If the Earth were an apple, the livable space that we call home, our atmosphere, would be thinner than the peel of that apple. This thin living space is changing under the weight of an economic system that values private property and the accumulation of individual material comforts over the very things that the vast majority of human beings, in the end, really care about.
In Ecocivilization: Making a World That Works for All (2026), global thinker Jeremy Lent identifies the problem: “We’re rapidly depleting the Earth’s forests, animals, insects, fish, freshwater, and even the topsoil we require to grow our crops. Animal populations worldwide have declined by a staggering 73 percent since 1970. In the oceans, coral reefs are on track to be virtually annihilated by the middle of this century. At this rate, we’re well on the way to causing the sixth great extinction event of species since life began on Earth—except this is the first driven by the actions of a single species.”
“Surveying this [planetary] devastation across the board, in 2017 over fifteen thousand scientists from 184 countries issued an ominous warning to humanity that time is running out: ‘Soon it will be too late,’ they wrote, ‘to shift course away from our failing trajectory.’” That was nine years ago.
This “juggernaut of destruction,” Lent adds, “is built into the very fabric of our global economic system.” Citing fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg: “If solutions within this system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself.” This is Jeremy Lent’s ecocivilization; establishing political and economic systems that promote human flourishing.
Hindering that flourishing is that 50% of the global population today (the Global South) owns just 2% of total global wealth.*
The Global South, including much of Latin America and Africa, is often called the “developing” world, suggesting that it is on a path toward becoming part of the “developed” world, or the Global North. The Global South is not developing; it is, rather, largely impoverished. Understanding how this came to be underscores the rationality and morality of the vast collection of ideas that can result in an ecocivilization.
Spain and Portugal, which began aggressively exploring and colonizing much of the world as they could reach beginning in the early fifteenth century, agreed to the Treaty of Tordesillas, in 1494, which essentially split the Earth into two hemispheres: the eastern half was delineated for Portugal, and the western half for Spain. The treaty was sanctioned by Pope Julius II in order that the two competing Catholic empires would not fight one another as they planted their respective flags around the world.
By the sixteenth century, many other European countries had joined the push to explore and colonize the world. In order to settle land disputes, the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 divided the continent of Africa among 14 European nations, while creating a “legal framework” for colonizing the continent.
“Western nations,” Lent accuses, “amassed vast wealth and power at the expense of most of the world’s population, who were left impoverished and bereft of their ancestral cultural and economic traditions.”
The Treaty of Tordesillas and the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 epitomize hundreds of years of the European exploitation of indigenous peoples and the extraction of resources. The wealth flowed out of Africa and Latin America and into Europe. While the rules have changed, the northward flow of this wealth continues to this day.
“Sixty-nine of the hundred largest economies are now shareholder-owned corporations rather than states,” Lent states.
These corporations continue to exploit and extract in order to generate shareholder profit and without regard to the human beings who toil in poverty or to the planet that is being despoiled. If it occurs to you that this is not just an economic issue but a moral problem of epic scope, you would not be far off the mark. Consider, though, what would happen to the CEO who brings these moral problems to the boardroom?
Corporate and state power is dependent upon growth as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Every once in a while, someone questions why this is so. In 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy said GDP, “counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play… It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Indeed, we should measure “that which makes life worthwhile.”
Why did we start praying at the altar of capitalism?
The answer is that our government is controlled by oligarchs and corporations. One need not look far to see that our electoral democracy is broken. The entire orientation of the current American system is to maintain corporate power. Several thousand billionaires, who actually gather every year, use their vast wealth to determine public policies in their favor. There are twenty-three lobbyists for every member of Congress. Whose interests do you think they promote?
We’ve been trained to believe the law, as we now experience it, is “a natural state of affairs…” However, “the law itself has been constructed over centuries as an imperceptible but potent force that permeates virtually every aspect of our social, political, and economic relations, imposing structures that inexorably pump wealth and power away from common people into the hands of a small, propertied elite.”
Lent suggests that, if our democracy actually represented the people rather than the corporate elites, corporations could be required to consider the interests of all stakeholders. He discusses what he calls a “Future Guardian Model” that “envisions investors as merely one stakeholder group among five others: customers, employees, commercial partners, the community, and the environment.” He concludes that “the charter [of a corporation] is a legal instrument that a society can choose to grant if it determines that an entity exists for the benefit of society as a whole.”
Instead of pursuing only a single bottom line, corporations could be required to consider a “triple bottom line” of people, planet, and profit. The CEO of that corporation would now be forced to consider the moral implications of his decisions.
“Imagine how the world would change if companies were required to adopt a triple bottom line in order to maintain their charter,” Lent writes.
Iimagining how we might change our economic system requires addressing the reformation of our government. While this is undoubtedly a monumental task, Lent encourages consideration of the Three Horizons Framework.
The First Horizon is the current unsustainable situation with society controlled by a few thousand billionaires motivated to influence government policy to support their pursuit of profit. If we continue on this First Horizon path we can expect, according to a 2023 climate report, “unbearable heat, frequent extreme weather events, food and fresh water shortages, rising seas, more emerging diseases, and increased social unrest and geopolitical conflict.”
The Second Horizon includes progressive efforts to minimize or slow down environmental damage and support social programs that attempt to alleviate poverty. This is where we are today with those on the left calling for programs such as these and those on the maniacal right castigating the very nature of democratic governance.
The Third Horizon, that which we cannot now see, nor perhaps even imagine, is to create a new political, economic, and social paradigm that promotes human flourishing throughout the world; an ecocivilization. Lent proposes that, “the state’s legitimacy would arise, not from its protection of private property, but from its fostering of the collective health of the entire society.”
Lent also discusses a “fractal democracy” which should appeal to traditional conservatives, as this political system places local issues in the hands of local communities by “empower[ing] ordinary citizens to determine policies that work for society at large rather than for wealthy elites.”
A primary step would be to guarantee every person on the planet a Universal Basic Income; enough food to eat, a place to sleep, a little medicine when sick, maybe even educate the children. If this sounds like a big giveaway to the undeserving, think again. The poverty experienced by billions around the world is a direct result of centuries of exploitation and extraction; wealth that now fills the coffers of several thousand billionaires.
“If each one’s wealth were capped at a single billion, that would free up $13 trillion – roughly $1500 for every person alive today… If a ‘limitarian’ cap were applied that restricted each person’s wealth to $100 million, that would free up $28 trillion for the public benefit [on an impoverished planet where] four trillion dollars would lift everyone in the world above the threshold for extreme poverty.”
This redistribution of wealth is not only morally sound as a means of correcting the injustices that the Global South experiences, it would also be better for society as a whole. “Above a certain threshold of economic attainment,” Lent reports, multiple studies have shown that “the level of equality in a society is a much stronger predictor of social wellbeing than national income.”
Lent tackles Big Agriculture, as well. In the interests of Big Ag’s pursuit of profit, “half the world’s caloric intake” is wheat, rice, and corn. “At this point,” he cites, “just four companies control 90 percent of global grain trading; four companies own two-thirds of the world’s agricultural chemical market; similar concentrations apply to farm machinery, pork and beef slaughterhouses and packing plants, chicken breeding, cotton seeds, and virtually every other part of the food system.”
Third Horizon solutions to these problems already exist as many communities are “producing more of [their] own food through hydroponics, community gardens, and roof gardens; encouraging urban wildlife; turning wastewater into fertilizer; and utilizing solar energy.” In diversifying agriculture in a regenerative environment Lent imagines “inviting nature into the city and harmonizing with it.”
While agriculture would be diversified by these healthier pursuits, so too would entire communities whose efficiencies would re-establish common spaces. In “Chapter 10, Wealth: Regaining the Commons for a True ‘Commonwealth,’” Lent writes that “[r]ather than prioritizing profits and growth, commons enterprises value fairness, connection, security, and meaningful relationships.”
“The modern city,” Lent observes, “has been built primarily to optimize for the use of the private automobile rather than human flourishing.” Why is this so? The answer is the same as for just about everything else. Automobile manufacturers make cars for profit while efficient mass transit systems and diversified neighborhoods serve the natural instincts of humanity.
Also serving the interests of humanity over corporate profits would be to make information and invention freely available to all. For instance, patent laws currently protect the profit-making potential for the inventor. Jeremy Lent rethinks this idea by acknowledging that any single invention is built upon the ideas and creations of others who have come before. Sure, the “inventor” would be rewarded for his work, but the idea of limiting access to it does not benefit society as it should (this monopolization of patents is an important storyline in Apple TV’s Extrapolations set in the near future where all the predicted madness of a collapsing world is frighteningly portrayed).
Jeremy Lent presents this collection of bold ideas with an idealistic confidence that, given the current state of affairs, seems almost irrational. However, each of a dozen chapters in this dynamic book offers specific examples of Second Horizon steps which could lead to Third Horizon solutions. Breaking down this massive endeavor into its component parts goes a long way toward making the whole thing seem feasible. And, in the end, “Envisioning an Ecocivilization” seems what must be done if we are to have any hope to avoid the calamity that awaits us if we do nothing.
*https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/02/inequality-developing-countries-women-oxfam/
