The need of ideas grows exponentially more urgent

 We need ideas now more
urgently than ever.

Ideas that will generate some sort of abatement of climate change implications are needed now more urgently than ever.

Reports from disparate points around the world illustrate that the realities of climate change predicted by climatologists were too conservative and the much discussed “tipping points” are in some places already upon us.

Prolific suggestions about response might have been appropriate if this was still 1980, but being 2012, some 32 years later and with the situation inevitably much worse, the time for talk and grandiose solutions is gone.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to discuss possible means to avoid earth’s unfolding dilemma without sounding pessimistic and overly dramatic, but the situation humanity faces brings on a certain pessimism and can only be resolved through decidedly dramatic action.

What has worked for the past 200 years has enriched humanity, but came at a misunderstood cost to the health of the planet; an account which is now due and which humanity, if it persists with its “business as usual” ways, will not be able to settle.

Had we acted in 1980, we would now have been cruising toward a workable solution, but it is not 30 years ago, it is 2012, well the eve of 2013, and the world is close to having 400ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and with the world’s permafrost beginning to melt, who know where that carbon dioxide content will stop.

The world is presently at less than one degree Celsius in global temperatures, historic emission of Co2 make an increase to a two degree increase certain and now some respected groups and scientists are predicting three and four degree increases and should that eventuate, five and six degrees seems inevitable.

Many, including Australian Professor Ross Garnaut who has considered the costs of climate change, are reluctant to say how well humanity would endure post Industrial Revolution increases in global temperatures of five or six degrees.

Few in our society how pull the strings of power and who could show the way in helping the world abate climate change and find a way to work through it seem unwilling to make tough decisions; decisions that will be decidedly unpopular and yet, are probably the most obvious way to address the present dilemma.

An example of why it would it work already exists.

The much considered World Financial Crisis of 2008 slowed growth, slowed consumption and slowed our use of the world finite resources and during that period humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions fell away dramatically.

The lesson, it appeared, should have been obvious – if we learned to live a more restrained life, understood how to find contentment with less, equally understood that we should not envy or covet our neighbour’s goods or way of life and lived in concert with nature rather in competition with it, then it would be possible to slow our global carbon dioxide emissions.

It is an inadequate idea, but in working just four-hours a day the traditional business world would, in some essence, be sustained, we would have less to spend on the present frivolities of life and it would be a wonderful introduction how we must live in a world governed by quite different from those of the past two centuries.

The legitimacy of The Four-Hour Work Day can be argued endlessly, but our changing climate and the ever depleting finite natural resources will eventually, within a decade or so, make to adoption of such inevitable.

 

The Four-Hour Work Day is loaded with inadequacies

The idea of the Four-Hour Work Day simply won’t work.

The beginning of
recorded history.

The concept is loaded with inadequacies; inadequacies that will see it do little to see society adapt to the demands of climate change.

Authoritative voices from around the world, climatologists who are conservative by nature, lean on undeniable evidence to illustrate that to mitigate human impact on the earth’s climate, we must reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80 per cent overnight.

Human activities of the past two centuries have bequeathed to the world and iron-clad guarantee that global temperatures will increase by a minimum of two degrees compared to pre-industrial times.

The present increase is less than one degree and already the world is being ravaged by weather events unique in recorded history.

We cannot change what is happening and some people, those with faultless climate related qualifications, are suggested that with positive feedback loops (the melting of the tundra permafrost that release billions of tonnes of methane gas, which is even worse than carbon dioxide) we could have a future in which global temperatures increase by as much as six degrees.

A six degree increase could end civilization as we know it.

The Four-Hour Work Day is nothing more than an essential first step in preparing society to prepare life in circumstances absolutely foreign to modern man – we have to learn to live where we live, valuing community and understanding that survival is not about controlling or competing with nature, rather living in concert with it.

The Four-Hour Work Day is about de-throning the economy and rather than prostrating ourselves before it, use that time to connect with neighbours, friends and others in the community to build the resilience that will be a prime requisite when our climate becomes fierce and the world’s finite resources, upon which our present lifestyle depends almost entirely, become almost impossible to excavate or extract from the earth.

The modern conception of work is exhausted, the idea is over and the sooner we recognise and understand that, the sooner we can, as a society, begin redirecting our efforts, our human energies, toward building resilient ways of living that don’t compete with nature, as has been the case in the “machine age” of recent centuries, and work with it.

The Four-Hour Work Day is inadequate in reaching the goal of true and genuine sustainability, but if nothing else it creates the correct mindset and redirects us form what is logistically, factually and most certainly a dead end path.

Work fewer hours; save huge amounts of time in travelling

Paul Tranter.

The Four-Hour Work Day is about many things, among them living closer to where you work and so spending far less time travelling.

Providing us with much to think about speed and travel is University of New South Wales Human Geographer, Paul Tranter.

Writing on The Conversation in a story headed: “Not so fast! How car commuting is taking your time”, Tranter argues that for car drivers, the time spend earning the money to pay for all the costs of a car is usually much greater than the time spent driving.

He concludes by suggesting that the improvement of urban health might be a simple as valuing the time of cyclists more than that of motorists.

Four-Hour Work Day about slowing growth and social equity

Ugo Bardi.

The essence of the Four-Hour Work Day is about slowing growth and along with that ensuring a massive step toward social equity.

Speaking at the 3^rd International Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, Ugo Bardi said peak oil had been a big disappointment as he, along with many others, expected it to stimulate the development of clean energy leading to the avoidance of climate change.

However, he was sad to report that such development and the resultant avoidance of this pressing dilemma of human’s wrestling with an injured climate has not eventuated.

A condensed version of his September 21 talk can be found on Cassandra’s Legacy.

Adapting to differences exceeds of imaginative capacities

Adapting to differences brought upon by our changing climate demand a lifestyle so different that understanding the resultant reality pretty much exceeds our imaginative capacities.

Public transit will play a
key role in adapting to
climate change.

The journey from here to there will be both troubling and tumultuous and adaptation is something we need to begin now and no matter what it is we do, it will not be enough.

The idea that we should work fewer hours is little more than a step in the appropriate direction, for alone it means little, but it simply a step and whatever the journey, it begins with the first step.

Working just Four-Hours a Day is as an idea totally inadequate as our response to dilemmas brought upon us by climate change need differences to our lifestyle that reach deeper our way of living that we can comprehend.

To have any serious impact on what is causing our climate to change we need to dethrone the economy, extract it from within our political lives and return it to being nothing more than a tool; a simple tool that is little more than a recording process and method of exchanging promises among people simply going about the normal business of living.

Once upon a time countries had a process in which all debts were cancelled and everyone reverted to a blank slate. I don’t claim to understand the dynamics of it and although it seems like a good idea it is absolutely certain that today the world’s rent-takers would corrupt the process.

Apologies for the digression, the Four-Hour Work Day, no overtime, no double time, would not apply to privately owned businesses with four or fewer employees, public institutions, such as hospitals, but would include our armed services.

How does it work? I don’t know, but I do know that if we are serious about adapting to climate change and its rather trying implications, we need to build resilience in our communities and resilience evolves from close-knit communities in which that have most everything needed to live contentedly within an easy walk or a short cycling distance.

Should we need to travel any further, our public transit system should be such that we can move easily and conveniently around our towns and cities. The car should be despatched to the rubbish, or at least recycled.

The Four-Hour Work Day is not the answer, but it is a conversation we should be having.

Mitt Romney's plan is a 'suicide note"

The idea of the Four-Hour Work Day would be an anathema to the like of US presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

US presidential candidate,
Mitt Romney.

In fact such a thought would be abhorrent to most anyone indoctrinated by our growth-based economy and the developed world’s way of life.

The embrace of a Four-Hour Work Day demands a change in mindset that few of us can comprehend, not want to comprehend for the simple thought of the idea can illicit panic, an almost impulsive grab to hold onto what we have.

The world’s climate is, because of human intervention, bolting out of control – “bolting” may seem like an extreme claim until we consider the changes that now threaten humanity have occurred over about the last 200 years and the world itself is about 13 billion years old.

Without the warming we have caused, the world would have been slowly sliding into a rather cool stage, but the reverse is happening, the world is getting warmed and our weather quite different from the near ideal conditions humanity has enjoyed almost from when they first came down from the trees.

The trouble for humanity began, oddly when we came to understand how to cultivate and harvest food.

The resultant security of food stocks brought with it the exponential growth of human numbers and then we further entrenched our place on earth with the understanding of how we could exploit fossil fuels (ancient sunlight) enabling the supplementation of human energy.

With this seemingly free energy and a rich and a growing food supply, human numbers continued to burgeon, bringing bonuses for those who understood how to exploit that situation and so while the population grew “fatter”, so did their wallets.

The cacophony of claims and counter claims around the present US presidential campaign has a focus on the economy, jobs and energy, but appears to be saying little , or nothing, about how the US, and the world population, can prepare for a world which will be entirely different.

Pandering to populous views, Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has promised energy independence for America by 2020.

His deluded comments what science is telling us, and have been for years, and in their story headed: “Mitt Romney's Disastrous EnergyPlan”, Rolling Stone magazine has described his plan as a “suicide note”.

The idea of a Four-Hour Work Day would rid us of the Romney suicide note and replace it with survivable, but different and difficult times; not resolving what’s ahead, but bringing-on circumstances which we might endure.

Life is fine just the way it is, but. . . . .!

I like life just the way it is.

Working fewer hours is integral
to responding to climate change.

Sadly, it is not likely to change, it is going to change!

The prognosis for humanity’s future is less than encouraging as circumstances prompted by our consumptive behaviours collide drawing us little by little and quicker and quicker toward the abyss.

Even if we stopped consuming, stopped burning fossil fuels and stopped living the wasteful life typical of the world’s developed countries right now, we are still committed to a global increase in temperatures of at least two degrees and to soar past carbon dioxide content in the earth’s atmosphere of 400 parts per million (ppm).

Not long ago it was considered that the point of no return was 350ppm and now we are at about 398ppm and rogue weather events all around the world suggest the 350ppm warning was timely.

The shift to a Four-Hour Work Day brings societal complications difficult to explain and necessitates change to our way of living that almost exceed, or do exceed, our understanding.

Those complications, it must be said, are miniscule compared to what is ahead is we do not step away from out consumptive behaviours.

The idea of working fewer hours is hugely inadequate in terms of responding to the implications settling upon earth because of our changing climate, but if nothing more, it is an acknowledgement that we must do something.

The implications of working fewer hours is simple – we will earn less money and so be able to consume less and subsequently use less of everything, especially energy, most of which is generated by burning fossil fuels.

A working day of just four hours contradicts everything the neo-liberals believe in and rather than having people working fewer hours, they would prefer to see work based on a 24-hour cycle, seven days a week.

Such a concept will unquestionable disrupt earth’s ecology and reduce our future to just decades rather than millennia.

We need to discuss working hours

The Spanish flag.

The idea of working just four-hours a day, no overtime, no double shifts, will not resolve employment questions, but certainly initiate a much needed discussion.

A story in the Melbourne Age headed: Generation Lost?, discusses what is happening in Europe, particularly Spain; a situation that has evolved for a complex set of reasons, but among them the fact that general intent has been about seeing society locked into a working week of about 35 hours.

We need to reimagine our society, rethink how it operates and reengineer it operate just as successfully, but obviously with different aims, and the ensure people life lives that are both contented and happy and free from the menace that the present addiction to the economic world brings.

A generation will never be lost if our society is structured differently and the emphasis is not on accumulation, rather the betterment of friends and neighbours.

The Four-Hour Work Day brings with it through what it is a marked jump in leisure time and although under the present paradigm that appears wasteful in the extreme, in a freshly engineered society that will allow for purposeful leisure time in which people could grow their own food, work and share their lives, and skills, with neighbours.

Workking fewer hours is just the first step

The Four-Hour Work Day is just the first step in preparing us to cope with unimaginable changes that will settle upon the world as our climate becomes increasingly variable.

Beyond significantly reducing our near obscene use of fossil fuel powered energy and enabling the abatement of climate change, the idea of the Four-Hour Work Day will help break the economic choke-hold corporations presently have on the world.

Working four-hours a day in the traditional sense, no overtime, no double shifts, except for privately owned businesses of four or less people, will change existing paradigms to the extent that communities will be re-invigorated and neighbourhoods will have new life breathed into them.

Our communities of the next generation will inevitably need resilience and as people will be able to spend more purposeful time in them and subsequently they will be able to “work” to help build that resilience in their neighbourhood.

Understanding and adapting to a shorter working day demands a whole new mindset; a mindset from which the unfolding calamities remove choice, leaving us no option but to move in that direction.

Led by the promise of a better life, a promise that for a minority of the world’s population  has been realised, but one which has brought with it an inequality that it obvious in every community, should you care to look around.

The difficulties of moving to the Four-Hour Work Day and manifest and frankly I have no clear answers, but I do have faith in the innovative and creative abilities of people.

The present state of our exhausted world and the exponential growth of our numbers leave us with no option but to at least begin the conversation about how we lead and live a life more in keeping with available resources.  

The continuation of earthly conditions that allows human flourishing rests with us

The preservation of earthly conditions that have allowed humanity to flourish rest with the present stewards the earth (that is you and I) living a more restrained life.

The earthly conditions that allowed
 humans to flourish will only continue
if all of us have a hand in helping
 reach the appropriate solution.

Our addiction to the hedonistic good life comes with costs that are beyond the fiscal; ever since we understood how to derive energy from “ancient sunlight” (fossil fuels) we began to pay with our atmosphere, the foundation of life on earth.

The technological advances of humanity in the last two or three centuries have been wonderful and should be celebrated, but with care and consideration.

The accumulation of human learning has been wonderful, but now the trick, the real trick, the life and death trick, is to learn and understand how to apply that learning.

Human learning has been exponential and that has allowed food security for many leading to an equally exponential growth in population and the demands upon the earth’s resources, particularly from those in the developed world, have exceeded earth’s capabilities.

Many world leaders operate on the “crash through or crash” philosophy seemingly convinced that the latter will only eventuate is the neoliberals are not given free rein.

Those same neoliberals, and the growth at all costs supporters, are oblivious to, or are psychologically unable to cope with the fact that we live in a finite world.

Probably decades ago, our “learnings” should have enabled us to understand earth’s finitude and though that accepted and worked toward creating a more restrained way of living; a way that was not dominated and controlled by the accumulation of a human construct, that being money.

A vastly more important value in life, a value that is not a human construct, is that of relationships; relationships that can be honed and developed from the creation of strong local neighbourhoods within communities, largely ignoring that accumulation and growth at any cost paradigm presently promoted with vigour by the neoliberals.

 The Four-Hour Work Day might seem an impossible dream, but in the early 1990s the Internet and its associated benefits, seemed little more than a dream, but without it today’s business world would grind to a halt.

Landing a man on the moon once seemed like a dream and now it is simply history.

Maybe you could argue about the impossibility of the Four-Hour Work Day but as convincing as that might be it is an argument to which the world will pay no heed.

Unless we can understand the importance of us living a more restrained life, the world is going to produce an argument to which we will have no retort.

 

The idea of disenfranchisement by stealth

The idea of disenfranchisement by stealth is, as ever, on the front foot and subsequently democracy is in retreat.

Consider an evening’s television programming and the retreat become of democracy becomes obvious as does the erosion of enfranchisement.

The entertainment of most commercial television programming is exactly that – “entertainment” and never does it disturb a person’s thinking and cause them to wonder about how and why their country is being governed.

It is a malign influence and is counter to exactly the intent of Socrates who said “That the unexamined life is not worth living”.

Watching television, or being involved in much of contemporary media offers, forestalls the idea that we should critically examine anything, rather simply give ourselves over to the hedonistic life; a life in which consumption is king.

The idea of the Four-Hour Work Day will evolve from the endless examination of what it is we do; a return to true democracy in which people involve themselves in a civil society; work to ensure democracy is truly about one vote, one person and not one dollar, one vote; and realise that what is presently foisted upon us under the guise of democracy is really totalitarianism by the wealthy.

The barbarians are at the gate and rather than being prepared to subdue us with weapons of mass destruction they will use finance of mass destruction.

The Four-Hour Work Day is not about money; rather it is about putting people ahead of profit and as it works its subtle magic to rescue us from a life of slavery to the cause of the corporations, it will also play a key role in helping counteract the damage humans have caused to earth’s atmosphere.

The Four-Hour Work Day will dramatically reduce our use of energy, our use of fossil fuels, but what will in fact be a quieter life by today’s standards, will really socially richer; richer to a level we don’t yet understand.

 

Conventional thinking versus revolutionary thinking

Albert Einstein - the thinking that brought
us here, will not take us into the future.

Continuing with business as usual is similar to maintaining the status quo, needing only conventional thinking.

Switching to and understanding how we could be fulfilled and content by working fewer hours, demands revolutionary thinking.

Such innovative thinking begins with the abandonment of cherished, but seriously dated concepts and then their replacement with something new; something that sits comfortably with our evolving world.

Agile, athletic and energetic thinking will help us understand the advantages of that new paradigm; a paradigm that without option we have to theoretically, politically and practically understand, and adopt, because of the damage we have inflicted on the equilibrium of our climate.

Fulfilment in life for all thrives more on co-operation than competition and as Thomas H. Greco writes in “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization”  ….”to recognize that we all have fundamental interests in common; and to organize and co-ordinate our actions to achieve common goals”.

Working a four-hour day is about common goals and co-operation, but it is a concept that is unquestionably beyond the comprehension of most and being wholly disruptive it will end, without question, life as we know it.

Disturbing as that might sound it is in fact a good thing for life as it is abounds with inequity; an inequity resulting from a globalized economy being forced upon on a world-society still fundamentally driven by localism.

We have a globalized economy – money travels uninhibited by national borders, but even in the relatively economically tiny Australia we, in Tony Abbott’s words, “must turn back the boats”, illustrating resistance to a globalized civilization.

The growth mandate of the globalized economy clearly puts profit ahead of people and even a cursory look at world circumstances illustrates that many have been brutalized and plunged into poverty through pursuit of that tumour-like ideal.

Greco's book explains
the difference between
co-operation and
competition.

That unrelenting quest for growth is exactly what has brought us to this position and that causes me to think of Albert Einstein’s observation that the thinking that has led to this will not be adequate to take us beyond it.

Considering Greco’s observation about the importance of co-operation ahead of competition and Einstein’s suggestion that we need to refresh and invigorate our thinking, it appears obvious, at least to me, that we must willingly surrender many of modern life’s trappings.

Many draw their optimism from technology and human ingenuity pointing to our magical modern life as justification of their faith, but embedded in that conviction is a disturbing indifference to the science on which that celebrated technology and equally acclaimed ingenuity depend.

Most everything we enjoy in our modern world depends on science and yet we ignore that science at our peril; a science that unequivocally declares that we, because of our behaviour, have wounded earth’s atmosphere.

Work is integral to human wellbeing . . . . but!

Work, in all its broad and complex manifestations, is integral to human wellbeing.

Influential economist,
 Jeffrey Sachs

The idea of work is, however, in dispute.

Work never really arose, it was simply a necessity that was important to human survival; it was beyond anything else an obligation each faced if they were to flourish.

It is somewhat risky to consider the idea of work as being in dispute for it is, certainly in the developed world, universal and an unreservedly linked to the modern idea of the good life.

That “dispute” is really only in my mind, but my views are aligned with an implacable ally, one I would prefer it didn’t have, but the harder we work for the wrong goals, the more we disrupt the world’s ecological balance.

Nature, our benevolent dictator, always seeks equilibrium, but mankind working diligently, particularly for the past two centuries, has created an amazingly complex society and so disrupted earth’s balance.

Embroiled in the complexity we have created, the simple life is remote; so remote that any bid to achieve it will be thwarted by the complications we have created.

However, that does not mean we should not aspire to the simple life; a life in which work is not about acquisition and consumption, rather ensuring that we can access life’s needs and within that allow us more free time for purposeful leisure.

Wellbeing, countless surveys has shown, is not linked to the modern way of acquisition or consumption, but it is to be found in a mindfulness of living and a considered life.

Writing in his latest book, Jeffrey Sachs, who has been described by the New York Times, as "probably the most important economist in the world," said: “The relentless drumbeat of consumerism into our lives has led to extreme short-sightedness, consumer addictions and the shrivelling of compassion”.



Sachs' latest book.

Sachs continues: “The logic of profit maximization, combined with unprecedented breakthroughs in information and communications technology, has led to an economy of distraction the likes of which the world have never before seen. The end result is a society of consumer addictions, personal anxieties, growing loneliness in the midst of electronic social networks, and financial networks, and financial distress. This is true for super-rich as well as the rest of society”.

Considering that, each of us should contemplate what Aristotle had to had to say today’s hyper-consumerism ever existed – “I count him braver who overcomes his desires that him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.”

Much of modern work does little but help us fulfil those desires Aristotle discusses, so it takes a brave and thoughtful soul to escape the all-encompassing shopping mandate the corporatocracy has convinced us is the portal to the good life.

An idea to help us escape 'the busy trap'

“I’m so busy” is the plea of most workers.

That “plea”, writer Tim Kreider says in the New York Time arises when people find they have fallen into what he calls “the busy trap”.

Tim Kreider's book,
 'We Learn Nothing'.

Kreider says that those in that “trap” is “almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence”.

Writing in the “Opinionator” in a story headed: “The ‘busy’ trap”, Kreider said that almost everyone he knows is busy.

The idea of busy is just that, an idea, and if people imagine they are busy then they are busy – it illustrates the power of ideas.

Working eight hours a day, and frequently longer, is simply an idea an idea that has perverted the human psyche and the four-hour day is just that, an idea; an idea with the power to erode the idea of ‘busy’.

Tim Kreider is the author of “We Learn Nothing.”

Weeping as I write

I weep as I write.

Surfers surfing, walkers walking and
 people enjoying the good life.

It is a beautiful day; surfers are surfing, swimmers are swimming, people are walking everywhere, the local coffee shops and cafes are packed with those simply celebrating the good weather and the equally good life.

This is the good life, at least that which the modern marketers tell us is the good life, and it is the rich life, something that is the epitome of our growth and consumerist-based economy.

It has been achieved because of our rapacious approach to all that allows humans to prosper. Sadly, and confusingly, it is a lifestyle I love, but it is one that is entirely unsustainably.

It is urgent, well beyond urgent, that we re-think what it is we do; re-imagine our way of life; seek a new way to access joy; re-structure and re-shape our communities to allow them to become emboldened with happiness the resilience and within that understand that contentment is to be found through working with, helping and encouraging your fellows, family and friends, rather than pursuing a life foundered on the exploitation of finite resources and making “presentism” the root of all activities.

Saving the planet is irrelevant as it is fine for no matter what we do, it will go on, the real issue is about saving ourselves, or at least preserving the conditions that are conducive to human survival.

Nature always looks to achieve equilibrium, but in dumping inordinate amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we have disrupted its bid for equilibrium and it will achieve that no matter what – storms, droughts, and major weather events we cannot yet understand.

The lifestyle we lead and the one I weep for is open to us because of our wealth; a richness that has allowed us to service our wants rather than simply our needs.

Working fewer hours each day (work in the modern and traditional understanding of work) is an anathema to any economist trained in the growth/consumerist/profit paradigm, but it is the most obvious first step in any move to abate the impacts of climate change.

Should we have fewer grounds for exchange (money) we will have no option but to turn to our fellows for support and within that build stronger and more resilient communities.

By Robert McLean

George Monbiot supports Four-Hour Work Day concept



George Monbiot.

Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, is a supporter of the Four-Hour Work Day, well, not in practice, but his philosophies seem to align with the concept.

In his latest piece - How “Sustainability” Became “Sustained Growth” – published in the Guardian newspaper discusses the mangled results of the Rio Earth Summit.

“The Rio Declaration rips up the basic principles of environmental action,” he says in a column published on June 22.

Monbiot’s observations about growth are aligned with the fundamentals of the Four-Hour Work Day.

A greedy individualistic few will disrupt the idea of the Four-Hour Work Day

The greed and individualism of a few will disrupt, slow and maybe make the introduction of the Four-Hour Work Day and impossibility.

Greed and individualism is
unbalancing the world.

Any switch to that new way of working and living a hitherto unseen, and probably utopian broad and encompassing, swathe of altruism.

Endless calls for research, reports and other time-wasting distractions aimed at preserving what is and within that the lifestyles of those in the rich developed world – that’s pretty much anyone who can read this – blatantly ignores the critical state of the world, or at least a world that is habitable for humans.

The root of troubles confronting the world is, primarily, is that there is simply too many of us – there is presently in excess of seven billion people on earth, it was earlier estimated to increase to nine billion by 2050, but recent re-calculations put number closer to ten billion.

We are already in catastrophic consumptive overshoot and whether the number be nine or ten billion is somewhat irrelevant as the need to slow our consumption and use of energy has reached a level of urgency that can only be described as “critical”.

Introduction of the Four-Hour Work Day may seem dramatic, unnecessary and something of a knee-jerk reaction, but compared to the implications that will settle upon the world if we adhere to the business-as-usual mindset, it will appear inconsequential.

'We will not act to save the planet" - Herman Daly

Herman Daly is not confident humanity will act to save the planet.



Herman Daly.

Although he doubted we would come to our senses sufficiently to preserve conditions favourable to man, Daly does believe, however, there will be a shift in the composition of economic activity, ensuring it will become less damaging to values that are currently not priced in the marketplace.

Daly (born 1938) is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland, College Park, in the United States.

He was a senior economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank and helped develop guidelines for sustainable development and played a key role in the establishment of theories of a Steady State Economy.

Writing in the newly published “2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years” by Jorgen Randers, Daly, in a piece entitled “The End of Uneconomic Growth” and reflecting the forty years had passed since the “The Limits to Growth” had been published said:

Jorgen Randers
 new book.

“Well, it is now forty years later and economic growth is still the number-one policy goal of practically all nations; that is undeniable. Growth economists say that the “neo-Malthusians” were simply wrong, and that we should keep on growing as before. But I think economic growth has already ended that the growth that continues is now uneconomic; it costs more than it is worth at the margin and makes us poorer rather than richer. We still call it economic growth, or simply “growth” in the confused belief that growth must always be economic. I contend that we have reached the economic limit to growth, but we don’t know it, and desperately hide the fact by faulty national accounting, because growth is our idol and to stop worshipping it is anathema.”

A slowing economy helps abate climate change

Evidence that the slowing of the world’s economy will help abate climate change is on the record.

The 2008-09 GFC not only
 took the economy through
 the floor, but it also had
 a noticably impact on
slowing carbon dioxide
emissions.

The much discussed Global Financial Crisis (GFC) did many things, among them slow noticeably the world’s output of carbon dioxide.

With the world’s economy sliding into disarray in 2008-09, the world’s environmental sinks were given a breather as our consumption, of everything, dropped back in a measurable sense and people, certainly those in the developed countries, found new ways to maintain their “good life”.

The Four-Hour Work Day is similar to the GFC as its introduction will cause significant disruption, decided disarray and unimagined unease for some, but treated altruistically and honestly, it will ultimately be more life affirming for all, and, importantly kind to the earth, the only home we have.

Joshua's view reflect those of the Four-Hour Work Day

Joshua Funder.

Joshua Funder’s sentiments reflect somewhat the underlying concept of the Four-Hour Work Day.

The chairman of the Per Capita think tank wrote in today’s Age (June 13) that asking people to sacrifice a good life by working longer and harder for the sake of economic growth is morally unacceptable.

The story, headed: “Too high a price for economic growth”, ended with the observation that, “Quick fixes for economic growth are not the answer”.

Unintended consquences and unimaginable complexities

Unintended consequences of a magnitude and complexity exceeding our imagination will erupt from the introduction of the Four-Hour Work Day.

John D. Liu.

However, those consequences and their associated complexities will be insignificant and minuscule compared to troubles that await us we do something to counter and adapt to the absolutely unimaginable differences that will descend upon us because of human induced changes to the world’s climate.

The “business as usual” paradigm is a human response to all-encompassing capitalistic system that has swept all before it, including, as is now becoming obvious, the welfare of a host: the earth.

Considered free of emotional baggage, the human race is parasitic and any understanding of species illustrates, quite clearly, that the death of the host on which the parasite depends dies, the parasite follows soon after. Our world is not too healthy.

Senior research fellow International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), John D. Liu, writing in the newsletter of Sustainable Population Australia, said nature is warning us to stop.

“We currently face,” he wrote, “numerous challenges, including human-induced climate change, bio-diversity loss, large-scale deforestation, desertification, hunger, economic crisis, economic instability, migration, armed conflict, revolution and war”.

Commenting on this litany of sins, the founder of the Earth Policy Institute and the author of “Plan B 4.0”, Lester R. Brown, said: “We must go beyond lifestyle changes and change the system, or civilization will end”.

Lester R. Brown and his
 book "Plan B 4.0".

The switch to a Four-Hour Work Day is little more than the leading edge of the fundamental changes we must make to our economic structures if we are to adapt in any way, at all, to the inevitable changes that will soon descend up us.

The change is possible, but to do so we will need to employ the values of compassion, co-operation and altruism that homo-sapiens exhibited thousands of years ago as the migrated to every corner of the earth.

Can we do it? I believe we can, but it is going to force us to excavate a style of courage and commitment foreign to human behaviour.

New book endorses working fewer hours

Twenty actions for sustainability listed in a new book from the Melbourne Institute for Sustainability support the concept of working fewer hours.

The Melbourne Sustainable Society
 Institute's new book will be
 released June 14.

The three points listed under “What individuals can do” are: engage personally; own less; and reduce waste.

All those points are critical, but it is the final pair –own less and reduce waste – which are best achieved by fundamentally reducing our purchasing power and that will evolve over a relatively short time by making each of us, from the corporations though to the ordinary work, somewhat poorer.

Through have less dispensable income we will subsequently own less and because of that waste less.

The outcome of working a Four-Hour Work Day, no overtime or double shifts, will slow, dramatically, all consumption, both in terms of energy and the seemingly endless array of consumer goods created using finite resources,

That almost dictatorial reduction of the use of energy and goods might appear brutal, but beyond reducing human numbers to a sustainable level of about two billion (that’s a cut of about five billion) it is, without doubt, the most reasonable and humane way to adapt to our changing climate.

The new book, coming soon from the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute is, “2020 Vision for a Sustainable Society”, will be launched on 14 June, and will be available online shortly afterwards through the institute’s website.

A compilation of 26 chapters, the book is written by experts; among whom are distinguished professors, established non-fiction authors and even a Nobel Prize winner.

Each chapter identifies something that needs to change and selects one key action that is necessary in the next decade.

These actions are mostly set within the context of Australia and the Asia-Pacific, although they do have global relevance.

They are aimed at communities and government rather than individuals / households and the final chapter compiles these priority actions into a ‘to do’ list: key actions to be taken before 2020 to create a sustainable society.