have occurred if forests had been treated with care. Just yesterday, the deputy head of Chinaís State Environmental Protection Administration reportedly stated that Chinaís environmental problems have reached ìcrisisî levelsóand that the problems now threaten economic performance.

It is also worth recalling that in some realms, we are well beyond sustainable use of resources. Depleting wellwater by pumping it faster than rainfall can recharge the well is by definition unsustainable. Same for the rate of deforestation, or for species extinctions at levels beyond the natural extinction rate (extinctions today run at 10-100 times this background rate). In all of these realms, the sustainability line was crossed long ago, even if adverse economic consequences may not yet be obvious.

But it is also worth noting that the many inefficiencies in our economies constitute a pool of opportunity to address our unsustainable ways. A great book from a few years ago, Natural Capitalism, argued that more than a fifth of the GDP of the United States was accounted for in spending on ìwasteîóspending for which no value is received. Things like the cost of gasoline and wear and tear on tires and roads for time spent in traffic. Or spending on energy that is unnecessarily consumed because efficiency standards are not as high as they should be. If the book is correct, it suggests that there is room for addressing a great many of the unsustainable dimensions of our economy without causing mass deprivation, simply by addressing these sources of waste.

Pawling, NY: There are pollution taxes for businesses to compensate for the external environmental costs/damages that there company has caused : how is it that they are not being highly publicized or strictly enforced throughout? Do you think such taxes being strictly enforced as a standard for any business, worldwide, will actually work as it is intended, or do you think the big businesses, who can afford to do anything, will still wind up finding a way around them and the small businesses will be left suffering as usual, and in the end, result in a failed attempt?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : To the extent that governments are not enforcing pollution taxes, it is likely because there is little pressure for them to do so. This in turn, can be partly blamed on the media, which has cut back on environmental reporting, and which presents news in a fragmented and uncritical way.

Apeldoorn, Netherlands: When income will be a legal issue (on basis of need) for everybody instead of an economic one (on basis of greed), all the working people can be as motivated as all the volunteers are! Then, only then will consumers receive real quality instead of quantity only! I think. Do you?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Iím not sure. I agree that we need to find a way to tame our acquisitiveness and supplement financial incentives for work with other incentives (more free time, for example).

But if you mean legislating incomes, I think you need to say more about how this would be done without falling into the same traps that socialist economies fell into. Most of those workers were hardly ìas motivated as the volunteers are,î as you put it. Nor were they renowned for producing quality goods. One could argue that because such economies were not based on mass and rampant consumption, they are a better model for an age in which consumption needs to be downplayed. But the environmental gains from socialist nationsí modest levels of consumption were surely offset to a large degree by the environmental losses in the production process. State firms had little incentive to conserve fuel and material, which led to some horrendous environmental damage.

Socialist economies were, of course, good at covering basic needs, a primary piece of a high quality of life. And I think that achievement is too often overlooked today. But while fundamentally important for a high quality of life, basic needs cannot do the trick alone. Freedom is important, say psychologists, especially in the form of opportunity to realize oneís potential. This spiritual need must be part of the quality of life picture as well.

In other words, I donít think that legislating away greed is likely to be a workable solution. The answers will need to be cultural and spiritual, it seems to me, as much as political and legal. To the extent that legal/political approach to dampening consumption is pursued (through taxes, or through limiting the work week, or through liberal family leave benefits that allow families to spend time together), it will require broad public supportówhich requires a cultural shift, it seems to me.

Vancouver, B.C. Canada: Less developed countries like Mexico are being (at an ever-increasing pace) influenced by the capitalist 'consumption paradigm'. What steps can be taken by a country where its general public is geared toward 'consuming' as the means to achieve happiness?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Good question. My answers to several other questions in this chat begin to address your concern. Here, I just want to note that the Chinese minister who said yesterday that Chinaís environmental problems have reached ìcrisisî levels went on to say that China could no longer afford to follow the West's resources-hungry model of development and it should encourage its citizens to avoid adopting the developed world's consumer habits.

WIngdale, New York: I am going to be writing a paper on recycling, so I was just wondering about the disadvantages of recycling.

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : The deeper you look into this question, the fewer disadvantages youíll find. And of course we need to ask ìdisadvantages for whom?î When New York City discontinued its recycling program a few years ago, it claimed that the program was too expensive, an apparent disadvantage. Yet comparisons of recycling with virgin materials use typically do not take into account the subsidies given to timber and paper producers. On a level economic playing field, recycling is quite competitive cost-wise. For the city, expenses associated with collection were quite possibly higher than for regular trash removal. But for the state or nation as a whole, and certainly for the environment, there is little doubt that recycling is superior on many many levels.

Step back from the city budget and look at the big picture, the global picture, the picture that includes trees and wildlife and aesthetic beauty in your analysis. From this vantage point, I would turn your question around: what are the advantages of relying unnecessarily on virgin materials?

New York: Do either of you believe there is a trend that pollution caused is exponential vs consumer happiness as a downward sloping graph? If so, do you think that on a bio-chemical level the existing pollution is slowly effecting the population's level of happiness?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Iíve not seen any studies on the connection between pollution and brain chemistry. Certainly if pollution is making a person sick, especially chronically sick, that personís happiness level is likely to be affected, but this is a more distant relationship than I believe you are suggesting.

Ventura, CA: The world is richer now than ever before? Beg pardon? The only real wealth is the soil to grow the crops we need, and the water to nourish them, and us, and both are being lost at alarming rates. We are also using up unreplenishable fossil fuels that took millions of years to create. As the soil, water, minerals, and biota are lost, the world becomes poorer every day. Care to comment?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Of course, it all depends on how you define wealth. If you're looking at wealth solely in economic terms, then we've seen significant growth in the gross world product since 1950, and a more than doubling of GDP in the United States since 1970. But if we're talking about natural wealth--such as soil, water, and biological diversity--then, as you mention, we see a very different picture. The World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Index, which measures the health of ecosystems around the world, has seen a 35 percent decline since 1970, suggesting that 'planetary wealth' is indeed shrinking at an alarming rate. One of the points we make in State of the World 2004 is that current measures of wealth--such as GDP--don't adequately measure true wealth in the world, whether we're talking about the environment or social well-being. (Indeed, according to current measurements, oil spills and wars both contribute to 'positive' growth of the GDP.)

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: If everyone had more leisure time, consumed less, and valued the good life over consumption, businesses would seemingly lower their productivity and decrease in size. With increasing populations, would this not lead to unemployment which would in turn increase unhappiness?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : This is an excellent question. Of course, it is hard to really know what the result of everyone on the planet consuming less and enjoying "the good life" would be, given widening global inequalities and varying individual consumer tastes. However, as we note in State of the World 2004, decreased consumption (esp. of material resources) does not necessarily have to mean decreased productivity, unemployment, and large-scale economic collapse. A "well-being" economy would look very different from the current economy--for instance, the energy sector would consist of wind and solar production and other renewables rather than a heavy reliance on fossil fuels--but it would still require a certain level of manufacturing and jobs. Meanwhile, businesses would focus more on providing services rather than products (e.g. the service of mobility, such as through 'car sharing' or mass transit, rather than the private car), but they would still continue to play a leading role. And products themselves would not disappear, but would be far more resource efficient--allowing consumers to meet their needs with far less material throughput through the use of 'cradle-to-cradle' and other design-for-efficiency concepts.
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Another way to look at the questions of consumption and employment you raise: theoretically, if people consumed less, they would require less income and wouldn't need to work the long hours they presently do to meet their demand for 'stuff.' In turn, if people worked less (say 35 hours a week rather than 40 or 60), this could conceivably "free up" employment for others-- requiring more workers to accomplish the same tasks that one worker previously did.

Of course, these types of discussions are relevant primarily in situations where people have already reached a certain level of consumption that has enabled them to meet their basic needs. For the world's poorer populations, what we need to be talking about is increasing consumption levels to the point where people can lead secure and dignified lives.

Trinidad, CA: I have two. One has to do with currency. Could we not expect to drastically alter consumption patterns by introducing more units of valuation in our pricing structures? I began an essay to explore this on our website, allinahrmony.com called Make Money! It can be found by clicking on the tab 'Fork in the Road Campaign' and then Make Money! I would very much appreciate your comments on this. Additionally, there is much talk about bioregional sustainability... With the loss of localized cultural wisdom and indigenous habitat both environmentally and contracturally, do we have some idea what sizes of communities are ideal and ways to rediscover patterns of living that are sustainable and gratifying, region by region? I am interested to know also, what sizes do you foresee healthy communities more or less optimized for dynamic and harmonious living and how this might be different in different regions...

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : On both of your questions, my knowledge is quite limited, and I post this question in part to invite those with more knowledge to chime in. But I would say that many indicators today suggest that we should pay far more attention to the merits of local economies. My colleague Brian Halweil will be releasing a book in November entitled Eat Here, which documents the many costs of long-distance food, and shows how people are increasingly turning to food that comes from local farmers. And many advocate the use of local currencies to stimulate local investment and job creation (Ithaca, NY, I believe, is one of several cities that has its own currency in use). Fascinating areas that I would love to learn more about, and that deserve greater attention.

Granada, Spain: Hi and congratulations for your last State of the World! I have been campaigning for responsible consumption in the last four years, and I find really hard shifting people from the mainstream culture of consumption towards different views of 'the good life'. Do you think that some people are just 'unrecoverable', like in Matrix?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : See other posts to find a partial response to your question. I donít think anyone is irredeemable (not even me!). But is changing consumption one of the most difficult challenges we face? Undoubtedly. Will it require a tragic wake up call to get us all to pay attention? I hope not.

London, UK: I worry about the term 'going back' when discussing the good life/reduced consumption. How can we make reduced consumption exciting and a challenge?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : I suppose that one approach is to point out to people the harm that heavy consumption is doing to their quality of life. The average American consumes more than ever, yet 65 % of US adults are overweight or obese. We work longer and longer hours and have less time for family. Many of us carry substantial personal debt. On a number of fronts we are arguably worse off than our parents were, despite our having more wealth. That reality may motivate someÖ

Probably better is to offer people a credible alternative vision that promises to give us what psychologists tell us we most deeply desire: good health, strong relationships, freedom of opportunity, and having basic needs met. Governments need to design economies not simply to produce more, but to provide more of what people need to make them happy. To the extent that a plethora of goods does not lead to these desired end results, the economy, I would argue, is not doing what it ought to.

A great study called the Well-being of Nations helps in this regard. It ranks countries based on their performance on more than 80 environmental and social indicators of well being, from infant mortality to rates of deforestation. (Interestingly, some of the wealthiest countries in the world (oil exporters) rank near the bottom of the 180-nation list.) Imagine if nations competed to finish first in this ranking, rather than first in wealth or first in military spending. How can we create that kind of competition?

Poughkeepsie, NY: I notice more and more people like me, college graduate, with incredible advantage and opportunity to make a six figure salary in a corporate job, giving up that life style and working in organic farms or volunteering for an organization which reflect our social concerns. Do you find that the more educated we get about certain issues and the more involved we get, it is easier to "drop out" of the consumer part of society?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : To some degree. Aa I note in another post, an interesting countertrend to the consumption boom is the minority of people who are downshifting in the ways you suggest. The countertrend appears to be growing, but it is still very much a minority movement.

People with high incomes have the luxury of cutting back their consumption without undermining the thngs that lead to a high quality of life. Many of the ìcultural creativesî in the USó-people who have made their consumption choices more environmentally or socially sustainable, or who have reduced their consumptionó-are people of higher income levels and high levels of education. Overweight and obesity are running rampant in many countries, for example, yet societal elites are often the ones who have embraced healthy eating.

Yet people of high incomes are arguably more susceptible to losing sight of what is important in lifeósimply because they can afford to pursue instant gratification over lifestyles that may be require more discipline, but are ultimately more rewarding. High income and high levels of education are no guarantee of enlightenment on the question of consumption.

Tucson AZ: People must perceive a net benefit of any alternatives to more and more consumption before they will be willing to incur the costs consuming less "stuff". If it is true that "you can't beat something with nothing", do you agree that the alternative to the consumer society is to create a greater sense of personal well being, thru more connections with others, and other intangible benefits? Does this imply that we will have to restructure the economic system so that we all have more "face time" with our neighbors (and make other changes to allow for more local social and economic interactions), if we are to achieve an alternative to the current view of "well being thru consumption"?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : I agree with nearly all that you have written. I suppose the question is how to achieve these things--how to create 1) an ìinfrastructure of consumption,î that gives people more responsible consumption choices, and 2) an ethic of consumption that encourages us to practice restraint in our consumption.

In other posts I refer a bit to what a different infrastructure of consumption might look like (services replacing some goods, product takeback laws, zero waste economies, eco industrial parks, etc.). Here I would like to focus for a moment on a new ethic of consumption.

Restraint is perhaps not the most persuasive word to use to sell this new ethic. Yet I think consumer societies may have lost sight of the fact that restraint and constraints are central to what it means to be a developed person and a developed society. Development in most of lifeó-from a swimmer who hopes to be an Olympic champion, to a tadpole en route to froghood, to a nation expanding its economic outputó-happens in a way that involves restraints or constraints. Boundaries set the arena that makes development possible. Only in the realm of consumption are we fed the falsehood that constraints can be bypassed and that restraint is foolish. ìYou can have it all,î the ads tell us. We can never have too much, we can never be too indebted, new is always better than old, two are always better than one.

I suspect that most of us know, deep down, that heeding these messages will not lead us to better lives. But that knowledge, in consumer societies, appears to have gotten buried deep in some dusty backroom in our psyches. And the people who are supposed to keep that knowledge aliveó-the knowledge that too much consumption can be bad for us, that we need time for reflection, that we need good relationships, that sacrifice and discipline and delayed gratification carry their own rewards, and are necessary for our own developmentó-the guardians of this knowledge are not doing their jobs, it seems to me. Our elders, our teachers, our religious leaders are not raising their voices to offer us a vision of the good life that is powerful enough to counter the messages coming at us from the media.

Melbourne, Australia: We know we need to reduce people's consumption if we are to stop the world's worsening environmental problems. Not only do we need to be smarter in the way we consumpe, but we also need to reduce the amount we consume if we are to support the world's population. But in affluent countries such as Australia, UK or USA actually reducing consumption whereby people will need to accept that they can't have all the goods they are used to having is a huge challenge - once people get used to a certain level of consumption it is hard for them to go 'backwards'. Do you have any advice on how to assist people to feel comfortable going without certain things in their lives?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Really good, tough question. To the degree that our consumption, however, is pursued not for what the goods themselves offer, but for the way those goods boost our status and self esteem, I would guess that a key to beating the consumption addiction is through our relationships. Strong relationships can reduce the need for consumption, if consumption is pursued as a way to fill a hole in one's life, a hole created by lack of good relationships.

In addition, people are heavily influenced by their peers, so peer relationships could be a key to reducing the perceived need to consume. If a neighbor I look up to, or a coworker, drives an older car and is not bothered by that, somehow it reduces the pressure I feel to have the latest and greatest car. In this way, our personal consumption choices could have greater impact than we know.

: In your opinion, what is the single most important factor that is having a significant effect on the world today?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Environmentalists have tried to sum up environmental (and to some extent, social) impacts using a single formula, the I=PAT formula. Here, the overall Impact is a reflection of Population times Affluence times Technology. Recognizing the importance of each of these three areas in driving global trends, Worldwatch has invested a great deal of energy into raising awareness about them. Typically, Affluence (a proxy for consumption) is among the most neglected of these three areas, and we have sought to raise the profile of the significant influence of the consumer society through our most recent State of the World report. We have also just released a special issue of World Watch magazine on the topic of population. Both of these factors are important drivers of many of the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges.

Hopewell Junction, NY: The majority of the American people are highly consumer conscious and measure personal happiness by what they possess or how others perceive them, due in part to what they possess. In this largely conservative, capitalist society many people are "fed" via the media and influenced by the culture of the celebrity into thinking and believing they need a certain something. What kind of movement or advertising campaign do you think it would take to make our country one with less "Hummer driving idiots" and more green individuals and businesses?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : The media is a huge influence in driving consumption. So we need responses that are at least as strong. In Norway, a reknowned ad executive has taken up the challenge of developing ads critiquing consumption, which apparently have caught the public's attention. We have also seen success in the US of narrowly focused enviro campaigns, such as the "Keep America Beautiful" campaign or the effort to have people cut up six pack plastic rings to protect birds and marine life. Tiny, tiny, compared to what is needed, of course, but my point is that people do respond to public information campaigns.

But we need much more, as I've said in other responses. The effort to curb consumption is ultimately a cultural effort, as we try to shift worldviews and have us all struggle with the questions "what is my life all about?" For too many of us, I suspect that the answer is Shopping, Consumption, or some other ultimately less than fulfilling activity.

Newburgh, NEW YORK,: How can the individual in everyday task help to not contribute to the pollution? How would you perform everyday tasks?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : It's very important that you ask this question, because I think many of us feel overwhelmed by the challenges we face and feel that we alone cannot make much of a difference. True, very few of us have the capability to change laws or to reorient business practices. Yet each of us does have our own sphere of influence, however small--whether it is our families, our workplaces, our religious institutions, etc. Starting to affect change in our own lives and our own spheres of influence is an important first step. I don't have time to go into all the changes we can make (and can encourage our friends, workplaces, supermarkets, etc, to make), but I can recommend a recent Worldwatch publication called Good Stuff, which is available on our website (www.worldwatch.org). Good Stuff discusses the impacts of some 20 different consumer goods and suggest ways that we can reorient our consumer practices in each of these areas. It's a great start!

Warkworth, New Zealand: Given the raw (and sometimes brutal) economic power exerted by multinational corporations (e.g. military-ndustrial-government connections in invasion of Iraq), what chance do you give the "good life" movement?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : No doubt that corporations continue to wield enormous power, and I would not minimize this reality. At the same time, we have also seen a steady and impressive rise in the power and influence of civil society in the last decade or more. More open political systems in much of the world, combined with new technologies such as email, the Internet, and inexpensive video cameras are transforming civil society as a political actor. The Campaign to Ban Landmines produced a Treaty largely as the result of NGO organization through email and the Internet. And activists opposed to construction of the Maheshwar Dam in India were able to team up with NGOs in Germany and the United States to block the participation of some foreign corporations. And the FEB 15 2003 demonstrations globally against the Iraq war, while unsuccessful in stopping the war, helped embolden the UN Security Council to oppose the US on the question--a huge victory.

At the same time, we ARE seeing increased interest in sustainability among large corporations (at least, to the extent that this can boost the bottom line). Many companies now have an environmental or sustainability person on staff, and some are rethinking their procurement practices and use of energy and water efficient products. Though clearly much more needs to be done, this is definitely movement in the right direction.

Not trying to be Pollyanish, but there are signs of counterforce out there that are worth looking at.

Sydney, Australia: First, I just wanted to bring your attention to The Simpler Way web site, located here: http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/ There are a lot of good ideas here, and I think you will find it worthwhile to read it. Second, how do you see our society moving towards sustainability (not uncontrolled growth) given that our political leaders show no inclination to make the tough decisions needed to plan and implement these changes?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Thanks for posting the Simpler Way website--I'm sure other readers will find it interesting as well.

Your question about political will is important, as this continues to be a significant obstacle to the type of change we are embracing. However, we can also not overlook the remarkable range of activities we are beginning to see among other leading 'actors' in society--whether the business community, regional and local governments, or local communities and individuals. In the United States, for instance, while there has been a clear lack of support for a large-scale transition away from fossil fuels at the federal level, interest in renewable energy at the state and local levels is growing rapidly. Many states are now embracing wind power and other renewable energy targets, partly in response to growing consumer demand. This holds true for many other countries as well--while the political impasse remains at the higher levels, a flurry of activity is occurring at the grassroots and local levels. Hopefully, these trends will eventually convince our political leaders of the growing importance of sustainability as well.

New York, NY: What is the best way to educate/ promote the re-designed (re-aligned) definition of the good life? How can we get this information into the mainstream?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Another tough and good question. I would argue again that any value-shaping institution in our society--education, political institutions, houses of worship, even the media--ought to be involved in redefining the good life. It is a central question of our age.

Which of these do you have the closest contact with? Why not target your interface with that one--with the local school board or your child's principal or teacher, or perhaps with your minister--and see if you can change shape some thinking on this issue in your corner of the world?

Barrie, Ontario, Canada: I love this Kenyan proverb "Treat the earth well, it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children". As I am raising my 6 month old daughter, I wonder what type of world she will live in. My question is, if the entire world should change their polluting ways today, will our children live in a healthy environment as adults, or has the present "good life" instilled too much irreversible greed in all of us? As David Suzuki says, " we are driving straight for a brick wall, but are arguing over who is driving." (quote not exact)

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Our planet is an amazingly resilient place, and on many fronts can be restored to health. (Extinct species, of course, will never return.) Not too late to do a lot of good healing work.

How soon and how well we heal ourselves of our addiction to consumption, of course, will have a lot of influence over how well we heal the planet. As many of the questions have noted, this is one of the toughest nuts our civilization has to crack. But the seeds of change are being sown, as the responses to other questions have indicated.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia: I wondered whether any of you have read or heard of the concept of the'eco-city' or 'traffic calming' - I read about them in a book by Michaek Engwicht. If you are familiar with the concept, do you think that it could be implemented on a large scale? and do you think it is a workable concept? Would you criticise any of the ideas the concept involves?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Unfortunately, I am not familiar with the concept or book you mention, but it does sound very interesting and worth looking into. In the past, Worldwatch has done quite a bit of work on sustainable cities, including issues of traffic congestion and urban sprawl. For our views on these topics, I suggest the following publications by researcher Molly O'Meara Sheehan, available for free on our website: "City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl" and "Reinventing Cities for People and the Planet."

London, UK: In your Worldwatch Paper, Dec 2002 on religion and spirituality and the quest for a sustainable world you argued that religions are in a position to weigh in more strongly with the spiritual and moral case against excessive consumption, also noting that they could become more active in the community by sponsoring neighbourhood groups that seek to promote simplicity and offer support to those who seek to live more simply, are you encouraged by any developments in this area, and do you have any further views on how the environmental lobby and people from various faith traditions can work together to tackle consumption?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : I remain hopeful on the role that religion can play in shifting our civilization to a sustainable footing. I hear all the time about new initiatives from religion that tell me that consciousness of sustainability issues is spreading within the religious community. Yet the religious environmental movement is still a small one, and many religious people still see no connection to sustainability issues.

The sustainability problematic is essentially about an antiquated worldview that many of us still hold today. Religion is a particularly strong shaper of the worldviews of many of the world's people, which is why I see the participation of religious groups in advancing sustainable development as such a hopeful sign.

: I am happy to know that an organisation as yours exists. What is progress if the future is filled with potholes. For one WHO says that by year 2020 the rate of cancer worldwide will increase by 50%. There is still no cancer cure in sight even though one can easily see the link between progress with its attendant stress and cancer rate. What is the solution your organisation seeks to offer to the world on this?

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Thank you for your kind support.

Worldwatch has not done much recent work on cancer issues specifically, but we have sought to raise awareness of some of the challenges associated with the rapid spread of "lifestyle diseases" linked to growing obesity levels and ill-health in the U.S. and around the world. For more on this, I recommend the Worldwatch paper "Overfed and Underfed: The Global Epidemic of Malnutrition", available for free on our website.

Steve Conklin, Worldwatch Institute: Thank you to everyone who joined us for today's Worldwatch Live online discussion, and to our Worldwatch researchers for answering all of these great questions.

Gary Gardner and Lisa Mastny : Thank you to everyone who participated in the chat, and to Steve for his excellent job moderating the discussion. I really enjoyed all of your great questions about these topics, and am sorry I didn't have time to answer them all.

I'm looking forward to chatting with you again in the future--so keep those questions coming!

--Gary