Integrity and Your Wallet

Two quick editorial observations related to achieving a sustainable society:

We know that science is struggling as an influence in shaping policy and general public discourse today. Perhaps a greater problem, however, is our increasing worship of cunning over integrity. It has always been an issue in the smoky backrooms of American decision-making, but now it permeates society openly. In the past, if a person openly pushed for what they could get away with, without consideration of what was right, they would be ostracized by the community. Today, in our money-obsessed culture, they are celebrated and raised on a pedestal by the media and society. In fact, it can actually make news as a “feel good story” when someone puts values in front of self-interest. Financial achievement is the metric by which we judge each other in the public realm. But as the expectation of continuous compounded growth hits the vertical climb of its mathematical destiny, and as more and more is never enough and we run out of places to squeeze, resources to plunder and fellow humans to exploit, the fallacy of this worship becomes clear. As with everything, the needed change can only come from within, one individual at a time.

Since Citizens United, the U.S. has made a dramatic turn toward a capitalistic governance system and away from a democratic system. The social and environmental legs of sustainability are being dismantled under the weight of pallets of cash from those who benefit from the historical fossil-fuel-based linear economy of consumption. The answer is not to try and re-establish some “balance” between the three legs: Sustainability is about aligning and integrating the three legs. What this means in practice is to recognize as citizens that we vote every day with our wallet. Every purchase is a vote in support of some organization, set of values and behaviors. When you buy food, are you supporting the local economy or imports laden with externalized carbon emissions from fossil-fuel based transportation? Whose products are you buying? How are their workers paid and treated? What is in the products? How do they affect the environment? Until Citizens United goes away, if you want to starve unsustainable behavior, put your money into the hands of people and organizations that will buy the government and policies you want.