FS_RIFKIN_foreword_1997.doc http://web.peacelink.it/tematiche/ecologia/futuro.html Wuppertal Institut, Wolfgang Sachs FUTURO SOSTENIBILE Riconversione ecologica - Nord Sud - Nuovi stil i di vita Prefazione di Jeremy Rifkin - A cura di Marco Morosini Editrice EMI, Bologna, www.emi.it

GREENING THE NORTH Foreword (1997) By Jeremy Rifkin For the past several hundred years western civilization has been engaged in a radical experiment on the Earth's biosphere -- an experiment that is temporal in nature and for which there is no precedent in human history. From the beginning of human time until the 19th century, human beings lived within the temporal rhythms of nature's own gait. Solar flow, animal and human muscle power, the winds and waves and the changing seasons set the pace for economic life. As a consequence, human economic activity never strayed too far from the Earth's recycling rhythms. Every society's production and consumption patterns were constrained by the dictates of nature's own timetable. The human species as a whole, could not produce and consume the Earth's bounty faster than the biosphere could recycle and replenish it. Humanity's first economy was regenerative and relied on nature's blessing. The invention of the steam engine and the extraction and harnessing of coal

and later oil and natural gas -- stored sun -- allowed humanity for the very first time, to greatly accelerate the speed by which it extracted, processed, manufactured, distributed and consumed natures largesse. Today, our nanosecond culture is wreaking havoc on the Earth's endowment, exhausting resources and depleting the store of precious germplasm that makes up our biological legacy -- all in the name of efficiency. What we call gross domestic product is less a measure of the wealth we generate each year, and more a measure of the resources we've expended and the waste we've generated. Now, with a population of over 5.9 billion human beings to feed, clothe and shelter, our species is beginning to ask the fundamental question: how do we create a sustainable and equitable approach to economic development that will allow us to share, more equitably, the Earth's bounty with each other, future generations and the other creatures with whom we share the Earth. Unfortunately, the term sustainability has been so bantered about in the political arena and the marketplace, that it's come to mean all things to all people. That's why Greening the North by Wolfgang Sachs, Reinhard Loske, and Manfred Linz, is so important. In an environmental discussion that has become more superficial than substantial, these three analysts have done something rather extraordinary. They have thought about what sustainable policy should look like and how it might be implemented in public policy. They have understood that economic issues and environmental issues are inseparable and they have made it clear that a healthy environment is critical to the maintenance of a healthy economy. In the final analysis all of economic activity is derivative in nature and dependent on nature, despite the remonstrances of neo-classical economists who would like to think of the economy as an autonomous sphere and the environment as mere inputs. The authors of Greening the North have provided an interdisciplinary window for viewing a sustainable future. And, they have been courageous enough to put a major share of the responsibility for rehealing the Earth on the wealthy Northern countries who use such a disproportionate share of the Earth's resources, often wastefully and shamelessly. One doesn't have to agree with all of the conclusions. Indeed, some of their prescriptions may prove less fruitful than others. Yet, what they have laid out, in detail, gives all of us a roadmap to sustainablity in the 21st century. Their work should be widely read, passionately debated and thoughtfully analyzed. It's a breath of fresh air in a debate that, in recent years has become far too facile and stuffy. Ideas matter, even in a world of seven-second sound bites and political spin. These are real ideas laid out in the pages that follow. Now, it's up to the rest of us to take up the challenge these three men have put forth.